In 1 Corinthians 9:15-27, Paul teaches the rights and responsibilities of a gospel minister, including financial support as a right and selfless sacrifice and self-discipline as responsibilities.
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study Podcast. This podcast is just one of the many resources available to you for free from Two Journeys Ministry. If you’re interested in learning more, just head over to twojourneys.org. Now on to today’s episode. This is episode 12 in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study Podcast. This episode is entitled The Responsibilities of a Gospel Minister, where we’ll discuss 1 Corinthians 9:15-27. I’m Wes Treadway and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis. Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
Well, what we’re going to see in these verses, they’re very memorable. We’re going to see Paul’s commitment to do whatever he can to take the gospel to various categories of people, and specifically the theme of the self-denial, the strictures he puts himself under so as to be able to share the gospel with as many people as possible. It’s in a larger section on meat sacrificed to idols in three chapters, chapters 8, 9, and 10, in which we have kind of an overriding principle, “Love limits liberty.” We’re going to see the limits very strongly in this chapter. We’re going to see the limits Paul put himself under. He didn’t do what was convenient for himself. He didn’t do what was easy. And specifically he was very strict with himself and his own desires, his own body and its drives, so that he wouldn’t be disqualified from gospel ministry.
So, we’re going to see him making assertions like, “I will be whatever I can be to anybody in any amoral thing. I will do anything I can in the amoral categories, whether with meat or not meat or whatever, with eating, with clothes, whatever I have to do to win people. I’m not going to violate moral laws, but I’ll do amoral things, whatever I can. I’m not in it for myself. But beyond that, I don’t trust myself, and I watch over myself with great strictness.” So, we’re going to talk about what it takes to be that kind of a gospel minister.
Wes
Well, let me go ahead and read verses 15 through 27 in 1 Corinthians 9:
But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.
For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 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. 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. 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. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Andy, Paul returns to his surrender of his rights of support in verse 15. What reason does he give for surrendering this right? And why, if he surrendered this right, does he argue so vigorously for the right of support?
Andy
All right, so the big picture here, big, big picture as I mentioned in the intro, was the topic of meat sacrificed to idols, and the basic doctrinal insight that an idol is nothing. It’s a chunk of wood or metal or stone. And that meat laid in front of a chunk of wood or metal or stone by a human being, then walks away, the meat is just meat. And a believer in Christ can come along, pick it up, cook it, and eat it without any problem at all to their soul. That is true. The problem is that knowledge is not enough. In a network of relationships, we have to be careful who’s watching and what’s going on in their hearts while they observe. They might draw the wrong conclusions. And if I’m going to damage anybody who’s watching, either a non-Christian or a Christian alike, I’ll refrain from eating.
So that’s the basic idea. Love limits liberty. Yeah, you have the freedom to eat, but what effect is it going to have on those watching? And if somebody’s conscience is bothered by what I do, that’s a factor. I want to look in on that. Then he uses himself in chapter 9 as an example of love limits liberty, and he changes the subject somewhat to the rights of an apostle to be supported financially. Let’s take that as an example.
“So I have the freedom to take along a believing wife. I have the freedom to be supported financially to have a life. But I have chosen to limit my own liberty and not demand those things. I did it so that I could really be free from any concerns or accusations that I was in it for the money, that I was in it for greed and all that. It’s clearly not the case. I was working hard with my own hands supporting others. I was serving as a tent maker there. You saw it, you watched it, etc. However, I want you to know that it is right for those who preach the gospel to make their living from the gospel. So as a lasting principle, I’m not advocating. It’s basically do as I say, not as I do here. But I had my own reasons for doing what I did. I limited my own liberty.”
And that’s why he’s talking about it here. He said, “Look, I didn’t use any of those rights and I have a boast I could make. I can look you in the face, O Corinthians, and say, ‘You didn’t give me a penny for preaching the gospel to you.’ I was not in it for the money.” But in a larger sense, he’s basically saying that’s an example of limiting your liberty. And he is also saying, however, other gospel ministers should have the right of support.
Wes
What boast is Paul referring to here in this section?
Andy
You didn’t support me. I worked hard with my own hands. I made myself an example. He’s going to say in Acts 20 to the Ephesian elders, he’s going to say, “You yourselves know how I lived, how hard I worked, how with my own hands I supported my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything that I did, I put on display the statement Jesus made, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” That’s my boast. You didn’t support me financially. I went above and beyond the call of a gospel minister here. That’s his boast.
Wes
What does Paul mean then by saying, “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel”? And how does this relate to the prophet Jeremiah?
Andy
So, the boasting thing, Paul just plays at it. He’s going to do it later where he boasts in 2 Corinthians about his sufferings and he says, “I have worked harder than anybody.” He uses this kind of statement, but he’s like, “Look, I can’t do it for long. It’s just not very Christian to talk like this.” But he does this kind of boasting thing a lot. And he says, “Look, when I bring it back to the cross, though, and the empty tomb, when I bring it back to Almighty God, I can’t boast. There can be no boasting. And the fact of the matter is no matter what I say to you, I was compelled by the Spirit to preach the gospel. I had no choice but to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. I am forced or compelled by the Spirit.”
It reminds me of what it says in Ezekiel 36. He says, “I’m going to take out the heart of stone and I’m going to give you a heart of flesh. I’m going to put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my commands and be careful to keep my laws.” Move you? What is that? That’s a compulsion. That’s the Holy Spirit basically taking over, not violating our personalities like a demon does in a demon-possessed person, but working so effectively in you that you see the wisdom of preaching the gospel. And now concerning Jeremiah, that’s a great, great question and I think it comes to a verse that we were just talking about it. Why don’t you read it from Jeremiah 20?
Wes
So, in Jeremiah chapter 20:9 it says, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”
Andy
That’s almost exactly what Paul’s saying. “Woe to me. I’m compelled to preach the gospel. I can’t say no.” So that’s the compulsion of the Spirit, as he says in the Book of Acts, “And now compelled by the Spirit, I’m going to Jerusalem.” So that’s a very good parallel, Jeremiah 20:9.
Wes
Now based on what we’ve just been discussing, in what way is Paul both voluntarily and involuntarily preaching the gospel like we see here in verses 16 and 17?
