“Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible.” (1 Corinthians 9:19)
Paul is concerned to win. But he is not after the prestige of winning for himself. His concern is to win people for Christ. That is to share the good news or gospel of God’s salvation through Jesus, so that they might believe and so be forgiven for their sins, be reconciled to God and receive the gift of eternal life. When this happens, there is a sense of success for Paul and rejoicing in heaven, but the greatest reward goes to the one who has been won for Christ.
What prize are you after?
It’s great to win prizes.
I was never much good at sport, often coming last in races on school sport’s day and only being picked for sports teams when they were really desperate! I was never going to win a sporting prize at school.
But, I did discover I was pretty good at chess. I even won a prize as best West Sussex under 14 in one competition. But even with chess, I was never going to win any really fantastic prizes. When I was a Sixth Former, I was asked to play for Sussex under 18s twice. Both times I lost – once to a twelve year old! Then when I went to university, I had a friend who played for the Greek chess team. He could quite easily wipe the board with me!!
I was good at chess – but not that good! To do really well at chess or any sport, you need both abundant talent and dedicated training. It turned out I had some talent, and a little bit of training – but not enough of either to become a really top notch player!
In the NIV version at the end of the reading, Paul talks about ‘not being disqualified for the prize.’ A little earlier he talked about the prize that sportspeople of his day went for – a crown.
In Greece in the first century, there were four great sporting events that people from all over Greece travelled to. The most famous was the Olympic Games at Olympia, but the second most famous one was the Isthmus Games, which were held in a stadium only six miles from Corinth. The first readers of Paul’s letter, would have been very familiar with athletes racing against each other and other competitive sports taking place, with the athletes aiming to become top notch, to win first prize. And what they won in those days was not a gold medal like today, but a crown made up from pine leaves covered in plaster.
It was a great symbol of accomplishment and honour. But of course, it was not a crown that lasted. The leaves would soon have withered and after a few years the crown would have crumbled.
Paul, however, says that as Christians our aim is not to win that kind of crown – one that soon falls apart. Our aim is a crown that will last forever.
What is the prize we are seeking to win? (9:27)
One of the groups who looked at the passage this week were not sure what this referred to and asked, “What is the prize we are seeking to win?” What is the everlasting crown that Paul is referring to? It’s a good question.
It may be the salvation won for us by Christ, that we will receive on the last day. Paul certainly talks about the crown in that way in other places.
Yet, Paul’s concern in chapter 9, is to win people for Christ. When he does that, they receive the crown of righteousness and become part of God’s eternal kingdom, but they also become in a sense his crown, the symbol that shows he has preached the good news of Jesus faithfully. Paul sometimes describes the churches he has founded in this way. For example in 1 Thessalonians:
“For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?” (1 Thessalonians 2:19)
This is an eternal crown, because those who owe their faith in part to Paul’s preaching will be eternally grateful as they share a place with him in eternity!
Paul’s passion then is to gain this crown. To see men and women come to believe in Christ, to receive his righteousness and his gift of eternal life. That is what he aimed for in his life and that passion is powerfully expressed in our reading today.
Questions…
But that leads to another question from one of our groups:
Is Paul’s strategy just for those called to be evangelists or all believers?
This is another good question and to help understand the question and its answer we need to remind ourselves how chapter 9 fits into Paul’s overall argument.
In chapters 8 to 10 of Corinthians, Paul is calling on the Christians to be willing to forego their rights, in order to build up and preserve the faith of other Christians in love.
In chapter 9, he uses himself as an example of this, explaining how he has foregone his freedoms and rights in order to preach the gospel about Jesus faithfully and so win people for Christ.
Some of what Paul says about himself, will just be relevant to his own situation and role, but the more general thrust of what he is saying is relevant to us all. We too need to be willing to sacrifice our rights out of love for others and particularly in seeking to win people for Christ.
One thing Paul does towards this goal is ‘to become all things to all people’ in order to save some. That leads to another good question from one of the groups:
How do we maintain Christian integrity, whilst also seeking to ‘be all things to all people’?
First of all we need to be clear that Paul is not saying that we simply imitate people’s behaviours in every way. It would not be right for example to take up drug dealing just to get alongside drug dealers!
Rather when Paul talks here about, ‘being all things to all people,’ he is saying he is willing to forego his right to live in a way that suits his background culture or comfort zone, in order to connect with people from different backgrounds. I am going to call that behaviour Holy Solidarity and that is what he emphasises in 9:19-23.
But to do that is certainly not to let go of our integrity as Christians. In fact in 9:1-18, Paul says he refuses to go along with certain expectations for the sake of the gospel, even when he would benefit from doing so and has every right to do so. I am going to call this Holy Resistance.
