Sermon Tone Analysis

Freed to Be A Slave

I Corinthians 9:19-23

 

         

          Fred and Elaine Meder lived out a fantasy that plays in the minds of many people.

In the late 1960’s, they moved away from their responsibilities as a professor of philosophy and a school teacher to move inside the Arctic Circle to the Brooks Mountain range, where they were 50 miles from their nearest neighbor and 250 miles from the nearest road.

They survived the Arctic winters of –50 degrees, living in very primitive conditions.

They built a three-room cabin; they ate berries, fruit, and wild game; they made bowls out of the roots of spruce trees; and they killed the game for the hides in order to wear.

They wanted complete independence from anyone or anything that they started cultivating crops.

Their philosophy was this: “Life can be lived to the full only at a distance from other people.”

For 15 years they stayed there; and left only to write a book.

Is that a Christian concept?

There may be a temptation to retreat; to get away from people, but is that in the will of God for your life?

In this passage, we find that the Christian life is not a life of isolation, but availability; not a life of alonement, but a life of involvement.

The gospel is full of paradoxes.

To live you must die.

To be filled you must be empty.

To be exalted you must be humble.

To get you give.

To be the greatest you must be the servant.

Paul tells us another paradox in this passage:  To be free you must be a slave.

The Christian is free from all people but a voluntary slave to all people in order to win people for Christ.

I.

Christians experience a personal freedom.

A.

The reality of the freedom.

(9:19)

 

          Beginning in 9:1, Paul asks a question, “Am I not free?”

This question anticipates an answer.

If you were to visit with Paul and asked him what did it mean to know Jesus Christ?

He would say, “It meant to be free.”

Free from the claim of the law, free from guilt, free from sin, free from the fear of death.

Free from what?

If you notice in your copy of the King James version, the word /men /is italicized.

That means that that particular is not in the original language.

The phrase could mean /free from all things, /or /free from all people.

/It may mean both.

He was free from all things.

He was free from guilt from the failure of keeping the law.

He was free from the power of sin; therefore, he was free from the penalty of sin.

More than that he was free from people.

He was set free from the opinions of people.

He was set free from his family who counted him as good as dead because he followed Jesus Christ.

He was free from the opinions of his peers.

He was criticized by thousands of people and loved by thousands of people, but he could say, “I am free from all of it.”

Paul knew what it meant to be free.

Do you?

The believer is liberated from all ties; he is free from all ultimate dependence on other people; he is free from all guilt of the past, the power of sin in the present, and the fear of judgment in the future.

The Christian is free from the law that no one kept anyway.

He is free from every human being in a direct relationship with God.

Do you know this freedom?

B.

The reversal of the freedom.

(9:19)

 

          In other words, Paul said, “I make myself a slave to everyone.”

He did not say, “Other people enslave me.”

No!

He said, “Voluntarily, I make myself a slave.”

Paul enslaved his life to the needs of other people.

Martin Luther put it this way, “/A Christian is a free lord and subject to nobody, while at the same time, being a ministering servant an submitting to everybody.”/

/ /

/          /How did Paul enslave himself to other people?

In Romans 1:14, he says that He was free but a debtor both to the Greek and the Jew, to the wise and the unwise.

In Romans 15, he said, “We who are strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak.

In Galatians, He said that the Christian is free, nevertheless, he serves others in love.

C.