Andy
He wants to do it. He wants to do it, but he is also under compulsion. I think it’s actually not much different than Jesus drinking the cup in Gethsemane. I mean, he wants to do it, but at the same time there’s a compulsion on him from the prophecies. He has no choice. And so, there’s a sense of that. “I am in this position where there is, I really don’t have a choice. But don’t misunderstand me. I really do want to preach the gospel. I actually have the delight in preaching the gospel. So, I am preaching voluntarily. Now, if I preach of my own free will, if I preach voluntarily and cheerfully, I get a reward.” So, our rewards are tied not just to what we do but how we do it. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, if I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.”
So, our rewards are tied to our demeanor and our reasons and our attitude, not just to what we do. Keep in mind also God can put a compulsion on somebody and speak through them, but they don’t get any reward at all. I think about, for example, Caiaphas, who said it would be more beneficial for one man to die and the whole nation not perish. And John tells us, he didn’t say this of himself, but as high priest that year, he prophesied concerning Christ that he would die for the nation, but he didn’t get any reward. His motive was not good.
“So, our rewards are tied to our demeanor and our reasons and our attitude, not just to what we do. Keep in mind also God can put a compulsion on somebody and speak through them, but they don’t get any reward at all.”
Wes
Did him no good.
Andy
It did him no good. So, what Paul’s saying here is like, “Look, I have no choice. I’m under compulsion, but if I preach voluntarily, if I want to do it, God loves a cheerful giver, if I do that, then I’m getting a reward. If I don’t want to do it, then I’m just discharging the duty.” Could be that in his humanness, in his Romans 7 human sinfulness, there are probably some days he did the right thing but didn’t really want to do it. And maybe for those days he didn’t get a reward. We don’t get a hundred percent rewarded for everything because sometimes we’re off that day and we don’t minister very well, et cetera.
Wes
Now Paul goes on in verse 18 to explicitly discuss rewards, talk about them a little more. What does Paul say is his reward for preaching the gospel?
Andy
He says, “What is my reward? It’s that in preaching the gospel I can offer it free of charge and I’m not using my rights.” So, what he’s doing is he’s saying, “Look, there are kind of the normal gospel ministers, but I’m not that person. I’m at a higher level. I am the apostle to the Gentiles, and it was incumbent on me to go above and beyond the normal call of duty. And so, my reward is, the extreme level of stricture I put on myself puts me in a position to be more rewarded.”
I think what we find out about the doctrine of rewards is that they’re in proportion to sacrifice. The greater the sacrifice then the higher the reward, and only God can properly measure it. Let’s imagine somebody has a very, very hard time speaking They have a stutter, they don’t speak well, and as a result they’re very insecure, and it’s extremely difficult for them to get up in front of a crowd. And they get up and they give their testimony, and they get baptized. They’re going to get a greater reward than the preacher who’s been there a thousand times literally before and preaches yet another sermon and it’s not that big a deal for him. Of the two, who gave a bigger sacrifice that day? And so, it really does zero in on the level of sacrifice and commitment. Paul was willing to forgo his apostolic rights in order to preach the gospel free of charge and be clear from any questions about his motives.
“The doctrine of rewards is that they’re in proportion to sacrifice. The greater the sacrifice then the higher the reward, and only God can properly measure it.”
Wes
What do verses 19 through 23, this next section that we’re going to look at, teach us about Paul’s level of self-sacrifice to spread the gospel?
Andy
Yeah, it’s really quite remarkable, and this is one of the most important sections in the entire Bible on missional strategy, on what we try to do in a culture. In a culture, you’re going to try to become all things to all people so that by all possible means we might save some. That’s what Paul says. What does that mean? For us, we were missionaries in Japan, we will try to fit into Japanese culture, eat Japanese food. We don’t necessarily have to wear Japanese clothing because they’re so used to Westerners at that point. Most of them wear Western-style clothing. But we try to immerse ourselves in the amoral, amoral aspects of their culture.
And I have to say amoral because Shintoism is a religion, a national religion, and there are certain rituals they would do, and we could never participate in those things. But when it comes to amoral things like food, clothing, habits, holidays, rituals, rights, taking your shoes off when you entered the house every time. By the way, I remember seeing a movie about a baseball player in Japan, and he went over there with cowboy boots that were mid-calf and he had to tug and tug and tug to get them off. And there was this other baseball player had been there for a couple of years. He looked at him, shook his head and laughed, said, “That’s going to change.” By the end of the movie, he’s wearing slides, slipping them on and off, because every time you go in a Japanese home, you’re going to take off your shoes. It’s just part of the culture.
What Paul’s saying in this whole section here is, “Whatever it takes to win people, I’ll do it, even if I don’t like it. Even if I have to eat things I don’t like.” You can imagine as a Jew, the non-kosher foods like pork might’ve even been nauseating to him, I mean, disgusting to him. And he would recoil from it like Peter did when he was told to get up and kill and eat these reptiles and all that in that vision he had in Acts 10. But Paul says, “I’ll eat it if I can win some people to Christ.” And why would he do that? He’s currying favor. He’s building relationships, he’s eating what’s served to him without any questions because the hostess wants to make him happy. And she’s serving food that that’s what they eat. And so, Paul says, “Whatever it takes, I’m going to do it.” So overall, these verses, and we’re going to walk through them, I know, in detail, but these verses give us a mentality that whatever I can do, however I am inconvenienced doesn’t matter as long as I might be able to win some people to Christ.
Wes
Now, you’ve alluded to this even in the description of this overall section, but how did Paul make himself a slave and become like a Jew to win Jews and like a Gentile to win Gentiles?
Andy
Well, here’s the thing. Martin Luther wrote The Freedom of the Christian Man. He said, “A Christian man is free, slave to no one, and a Christian man is slave to everyone, not free, in that case.” And I don’t remember the exact terminology, but we are both completely free horizontally from other people and then completely enslaved. So how is Luther free? Well, he stood before them and basically the Diet of Worms proclaimed the gospel of justification by faith alone saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other, I can’t go against conscience. None of you can change my mind unless you can prove it from scripture, and you can’t. So fundamentally, I’m free from your opinion. If you kill me, you kill me. But the truth is the truth.”
