For the Sake of the Gospel

1 Corinthians 9: 16-23

 

 

          Ever feel like you had to do something or else? I’m not talking about something you wanted to do or even something you were required to do. I’m talking about something that if you didn’t do it, would tear you apart. You just had to act. Maybe it was someone betraying a close friend and you just couldn’t stand by and let it go on. You know you were risking a friendship, but the stakes were too high. Whether your friend understood or not, turned on you or not, he or she had to be told. Maybe you had to leave home and go try your wings. Even though you didn’t want to leave, you just couldn’t stay, at least not right now. There would be time for coming back home, but for now, you just had to leave or bust. When you were in love, didn’t it just about kill you not to be able to tell the whole world, especially him or her, how you felt. You had to. It couldn’t be held inside. It had to be told.

          Those who are called to ministry often express feelings like that—as though if they didn’t answer the call, they just wouldn’t be able to go on. And yet, the call of ministry is a double edged sword. Some years ago, I met with my minister and told him that I was seriously thinking of enrolling in seminary. His advice was to argue with God and to do everything in my power to avoid that call, but if I could not get it to go away, then to answer it. Today, I understand more about what he meant.

          Paul says to the Corinthian church: “…necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” Paul has been called to ministry and having heard that call, he can no more say no to it than he can say no to Jesus himself. Paul must follow his call.

          This passage has often been used to talk about the calling to ministry, and also whether it is appropriate to pay ministers or whether they should labor for free. But in a larger sense, it is also about stewardship and its call for each of us as Christians. 1 Peter 2:5 teaches us that as Christians, we are “living stones being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.” Peter is not talking about ministers. He is talking about us.

            So when we read this passage from Paul to the Corinthian Christians, we can see the marks of stewardship imprinted upon it. Listen to these phrases: “I am entrusted with a stewardship…I have made myself a servant to all…I have become all things to all people…I do it all for the sake of the gospel.”  These thoughts are not just the thoughts of a minister. They could be the thoughts of any Christian.

          Listening might be the first ingredient to effective stewardship. I love the story that William Barclay tells about a country doctor in England named Johnson, who possessed the art of leading people to talk on their favorite subjects, and on what they knew best. He had a readiness to throw himself into the interests of other people. He knew the art of listening and he practiced it. As a result, he had a great following. Is that so hard to do? Apparently it is for some. But for Christians, we are called to be a people who listen.

          “I am entrusted with a stewardship,” said Paul. For Paul, that meant taking the gospel to the Gentiles. It meant living all over Asia Minor and being a traveling missionary for much of his life. He was the first and greatest church planter. But stewardship takes many forms. Consider the story of Oseola McCarty, of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Forced to quit school in the sixth grade to help take care of her aunt, she never returned. She later became a washerwoman and did that menial job for decades until arthritis forced her to quit at the age of 86. She never owned a car; she walked everywhere she went. Her mother taught her to save money and she opened a bank account before she quit school. She saved something every week, no matter how little she earned washing clothes at fifty cents a load. A year after she retired, she had a meeting with her banker and her attorney, a man for whom she had washed clothes. She had saved $250,000.00. She showed them her estate plan with ten dimes. On dime was to go to the church. Three were to go to relatives. The other six dimes were to go to the University of Southern Mississippi as an endowment to fund a scholarship to help underprivileged African-American kids attend college. The washerwoman funded a $150,000.00 endowment and became the university’s most famous benefactor. She said she had too much money and couldn’t take it with her, so why not help someone else and put the money to work for God. Stewardship can be found anywhere along that spectrum, from giving your life to the planting of churches to saving money for a future gift.

          “I have made myself a servant to all…I have become all things to all people,” says Paul. Paul never compromised his ethics or his theology. But neither did he let his own upbringing or pride or cultural bias get in the way of winning more people over to the gospel.  The word we translate here as servant can also be translated slave. He saw himself as a slave entrusted with the stewardship of the gospel.  He is too good for no one.

          Paul ministered to the Jews. He says that he “became as a  Jew.” At first that makes little sense. He was in fact Jewish. But this passage shows how far Paul had come since that experience on the Damascus Road. He no longer thought of himself purely in that ethnic context. He would use his “Jewishness” to gain the confidence and respect of the Jews, but he was free from the old legal constraints of that religion. Nevertheless, his experiences and knowledge were useful to him in understanding how to reach the Jews.

          Paul ministered to those outside the law. This most probably refers to the Gentiles, as they were outside the Mosaic law of the nation of Israel. He grew up in the Diaspora, the area outside the capital city. He knew what the world was like outside Jerusalem. He says that although he is not lawless, he acts as though he is. Again, he is not compromising his ethics or theology, but rather his approach to how to communicate. His compass is the law of Christ, the requirement of Christian living, working out one’s salvation through faith in Christ and his teachings. He will not scare away a Gentile seeking Christ by spouting Mosaic Law to him. Rather he will listen to where that person is. Then, he can share Jesus and his love for all people.

          Paul ministered to the weak. Here, it would seem that Paul is calling to those who are at this point lost. It is not just the Jews, who know God but not Jesus, or the Gentiles, who come to know Jesus without the Jewish law, but also those within each group who have lost their way, to whom Paul reaches out. He is calling out to those who, like that lost sheep who wandered away from the flock, need a good shepherd to guide them home. If Paul has to go where they are, be who they are, to save them, he will.

            So why does Paul do these things? Why does he meander throughout Macedonia and Greece, calling out to those from all walks of life? He tells us in verse 23. He “does it all for the sake of the gospel.” He experienced God. He believed the Jesus story. He preached Christ crucified.  For Paul, it was never about him. It was always about the gospel, the lifesaving, life sustaining message of salvation offered through belief in Jesus. Paul felt the call of Jesus to tell the gospel story.

          Is there a “takeaway” today, besides the fact that we can clearly admire Paul for all he did?  The takeaway for me is that we should do the things we do for the sake of the gospel. Some of us will do as Paul did. We will go into some sort of ministry for our vocation as well as our calling. Most of us will do other things as we travel the road of life. Ministry is a funny thing. You can do it and never leave your chair in the den. You can be a prayer warrior and God’s army will be the stronger for it.  You can save a dollar or so a week until your savings turns into a university endowment. What you do is between you and God. It’s not about the what. It’s about the whether. Will you? Will you let God use you the way he used Peter and Paul and Oseola McCarty?  God wants us all as his ministers. Will you listen? Will you get your hands dirty with people different from you? Don’t stand at the edges of life. Get involved. Let yourself disappear into the message. And do it all for the sake of the gospel, that you may share with them in its blessings.