What God’s Grace Produces In Us
Every time you’ve become aware of your sin and repented of it, every time you’ve silently asked God for help when you feel anger rising up in you. Every cup of tea you’ve made for a hurting friend, every prayer you’ve prayed, every tear you’ve shed for the lost . . . all of it is meaningful. All of it is given meaning by a loving God who is shaping you and using you for his glory. To serve God is to enjoy him with our whole lives.
In Ephesians 2:4, we’re told that God saved us because He was rich in mercy and because of his great love with which he loved us.
In other words, it had nothing to do with who we were and everything to do with who God is. He alone has the power to not only forgive someone but actually bring them back to life. Paul says that even though we were dead in our sin, God made us alive in Christ.
If we look back at our key verse, verse 10, that’s exactly what Paul means when he says we’ve been created in Christ Jesus. We’re a new creation, we have a new being, a new life in Christ.
New Life in Christ
It’s hard to put into words exactly what’s happening here. I’ve heard it described as being similar to a caterpillar that goes into its cocoon for a bit and then out it pops, a beautiful butterfly. It’s transformed—changed from something rather ugly to something beautiful.
But that doesn’t quite capture what Paul is describing here. If we think about it, a caterpillar always had the potential to become a butterfly. It was created with the DNA and ability to build a cocoon for itself and grow the wings and everything else.
But the Bible is clear. We had nothing. We had nothing to give to God. No good works, no lovable qualities that made God bend the rules a bit for us.
But God made us alive. He created us again in Christ. That kind of newness, that kind of re-creation, can only come through Christ. It can only come through being connected to the only perfect one who paid the price for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to.
It Took A Cross
That’s what we received when he died that horrible death on the cross. We got his righteousness. We got his perfect record. He took on our guilt and our shame and we got his perfection and a clean slate before God.
In another one of Paul’s letters, he describes it like this: “You, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Col. 2:13–14)
You’ll notice how legal-sounding his language is. It’s the kind of language you’d hear in a courtroom. Paul does that on purpose. He wants to communicate the full weight of what’s been done for us. Our debt is paid. Our death sentence has been removed. We have a new standing before God. Not because of anything we’ve done but because of what Christ has done.
We’ve been forgiven, and now when God looks at us, the words “Not Guilty” are over us. In order for this to be true about us, in order to receive that new standing, to be made a new creation, we must acknowledge that we bring nothing to the table. We come with empty hands to receive the gifts of a gracious God.
Paul shows why that’s important in in the end of verse 8 leading into verse 9. He says that this forgiveness, this grace, is a gift of God, not a result of works so that no one can boast.
That word ‘boast’ is a bit unfamiliar. It’s not really a word that we use outside of reading the Bible these days to be honest.
It’s similar to bragging or bigging yourself up. But it’s a bit more than that. It’s not so much about bragging about your accomplishments but it has more to do with where you find your identity.
The risk that Paul sees here is that if we as Christians start to believe that we somehow earned our salvation based on how we lived our lives before Christ, then that automatically translates to how we view the significance of our lives after Christ.
It’s similar to what I said before about faith.
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What Happens When God Comes to Town
An idol is anything we desire more than God, love more than God, or fear more than God. That, all too often, is what we would see if we looked in a mirror. Times such as these are God-given opportunities to shed ourselves of the excess baggage of our sinful narcissism so that we can fix our gaze on Christ who is more beautiful than all our comprehension.
And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. (Acts 19:11-20)
Who is this God?
The story gives us leads. It takes place in the city, Ephesus, near the shores of the Aegean Sea. It is a rich, cosmopolitan, multicultural place with a large Jewish minority. Most people, however, are pagans and proud of it. People compete over their devotion. Locals bragged, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” That was only a hint of the city’s devotion. There were a host of deities that competed for popular devotion. There was a pecking order with Diana (Artemis in Greek) at the top, celebrated in a temple that dwarfed the Parthenon, with ranks of lesser gods, spirits, demons under her.
All of the sacrifice and incense can be misleading. We get the impression that these people considered the gods and the world they represented the most important things in their lives. That has everything backward. People did not worship deities or spirits, they bribed them to get happy lives in return. If the god was too strong to push around, you bribed her to get her on your side. Lesser spirits could, however, be bullied if you had the right leverage. That was what Luke was telling us. He described a community of people who wanted life to work for them.