So, he at that moment was a free man. He was not afraid of death; he was not afraid of anyone’s opinion. He was free from everyone and subject to none. But when it came to ministering the gospel, then Luther and any faithful missionary, evangelist, or the Apostle Paul here, makes himself a voluntary slave to everyone in order to win them. And again, we need to be clear about this. What does it mean? He’s under certain boundaries, he’s bounded by the customs of the people, their dietary customs, their culture, their holidays, and rituals and all that, as long as they don’t violate the law of God. And he says that later, he says, “Though I am not under the law.” But later he says, “Though I am not free from God’s law.”
So, if their custom is to, one of the things we do is to make our guests home is we offer our wives, to have carnal knowledge with our wives. Like, yeah, not going to do that because that’d be immoral. All right, so I’ve never heard of that ever, but you could imagine somebody offering a wicked thing, an evil thing, like smoking an opium pipe or something like that. It’s like, “No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to do that.” But if you’re going to say, “I’m offering you a pork tortilla,” and I’m a converted Jew, I’ll eat the pork tortilla, there’s nothing immoral. It’s not my taste. And so, I feel a little bit in myself like a slave. I’m bounded in by this, I’m going to eat whatever you serve. Most of us are just slaves to our preferences. We’re like, “I don’t like it, I’m not eating it.” And it’s like, well, you’re selfish, you’re being selfish. So, this passage tells us, don’t be selfish, be willing to get up out of yourself and do things to win people.
“Most of us are just slaves to our preferences. …So, this passage tells us, don’t be selfish, be willing to get up out of yourself and do things to win people.”
Wes
Such a great quote from Luther, and it really does help situate this section in the broader passage, as you have so helpfully done as we’ve walked through these chapters, to say that love is limiting our liberty. We don’t get to do whatever we want, and we really do have to take stock of the situation and how we can best honor the Lord and also have an avenue to share the gospel.
Andy
Honestly, if love doesn’t limit liberty, you’re selfish. You’re a selfish person. Most people are. Most people live for themselves and for their own tastes and they’re blunt and they’re rude and they don’t win connections. I think fundamentally it goes to one of the most interesting parables that Jesus ever told, the parable of the unrighteous steward. And this is a parable of a guy who was in charge of a master’s stuff, and he comes to find out, the master does, that this guy’s been dishonest. And he’s going to lose his job, but he doesn’t lose it right away, which is the key to the whole parable. And so, he doesn’t lose his job right away, and then he starts calling in some of his master’s debtors and starts cutting their debts in half. He’s currying favor.
And it’s an odd parable, but basically what Jesus is teaching is the things you have control over, you have them temporarily. Use them to make friends for yourself. That’s what he says. Use unrighteous mammon to make friends for yourself. Paul’s doing the same thing here. “I’m going to use my dietary habits to make connections with people, to make friends.” The alternative is to be selfish, and you won’t be able to win as many people to Christ.
Wes
And ultimately that is Paul’s aim, right? He says in verse 23, “I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessing.” What point does Paul make with this analogy of running the race in order to obtain or win a prize?
Andy
All right, so this whole section is very, very important on the issue of self-control. One of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control. Another corollary or connection might be self-denial. And what does it mean? I’m saying no to myself, I’m saying no to my drives. Now here again, we’re in the overall topic of meat sacrificed to idols, and what if I really like meat or really don’t like meat? Doesn’t matter what you like and don’t like when it comes to meat. What matters is the mission. The mission’s bigger than your personal tastes. But here he seems to go beyond any of those things as well. I think here when he talks about controlling his drives, we get into the issue of the flesh and the body of sin and its drives.
And basically, the flesh, as we understand, sometimes called the sin nature, but the flesh that we are having to watch over so diligently takes normal desires, biological desires, so for food, for drink, for sex, for love, for affirmation, and pushes them beyond boundaries. That pressure is going to be in us while we live in these mortal bodies. It’s always going to be pushing us to go beyond boundaries that God has set up. Paul’s saying no to his drives, he’s saying no to his fleshly desires, he’s saying no to his body. He’s going to discipline his body severely and strongly, so that he’s not dominated by his bodily passions.
Now you look at the culture we live in here in America, people don’t say no to themselves. They do whatever feels good, whatever they want to do. If they want to eat, they’re going to eat. If they want to eat a lot, they’re going to eat a lot. If they want to sleep with that girl that they meet at the party, they’re going to do it. It’s a hookup culture. They’re going to do that. They’re going to follow their drives and desires like they’re animals. We Christians are called to a higher standard, and this is probably one of the strongest articulations in the Bible of the strictness it takes for us to live holy lives. If you’re going to live a holy life, you have to say no to those fleshly drives and desires. You have to be careful what you look at on the internet. You can’t go to any site you want. You can’t do whatever you want. You’ve got to say no to yourself.
And Paul is the quintessential example of the holy man of God. You want to be a minister of the gospel, you got to say no to your fleshly drives and desires. Now he couches it in an athletic image, and that’s important because sports is very important in our culture. In this case, it’s a distance runner. You want to win the prize as a distance runner, you have to, as he says in 2 Timothy, “compete according to the rules.” So, the rules of the race, yes, but also the rules of training. You can’t show up the day of the race not having done anything and hope that you’re going to do well. You’re not. You’re a runner. So, what kind of preparation… Here is you need to understand, this guy runs 50-mile races. No, longer.
Wes
Not 50 miles.
Andy
Okay, 36. 50 kilometers.
Wes
31.
Andy
All right, there we go.
Wes
Yeah.
Andy
All right, so what do you do to prepare?
Wes
You run a lot. You have to put in work ahead of time, lots of volume, lots of preparation. There are certain things that I probably should do better, like nutrition and things like that. But it’s certainly a lot of prior preparation in order to actually compete well and run in the race.
Andy
And so at Two Journeys, we talk about two journeys, the internal journey of holiness and the external journey of gospel advance. They come together in this chapter, but here it’s really holiness. And he’s talking about saying no to his drives and desires so that he can preach the gospel. And so, here’s the thing, those two journeys are interconnected. You can’t say, “Look, I’m not going to look after the internal journey of holiness. I want to preach the gospel.” You know what’s going to happen? You’ll get disqualified. Satan will hunt you down. Satan will take you out. You won’t be preaching the gospel five years from now. Paul knew that. He said, “Look, I don’t want to get disqualified. I don’t want to get the big red X put on me. I don’t want to get set aside. And so, in order for me to not be disqualified from preaching the gospel, I have to go into strict training and watch myself very closely and carefully.”
