Free to Go

In this chapter and the last, Paul has been talking about the believer’s freedom and then about his personal freedom. Without question, each individual believer has freedom; you have rights. Believers can, with clear conscience, eat that food or drink that drink or play that game (all you Baptists: go ahead and dance). You’re free!

You, christian, have this great freedom in Christ Jesus, because of what Jesus has done for you. You’re free! You are living a freedom that far exceeds all other freedoms; it’s a freedom purchased for you, not by military conquest, but by the sacrifice of -our humble King Jesus. It’s His death in your place, it’s His victory over death on that great resurrection morning that secures for you ultimate freedom.

There’s no freedom like the freedom Christ gives.

John 8:36 NIV

36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

N.T. Wright is good here:

“Freedom is important, but in Christian terms it is never the freedom of a sub-atomic particle, to whizz around in all directions in an apparently random fashion. It is always freedom for: for the Messiah, for God’s people, for those who need the gospel.”

Freedom for. That’s incredibly important. That’s what we have to understand. We are free, but not for ourselves, not free to do whatever we please. We are free for the sake of others. We are free for the sake of the gospel.

The freedom we have in Christ and because of Christ must always be exercised for the sake of another, for the sake of others. We’ve not been set free to live a comfortable, middle-class, self-centered existence.

We have been set free for...

Our Bible text might be familiar to you (at least in part). Part of the passage we’re looking at today is the passage on Christian witness in the world.

Our freedom has been given us so that we might work to win people for the Lord, that we would share the Good News that Jesus saves.

Paul makes a compelling case for using our freedom in just this way. That we would use our freedom and give up our rights for the sake of reaching others for Christ.

In Jesus’ Great Commission—the task He gave to His disciples after His resurrection and before His ascension into heaven—Jesus tells His followers to “go”:

Matthew 28:19–20 NIV

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Okay, it’s Grammar Time (it’s like Hammer Time, only nerdier).

This is important. What’s the main verb in these verses?

It’s not “go”—go, along with baptizing and teaching are participles.

The main verb in these verses, the controlling verb is “make disciples”. That’s our main task, our job, our commission.

But it’s so important that we go. Jesus says, literally, “Therefore going/as you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…teaching them...

In order to get at our main task of making disciples, we must go. We can’t not go.

This is the reason we go on mission trips. This is the reason we give to and serve our community. It’s the reason I set on 4,000 different boards around town and around the county. It’s not because I enjoy having 4,000 meetings a month. In part, it’s because I love this community and want to serve its people however I can. But it’s mostly because I hope to have and want to have a positive impact on people for the cause of Christ.

We’ve been ordered by our Lord and Savior to go. We have our marching orders; what we need is the willingness and the discipline to go.

>If you have your Bible (and I hope you do) please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 9. If you’re able and willing, please stand with me for the reading of God’s Holy Word, out of reverence for Him:

1 Corinthians 9:19–27 NIV

19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win 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 those under the law. 21 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 not having the law. 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. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. 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. 25 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. 26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 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.

May God add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

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Paul has been obedient to Jesus’ command, Jesus’ commissioning of His people to go and make disciples. After Jesus stopped him in his tracks, rescued and redeemed him, Paul went on several missionary journeys telling others about Jesus.

It was Paul’s third missionary journey that brought him to the city of Corinth to preach the gospel and make disciples.

In the course of his life, Paul shared the Good News of Jesus with thousands and thousands of people—Jews and Gentiles, peasants and kings, rabble and royalty; he witnessed all over, from Jerusalem to Rome; in Judea and Syria, in Asia and Macedonia. Imagine the different people he encountered. All the different backgrounds and cultural variations, all the different customs and stories, beliefs and languages.

Paul was willing and disciplined in his witness.

It’s important for all of us to consider our witness because it’s the way in which we should interact with one another in the world.

In verses 19-22, Paul says, if we want to witness well, we are going to need, first of all, the willingness to go.

Willingness to Go

In verses 19-22 two groups of people are introduced:

Those under the law

Those outside the law

Both groups lived in the city of Corinth at the time. Jews and non-Jews, mainly Greeks. These two groups were, I don’t have to tell you, very different from one another.

They had vastly different hopes and aspirations as well as different questions and troubles with the gospel that had taken their city by storm.

