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Introduction
Opening Illustration: Hudson Taylor
Today, China is one of the largest Churches on the planet, and its majority under state sponsored persecution.
What’s happening in China with the gospel is incredible.
Before the gospel ever made major inroads into China, there was a man named Hudson Taylor (1800’s) who moved to China to become a missionary.
This is before airplanes and email.
He moved.
He spent the number of years laboring tirelessly to reach the Chinese.
He became fluent in the langauge.
He made many friends.
He saw some conversions take place, but his work was limited.
He realized, the Chines aren’t listening to us because we look so foreign to them.
So, though he was very uncomfortable, he changed what he wore to match the typical Chinese Garb.
He wore his hair in a long pigtail and shaved his forehead which was was common for Chinese men at the time.
This little act, of identifying, in way that was uncomfortable for Hudson at the time, proved to be increidbly meaningful, and gave Hudson Taylor an opening to speak with many Chines about the Gospel.
Through Hudson Taylor the great China Inland Mission was founded.
Personal
If you’re a Christian, are you passionate about doing whatever it takes to help others know Jesus in the way you know Jesus.
How far are you willing to go to prioritize those whom God has placed around you in your life, to help them meet Christ?
What would you be willing to sacrifice towards that end?
What does it say about us if the answer is in all honesty, ‘Not that much—it’s just not a priority.”
Contextual
Remember where we are in our journey of 1 Corinthians.
Beginning in chapter 8, a new turn in this book emerged where Paul started confronting cultural issues.
The way that Christians engage the culture around them.
Particularly in their context, he began to address a question they had around whether or not it was permissable to eat meat that had previously been offered to a false god.
While not relevant for us, what we discovered was that we ask many of the same questions whenever we are wondering what parts of culture Christians can participate in, and what parts of culture Christians must reject.
Paul’s driving principle in determining that was we must be driven by a desparate desire to build others up in Christ.
Then last week, Paul illustrated that point by explaining how he manages money.
For Paul, he was willing to be radically generous with money—to not hold on with too tight a grip—in order for others to built up in Christ.
Today he continues to develop this theme by discussing the extent to which Christians should apply these principles.
Big Idea: A Christian heart is willing to do whatever it takes, short of sin, to win others to Christ.
Move 1: Becoming a Slave
Paul begins in verse 19 as follows,
1 Corinthians 9:19-23 “19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.
20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews.
To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law.
21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law.
22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak.
I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.
23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”
I Am Free From All
Paul opens his discussion with this sentence that defines his ministry.
He says, “Though I am free from all.”
In Paul’s day, the imagery of slavery was all over Greco Roman society.
It is estimated that up to 15% of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves.
Many of the first Christians were slaves of whom we meet in Scripture.
Onesimus, Tertius, and Quartus, were all slaves and yet followers of Christ.
Others were slave owners who had come to Christ.
In fact there is an entire New Tesament book that I have preached on at length titled Philemon, written to a slave owner with instructions about how to treat his runaway slave with grace.
The point is that is Paul opens with very important and culturally weighted language.
He was a free man.
And in those days, there were rights, privileges, and cultural expectations associated with freedom.
People worked their whole lives to gain the status of a freeman in those days.
I Made Myself a Servant to All
Then in that very same sentence Paul says, “Though I free from all, I have made myself a servant to all.”
That term servant is doulos which can also be translated slave.
This would have been shocking langauge in the first century in a way that will take some work for us to fully appreciate today.
No free man willingly chose slavery.
In the eyes of the world, that would be foolish.
Not only were slaves commissioned with manual labor.
But they were not afforded many privileges in society, and were often harshly treated.
That I Might Win More of Them
Paul says, “I willingly choose to give up my rights of freedom, and I choose to be a slave to you all, in order that I might win more of them.”
The Apostle Paul was driven by one godly ambition, to honor God with his life and win as many people to faith in Jesus Christ while he had breath.
Paul say his life as something to be poured out in service to others.
Notice the language of “winning more of them.”
it’s interesting language actually, because the term really is often used in terms of investment gains.
In light of the entire context of the chapter where he has been talking about going without a paycheck, he now says, ‘seeing others come to saving faith in Jesus Christ is my paycheck.’
Paul has a right understanding of a wise investment portfolio and the type of gains we ought to be seeking.
Three Examples
How did Paul become a servant to all?
He gives three specific examples.
1 Becoming a Jew to Reach Jews
The first group are the Jews who were still living underneath the Mosaic Laws of the Old Testament.
Paul himself was ethnically Jewish.
He grew up with all the rules and ceremonial laws of the Old Testament.
But then he believed that Jesus was the messiah that the Jewish Scriptures had foretold.
That’s we talk about the Church as ‘true Israel’, it is Judaism fulfilled in the promised messiah.
Paul still had a marvelous heart for the Jews who had not yet believed in Jesus as their messiah.
He says,
1 Corinthians 9:20 “20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews.
To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law.”
How did Paul become a Jew and place himself under the law to reach the Jews.
This doesn’t mean that he started going to the temple with them and offering sacrifices again.
No, that would be sin, and he clearly forbids that in his writings.
Jewish tradition helps us understand Paul’s language here.
Under rabbinic tradition there is a statement that goes like this, “If they brother seems vile to thee, when he is scourged he is your brother.”
So the law of the Jews was that if another Jewish man did something to become vile in your eyes, if he was whipped, the relationship would be restored.
As a result of Paul’s repeated efforts to reach the Jews with the message of Christ, he was regularly found vile in their eyes.
We read of those accounts regulalry in the book of Acts.
Then in 2 Corinthians 11:24 Paul describes that on five separate times he had been scourged by the Jews,
2 Corinthians 11:24 “24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.”
Paul received 39 lashes of the whip, on five separate occasions at the hands of the Jews.
This was something he did willingly.
This was the method whereby a relationship could be restored with his Jewish community.
So he went underneath their laws, their laws of scourging those whom they found vile, in order to attempt to restore peace with them.
He did this for one reason—that hopefully some of them might believe in Jesus.
It makes me ask a simple question of myself, What am I willing to do to reach my neighbor with the love of Jesus.
2 Becoming Outside the Law to Reach Those Outside the Law
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