And so, it is with me as a pastor, I have to be very, very careful what I do in terms of sexual purity, what I do in relationships with people. It’s not just a matter of purity in sex, it’s also a matter of purity in relationships, that I not be a bitter, angry, unforgiving person who has broken relationships left and right. Pastors leave the ministry because of that. There’s some things we have to do.
Now, the image here is athletic. If I want to still be running this race years from now, I got to be in strict training. I got to watch the drives of my body. I got to not go in for bitter vindictiveness or sexual immorality or eating and drinking problems. I need to keep my body under control. My body, in this case, seems to be an enemy. I have to keep it under control. The one translation says, “I beat my body and make it my slave.” It’s a very harsh image. Your translation says strict training or something like that. What does it say?
Wes
“I discipline my body and keep it under control.”
Andy
Keep it under. So, it’s like it’s pressing. It’s like a team of horses, like Ben Hur, he’s got four, I think it was four horses side by side. And they’re strong and they’re pulling. It’s like I got to keep them under rein. So that’s the idea here.
Wes
Yeah, Andy, when he uses this image of a runner, I think of Olympians, and you hear stories of them having as a kid the poster of a favorite runner up on their wall. And it really, it’s that idea of having the goal or the end always in front of them. So, they grew up running track in high school, and then they ran in college, and then they competed on the world stage, and finally they won. But all along the way, they had in mind the end. What’s the eternal crown that Paul was talking about? Because it seems like he has his end goal always before him.
Andy
Well, he speaks of the Philippians as his crown. He speaks of the Thessalonians as his crown. So, people are the crown. But crowns also are given to individuals as the 24 elders cast their crowns before the Lord. And so, it’s an emblem of honor given to a servant of Christ for certain services rendered in this world. And so, he’s pursuing that crown. He wants to get that victor’s wreath. Now, these athletes, he says, in the Isthmian games, I think it was, they’re competing for an olive wreath that’s put on their head. But a week and a half later, it’s all wilted and brown.
Wes
Crumbly and brown.
Andy
Yeah, it’s gone and it’s pretty sad, but we’re getting an eternal crown. And so forever and ever and ever, the crown will shine. And that’s because the Lord will remember it forever and never cease honoring the servants. He said, “That’s a crown worth going for.” Now, in this case, it’s evangelistic. People who are won to faith in Christ are our crown. But even if you just serve someone, it’s like a jewel in the crown or something like that. Anything that you do by faith for the glory of God, if it’s self-denying, sacrificial, costly to you, you do it cheerfully and out of love and you do it according to the word of God, it’s rewardable. And that’s why Jesus said, “Store up treasure in heaven.” So, there is a crown that we’re pursuing, and we hope to have it. Now, Paul says, “I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith. Now there is laid in store for me a crown, which the Lord will award to all who have longed for his appearing.” And so there is this image of a crown yet to come.
“Anything that you do by faith for the glory of God, if it’s self-denying, sacrificial, costly to you, you do it cheerfully and out of love and you do it according to the word of God, it’s rewardable.”
Wes
Now, Andy, there also I feel like could be two pitfalls on either side of this topic where we could take this too far or we could disregard it. How do we protect against both of those?
Andy
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think there is a sad history of extreme asceticism. Ignatius of Loyola’s the worst. This is a guy that had a belt of nails, sharp nails, turned inward, wrapped around his body all the time. So, like little trickles of blood going down all the time. And that’s just a very bad misunderstanding of mortification. That’s not how we mortify sin. We mortify it spiritually, et cetera. So extreme asceticism, fastings, things like that. George Whitfield was into this before he was converted. So was Martin Luther. Extreme fastings. You look at the earlier woodcuts of Martin Luther when he was at the Diet of Worms, he looks like a living skeleton. I mean, this is a guy through extreme fastings was trying to earn his way to heaven.
So, there is an extreme strictness that I think is dishonoring to God. We need to take good care of our bodies, make sure we get enough nutrition, enough sleep, things like that. Self-denial from time to time, fine. Fasting, okay. Maybe spend a night in prayer like Jesus did one time. But if you’re never sleeping, sooner or later, it’s going to catch up with you. So that’s the one extreme. The other extreme is there’s no discipline at all. You just give into your fleshly drives and desires and just kind of live, almost seems like a pagan life. So somewhere in between those two extremes is a healthy self-discipline that produces good fruit.
Wes
Andy, as we reach the final verse, verse 27, what does it mean to be disqualified for the prize? And what final thoughts do you have on this passage we’ve looked at today?
Andy
Well, it’s a very scary word, and my mind immediately goes to specific people that I’ve known that are no longer in vocational ministry because of immorality. Frequently sexual, but not always. Sometimes it was a power control thing where they were tyrannical in their leadership style, and so they lost their position, the ministry position, or maybe occasionally financial malfeasance. Some people embezzle. And so, they were essentially idolaters at that point, and now they’re not in the ministry. But often it’s sexual. There’s an affair or something that happens and some sexual impropriety. So, it’s scary. And then it becomes public knowledge, and the person’s not in the ministry anymore.
And so, I think for me, there’s a reasonable fear of sin. This, “lest I be disqualified for the prize,” is a reasonable fear of a bad outcome. And so, I think there’s a healthy fear of sin, a healthy fear of Satan. And so, I think that’s reasonable for us to consider. I sometimes think, what would it be like to have to get up in front of First Baptist Church on a Sunday morning and resign my position because of some disqualifying sin? And I actually have a brother that almost always prays out loud in my hearing that I would not be disqualified from the ministry, which is scary, but I say keep doing it. So big picture though with this chapter, the fundamental thing is we should be willing to deny ourselves and make life difficult for ourselves so that we can win others to the gospel. That’s the takeaway here.
