1 Corinthians 9:19-23
I hope that the passage puzzled you; it sure puzzled me. The Apostle Paul is back in the city of Jerusalem. He reports to the Jewish Christian leaders that his journeys have been successful—people are trusting in Jesus as their King and Savior. These leaders are happy to hear this, but something else is worrying them. A rumor has been going around that Paul teaches not only that the Jewish customs (circumcision, not eating pork, observing certain holy days) are no longer necessary in order to be accepted by God, but also that the Jews should make a clean break with their customs. So they suggest that Paul, along with four other men, undergo a Jewish ritual, so that all can see that he’s not against Jewish customs, thus proving that this isn’t what he’s really teaching. You might have thought that Paul would say, “Not on your life! God accepts me because of Jesus, not my observance of Jewish customs. And furthermore, people can think of me what they want. I’m not a slave to their suspicions. I’m free in Christ, and you can’t make me go back to those Jewish customs.” But instead, Paul goes through with it! This prompts us to wonder: (1) Was this a temporary lapse into legalism? (2) Or was Paul being a cultural chameleon—changing his color to match his surroundings? (3) Some commentators have even gone so far as to call Paul hypocritical. These views hold in common that this incident is a sour note, something off-key. But, as we’ll discover, this incident is perfectly in tune with the Christian teaching on freedom, which Paul states in a nutshell in a letter to the Corinthians: “Though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them” (1 Corinthians 9:19), which is the text we will unpack this morning. [tension] What does it mean to be a free as a Christian? [overview] We will discover (1) What freedom is, (2) Where freedom comes from, and (3) How freedom works. [prime for application] I’ll warn you that this will upset two seemingly opposite impulses in you, and people will always misunderstand from both sides. On the one hand, this will scandalize the part of you that says, . . .