They got experts to help them do that. We call them exorcists. If we take a closer look at this, we can see what the people thought of their gods. The gods had to be feared but they could be managed. Gods were capricious. You never knew if they were for or against you. Offerings helped get them on your side. When speaking of the gods or spirits, the point was to make them work for your good. The Greco-Roman world was all about human flourishing. Religion, in all of its forms, existed to order society. The unseen world was always treated as a reality, whether it’s observance was genuine or just a polite fiction, the point was the peace of the polis.
Acts 19 describes Paul performing miracles, to include healing, in the name of the Lord Jesus. Some exorcists, piggybacking on Jesus and Paul’s reputation and success command an evil spirit in their name to obey the exorcists’ command. It does not go well as we see. Rather than obeying the exorcists, he gives them a mauling and strips the clothing from their backs, before they run for their lives.
The performance of Paul and his connection to Jesus, now risen from the grave as we see earlier in Luke and Acts, describes the enthusiasm related to the many miracles performed in Ephesus, things that were seen in public. Thus far, all we know is that this Jesus and his servant Paul perform miracles. In other words, they are seen to do things not things normally accomplished by most of us. Paul heals people in Jesus’ name for instance. There is more, however.
If that is all we are told, we could characterize both men as healers, something the exorcists, the Sons of Sceva, claimed for themselves. But Luke gives us more to work with. Not only does Paul succeed in Jesus’ name, but the Sons of Sceva don’t. The reasons for that are easy to see. Sceva is not a name found on any of the high priests’ roles. If he is physically related to a high priest, he is misleading about his credentials.
You can fool a lot of people but you can’t fool an evil spirit who knows the Son of God the hard way, in the heavens. Rev. 12:7-11. describes the scene. The hosts of heaven fought Satan and his minions and threw the latter down to earth where they attempt to convict humans of crimes already paid for by Jesus. The evil spirit took a beating at the hands of Jesus and his army and never forgot that lesson. When the exorcists tried to bully him in the name of Jesus and Paul, the spirit knew a fake when he heard one.
This time the evil spirit gave the beating. He reminds me of two brothers I know. Both were amazingly gifted athletes and martial artists, wrestlers, judo masters, etc. Their dad was one too. When I asked him what the difference was between them, he noted greater power in one and greater speed and cunning in the other. Either could beat us. That is the point. Evil can always beat us if we enter the ring alone.
The point we cannot afford to miss is that fakes are fakes. They are as fulfilling as a bowl of plastic fruit. They may be full of themselves but they are empty of life. There is no life-giving power in them. Their bag of tricks has a bottom. Their authority is counterfeit. When they see Jesus face to face at the final judgment, he will do exactly what the evil spirit did. Who are you? I have never known you? This is my heavenly home, and you do not belong here.
If we face evil in Christ we are not alone. We are greater than any army. Satan cannot grapple with us without taking a beating at the hands of Christ who fills us.
Luke in Acts goes on to say, that the drubbing of the frauds, following closely on the heels of the miracles and genuine healings combined to induce fear and faith. People who meet Christ for real are forever changed. His Spirit breathes into them. Christ himself fills them. How does anyone live with business as usual when that happens? We see two great realities, facts greater than any other. We see ourselves as we really are and we see Christ in all of his majesty as he really is.
We often attempt to relativize “fear” as reverence or awe, but I think this is a wasted effort on our part. “Fear” as it is described is visceral more than it is intellectual. It is the appropriate response of any created being made in God’s own image when he or she runs straight into God. It is more than shocking. When I was a kid, I got into fights all of the time. I simply counted my opponents and sized up the situation. Then I jumped into battle. When we turn the corner and run into God with our eyes open, we experience fear at the most basic of levels. We know instantly that it is no contest. Our fakery is exposed and we get stripped of all of our sins and our virtues.