Wes
Well, this has been episode 12 in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study Podcast. We want to invite you to join us next time for episode 13 entitled Severe Warnings from Israel’s History, where we’ll discuss 1 Corinthians 10:1-13. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys Podcast. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study Podcast. This podcast is just one of the many resources available to you for free from Two Journeys Ministry. If you’re interested in learning more, just head over to twojourneys.org. Now on to today’s episode. This is episode 12 in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study Podcast. This episode is entitled The Responsibilities of a Gospel Minister, where we’ll discuss 1 Corinthians 9:15-27. I’m Wes Treadway and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis. Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
Well, what we’re going to see in these verses, they’re very memorable. We’re going to see Paul’s commitment to do whatever he can to take the gospel to various categories of people, and specifically the theme of the self-denial, the strictures he puts himself under so as to be able to share the gospel with as many people as possible. It’s in a larger section on meat sacrificed to idols in three chapters, chapters 8, 9, and 10, in which we have kind of an overriding principle, “Love limits liberty.” We’re going to see the limits very strongly in this chapter. We’re going to see the limits Paul put himself under. He didn’t do what was convenient for himself. He didn’t do what was easy. And specifically he was very strict with himself and his own desires, his own body and its drives, so that he wouldn’t be disqualified from gospel ministry.
So, we’re going to see him making assertions like, “I will be whatever I can be to anybody in any amoral thing. I will do anything I can in the amoral categories, whether with meat or not meat or whatever, with eating, with clothes, whatever I have to do to win people. I’m not going to violate moral laws, but I’ll do amoral things, whatever I can. I’m not in it for myself. But beyond that, I don’t trust myself, and I watch over myself with great strictness.” So, we’re going to talk about what it takes to be that kind of a gospel minister.
Wes
Well, let me go ahead and read verses 15 through 27 in 1 Corinthians 9:
But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.
For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 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. 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. 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. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Andy, Paul returns to his surrender of his rights of support in verse 15. What reason does he give for surrendering this right? And why, if he surrendered this right, does he argue so vigorously for the right of support?
Andy
All right, so the big picture here, big, big picture as I mentioned in the intro, was the topic of meat sacrificed to idols, and the basic doctrinal insight that an idol is nothing. It’s a chunk of wood or metal or stone. And that meat laid in front of a chunk of wood or metal or stone by a human being, then walks away, the meat is just meat. And a believer in Christ can come along, pick it up, cook it, and eat it without any problem at all to their soul. That is true. The problem is that knowledge is not enough. In a network of relationships, we have to be careful who’s watching and what’s going on in their hearts while they observe. They might draw the wrong conclusions. And if I’m going to damage anybody who’s watching, either a non-Christian or a Christian alike, I’ll refrain from eating.
So that’s the basic idea. Love limits liberty. Yeah, you have the freedom to eat, but what effect is it going to have on those watching? And if somebody’s conscience is bothered by what I do, that’s a factor. I want to look in on that. Then he uses himself in chapter 9 as an example of love limits liberty, and he changes the subject somewhat to the rights of an apostle to be supported financially. Let’s take that as an example.
“So I have the freedom to take along a believing wife. I have the freedom to be supported financially to have a life. But I have chosen to limit my own liberty and not demand those things. I did it so that I could really be free from any concerns or accusations that I was in it for the money, that I was in it for greed and all that. It’s clearly not the case. I was working hard with my own hands supporting others. I was serving as a tent maker there. You saw it, you watched it, etc. However, I want you to know that it is right for those who preach the gospel to make their living from the gospel. So as a lasting principle, I’m not advocating. It’s basically do as I say, not as I do here. But I had my own reasons for doing what I did. I limited my own liberty.”
And that’s why he’s talking about it here. He said, “Look, I didn’t use any of those rights and I have a boast I could make. I can look you in the face, O Corinthians, and say, ‘You didn’t give me a penny for preaching the gospel to you.’ I was not in it for the money.” But in a larger sense, he’s basically saying that’s an example of limiting your liberty. And he is also saying, however, other gospel ministers should have the right of support.
Wes
What boast is Paul referring to here in this section?
Andy
You didn’t support me. I worked hard with my own hands. I made myself an example. He’s going to say in Acts 20 to the Ephesian elders, he’s going to say, “You yourselves know how I lived, how hard I worked, how with my own hands I supported my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything that I did, I put on display the statement Jesus made, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” That’s my boast. You didn’t support me financially. I went above and beyond the call of a gospel minister here. That’s his boast.
Wes
What does Paul mean then by saying, “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel”? And how does this relate to the prophet Jeremiah?
Andy
So, the boasting thing, Paul just plays at it. He’s going to do it later where he boasts in 2 Corinthians about his sufferings and he says, “I have worked harder than anybody.” He uses this kind of statement, but he’s like, “Look, I can’t do it for long. It’s just not very Christian to talk like this.” But he does this kind of boasting thing a lot. And he says, “Look, when I bring it back to the cross, though, and the empty tomb, when I bring it back to Almighty God, I can’t boast. There can be no boasting. And the fact of the matter is no matter what I say to you, I was compelled by the Spirit to preach the gospel. I had no choice but to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. I am forced or compelled by the Spirit.”
It reminds me of what it says in Ezekiel 36. He says, “I’m going to take out the heart of stone and I’m going to give you a heart of flesh. I’m going to put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my commands and be careful to keep my laws.” Move you? What is that? That’s a compulsion. That’s the Holy Spirit basically taking over, not violating our personalities like a demon does in a demon-possessed person, but working so effectively in you that you see the wisdom of preaching the gospel. And now concerning Jeremiah, that’s a great, great question and I think it comes to a verse that we were just talking about it. Why don’t you read it from Jeremiah 20?
Wes
So, in Jeremiah chapter 20:9 it says, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”
Andy
That’s almost exactly what Paul’s saying. “Woe to me. I’m compelled to preach the gospel. I can’t say no.” So that’s the compulsion of the Spirit, as he says in the Book of Acts, “And now compelled by the Spirit, I’m going to Jerusalem.” So that’s a very good parallel, Jeremiah 20:9.
Wes
Now based on what we’ve just been discussing, in what way is Paul both voluntarily and involuntarily preaching the gospel like we see here in verses 16 and 17?
