THE BOOK OF 1 CORINTHIANS: Reaching Across Boundaries for Christ
Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve (with edits)
Well, we are supposed to work through 1 Corinthians, and this morning we are in chapter 9, but as we prayed this morning for you, I’m just sensing that the Holy Spirit is leading us in a different direction this morning. I don’t know exactly what that all means yet, but we’ll try and figure that out. So is that okay if we go off topic a little bit this morning? And I don’t want to just force myself to stay in this if the Holy Spirit wants to maybe do something different.
The Gospel Mind
I want to start off this morning with Romans chapter 8. So there’s just different verse that I had a sense that I want to share with you. Romans chapter 8, verse 22–23. It says:
For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
As I was reading that this morning, it’s a reminder, right, that we’re still dealing with sin. We haven’t experienced perfection; we’re not in heaven yet, right? But there’s a longing—as we go through our spiritual journey, we deal with stuff. Amen? Anybody relate out there? Right? Even this morning, just in my prayer time and even right now, I don’t know what it is exactly what the Holy Spirit is sharing or just kind of sensing where you are at, but even this morning, I just feel a weight on my shoulders. I don’t know if that is what you are experiencing this morning as you maybe came through these doors. But just a word of encouragement this morning: as a church and as believers, we deal with brokenness. We deal with shortcomings in our lives, and we deal with the pain and disappointments that life can throw at us
And so on Friday Venessa and I started a new devotional. We kind of take turns to pick something in the Bible App, and I picked something about—I can’t remember the title of it, but it’s about why do we come to church on Sunday morning? Why Sunday morning? Not trying to figure out why specifically Sunday mornings, but just, why do we gather?
And so our first devotional that morning, the author is talking about that he lost his “gospel mind,” right? And so here’s how he is explaining how we sometimes lose our gospel minds. He says:
Perhaps during an argument with your husband, wife, or friend, securing affirmation as being right (for once) becomes the most important thing to you. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you find yourself doing whatever is necessary to get that job promotion. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you’re willing to destroy your relationship with your neighbor over a boundary dispute. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you rip […] into your teenager because you’re tired of being disrespected. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you cling to an unending obsession with your weight and appearance. You have lost your gospel mind. Perhaps a lifestyle dream is leading you into crushing debt. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you harbor a pattern of internet sexual sin. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you feel an overwhelming anxiety about what people think about you and how they respond to you. You have lost your gospel mind. Or you might demand to be in charge and in control of your relationships. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe you are passive and complacent when it comes to your faith. You have lost your gospel mind. Maybe patterns of envy and bitterness have robbed you of your joy. You have lost your gospel mind.
And so then he continues to say that’s part of just why we show up on a Sunday morning. Because of the brokenness and stuff that we experience during the week, what a great opportunity to show up on a Sunday morning to worship, to minister to one another, to hear from God’s Word, because God’s Word will help us to get in line again with his heart and his desire for us.
Now I’m just saying again, I don’t know if you can relate to any of these things that I was reading this morning. I could relate to many of those, right? Because when we’re out there, we get tempted to lose focus on what is important to God. And so Sunday mornings helps us to just get in sync again with God’s desire for us this morning. And so I pray that that will be true for us this morning, that as you—maybe you’ve lost your gospel mind as you look back this week on some things that didn’t line up with God’s Word, and you made other things a priority—that God will just, through his Holy Spirit, will come and help you to realign and get on track again. Because again, it happens where we live in a broken world, and we’re not perfect yet, and we need that constant encouragement.
The State of the Believer
So if you look at 1 Corinthians—I want to just kind of look back at chapter 6, verse 11, because it reminds us that… and so Paul is reminding that early church—as they were dealing with sins, they were bringing stuff from the world into their church—and Paul is now reminding them, it says, “You have been washed, you have been sanctified, and you have been justified.” If you are a believer, these are amazing and powerful truths and promises from God. If you’ve given your life to Christ, I want you to know this morning that you are washed, that you are sanctified, and that you are justified. And so so much is built on some of these truths. If you struggle with these things, you will struggle to live in that fullness of what it means to be a believer, and Satan will constantly come and try and deceive you in some of these areas. That’s why we have the armor of God. When we read Ephesians and we read about the armor of God— the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness—it is to protect these things in your life, that Satan can’t come in and say, “Oh, you know what? You’re not washed. Oh, you know what? You’re not sanctified. Oh, know what? You’re not justified.” And we do it every time that we mess up, every time that we fall short—and just how I shared with you already, we fall short. And it’s what do we do in those moments when we when we fail?
And so Paul is correcting this early church. He’s helping them to put things in perspective. He’s reminding them of their identity. And it’s all about—this whole 1 Corinthans is about relationships, and so first several chapters he’s talking about division; then we’ve talked about sex; and today we’re gonna look at different things.
The Rights of an Apostle
I want to just scan over this first part of 1 Corinthians chapter 9. We’ll read through it, and then I’ll highlight some things, and then we’ll just pay attention to how the Holy Spirit wants to lead us this morning. Verse nine:
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living?
Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
So just to kind of pause there for that first part—what Paul is doing, he’s having conversation, because the Corinthians is not believing in his apostleship anymore. And so he’s a little sassy with them, and he’s telling them why people that are preaching the gospel, why they should be paid because of their work in the gospel. And so he’s giving this example to say, you know, when you think about somebody that’s going into the Army, I’m assuming—I haven’t served in the Army, but I guess as you get into Army and you get your uniform, and you’re gonna get a machine gun or whatever weapon at some point, you don’t have to pay for that weapon. Right? The military provides for that. In the same way, now this whole passage Paul is making the argument again just to say, “Hey, if I’m preaching the gospel, then people should be getting paid for their work, for preaching the gospel.” So a little bit on what he is sharing. I don’t want to lose a lot of time in that first part.
To Win Others
I want us to jump through verse 19. So:
Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win…
If you have a highlighter or a pencil, I want you to highlight that first word there, “to win.”
… as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win…
There it is again. Highlight again.
… the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win…
You can highlight that again.
… those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those…
There it is again.
… those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
I want to just talk a little bit as we think about this idea on what Paul is communicating to his church. And he is sharing with them—Paul has not lost his gospel mind. He’s bringing things into perspective, and he’s reminding him the passion, his reason for preaching the gospel, and that is to win others. You see it about five times in this passage. So I’ll just highlight several here again. It says:
Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.
Verse 9:22:
To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.
Paul’s heart is to win the lost, right? This is the main purpose that is driving him. He experienced a calling in his life to preach the gospel, and we see that this gospel is driving him. That’s why he can go through all of the hard things in his life, where he doesn’t quit. He doesn’t lose sight. He doesn’t lose his gospel mind because he’s driven. He knows why this gospel is so important and the impact that that can have on people’s lives.
And so this morning, even just as, you know, thinking through just life and all of the things that we experience and why it’s so easy for us to lose our gospel mind and kind of lose that shift, is that we forget that it’s all about people. Winning the lost.
You know, kind of thinking about even just Operation Christmas Child. Why do all of this, right? It is not to just bless those kids—and we are gonna bless those kids as they receive these boxes—but it’s more. You know, as they are giving out these boxes all over the world, it is to preach the gospel, because we want to win people for Jesus. It really matters, right? It really matters, and that’s why we can’t lose focus, we can’t make it about anything else, and why we need to really study God’s Word and why we need to have people in front of us all the time.
Why Care?
And so why care? Why is Paul caring?
Well, we see some of this through some of these other letters, and we’ll see this in this passage as well. He says:
Since we have been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
1 Thessalonians chapter 1:
… and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
So Paul saying, “I want to win. I want to win the lost for Jesus.”
Why care? Why is he doing that? Well, at some point Jesus is gonna return, and there is people that will experience the wrath of God. And we don’t want that for anybody. And so we want to pay attention; we want to continue to stir our passions in that direction to look for opportunities where you and I can share the gospel.
Yes, Paul had a full-time calling as an apostle and a full-time calling into the full-time ministry, but that doesn’t disqualify us or say, “Oh, that same calling isn’t on us.” Yes, you and I might not have the full-time calling into ministry, but there should always be this calling on our lives to win the lost, to be passionate about the gospel of Jesus Christ. You never know how that might impact somebody.
The Law of Love
And part of why we do that is because of love, and so throughout this passage you’re gonna see Paul is trying to tell them that they’re not under ceremonial law anymore, but that they are under a different law, and that different law is love. Galatians chapter 5:13:
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
And so even in this context of 1 Corinthians, this whole chapter, the context, what Paul is now dealing with them in 1 Corinthians 8 and in 1 Corinthians 9 is because they’re wrestling now. The first part they wrestled with, “Hey, can we just sleep around and do whatever we want sexually, and is that okay in the church?” And so Paul addresses that. And then in chapter 8 they’re talking about meat that has been presented to false gods, right, and, “What do we do with that? When can we eat it? When should we avoid that?” And in all of this, Paul is communicating them and he’s trying again to just kind of create a different focus. He says, “I am not under that law.” Right? “I am free from a lot of those things, but I submit myself under God’s love, and I become a slave,” right, “because I love people. I am laying down my own life so that I can win people for Christ.” And so that motivation is love.
Run for the Prize
Now, this is kind of the part that I kind of have a sense the Lord wants us to spend a little bit of time on this morning and some ministry. Verse 24:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
A couple of things this morning as Paul is reminding them, he says, “Hey, we are in a race,” right, and there’s three things that will help us as we think about our own life journey and about this race that we are in. He says, first of all, he reminds them, he says, “Run with purpose.”
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
And again, to be able to be successful in this, we cannot lose our gospel mind. And this morning, what I maybe have on my heart is that some of us—because of some hard shots we took in life and disappointments—we have lost our purpose. And I believe this morning the Lord just wants to help us, to kind of just remind us that you are running for something bigger than just the material things in your life.
Number two… oh, I just, this quote this morning from Charles Spurgeon. It says:
“Keep your eye on eternity, and you will navigate the present faithfully.”
Number two as we run this race, he talks about self-control.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training.
There needs to be self-control. Elizabeth Elliot, missionary, says:
“Without discipline, there is no discipleship.”
And then lastly—and this is a big one—it says, “Avoid disqualification.”
No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