That leads to a second thing. We, like the Ephesians, must repent of ourselves, repent of our sinful dispositions, repent of anything that gets in the way of our running with Christ. I started reading a little gem written by R.C Sproul, Saved for What? He wisely reminded people who identify with Christ, not only what they get saved to, a very popular sermon topic, but also what they are saved from. He reminded readers of an Old Testament passage not often quoted by churches that like to promote healthy self-acceptance, a flourishing life in the here and now. It was pretty jarring. Here it is:
The great day of the LORD is near,near and hastening fast;the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter;the mighty man cries aloud there.A day of wrath is that day,a day of distress and anguish,a day of ruin and devastation,a day of darkness and gloom, ‘a day of clouds and thick darkness,a day of trumpet blast and battle cryagainst the fortified citiesand against the lofty battlements.I will bring distress on mankind,so that they shall walk like the blind,because they have sinned against the LORD;their blood shall be poured out like dust,and their flesh like dung.Neither their silver nor their goldshall be able to deliver themon the day of the wrath of the LORD.In the fire of his jealousy, ‘all the earth shall be consumed;for a full and sudden endhe will make of all the inhabitants of the earth. (Zeph. 1:14-18)
We are saved, it is true, from the grip of Satan, but more importantly, we are saved from the wrath of a righteous God. The life in Christ is not a kind of spiritual amnesia. When we live in union with Christ, we become increasingly sensitive to the sin that led to the cross. We recognize our own sin, begin to loath it. It burdens us. We are desperate to divest ourselves of it. This is the life of repentance. It is not pessimism. It is not self-flagellation. Repentance is a gift. It reminds us that God really saved us from our sin and continually works in us to unearth the sins we keep buried. These, of course, torment us, but the grace of a righteous God who loves us by not tolerating our sin produces transformed life that bathes us in joy. When we lose sight of this, the grace of a holy God who continuously shows us our sin to cleanse us of it, salvation becomes nothing more than human flourishing. Some people look at donuts and others see the holes. I am the latter. I notice that, year by year, repentance disappears from our pulpits.
Grace changes meaning from human flourishing that uses God as a means to human happiness as an end to lives devoted to God the source and end of our happiness. So much preaching reduces Christ to being the means to another end, our happiness. What if we already have what we want? What if we are content? When COVID struck, we rediscovered misery, but we felt no connection between our unhappiness and any deficiency in our relationships to God. Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not suggesting a straight-line connection between any particular, personal sins and a global pandemic. I am saying, however, that few if any of us saw the onset of the disease as an opportunity to reflect on the state of our relationship to Christ. How could we? We were already obsessing about our own health, the danger posed by others, the impingement of our freedom, etc.
Did we consider the larger issues? We live in the grip of a therapeutic age and evangelical churches too often resemble health spas rather than surgeries for sin-sick patients. We are self-satisfied. We are proud. We are content that we are loved without giving much thought to our sinful self-centeredness. COVID did not bring out our sacrificial love. A lot of churches became battlegrounds. Many shrank. Now that we seem past the worst of it, we rush to put it behind us. We are just fine. We work so very hard to be cheerful. The order of the day is ““be upbeat”. We double down on what we were before we closed down and hibernated.
Were we really that ok? Did we stop needing a savior? Sproul compares our complacency over our sins to someone who doesn’t need a fireman because his house isn’t on fire. We no longer fear God, neither himself or his judgment. We fear dying and the pain on the way down, but that is as far as it goes. We resent the reminder that we even need mercy. Sproul illustrates our problem by comparing false and true Old Testament prophets. False prophets stuck with a message of happiness and joy. True prophets were a pain in the neck. They had the unwelcome habit of proclaiming the day of the Lord as judgment. Why? Because they did not know grace and the one who brings it? No. They knew it better than most of us. The difference between them and us is that they kept God, in his fullness, in view. We don’t.
We want grace, all the time. We don’t want repentance and the holiness it produces. Impenitence gets papered over as we rush to acceptance. But God, the God of all holy love is not in it. Bread and circuses are closer to our hearts. We need to rediscover the fear of God that cones with the life of God. Every now and then, we conservative Calvinists mention fear, but it often dies Flew’s “death of a thousand qualifications”. We describe the fear of God as “reverence” or “respect”. Not even close! Isaiah knew what the fear of the Lord looked and felt like.
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isa 6:5)
Sproul comments on this: “It seems that every person who encounters the living God in Scripture suddenly loses his self-composure and experiences a severe identity crisis.” How can anyone ever go back to business as usual when they experience the presence of God? The only way we manage it is by discounting the seriousness of our sin. We push it out of view, a relic of the past.
When we put our faith in Jesus, God cloaks us with the garments of Jesus, and the garments of Christ’s righteousness are never, ever the target of God’s wrath. But we never put the cart before the horse. When we do, we underestimate our sin and we take God so lightly. If we stand for anything, we stand for cheap dollar store grace.