Andy
He wants to do it. He wants to do it, but he is also under compulsion. I think it’s actually not much different than Jesus drinking the cup in Gethsemane. I mean, he wants to do it, but at the same time there’s a compulsion on him from the prophecies. He has no choice. And so, there’s a sense of that. “I am in this position where there is, I really don’t have a choice. But don’t misunderstand me. I really do want to preach the gospel. I actually have the delight in preaching the gospel. So, I am preaching voluntarily. Now, if I preach of my own free will, if I preach voluntarily and cheerfully, I get a reward.” So, our rewards are tied not just to what we do but how we do it. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, if I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.”
So, our rewards are tied to our demeanor and our reasons and our attitude, not just to what we do. Keep in mind also God can put a compulsion on somebody and speak through them, but they don’t get any reward at all. I think about, for example, Caiaphas, who said it would be more beneficial for one man to die and the whole nation not perish. And John tells us, he didn’t say this of himself, but as high priest that year, he prophesied concerning Christ that he would die for the nation, but he didn’t get any reward. His motive was not good.
“So, our rewards are tied to our demeanor and our reasons and our attitude, not just to what we do. Keep in mind also God can put a compulsion on somebody and speak through them, but they don’t get any reward at all.”
Wes
Did him no good.
Andy
It did him no good. So, what Paul’s saying here is like, “Look, I have no choice. I’m under compulsion, but if I preach voluntarily, if I want to do it, God loves a cheerful giver, if I do that, then I’m getting a reward. If I don’t want to do it, then I’m just discharging the duty.” Could be that in his humanness, in his Romans 7 human sinfulness, there are probably some days he did the right thing but didn’t really want to do it. And maybe for those days he didn’t get a reward. We don’t get a hundred percent rewarded for everything because sometimes we’re off that day and we don’t minister very well, et cetera.
Wes
Now Paul goes on in verse 18 to explicitly discuss rewards, talk about them a little more. What does Paul say is his reward for preaching the gospel?
Andy
He says, “What is my reward? It’s that in preaching the gospel I can offer it free of charge and I’m not using my rights.” So, what he’s doing is he’s saying, “Look, there are kind of the normal gospel ministers, but I’m not that person. I’m at a higher level. I am the apostle to the Gentiles, and it was incumbent on me to go above and beyond the normal call of duty. And so, my reward is, the extreme level of stricture I put on myself puts me in a position to be more rewarded.”
I think what we find out about the doctrine of rewards is that they’re in proportion to sacrifice. The greater the sacrifice then the higher the reward, and only God can properly measure it. Let’s imagine somebody has a very, very hard time speaking They have a stutter, they don’t speak well, and as a result they’re very insecure, and it’s extremely difficult for them to get up in front of a crowd. And they get up and they give their testimony, and they get baptized. They’re going to get a greater reward than the preacher who’s been there a thousand times literally before and preaches yet another sermon and it’s not that big a deal for him. Of the two, who gave a bigger sacrifice that day? And so, it really does zero in on the level of sacrifice and commitment. Paul was willing to forgo his apostolic rights in order to preach the gospel free of charge and be clear from any questions about his motives.
“The doctrine of rewards is that they’re in proportion to sacrifice. The greater the sacrifice then the higher the reward, and only God can properly measure it.”
Wes
What do verses 19 through 23, this next section that we’re going to look at, teach us about Paul’s level of self-sacrifice to spread the gospel?
Andy
Yeah, it’s really quite remarkable, and this is one of the most important sections in the entire Bible on missional strategy, on what we try to do in a culture. In a culture, you’re going to try to become all things to all people so that by all possible means we might save some. That’s what Paul says. What does that mean? For us, we were missionaries in Japan, we will try to fit into Japanese culture, eat Japanese food. We don’t necessarily have to wear Japanese clothing because they’re so used to Westerners at that point. Most of them wear Western-style clothing. But we try to immerse ourselves in the amoral, amoral aspects of their culture.
And I have to say amoral because Shintoism is a religion, a national religion, and there are certain rituals they would do, and we could never participate in those things. But when it comes to amoral things like food, clothing, habits, holidays, rituals, rights, taking your shoes off when you entered the house every time. By the way, I remember seeing a movie about a baseball player in Japan, and he went over there with cowboy boots that were mid-calf and he had to tug and tug and tug to get them off. And there was this other baseball player had been there for a couple of years. He looked at him, shook his head and laughed, said, “That’s going to change.” By the end of the movie, he’s wearing slides, slipping them on and off, because every time you go in a Japanese home, you’re going to take off your shoes. It’s just part of the culture.
What Paul’s saying in this whole section here is, “Whatever it takes to win people, I’ll do it, even if I don’t like it. Even if I have to eat things I don’t like.” You can imagine as a Jew, the non-kosher foods like pork might’ve even been nauseating to him, I mean, disgusting to him. And he would recoil from it like Peter did when he was told to get up and kill and eat these reptiles and all that in that vision he had in Acts 10. But Paul says, “I’ll eat it if I can win some people to Christ.” And why would he do that? He’s currying favor. He’s building relationships, he’s eating what’s served to him without any questions because the hostess wants to make him happy. And she’s serving food that that’s what they eat. And so, Paul says, “Whatever it takes, I’m going to do it.” So overall, these verses, and we’re going to walk through them, I know, in detail, but these verses give us a mentality that whatever I can do, however I am inconvenienced doesn’t matter as long as I might be able to win some people to Christ.
Wes
Now, you’ve alluded to this even in the description of this overall section, but how did Paul make himself a slave and become like a Jew to win Jews and like a Gentile to win Gentiles?
Andy
Well, here’s the thing. Martin Luther wrote The Freedom of the Christian Man. He said, “A Christian man is free, slave to no one, and a Christian man is slave to everyone, not free, in that case.” And I don’t remember the exact terminology, but we are both completely free horizontally from other people and then completely enslaved. So how is Luther free? Well, he stood before them and basically the Diet of Worms proclaimed the gospel of justification by faith alone saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other, I can’t go against conscience. None of you can change my mind unless you can prove it from scripture, and you can’t. So fundamentally, I’m free from your opinion. If you kill me, you kill me. But the truth is the truth.”
