Sermon Tone Analysis

In this chapter and the last, Paul has been talking about the believer’s freedom and then about his personal freedom.

Without question, each individual believer has freedom; you have rights.

Believers can, with clear conscience, eat that food or drink that drink or play that game (all you Baptists: go ahead and dance).

You’re free!

You, christian, have this great freedom in Christ Jesus, because of what Jesus has done for you.

You’re free!

You are living a freedom that far exceeds all other freedoms; it’s a freedom purchased for you, not by military conquest, but by the sacrifice of -our humble King Jesus.

It’s His death in your place, it’s His victory over death on that great resurrection morning that secures for you ultimate freedom.

There’s no freedom like the freedom Christ gives.

N.T. Wright is good here:

“Freedom is important, but in Christian terms it is never the freedom of a sub-atomic particle, to whizz around in all directions in an apparently random fashion.

It is always freedom for: for the Messiah, for God’s people, for those who need the gospel.”

Freedom for.

That’s incredibly important.

That’s what we have to understand.

We are free, but not for ourselves, not free to do whatever we please.

We are free for the sake of others.

We are free for the sake of the gospel.

The freedom we have in Christ and because of Christ must always be exercised for the sake of another, for the sake of others.

We’ve not been set free to live a comfortable, middle-class, self-centered existence.

We have been set free for...

Our Bible text might be familiar to you (at least in part).

Part of the passage we’re looking at today is the passage on Christian witness in the world.

Our freedom has been given us so that we might work to win people for the Lord, that we would share the Good News that Jesus saves.

Paul makes a compelling case for using our freedom in just this way.

That we would use our freedom and give up our rights for the sake of reaching others for Christ.

In Jesus’ Great Commission—the task He gave to His disciples after His resurrection and before His ascension into heaven—Jesus tells His followers to “go”:

Okay, it’s Grammar Time (it’s like Hammer Time, only nerdier).

This is important.

What’s the main verb in these verses?

It’s not “go”—go, along with baptizing and teaching are participles.

The main verb in these verses, the controlling verb is “make disciples”.

That’s our main task, our job, our commission.

But it’s so important that we go.

Jesus says, literally, “Therefore going/as you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…teaching them...

In order to get at our main task of making disciples, we must go.

We can’t not go.

This is the reason we go on mission trips.

This is the reason we give to and serve our community.

It’s the reason I set on 4,000 different boards around town and around the county.

It’s not because I enjoy having 4,000 meetings a month.

In part, it’s because I love this community and want to serve its people however I can.

But it’s mostly because I hope to have and want to have a positive impact on people for the cause of Christ.

We’ve been ordered by our Lord and Savior to go.

We have our marching orders; what we need is the willingness and the discipline to go.

>If you have your Bible (and I hope you do) please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 9.

If you’re able and willing, please stand with me for the reading of God’s Holy Word, out of reverence for Him:

May God add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

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Paul has been obedient to Jesus’ command, Jesus’ commissioning of His people to go and make disciples.

After Jesus stopped him in his tracks, rescued and redeemed him, Paul went on several missionary journeys telling others about Jesus.

It was Paul’s third missionary journey that brought him to the city of Corinth to preach the gospel and make disciples.

In the course of his life, Paul shared the Good News of Jesus with thousands and thousands of people—Jews and Gentiles, peasants and kings, rabble and royalty; he witnessed all over, from Jerusalem to Rome; in Judea and Syria, in Asia and Macedonia.

Imagine the different people he encountered.

All the different backgrounds and cultural variations, all the different customs and stories, beliefs and languages.

Paul was willing and disciplined in his witness.

It’s important for all of us to consider our witness because it’s the way in which we should interact with one another in the world.

In verses 19-22, Paul says, if we want to witness well, we are going to need, first of all, the willingness to go.

Willingness to Go

In verses 19-22 two groups of people are introduced:

Those under the law

Those outside the law

Both groups lived in the city of Corinth at the time.

Jews and non-Jews, mainly Greeks.

These two groups were, I don’t have to tell you, very different from one another.

They had vastly different hopes and aspirations as well as different questions and troubles with the gospel that had taken their city by storm.

And because of these cultural differences, Paul had made it a priority to understand, enter into, immerse himself deeply within both worlds.

In fact, Paul had become so entrenched in both Jewish and Greek culture that he could see things from the inside.

Paul didn’t just understand them; he became like one of them.

His was an incarnational ministry, becoming like them as Jesus became like one of us.

I think this is what Paul means when he says (vv. 20-21), “To the Jews I became like a Jew…to those not having the law (the Greeks) I became like one not having the law.

The clearest example of what Paul means by becoming “like a Jew” and “like one under the law” is his receiving 39 lashes from the hands of the Jews:

Paul bowed to synagogue discipline to maintain his Jewish connections.

Paul accepted this punishment to keep open the option of preaching the gospel message in the synagogue.

For Paul to submit to this punishment makes it clear how tough he was (he was one bad mamma-jamma).

He was clearly very tough and it’s clear he very much loved his people, the Jews.

How did Paul become like one without the law?

He isn’t talking about just ignoring Jewish food regulations or Sabbath observance (which he might have done).

He didn’t change the core of his message in order to make the gospel message easier to hear.

Neither did Paul become a pagan sinner.

He simply became like a Gentile.

He didn’t tout his heritage or throw around his relation to Abraham; he didn’t brag about his observance of the law or his knowledge.

Paul lived among the Galatians simply as a Christian.

Not a Jew or Pharisee of Pharisees that he was, but as one saved by the grace of Jesus Christ alone.

Paul was willing to learn to be agile—able to witness to Jew and Gentile and everyone in between.

He was willing to go to whomever and take whatever they handed him for the sake of the gospel, for the good of those he was preaching to.

Are Christians today willing to follow Paul’s lead in witnessing?

Willing to be culturally agile, immersing themselves so deeply in their cities, in their towns that they can see it from the inside.

Do we know the deepest hopes and aspirations of our neighbors?

Do we know what questions our unbelieving co-workers are asking or what troubles them about Christianity?

Or have Christians today, have we, become so isolated and entrenched in our little circle, so detached from the community and the culture that we have no clue what they’re thinking, what’s important to them, what they’re struggling with?

The phrase “cultural agility” was a new one to me.

As I prepared for this message, it came up a time or two in my reading.

The need to be culturally agile—the ability to move from speaking with this person in their culture with their beliefs to that person over there who is, in most ways, almost entirely different.

It pays to be culturally agile in our witness.

But it’s really hard.

We can chat with people like ourselves at length.

I can talk all day with people who like books and theology and movies and Seinfeld.

It’s a little bit harder for me to talk to car buffs and sports fanatics.

I know a little, but not a lot.

It makes a big difference if you can take an interest in what another person takes an interest in.