But it seems to have made no impact on them whatsoever. It’s exactly, Jesus said, what Isaiah foretold: “You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull” (Matt. 13:14–15; see also Isa. 6:9–10). (Thad Barnum)
We fear COVID or Russia more than God.
We worship nothing more than our health and dread death.
An idol is anything we desire more than God, love more than God, or fear more than God. That, all too often, is what we would see if we looked in a mirror. Times such as these are God-given opportunities to shed ourselves of the excess baggage of our sinful narcissism so that we can fix our gaze on Christ who is more beautiful than all our comprehension.
Bill Nikides is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as a church planting strategist with Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship.
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What Is the Mission of the Church in a Racialized World?
If the church is to be on earth what it is in heaven, the church’s mission is to see sons of Adam become sons of God by the preaching of the gospel. More predestinarian, the mission of the church is to find the lost sheep in every fold (i.e., in every nation), and by so gathering God’s elect this increases the divide between sheep and goats. Truly, the truth of two races— one natural, one spiritual—is so important today, because there is a spirit of Babel that wants to unite the human race and eliminate the divide between sheep and goats.
Here is the thesis that I want to argue: Your race is more important than your ethnicity.
When defined biblically and not sociologically, one’s race is more important for identity formation than one’s ethnicity. And by extension, the mission of the church is to help you make that statement true. Which raises the question. What is race? And do you know what your race is?
As insulting as that question may sound at first, I am going to suggest it is an easy question to mistake—especially if we have fused biblical ideas with worldly ideologies. At the same time, if we can answer this question from the Bible and the Bible alone, then we have hope for knowing and growing the mission of the church. This is the point that I will argue here, and here is how I will proceed.
I will show why the concept of racialization in America is popular and pervasive, but ultimately unhelpful—if not harmful.
I will attempt to draw the lines of race and ethnicity according to the Bible.
With those lines in place, I will demonstrate that the mission of the church helps men and women, who hold PhD’s in ethnic Partiality, ethnic Hostility, ethnic Discrimination, grow up into Christ, who is the head of a new chosen race, redeemed from nation (ethnē).
So that’s where we are going today.
Racism (Re)Defined as Racialization?
If you have not seen or heard this word before, you probably have not been reading the newer books on the subject of race and racism. Not that I am counting, but this term has been used by John Piper (Bloodlines),[1] Jarvis Williams (Redemptive Kingdom Diversity),[2] Irwyn Ince (The Beautiful Community),[3] and many others. And importantly, all of these works point to Michael Emerson and Christian Smith in their landmark book, Divided by Faith.[4]
Irwyn Ince is a wonderful brother who has been a PCA pastor for years. He has served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the PCA. And most personally, I met him a few years ago when I sat in on one of his classes at Reformed Theological Seminary. After that, he preached in our church’s pulpit and delivered an edifying message from the book of Hebrews. So I deeply respect Dr. Ince and there are many parts of his book I appreciate. That said I find his use of the idea of racialization unhelpful.
In The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church at Its Best, Ince describes the effects of Genesis 11 on America. And in that discussion, he cites Ibram X. Kendi and Kendi’s thesis that racist policies in America have always come from racist ideas (pp. 75–76). Affirming this sociological perspective, Ince makes a theological connection. He says, “Put in theological terms, our racialized society is an outworking of our ghettoization at Babel. And the devastating reality is that groups of people still seek to serve the interests of their ghetto.”[5]
Ince continues:
“Kendi’s point about the changing nature of racialization in America reinforces what Christian Smith and Michael Emerson explained in 2000 when they wrote: “The framework we here use—racialization—reflects that [post-Civil Rights era] adaptation. It [Racialization] understands that racial practices that reproduce racial division in the contemporary United States [are] (1) increasingly covert, (2) embedded in normal operations of institutions, (3) avoid direct racial terminology, and (4) invisible to most Whites.”[6]
Without getting into all the details of racialization, we need to consider where this new, Post-Civil Rights racism comes from. If you look at Ince and all the other evangelicals who use this term, almost all of them cite Emerson and Smith. And where do Emerson and Smith get the definition of racialization, the idea of racist ideas hidden in plain sight?
The short answer is Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a sociology professor at Duke and a leading proponent of Critical Race Theory (Divided by Faith, 9–11). What is important about Bonilla-Silva, is that racism after the Civil Rights movement has been transformed and is now embedded in social, political, and legal structures. The result is that racism can now exist without racists. That’s the title of his book (Racism with Racists), now in its sixth edition. This book was published after Divided by Faith, but Emerson and Smith cite an unpublished paper that he wrote in 1997.