It is in attending to both Holy Solidarity and Holy Resistance that we can ‘be all things to all people’ and maintain Christian integrity.
So, let’s look at those two issues and what they meant for Paul and what they might mean for us.
Holy Resistance
First of all, Holy Resistance.
In verse 18, Paul says:
“What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.”
In the first half of the chapter, Paul has used a number of arguments to make clear that those who preach the gospel, the good news about Jesus, deserve to be paid a reasonable wage for doing so. As an apostle he had the right to be paid by the Corinthians whom he had spent eighteen months teaching about Jesus and God’s salvation.
However, he had chosen to forego that right and refused to be paid by the Corinthians. Why did he do that? He says so that it could be offered free of charge. Earlier on in verse 12, he said because to do so would be to hinder the gospel of Christ.
Not that Paul did not want the Corinthians to be generous with their money. At the end of the letter he mentions a collection he is making for the poor in Jerusalem.
Probably Paul was concerned about the way patronage worked in Roman cities at that time. People would offer generous donations or gifts, but they would expect loyalty, even compliance in return.
So, Paul did not want to receive financial support from the wealthy in Corinth, because he might then become in some way obliged to them and so be drawn into one faction against another or privileging the wealthy over the poor. He as a gospel preacher would be seen to be bought and belong to one particular person or group, rather than free to show concern for the whole people of God.
So, although he had the right to receive money from the Corinthians for his work, he forewent that right as an act of holy resistance against the potential manipulative control of the wealthy.
As Christians today, we also will need at times to act in holy resistance. To refuse to meet people’s expectations or to join in with what people want in order to maintain the integrity of the gospel and our witness.
In particular, although, we struggle financially as churches, we also need to be careful that in accepting money or donations, we are not pushed into relationships or behaviours that undermine our gospel witness.
That is why, we encourage all giving to be done anonymously. If I and other key leaders don’t know who is giving large amounts of money to the church, then we cannot be unduly influenced by them.
Yes, let’s pray for more money to fund what we need, but let’s also be concerned to protect the integrity of the gospel. We are at times called to Holy Resistance, even when it is costly.
Holy Solidarity
At the same time as resisting pressure to do what some expect from him, Paul also says, in verse 19 – “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.”
Then in verse 22: “I have become all things to all people so that by all means I might save some.”
What Paul is talking about here is ‘Holy Solidarity.’ Just as Christ gave up the glory of heaven and became one of us, so we give up our rights and freedoms to come alongside those different to us.
Holy Solidarity means being willing to adapt ourselves to the culture and ways of others in order to connect with them and share the good news with them, even though it might mean taking on customs or ways that take us out of our comfort zones or what we are used to.
So, how might we go out of our comfort zones in order to help win others for Christ?
Some of the groups had some initial suggestions:
- One way may simply be on a Sunday after church, instead of rushing away or talking only to the same people as normal, to seek out and befriend those who may be new to the church, so that they can be encouraged in their exploration of faith.
- Another group suggested outside services as a way of going to where people are. This year we are going to encourage St. Luke’s and St. George’s to be more involved in the Churches Together Good Friday witness in the town centre.
- Another suggestion was to connect to people locally by showing love by meeting their needs. We are already doing that in a number of areas with a number of different groups: Gather that we heard about earlier, Cafe4All, the St. George’s community meal, Play and Praise, the potential After-School club. All these initiatives involve people giving up their own freedoms in order to help connect with people in holy solidarity, in the hope both to show them real love, but also to share the good news of Jesus with them.
- Finally, there were suggestions about how we might need to adapt our services in ways we may not like – no-one likes change, but might better enable and encourage new people to come and hear the good news about Jesus.
All of these are ways of showing holy solidarity with the world around, in order to help connect with them and so share the good news of Jesus.
In the Year of Discernment we need to consider how we might improve on these present ways of connecting and also whether God is calling us in new directions to.
Not Running Aimlessly
In the last few verses Paul compares his ministry with that of an athlete. Paul pushes himself hard, in order to win the crown just as an athlete does. He says he does not run aimlessly.
In response to this, one group asked the question:
What does ‘running aimlessly’ (1 Cor. 9:26) look like in a believer’s life?
It is to take our eyes off the prize, which is to win people for Christ. Those who come to faith partly as a result of our efforts are our eternal crown.
When we live the Christian life, but do not have our eyes on this prize, when we make no efforts or sacrifices to win people for Christ, whether playing our part in supporting the wider church witness or in our personal witness, then we are running aimlessly, we are not seeking the prize.
Let’s imitate Paul, as he imitates Christ, by being willing to forego our rights, make sacrifices, show holy resistance and holy solidarity, that together as churches in Ramsgate we might win the eternal crown of people in eternity with Christ because of our efforts.
St. Luke's Church Ramsgate 