Day 141, 1 Corinthians 9
We finished last week with Paul’s reasoning that love is always right, and that putting others ahead of ourselves is the surest way to demonstrate love. Today we move into the second half of this letter, and we see Paul’s use of rhetoric and hyperbole to make his point. We saw earlier that some of the believers in Corinth are promoting their own agenda or their favorite faction; Paul takes criticisms leveled at him by the Corinthians and turns them around with enthusiastic rejection of their arguments.
They are standing on their rights, and rejecting Paul for selfish reasons, but Paul is taking a higher road: not claiming his rights but willingly sacrificing for the sake of the gospel.
Part of that sacrifice is to adapt to the different settings where he speaks: behaving more definitively like a Jew when he’s reaching Jews, and clearly demonstrating his freedom to those who are not bound by Jewish law. Paul loves to boast that he’s free from law, yet bound to Christ, so his life is constantly lived in the opposite spirit to those he’s reaching. This discipline is like that of an athlete training for competition, except the cost is higher and the prize eternal.
Have a great day!
Mark.