Here’s the point. Without getting into the details of CRT, when you use, or hear, or see the word “racialization,” take note. It is not a concept that comes from the Bible, nor is it a word that comes from a sociology grown from biblical stock. Racialization is a term that comes from a view of the world that is wholly inconsistent with the biblical narrative. And thus, Christians should take caution whenever that word is used and should seek a biblical definition of race and ethnicity, as well of the universal sins of ethnic pride and hostility.
In what follows, I will argue that if we are going to rebuild our understanding of race, ethnicity, and the ministry of reconciliation, we must not borrow the idea of racialization. Instead, we need to go back to the Bible itself. We cannot simply employ the tools of CRT, or any other religious ideology (e.g., White Supremacy, Black Power, or anything else), to assist biblical reconciliation. Instead, we must mine the depths of Scripture to find God’s perspective on fallen humanity, its sin, and God’s plan of reconciliation in Christ. Because Scripture is sufficient to handle any type of sin, importing the concept of “racialization” does not give us a better understanding of Scripture. It only confuses the problem.
For not only does racialization, a concept drawn from the quarries of CRT, identify sin with groups of people—specifically, people with power—but it also ignores human agency in sin. Even more, it gives a view of the world that comes from sociology—and not just any sociology, but a sociology that redefines biblical words and concepts, so that in talking about race, ethnicity, justice, and the church, we end up talking the language of Babel. Therefore, we need to go back the Bible.
One Human Race, Or Two?
With our eyes fixed on Scripture we need to see what the Bible says about race, ethnicity, and the pride, hostility, and discrimination that arises in the heart of every son or daughter born of Adam.
The first thing to observe is that the Bible identifies two races, not just one. This might sound strange, if you have been schooled in the biology of Darwin and his kind, because various Darwinists have argued that different races came from different origins. This was the scientific rationale that supported the racial inferiority of blacks.
By contrast, Paul declares there is one human race, derived from one man. “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26).
Still, this singular human race, with one common ancestor, does not deny a second race in the Bible—namely, a people born from above (John 3:3–8). As Scripture presents it, every child of God has a Father in heaven and an older brother in Christ, not Adam. In Romans 5, these two races are set against one another. There is the human race whose head is the first man, and there is the new human race whose head is the last man. Maybe we do not think of Adam’s family and Christ’s family as two separate races, but we should. Peter does. Just listen to 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
So, does the Bible teach us about race? Absolutely. Race is a biblical concept. For all the ways that sociology has (wrongly) defined race, there is something in Scripture that speaks to this very issue. The word “race” is the word genos, a word that can mean descendent, family, nation, class or kind. Indeed, it is a word that deserves its own study, but in 1 Peter 2:9, it is clearly speaking of a new humanity, chosen by God, redeemed by the Son, and made alive by the Spirit. And this “chosen race” is set against another “race,” the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.
In this way, we should see in Scripture one fallen human race and one redeemed human race, thus producing two peoples, or as Genesis 3:15 would have it, “two seeds.” From the beginning, there was a single divide in humanity, producing two kinds of people. And in the fullness of time (i.e., when Christ came), this divide manifested in the two races referenced in 1 Peter 2:9. Today, all biblical thinking about race begins with this fact—there is not one human race, but two.
A Biblical Theology of Race
Moving across the canon helps us take the next step in a biblical theology of race. If we had more time, we could consider all the ways that the Law divided Jew and Gentile as two “races.” Indeed, if the language of Scripture means anything, it is striking that in Acts 7:19, Stephen speaks of Israel as his “race” (genos) not his ethnicity (ethnos). Indeed, because the divide in the Law separates Jew and Gentile as two peoples, set under different covenantal heads, the division between Jew and Gentile stands in typological relationship to Adam and Jesus. To put it in an analogy,
Jew : Gentile :: Christ : Adam
More fully, we can say that the legal division between Jew and Gentile, did not create a permanent, spiritual, or lasting division in humanity, but it did reinforce the divide created in Genesis 3:15, when God set at odds the seed of the woman against the seed of the serpent. Ever since, the biblical story carves out one people to be God’s chosen race. In the Old Testament, this was the nation of Israel according to the flesh (see Exod. 19:5–6). And during the time of the old covenant, there were two “races”—the Jews and the Gentiles. Typologically, these two races were roughly equivalent to the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, even though not every Israelite was truly a seed of the woman (e.g., Saul) and some Gentiles would become members of the covenant community (e.g., Rahab and Ruth).