So, he at that moment was a free man. He was not afraid of death; he was not afraid of anyone’s opinion. He was free from everyone and subject to none. But when it came to ministering the gospel, then Luther and any faithful missionary, evangelist, or the Apostle Paul here, makes himself a voluntary slave to everyone in order to win them. And again, we need to be clear about this. What does it mean? He’s under certain boundaries, he’s bounded by the customs of the people, their dietary customs, their culture, their holidays, and rituals and all that, as long as they don’t violate the law of God. And he says that later, he says, “Though I am not under the law.” But later he says, “Though I am not free from God’s law.”
So, if their custom is to, one of the things we do is to make our guests home is we offer our wives, to have carnal knowledge with our wives. Like, yeah, not going to do that because that’d be immoral. All right, so I’ve never heard of that ever, but you could imagine somebody offering a wicked thing, an evil thing, like smoking an opium pipe or something like that. It’s like, “No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to do that.” But if you’re going to say, “I’m offering you a pork tortilla,” and I’m a converted Jew, I’ll eat the pork tortilla, there’s nothing immoral. It’s not my taste. And so, I feel a little bit in myself like a slave. I’m bounded in by this, I’m going to eat whatever you serve. Most of us are just slaves to our preferences. We’re like, “I don’t like it, I’m not eating it.” And it’s like, well, you’re selfish, you’re being selfish. So, this passage tells us, don’t be selfish, be willing to get up out of yourself and do things to win people.
“Most of us are just slaves to our preferences. …So, this passage tells us, don’t be selfish, be willing to get up out of yourself and do things to win people.”
Wes
Such a great quote from Luther, and it really does help situate this section in the broader passage, as you have so helpfully done as we’ve walked through these chapters, to say that love is limiting our liberty. We don’t get to do whatever we want, and we really do have to take stock of the situation and how we can best honor the Lord and also have an avenue to share the gospel.
Andy
Honestly, if love doesn’t limit liberty, you’re selfish. You’re a selfish person. Most people are. Most people live for themselves and for their own tastes and they’re blunt and they’re rude and they don’t win connections. I think fundamentally it goes to one of the most interesting parables that Jesus ever told, the parable of the unrighteous steward. And this is a parable of a guy who was in charge of a master’s stuff, and he comes to find out, the master does, that this guy’s been dishonest. And he’s going to lose his job, but he doesn’t lose it right away, which is the key to the whole parable. And so, he doesn’t lose his job right away, and then he starts calling in some of his master’s debtors and starts cutting their debts in half. He’s currying favor.
And it’s an odd parable, but basically what Jesus is teaching is the things you have control over, you have them temporarily. Use them to make friends for yourself. That’s what he says. Use unrighteous mammon to make friends for yourself. Paul’s doing the same thing here. “I’m going to use my dietary habits to make connections with people, to make friends.” The alternative is to be selfish, and you won’t be able to win as many people to Christ.
Wes
And ultimately that is Paul’s aim, right? He says in verse 23, “I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessing.” What point does Paul make with this analogy of running the race in order to obtain or win a prize?
Andy
All right, so this whole section is very, very important on the issue of self-control. One of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control. Another corollary or connection might be self-denial. And what does it mean? I’m saying no to myself, I’m saying no to my drives. Now here again, we’re in the overall topic of meat sacrificed to idols, and what if I really like meat or really don’t like meat? Doesn’t matter what you like and don’t like when it comes to meat. What matters is the mission. The mission’s bigger than your personal tastes. But here he seems to go beyond any of those things as well. I think here when he talks about controlling his drives, we get into the issue of the flesh and the body of sin and its drives.
And basically, the flesh, as we understand, sometimes called the sin nature, but the flesh that we are having to watch over so diligently takes normal desires, biological desires, so for food, for drink, for sex, for love, for affirmation, and pushes them beyond boundaries. That pressure is going to be in us while we live in these mortal bodies. It’s always going to be pushing us to go beyond boundaries that God has set up. Paul’s saying no to his drives, he’s saying no to his fleshly desires, he’s saying no to his body. He’s going to discipline his body severely and strongly, so that he’s not dominated by his bodily passions.
Now you look at the culture we live in here in America, people don’t say no to themselves. They do whatever feels good, whatever they want to do. If they want to eat, they’re going to eat. If they want to eat a lot, they’re going to eat a lot. If they want to sleep with that girl that they meet at the party, they’re going to do it. It’s a hookup culture. They’re going to do that. They’re going to follow their drives and desires like they’re animals. We Christians are called to a higher standard, and this is probably one of the strongest articulations in the Bible of the strictness it takes for us to live holy lives. If you’re going to live a holy life, you have to say no to those fleshly drives and desires. You have to be careful what you look at on the internet. You can’t go to any site you want. You can’t do whatever you want. You’ve got to say no to yourself.
And Paul is the quintessential example of the holy man of God. You want to be a minister of the gospel, you got to say no to your fleshly drives and desires. Now he couches it in an athletic image, and that’s important because sports is very important in our culture. In this case, it’s a distance runner. You want to win the prize as a distance runner, you have to, as he says in 2 Timothy, “compete according to the rules.” So, the rules of the race, yes, but also the rules of training. You can’t show up the day of the race not having done anything and hope that you’re going to do well. You’re not. You’re a runner. So, what kind of preparation… Here is you need to understand, this guy runs 50-mile races. No, longer.
Wes
Not 50 miles.
Andy
Okay, 36. 50 kilometers.
Wes
31.
Andy
All right, there we go.
Wes
Yeah.
Andy
All right, so what do you do to prepare?
Wes
You run a lot. You have to put in work ahead of time, lots of volume, lots of preparation. There are certain things that I probably should do better, like nutrition and things like that. But it’s certainly a lot of prior preparation in order to actually compete well and run in the race.
Andy
And so at Two Journeys, we talk about two journeys, the internal journey of holiness and the external journey of gospel advance. They come together in this chapter, but here it’s really holiness. And he’s talking about saying no to his drives and desires so that he can preach the gospel. And so, here’s the thing, those two journeys are interconnected. You can’t say, “Look, I’m not going to look after the internal journey of holiness. I want to preach the gospel.” You know what’s going to happen? You’ll get disqualified. Satan will hunt you down. Satan will take you out. You won’t be preaching the gospel five years from now. Paul knew that. He said, “Look, I don’t want to get disqualified. I don’t want to get the big red X put on me. I don’t want to get set aside. And so, in order for me to not be disqualified from preaching the gospel, I have to go into strict training and watch myself very closely and carefully.”
