Freedom for Service 1 Corinthians 9:19-27 The Reformer Martin Luther, writing on the freedom of the Christian, said, A Christian person is a most free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian person is a most dutiful servant of all, subject to all. -- (Freedom of the Christian, 1530). There really is no such thing as absolute freedom. Even God is only free to be God! The words of the Declaration of Independence -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- make no sense if one understands them to mean a life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that acts against the person, rights, and property of my fellow citizen in an unlawful way. Like-wise when we talk about freedom, and freedom as it relates to Christian living, we have to realize it, too, is freedom within certain limits and for a certain purpose. The apostle Paul--speaking about freedom--does so in a specific context. That context gives the goal of Christian freedom as he addresses it here. It s why he ends this section with examples from the athletic world. As he says, Athletes exercise self-control in all things (vs. 25). Marc Gasol and Mike Conley aren t where they are by accident or mere talent. It helps--a lot!--but it takes a lot more than that. It takes discipline and focus. We may ask why Paul uses the athletic examples. It just so happens that the city of Corinth was famous for the Isthmian Games (Corinth sitting on an isthmus), second only to the Olympic games in the ancient Greek world. The thrill of athletic competition in the various games was as well-known to them as the Grizzlies and Tigers are to us. And, of course, as we know, you cannot run well or box well--to cite the two contests he names--without much preparation, discipline, and practice. It s because of those things,
the athletes can do the incredible things they do. Those commitments--which are mental and physical--limit personal freedom in one sense but enable them to be free in another, and to reach the goals they are seeking in the athletic contest. So, when the apostle Paul talks about Christian freedom, For I am free with respect to all, (vs. 19a) he is speaking in a context--that being for the sake of spreading the gospel and winning people to it. I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more [people to it] (vs. 19b). Then, (vs. 23), I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for sake of the gospel All this talk, then, about Christian freedom is understood in the context of living a life for the sake of the gospel and winning others to it. Paul sets himself--and by implication--sets us all in the same context of living lives for the sake of the Gospel and in the pattern of Gospel. Here he does so by addressing the matter of freedom, the freedom that is ours because of Jesus Christ. As we have seen--last time--paul speaks to our liberation, our freedom we have received, as a result of Christ, who has brought us through our Exodus, and who is our Passover. We were slaves to sin, to ourselves, to death, but now our lives have been set free through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus our Lord. So if we are free, what does that mean? How great is that? Paul was--as we have seen--often misunderstood by many about many of the things he said. This was true in Corinth, in Galatia, even in Rome, too. Christian free-dom is real and wonderful, but it must be rightly understood--and it has to be understood as to what purpose. To the Galatians, for example, Paul had written, For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke
of slavery, (Gal 5:1). Some people took such words--as they did in Corinth--as a kind of pass on personal morality. Some believed the body was not important in relation to the Christian life and salvation, and so it didn t matter what you did with the body. They thought that s what Paul meant. Similar misunderstanding happened in Rome, where some even said, Let us do evil that good may result, (Rom 3:8). In Corinth, some said, All things are lawful for me, (1 Cor 6:12; 10:23) meaning, I can do anything I want. But Paul did not teach such free-wheeling moral liberty. To the Galatians, Paul said plainly, You were called to freedom but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, (5:13-14). To the Romans, Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present the members of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present your members to God as instruments of righteousness, (Rom 12-13). So also to the Corinthians, All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other, (1 Cor 10:23-24). Paul hardly ever speaks about Christian freedom without speaking of Christian slavery or servant-hood in the same sentence. The Declaration of Independence may well define civil liberty, but it does not define Christian liberty. Nor was it meant to. But it s very easy for us to think they are the same. They are not. We have to understand our-selves in this world where we are in God s Story, not just the American Story. And where we are is in terms of the Gospel, the message that defines us and ministry as human beings. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not merely about saving people
individually, and it s not about saving them for heaven. It s about saving people in the larger plan of God to save the whole world, in particular to put human beings back on track in carrying out God s original purposes from Creation onward. And that means re-creating the human community that manifests itself in grace, love, and peace. In this regard, Paul s teaching on Christian freedom has to do with freeing us from self-interest. Adam s sin opened the door for the powers of sin and death, so to wreak havoc in all areas of creation and human community. We were created for community, and work together, with God and in God s Creation. Sin and death, human sinfulness and self-indulgence, have confounded God s original purpose. But in Jesus Christ--the Second Adam, our elder brother--god has put things back on track for us By him, God re-instills patterns of good and grace among us. That s why Paul says we have been freed from sin, meaning the power and the rule of sin. For [the reign of] sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under [the reign of] law, but under [the reign of] grace, (Rom 6:14). And that means, we are to live in the freedom that benefits and builds up our brothers and sisters in Christ. The reign of the Gospel means we are to pursue the kind of life that does those things, even at the expense of our own freedom when necessary. That s that business Paul speaks to when he says, To the Jews I became a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those outside the law [Gentiles], I became as one outside the law (though I am under Christ s law, [the law of love] To the weak I became weak so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I might save some, (vss.20-22). Now, Paul himself was in a somewhat unique position as he was seeking to witness among both Jews and Gentiles, and people very different from himself. He had
