Freely Renounce Your Rights-1 Cor 9:15-23

1 Corinthians, New Testament, Sermons

Paul’s play of words. His “pay” is to offter the gospel “without pay” (1 Cor 9:18). He offers the “free” gospel “free of charge” (1 Cor 9:18), so that he is “free of all people” (1 Cor 9:19). The “strong” Corinthains didn’t like him because they couldn’t control him. No one could except Christ and the gospel (1 Cor 9:16; 1:23; 2:2). He was indeed a truly free man–free to NOT use his apostolic rights [exousia] to their financial support (1 Cor 9:12, 15), for to him use might be viewed as misuse (1 Cor 9:18).

Paul is a man of a single passion, “the gospel of Christ” (1 Cor 9:12b, 16, 23) which is the cross (1 Cor 1:23; 2:2). The key to everything must be for us what it was for Paul–“no hindrance to the gospel” (1 Cor 9:12b). Robert Barron [2/7/2021] (What our lives must be about): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9nWBwPy6es&ab_channel=BishopRobertBarron

 

Paul’s whole concern is to make clear the changeless gospel. This empowers him to be free to change according to his audience, and even to renounce his rights of being paid. Paul is NOT adapting OR changing his message to accomodate his audience. His freedom is make himself the servant of all in order to win them (1 Cor 9:19). Sadly, freedom is too often abused for self-interest, and insistence on one’s agenda, rather than expressed as a gentle and humble concern for others and for the progress of the gospel.

Paul renouncing his rights (9:15–18) is the apostolic model. 9:4-14 lists all of Paul’s rights in detail, providing elaborate extensive explanation, with support from Scripture (1 Cor 9:9, 13), and from Jesus (1 Cor 9:14) as to why he should receive monetary support from them. It’s his unquestionable undeniable right from the church he founded (1 Cor 3:10). With all this buildup, we expect Paul to demand/insist that they pay up and pay him what they rightfully ought to give him. Yet he argues with similar passion and emotion for his “right” to give it up (1 Cor 9:18)–the exact opposite, as he’s already stated (1 Cor 9:12b), which is his point all along.

Outline:

  1. I‘m not using my rights (9:1-14). I have rights, but I’m not using it. [Don’t use your rights.]
  2. In defense of his apostleship (9:1-2)
  3. Paul’s apostolic rights (9:3-14)
  4. I‘m freely renouncing my rights (9:15-23). Paul’s free gospel. [Freely renounce your rights.]
  5. Paul’s apostolic restraint (9:15-18)
  6. Paul’s apostolic freedom (9:19-23). I’m a truly free man. [Those who want to be in control won’t like such a man.]
  7. I train myself to renounce my rights (9:24-27). Exhortation and example. [Train yourself to renounce your rights.]

Paul‘s boast (1 Cor 9:15c). Paul’s argument is one of the more complex in his letters. Why he deliberately refuses their monetary support is because of his priority and concern for the gospel. His boast (1 Cor 9:15c) and grounds for that boast (9:16-18) is profound and not easily explained or understood. Both his “pay” and his “boast” refer to the same reality: preaching the gospel without their “pay” so as not to hinder the gospel–which made them judge him (1 Cor 9:3).

Damned if you do, damned if you don‘t. Paul never wanted anyone to be able to accuse him of preaching for money (2 Cor 2:17). Yet–by not accepting any money from them–they accused him for not being a real apostle (1 Cor 9:1), for if he was, he’d have accepted payment for his apostolic services like the other apostles (1 Cor 9:4-5, 12). Paul was indeed in a no win situation! There’d always be someone on one side or the other to judge and criticize him. Yet, he was a truly free man (1 Cor 9:19a), whose singular motivation was to preach the gospel (1 Cor 1:17, 23; 2:2; 9:17), believing that the gospel is the only power of God for salvation (1 Cor 1:18; Rom 1:16).

I‘d rather die than… (1 Cor 9:15b) … “no one shall nullify my boast” (1 Cor 9:15c). The dramatic climax and pivot–point of ch. 9 is 1 Cor 9:15. It’s a rather strong but unfinished, insistence that “I’d rather die than make use of any of my rights…” (1 Cor 9:15b). The sentence is broken off in Greek and halts abruptly. Then he blurts out with the equally strong assertion that no one will deprive him of his “boast” (1 Cor 9:15c). What follows is a series of sentences that begin with “for,” each explaining or elaborating the former, but also seeming to take the argument astray somewhat in 1 Cor 9:16–18.