And so, it is with me as a pastor, I have to be very, very careful what I do in terms of sexual purity, what I do in relationships with people. It’s not just a matter of purity in sex, it’s also a matter of purity in relationships, that I not be a bitter, angry, unforgiving person who has broken relationships left and right. Pastors leave the ministry because of that. There’s some things we have to do.
Now, the image here is athletic. If I want to still be running this race years from now, I got to be in strict training. I got to watch the drives of my body. I got to not go in for bitter vindictiveness or sexual immorality or eating and drinking problems. I need to keep my body under control. My body, in this case, seems to be an enemy. I have to keep it under control. The one translation says, “I beat my body and make it my slave.” It’s a very harsh image. Your translation says strict training or something like that. What does it say?
Wes
“I discipline my body and keep it under control.”
Andy
Keep it under. So, it’s like it’s pressing. It’s like a team of horses, like Ben Hur, he’s got four, I think it was four horses side by side. And they’re strong and they’re pulling. It’s like I got to keep them under rein. So that’s the idea here.
Wes
Yeah, Andy, when he uses this image of a runner, I think of Olympians, and you hear stories of them having as a kid the poster of a favorite runner up on their wall. And it really, it’s that idea of having the goal or the end always in front of them. So, they grew up running track in high school, and then they ran in college, and then they competed on the world stage, and finally they won. But all along the way, they had in mind the end. What’s the eternal crown that Paul was talking about? Because it seems like he has his end goal always before him.
Andy
Well, he speaks of the Philippians as his crown. He speaks of the Thessalonians as his crown. So, people are the crown. But crowns also are given to individuals as the 24 elders cast their crowns before the Lord. And so, it’s an emblem of honor given to a servant of Christ for certain services rendered in this world. And so, he’s pursuing that crown. He wants to get that victor’s wreath. Now, these athletes, he says, in the Isthmian games, I think it was, they’re competing for an olive wreath that’s put on their head. But a week and a half later, it’s all wilted and brown.
Wes
Crumbly and brown.
Andy
Yeah, it’s gone and it’s pretty sad, but we’re getting an eternal crown. And so forever and ever and ever, the crown will shine. And that’s because the Lord will remember it forever and never cease honoring the servants. He said, “That’s a crown worth going for.” Now, in this case, it’s evangelistic. People who are won to faith in Christ are our crown. But even if you just serve someone, it’s like a jewel in the crown or something like that. Anything that you do by faith for the glory of God, if it’s self-denying, sacrificial, costly to you, you do it cheerfully and out of love and you do it according to the word of God, it’s rewardable. And that’s why Jesus said, “Store up treasure in heaven.” So, there is a crown that we’re pursuing, and we hope to have it. Now, Paul says, “I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith. Now there is laid in store for me a crown, which the Lord will award to all who have longed for his appearing.” And so there is this image of a crown yet to come.
“Anything that you do by faith for the glory of God, if it’s self-denying, sacrificial, costly to you, you do it cheerfully and out of love and you do it according to the word of God, it’s rewardable.”
Wes
Now, Andy, there also I feel like could be two pitfalls on either side of this topic where we could take this too far or we could disregard it. How do we protect against both of those?
Andy
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think there is a sad history of extreme asceticism. Ignatius of Loyola’s the worst. This is a guy that had a belt of nails, sharp nails, turned inward, wrapped around his body all the time. So, like little trickles of blood going down all the time. And that’s just a very bad misunderstanding of mortification. That’s not how we mortify sin. We mortify it spiritually, et cetera. So extreme asceticism, fastings, things like that. George Whitfield was into this before he was converted. So was Martin Luther. Extreme fastings. You look at the earlier woodcuts of Martin Luther when he was at the Diet of Worms, he looks like a living skeleton. I mean, this is a guy through extreme fastings was trying to earn his way to heaven.
So, there is an extreme strictness that I think is dishonoring to God. We need to take good care of our bodies, make sure we get enough nutrition, enough sleep, things like that. Self-denial from time to time, fine. Fasting, okay. Maybe spend a night in prayer like Jesus did one time. But if you’re never sleeping, sooner or later, it’s going to catch up with you. So that’s the one extreme. The other extreme is there’s no discipline at all. You just give into your fleshly drives and desires and just kind of live, almost seems like a pagan life. So somewhere in between those two extremes is a healthy self-discipline that produces good fruit.
Wes
Andy, as we reach the final verse, verse 27, what does it mean to be disqualified for the prize? And what final thoughts do you have on this passage we’ve looked at today?
Andy
Well, it’s a very scary word, and my mind immediately goes to specific people that I’ve known that are no longer in vocational ministry because of immorality. Frequently sexual, but not always. Sometimes it was a power control thing where they were tyrannical in their leadership style, and so they lost their position, the ministry position, or maybe occasionally financial malfeasance. Some people embezzle. And so, they were essentially idolaters at that point, and now they’re not in the ministry. But often it’s sexual. There’s an affair or something that happens and some sexual impropriety. So, it’s scary. And then it becomes public knowledge, and the person’s not in the ministry anymore.
And so, I think for me, there’s a reasonable fear of sin. This, “lest I be disqualified for the prize,” is a reasonable fear of a bad outcome. And so, I think there’s a healthy fear of sin, a healthy fear of Satan. And so, I think that’s reasonable for us to consider. I sometimes think, what would it be like to have to get up in front of First Baptist Church on a Sunday morning and resign my position because of some disqualifying sin? And I actually have a brother that almost always prays out loud in my hearing that I would not be disqualified from the ministry, which is scary, but I say keep doing it. So big picture though with this chapter, the fundamental thing is we should be willing to deny ourselves and make life difficult for ourselves so that we can win others to the gospel. That’s the takeaway here.
Wes
Well, this has been episode 12 in our 1 Corinthians Bible Study Podcast. We want to invite you to join us next time for episode 13 entitled Severe Warnings from Israel’s History, where we’ll discuss 1 Corinthians 10:1-13. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys Podcast. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