to adjust to very different cultural situations and act accordingly. This didn t always sit well with people that thought he should do and act exactly as they did, be they Jewish believers or Gentile. This was an enormous challenge, and Paul did not please everyone with how he acted. That s why Paul is going to such lengths to explain and teach what this matter of Christian freedom really means. But what does that mean for us? In our day and time, I think it means that we have to be more accepting and open to where people are in our attitudes and actions. You may not approve, but keep your judgments to yourself. Billy Graham has said, God judges. The Holy Spirit convicts. My job is to love. We often prefer to do the judging and let God do the loving! But we live in a time where your children and certainly your grand-children do not live and think about some things--particularly in society--as you and I did. But this is reality. But it is not unheard of or unlike some of the realities that Paul faced in Corinth. As Paul is explaining it, there were some Christians in Corinth who would have been less concerned about winning other people to faith in Christ as Lord than with keep-ing certain social and accepted moral practices to keep themselves--as they saw it--and their fellowship pure and right. If you disagreed, you weren t worthy of them or their fellowship. Others, proclaiming their spiritual freedom, would--and did--take offense at Paul for saying he was prepared to become as one under the [Jewish] law, for the sake of winning Jews. Then others--committed to accepted moral rules and attitudes--were shocked into apoplexy to hear Paul say he was outside the law. They just couldn t accept Paul s practice of freedom, which though was not an absolute freedom. It was always a freedom that he could sacrifice for a greater purpose--the cause of the love, the cause of the Gospel for others, the cause of broader fellowship.
And that he did. Paul clearly exercised a most imaginative and sensitive adaptability in his relationships with Christians and non-christians. He was never locked into just one way of doing things, of a single way of listening to, interacting with, communicating and living the meaning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Lord. He says, I have become all things to all people, (vs. 22). The message of the Gospel--Jesus Christ is Lord--remains the constant. But we the messengers sometimes have to swallow pride, must give up our rights, and sacrifice freedom to become servants of Christ for the sake of others. That was the pattern of the Lord Jesus, who was called a drinker and friend of sinners as insults. Paul followed Jesus, and his versatility challenges every one of us to cross the culture-gap, the social gap, and whatever the gap--the gap between our familiar Christian, Presbyterian sub-culture of comfortable, our well-worn worship and familiar Christian talk and the often differing culture and attitudes of a great many around us, whether it be in our families, in our community, and beyond. The sermon two weeks ago was Love Trumps Rights. Today s teaching/this sermon is really carrying that theme on further. Paul is very much saying here, Christ-ians, forget your rights. Follow hard after the cause of Christ, not yourselves. They are not the same thing! Take the risk and be Christian in new ways, for the sake of the Gospel, for Christ s sake. Indeed, this is one of the biggest tasks confronting the church today. But to do it effectively may mean we must use our Christian freedom for the sake of others. Woe betide those who trim the message so that they don t have to trim themselves, writes NT scholar NT Wright (1 Corinthians, p. 117). It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, (Gal 5:1), and that is so the self-giving Christ may
become incarnate within each of our self-giving lives. To emulate Paul, to seek to become all things to all people, does not mean we lose or give up one s own center, or just blow the way the wind blows, or lose track of what s really important. Quite the contrary, to do what Paul did means you must be absolutely certain as to what really counts. So as Paul evangelizes, as he lives toward others, he does so on the principle that by seeking to encounter all sorts of people, meet-ing them on their ground, and seeking acceptance by them as he accepts them, it is clear that no human institution or practice or distinction, can be permitted to hinder the wonderful truth that God cares passionately about them as much as he does himself--and there are no exceptions. To practice that means sacrifice, discipline, and commitment--just like an athlete keeping in shape for the next contest. Now friends, that is the challenge. It is a challenge for all of us, and our calling as followers of Jesus Christ. The last line of these verses by Paul may sound somewhat odd to us: I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified, (vs. 27). Paul s make several similar remarks this throughout his letters. His point is that he knows that is possible to live a life unworthy of the gospel through ignoring the evident needs of one s neighbors. It s possible to have the right formal beliefs, but not practice their practical, on-hands meaning. In other words, Paul knows that while salvation is the gift of God and we don t achieve it on our own efforts, at the same time we can fail to live out the pattern of Christ s self-giving in our lives. We can forfeit the blessings of salvation in our present lives. When we relish our freedom over the needs of our
neighbor, Christian or not, we are contradicting the very faith we proclaim. So we are to use our freedom to enact the self-giving message of the Gospel, so people only see not our face, and but the face of Christ. And as we become all things to others, like our Lord Jesus--we embody and release ourselves for the well-being--for the Good News--of others. In so doing, we become fellow-sharers in the Gospel. In so doing we are live the Gospel. And only in so doing can we understand Martin Luther s words: A Christian person is a most free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian person is a most dutiful servant of all, subject to all. Amen.