  1. 1st he explains what his boast doesn‘t consist of—preaching the gospel per se (1 Cor 9:16a), followed by his explanation why evangelizing cannot be his boast.
  2. He is under compulsion to proclaim the good news (1 Cor 9:16b). Then he adds a wrinkle.
  3. Since he is under “compulsion,” he cannot receive “pay,” for “pay” implies voluntary labor (1 Cor 9:17a). But his labor has been “involuntary” (1 Cor 9:17b) in the sense that divine destiny has prescribed his task (1 Cor 9:16).
  4. He is a “slave” entrusted with a charge (1 Cor 9:17a). What “pay” then can he expect?
  5. With something of a word play he answers that his “pay” is in presenting the gospel “without pay” (1 Cor 9:18a). The final reason for all this echoes what he’d said, but with a slight change in verbs, implying that…
  6. …the “use” of his right [exousia (1 Cor 9:12b)] in this case would be a “misuse” of his authority [exousia (1 Cor 9:18b)].

Despite all the biblical reasons to receive financial support, including Jesus’ command (1 Cor 9:14), Paul won’t take money because he’s NOT working voluntarily as an apostle. Unlike the sophists, he won’t receive fees for his services. His service is rendered to God, NOT willingly (!) but because he has been “entrusted with a commission / trust” (1 Cor 9:17). It’s the image of the slave as steward (4:1–4).

What makes Paul tick. 1 Cor 9:16-17 helps as much as anything in his letters to understand Paul’s center/core. His renunciation of his “rights” to financial support is because of his singular passion for the gospel (1 Cor 9:16). Everything is done to NOT hinder the gospel (1 Cor 9:12), to NOT to misuse his authority in the gospel (1 Cor 9:18). By presenting the gospel “free of charge” (1 Cor 9:18) he is “free from all people” (1 Cor 9:19). No one has a claim on him except Christ. He presenting the gospel “free of charge” is a lived out paradigm of the gospel itself.

Paul‘s divine call (1 Cor 9:16-17). Preaching the gospel was not just a job with Paul. It wasn’t another way for him to make a living, just a profession. Rather, it was a divine call, an imperative call, an inescapable responsibility. He was not a preacher by choice. He was a preacher by conviction / obligation / necessity. He wasn’t in it to make an easy living. Paul preaches because “necessity is laid upon me” (1 Cor 9:16; 7:26). “Necessity” [“obligation”] has been laid upon him by God. To Jeremiah, it’s “something like a burning fire shut up in my bones” (Jer 20:9). He has no choice but to proclaim the gospel. Therefore, his “reward” is, paradoxically, to make the gospel available to others “free of charge” [(1 Cor 9:18); cf. his caustic description of other preachers as “peddlers of God’s Word” (2 Cor 2:17)], and NOT make use of his rights.   How is this a “reward” (1 Cor 9:18)? “In offering the ‘free’ gospel ‘free of charge’ his own ministry becomes a living paradigm of the gospel itself” (Gordon Fee). His renunciation of rights allows him to share in the pattern of Christ’s own sacrificial action and thereby paradoxically to share in the life giving blessings of God.

Don‘t lose sight of the larger argument–they are rejecting his prohibition against going to the pagan temples, contesting his right to do so by his failure to accept patronage/pay/financial support. Paul has the right to their patronage, even as Jesus had commanded (1 Cor 9:14) but refuses it.

Everything Paul does is aimed at winning as many people as possible to the gospel (9:19-23). He adapts his behavior (not his message!) in whatever way necessary to achieve that end. Paul seeks to overcome cultural and ethnic differences in order to bring all sorts of people into the one community of faith. To do this, he makes himself—though a free man—“a slave to all” (1 Cor 9:19; 2 Cor 4:5). This is exactly what happens to free persons when they’re called: they become “slaves of Christ” (1 Cor 7:22b). Paul’s slavery to Christ is to submit himself in various ways to the cultural structures and limitations of the people he hopes to reach with the gospel. Paul gives 4 examples of his adaptive behavior (9:20–22), the 1st 3 being Jew/Gentile issues.