And because of these cultural differences, Paul had made it a priority to understand, enter into, immerse himself deeply within both worlds.

In fact, Paul had become so entrenched in both Jewish and Greek culture that he could see things from the inside.

Paul didn’t just understand them; he became like one of them. His was an incarnational ministry, becoming like them as Jesus became like one of us.

I think this is what Paul means when he says (vv. 20-21), “To the Jews I became like a Jew…to those not having the law (the Greeks) I became like one not having the law.

The clearest example of what Paul means by becoming “like a Jew” and “like one under the law” is his receiving 39 lashes from the hands of the Jews:

2 Corinthians 11:24 NIV

24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.

Paul bowed to synagogue discipline to maintain his Jewish connections. Paul accepted this punishment to keep open the option of preaching the gospel message in the synagogue. For Paul to submit to this punishment makes it clear how tough he was (he was one bad mamma-jamma). He was clearly very tough and it’s clear he very much loved his people, the Jews.

How did Paul become like one without the law? He isn’t talking about just ignoring Jewish food regulations or Sabbath observance (which he might have done). He didn’t change the core of his message in order to make the gospel message easier to hear. Neither did Paul become a pagan sinner. He simply became like a Gentile.

He didn’t tout his heritage or throw around his relation to Abraham; he didn’t brag about his observance of the law or his knowledge.

Paul lived among the Galatians simply as a Christian. Not a Jew or Pharisee of Pharisees that he was, but as one saved by the grace of Jesus Christ alone.

Paul was willing to learn to be agile—able to witness to Jew and Gentile and everyone in between. He was willing to go to whomever and take whatever they handed him for the sake of the gospel, for the good of those he was preaching to.

1 Corinthians 9:22 NIV

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.

Are Christians today willing to follow Paul’s lead in witnessing? Willing to be culturally agile, immersing themselves so deeply in their cities, in their towns that they can see it from the inside.

Do we know the deepest hopes and aspirations of our neighbors? Do we know what questions our unbelieving co-workers are asking or what troubles them about Christianity?

Or have Christians today, have we, become so isolated and entrenched in our little circle, so detached from the community and the culture that we have no clue what they’re thinking, what’s important to them, what they’re struggling with?

The phrase “cultural agility” was a new one to me. As I prepared for this message, it came up a time or two in my reading. The need to be culturally agile—the ability to move from speaking with this person in their culture with their beliefs to that person over there who is, in most ways, almost entirely different.

It pays to be culturally agile in our witness. But it’s really hard. We can chat with people like ourselves at length. I can talk all day with people who like books and theology and movies and Seinfeld. It’s a little bit harder for me to talk to car buffs and sports fanatics. I know a little, but not a lot.

It makes a big difference if you can take an interest in what another person takes an interest in. If you pay attention to what makes that person tick, to what they really love, to whatever is important to them—it matters. It’ll open doors. It’s been said the people “don’t care what you know until they know how much you care.” This, I think, is very true.

The first summer I went to Mexico on a short-term mission trip, I was really, really excited to tell the people there about Jesus—the Jesus many of them had never heard about. The Jesus who saves, purely by His grace and mercy, not based on their good works or based on how much money they’d given to the church. I was ready to preach the free, undeserved grace of Jesus.

After 26-hours of driving and a few days sitting in the old church van, I was ready to hop out and use my rudimentary Spanish to tell them Jesus loved them and gave up His life for theirs.

I was ready for a crowd to gather around and listen to my gospel presentation.

Instead, my youth pastor handed me a ball and said, “Go door-to-door and ask people, “¿Quieres jugar al fútbol con nosotros?” (Do you want to play soccer with us?)

In about 15 minutes, every single boy and young man, and a handful of girls in the village were out on the dirt playing soccer with us. More accurately, they were showing us how it was done. Let me tell you, it’s embarrassing to lose at soccer to a bunch of little kids.

This was a lesson in being culturally agile. You want to gather a crowd in Central Mexico, you bring a soccer ball. After they tire (which is long after we tired), they sit right down on the ground and listen to what you have to say.

To those who played soccer, we became like those who played soccer.

Are we willing to go to those who don’t know Jesus, to those who haven’t heard the gospel or to those who have previously dismissed the gospel, and do whatever we can to reach them, to win them,that they might be saved?