In the fullness of time, however, this covenantal difference would be brought to an end, and the real, lasting, and spiritual divide, of which God promised in Genesis 3, and again in Genesis 12, would be created in the new race of men created by the firstborn from the dead, Jesus Christ (Col. 1:18). And this again is what makes two races.
Therefore, “racism,” according to Scripture alone, should be defined as the hostility that stands between seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Indeed, what is commonly called racism today is not racism at all, but ethnic hostility, ethnic pride, ethnic partiality. Moreover, what is called diversity, equity, and inclusion is actually an affront to the very division that Jesus is bringing into the world (see Matt. 10:34).
Now, in redefining racism according to Scripture, I am not trying to ignore the fact that our world is filled with pride and partiality amplified by color-consciousness. America’s history is filled with hatred and violence due to skin color. If there is anything redeemable in Divided by Faith, it is the selective but shocking history of slavery and Jim Crow that it reports. Those who deny the horrors of history should listen to the testimonies of Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass), Booker T. Washington (Up from Slavery), and Solomon Northrup (Twelve Years a Slave).
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All Things to All Men: What Does It Really Mean?
Reaching back beyond current debates and controversies to learn from the way that others in the past have understood this passage is particularly helpful. It brings a different perspective that help us to see things in a clearer way. We are not the only generation to seek to understand the Scriptures and if we are prepared to learn from other Christians in our own day then why not from the past too? The following is therefore drawn from the way that David Dickson and James Durham understood 1 Corinthians 9:22. In this verse Paul says “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some”. We need to understand these words in their context, not just repeat them as a slogan.
Paul Is Speaking about His Personal Conduct
Paul has been speaking about financial support for the ministry in verses 7-14. He then speaks about his own practice amongst the Corinthians in verses 17-18. If my preaching is “voluntary, it shall have a reward” he says “but if against my will, I must still discharge it, because of the dispensation committed to me by the command of God” (Dickson). Paul contrasts this with those who “unwillingly preach the gospel” and “exercise their ministry, not out of any love to God and desire of converting souls but for filthy lucre’s sake or out of vain-glory” (Dickson). But Paul chose to deny himself what he was entitled to by not seeking financial support for his ministry in this context. He chose to “make the gospel of Christ without charge” (v18). If he had sought financial support, those who opposed him would have used it against him and he would have “abused the gospel” (v18) and “abused his liberty” (Dickson).
James Durham says that Paul’s taking wages in Corinth would have harmed the edification of the Corinthians because it would have given confirmed the suspicion that he was self-seeking. It would only strengthen the slanders he received from his opponents. It would have been unedifying for Paul to accept financial support because it would have stirred up groundless suspicion. The spiritual edification of our brother is of more value than our temporal rights. Thus we may have to forbear lawful things that we are inclined to do if doing it would harm the edification of others.
Paul has a liberty (v19) but he is willing to give up his personal benefit if it will get in the way of spiritual service to others. He is willing to do this in “all sorts of things that are indifferent” so as not to serve “himself but rather others so that he might gain them” (Dickson). There are three ways in which he gave up his entitlements in this way (verses 20-22).Jews. He conformed himself to the Jews who considered themselves bound to keep the ceremonial law. If necessary in particular times and places, he was willing to observe the ceremonies appointed under Moses. He did this as though he was under the yoke of ceremonies. He did this according to the verdict of the Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:22-29) which left the Jews (such as Paul) who had been born under that yoke free to use the ceremonies for a time. In no way was this the case for the Gentiles (Acts 21:21, 25).
Gentiles. When amongst the Gentiles who were without obligation to the ceremonial law, he laid aside the use of such ceremonies, as though he was without obligation to that law. He makes it clear, however, that he did not mean the moral law or the law of love. This is the perpetual law of God and Christ, from which he could not be freed. He was indeed he freed from the ceremonial law so that he might freely, for the advantage of the gospel, either use of abstain from using such ceremonies.
Weak Believers. Paul conformed himself to those who doubted whether they were free to abstain from lawful things.It should be clear that Paul is not speaking about a positive requirement to adopt a culture but rather in relation to whether certain practices are positively commanded by God or indifferent. He is speaking about personal conduct rather than providing a full-blown missionary strategy or church planting methodology.
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