  1. To Jews he became “as a Jew” (1 Cor 9:20a) is remarkable. Since Paul was in fact a Jew, this formulation shows how radically he conceives the claim that in Christ he is “free with respect to all,” i.e., in a position transcending all cultural allegiances. To relate to Jews as a fellow Jew (Ac 21:17–26) is for Paul now an act of accommodation!
  2. The 2nd may just be a restatement of the first (1 Cor 9:20b), though it’s suggested that this might include the wider circle of Gentile god-fearers who observed the Jewish Law. Perhaps this allows Paul to interject parenthetically that he is not himself under the Law, even though his “strong” critics may accuse him of acting as though he were.
  3. The 3rd (1 Cor 9:21) refers to Paul’s ministry to Gentiles, his fundamental apostolic mission (Gal 1:15–16; Rom 1:5). Paul resists the imposition of Jewish Law on Gentiles and adopts a casual attitude about Law observance (kosher laws, etc.) when he was among Gentiles. The bite comes in the play on words in Paul’s parenthetical qualifying remark: even though he became “as one outside the law [anomos]” he himself is not lawless (anomos) toward God but is “under Christ’s law [ennomos Christou].” Being free from the Law doesn’t mean he runs wild with self-indulgence—pointedly spoken to those who proclaim, “I am free to do anything” (1 Cor 6:12). Instead, he lives with a powerful sense of obligation to God, defined now by his relationship to Christ. By “under Christ’s law” (Gal 6:2) Paul doesn’t mean that he has acquired a new legal code of commandments to obey (such as the teachings of Jesus). Rather, he’s asserting that the pattern of Christ’s self–sacrificial death on a cross has now become the normative pattern for his own existence (2 Cor 4:10–12; Gal 2:19–20; Phil 2:5–8; 3:10–11; 1 Cor 11:1–the culminating appeal).
  4. The 1st 3 prepares for the 4th and decisive illustration of Paul’s willingness to adapt his actions in the interest of gospel: “To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak” (1 Cor 9:22a). This is Paul’s immediate goal. How? There’re 2 clues: there is no counterbalancing statement that to the strong he became strong, and he doesn’t say, “I became as the weak,” but rather, “I became weak.” He’s not pretending. Paul took on the lifestyle and condition of the weak. In the context of 1 Cor 1–10, it means 2 things: he accepted for himself their strictures against eating idol meat, and he lowered himself to the social status of the weak by refusing the patronage of the rich and became a manual laborer. [The “weak” were grouped with the “low and despised” cf. the “strong” and “those of noble birth” (1:26–29)]. This is puzzling and demeaning to the “strong” higher-class Christians. But this is necessary to win more people to the gospel (1 Cor 9:22). This self–lowering is homologous with the law/pattern of Christ, who also became a slave (Phil 2:6–8) in obedience to God. Paul is embodying the basic logic of the Christian life: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self–indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another” (Gal 5:13-14). That is Paul’s word to the “strong” in 1 Cor 9, not as a direct exhortation, but his own personal example. He invites the “strong” to see in his own self–enslaving action as a call to them.

“The weak” (1 Cor 9:22) are not non-believers but are the weak Christians, whom Paul still needs to “win” or “save.”  Paul doesn’t think that his converts were already “saved” as soon as they professed faith. Paul refers to himself and others in the church as those “who are being saved” (1 Cor 1:18). Conversion is a process of having one’s life reshaped in the likeness of Christ, and salvation is the eschatological end for which we hope. The weak Christians in ch. 8 are in danger of falling away from Christ and not being saved (1 Cor 8:11; 10:1–13). Thus, his continuing identification with the weak aims not only to gain converts but also to strengthen them and to help them along the path to salvation.

Reference:

  1. Richard B. Hays. First Corinthians. Interpretation. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1997.
  2. Gordon D. Fee. First Corinthians. The New International Commentary on the NT. 1987, 2014 revised.
  3. Richard B. Hays. The Moral Vision of the N.T. A Contemporary Introduction to N.T. Ethics. 1996.
  4. Kenneth E. Bailey. Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes. Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians.2011.
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