I had one of those eye-opening moments this week. One of the books I’m reading posed the question that went something like this: “Pastor/church: are you more concerned about doing things to please those already Christians and members of your church or doing what it takes to reach the lost?”

Yikes.

Are we willing? Are we willing to go? Paul sure was.

1 Corinthians 9:19 NIV

19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.

To heck with freedom, says Paul. I’ve made myself a slave; that’s how willing I am.

If we want to witness well, we are going to need, first of all, the willingness to go in.

And we need the discipline to stay in once we get there.

Discipline to Go (and Stay!)

Verses 24-27 talk about runners running and athletes exercising self-control; these verses talk about those who compete and their strict training, about how they do it to get themselves a nice participation trophy, and on and on.

These are some pretty well-known verses. They’re typically used to talk about how we need discipline in order to run the race of the Christian life.

And whereas that’s certainly true, it’s not Paul’s point here.

Paul’s point here is that discipline is absolutely essential to our witness in the world.

Here’s why:

It’s so much easier for a Christian to retreat to their safe, comfortable Christian bubble than it is to stay in the world. It takes a lot of work, a lot of energy, a lot of courage to know one’s neighbors and to engage wisely the broader culture.

A Christian can’t expect to witness well without a tremendous amount of effort, any more than eh could expect to be an effective athlete without that.

The discipline to stay in takes rigorous training and incredible effort.

When Meghann and Jamie decided that they were going to run their first marathon, I was amazed at the amount of training that went into it. It required months of running in preparation, very specific plans, a certain number of miles on this day and this day. It meant early mornings and after-work runs. Multi-hour weekend runs.

Crazy. But that’s discipline. That’s the discipline it takes.

What’s complicates matters and makes the need for discipline even more crucial is our particular culture moment.

We now live in an age of suspicion. We can’t expect people to take the gospel at face value anymore. We have to make a compelling case for the gospel.

So many questions have to be addressed before folks can begin to take Christianity seriously.

How do you reconcile a loving god with pain, Hell, and the terrible track record of the Church? Christianity and science? Are the Bible and the resurrection of Jesus Christ historically credible? What do we do with the exclusive claims of Christianity in a relativistic, pluralistic society?

If we don’t take these things seriously, our efforts will be much like someone running aimlessly or like a boxer beating the air.

Here’s the thing about discipline. We don’t have to do any of this. We’re free not to. We’re free to keep doing business as usual.

An athlete doesn’t have to subject herself to rigorous training. She’s free to eat that extra slice of cake and skip that morning run. But she doesn’t. There’s something more important, something worth the discipline.

Where our witness is concerned, the same can be said. We’re free to do as we please, to sit back and watch the world around us crumble. We’re free to enjoy our nice middle-class existence.

But we won’t. We won’t because there’s something that’s more important, something worth curbing our freedom for.

And it’s love. If a Christian is unwilling to discipline him- or herself then something has gone terribly wrong. And it probably means that he might have something that looks like love, but is really just some shallow feeling cloaked in thin veneer.

Paul fought with all his being to avoid this:

1 Corinthians 9:27 NIV

27 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.

He enslaves his body so that he won’t be disqualified. The word translated disqualified literally means “to be shown counterfeit.”

This is precisely what will become of our witness, our love, if we don’t do the hard work of training ourselves—our witness and love will be shown to be counterfeit, a charade, a facade.

>You see, the gospel is, at its foundation, about a witness who came to us by becoming one of us—an insider who felt our deepest hopes and aspirations, who learned the questions we were asking and the things that troubled us. It’s about a witness who immersed Himself deeply in our fallen world, speaking and giving, living and loving in ways we could understand—sharing everything with us, but even more, giving His life away for us and our sin, becoming weak, losing it all—for our sake.

It’s tempting to make different people in the Bible role models: “Be more like Abraham. Be more like Moses. I think Barrett is telling us to be more like Paul.”

Friends, the only person in the Bible to follow and emulate, the only person after which we should model our lives is Jesus. We need a willingness to forego our freedom and go to others, just like Jesus did. We need to discipline ourselves, just like Jesus did.

In Christ, we are free. But we are not free for our own sake. May the Lord make us willing and disciplined for the task ahead of us.

You, Christian, are free to go.