TEXT: 1 corinthians 9: 19-27 New Revised standard version
19 For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings. 24 Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. 25 Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. 26 So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; 27 but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.†
“To the Jew I became as a Jew..To those outside the law I became as one outside the law.”
We’ve all known the type of person who can conform to any social environment. The salesman who immediately picks up on an accent and mirrors it back, the new kid in town who quickly changes his clothes and hairstyle to match those at his school, and the party-goer who adapts to the social cues of a gathering with lightning speed—all of us have in us the mechanisms for social adaptation. But why do we conform? To avoid trouble? To be liked and accepted? To belong and fit in? Yes, perhaps all of these—we all need to belong somewhere, and our psychological makeup seems designed to help us become capable social creatures.
But just as much as we need to belong, be liked, and avoid being troublesome, there is another mechanism within us that makes us dislike—even loathe—conformity. There is something unseemly about conformity—about being perfectly satisfied just going along with the herd. Something about it seems to lack integrity or stands as an implicit insult to our individualism. You remember your mother asking, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff…” and we may even feel terrorized by all those negative, psychological experiments about peer pressure: shocking people or refusing to help because no one else did.
So how do we find our balance? When is conformity a good thing and when and where does it go south? Paul tells us in today’s text that he embraces conformity as a means of connecting and spreading the gospel. We’ll see that it’s the strong, not the weak, who can willfully set aside their precious individuality in order to serve others and the Lord.
CREDIBILITY
The key issue for Paul has nothing to do with fitting in, needing to be liked, or belonging. It has everything to do with credibility. To be credible is to be taken seriously. It means that when you have something important to say, you can be heard.
Everyone needs to be taken seriously, at least in certain moments. If there is a fire and you shout, “Fire!” you want and need to be taken seriously. There are old stories to remind us of the problem of failed credibility. You’ll remember Henny Penny, also known as Chicken Little, who runs around screaming, “The sky is falling!” after an acorn hits her on the head. Or The Boy Who Cried Wolf, wherein one’s need for attention by playing on public fears kills credibility. When the wolves actually come to kill all the sheep, the boy cries Wolf but everyone expects it to be yet another false alarm. Kinda reminds you of what’s happened to the news media, doesn’t it? 24 hours a day of breaking news and urgent, special reports. Again, all designed to get attention (and sell ads).
The need to be taken seriously can come from either weakness or strength. The weak, fragile ego seeks credibility in order to find respect, or just get attention. The boy who cried wolf was mischievous; Henny Penny was at least a true believer—she was truly paranoid and expected the sky to fall—but her credibility was undermined by her weak, fear-mongering character.
But credibility can issue from strength as well. The strong—and here I mean people of faith—have no need for personal attention or respect but rather seek credibility in order that the gospel of Jesus Christ may be announced to ears that are open. In this case, credibility is not self-serving, but rather serves a higher purpose. Our word for it is simply witness. We do not manufacture truth, pretend to own it, nor pretend to have cornered the market on truth. We merely witness to the truth—truth that is above us and beyond us, but truth which we have seen and experienced. As witnesses we point outward or upward, not in to ourselves.
INTERSECTIONALITY
In today’s pop culture, being a witness isn’t necessarily sufficient. Other qualifications must be met if we are to be considered credible. “Intersectional” is today’s buzzword for credibility. It means that in order to be taken seriously (at least by a certain group of hard-nosed thinkers), you must have certain, specific qualifications in your resumé if you are to have a hearing at all. Are you white? Subtract 10 points. Male? 10 more. Do you follow your biological, birth gender? 5 points off, if yes. Heterosexual? 5 points more. Christian? 7 points off. Republican? Subtract 20.
The cultural assumption has become that you only have credibility to the degree you have some specific identification with a non-dominant group identity. That’s intersectional-ism. To have credibility in this scheme, you must dissociate yourself from privilege and prove you have labored tirelessly for the poor, the oppressed, or the underprivileged if you are to gain credibility at all. And we should be doing those things, but not to gain credibility. We should be doing those things because they are good things to do in service to our Lord—if doing so increases our street credibility, so be it, but anything done without love is essentially worthless.
So I’m not picking on pop culture, let’s be clear: every in-group has its own equivalent to intersectionality. Every sub-grouping of human beings will manifest one code or another by which outsiders are allowed in or remain outsiders. That’s all deeply ingrained within us along with those mechanisms that make for conformity. Think of it—there is no worldly institution that doesn’t have its insiders and outsiders.
In education, there is a vicious king-of-the-hill within academia. What degrees do you hold? From which college? Ah! It really makes a difference, you know. It’s also true of experience. In business, industry, or almost any field you might be asked, “How long have you worked in your field?” [Eye-roll]: “Well, that’s not very long, is it? If you think about it, there are countless codes for for credibility and/or its absence, and these things differ from group to group. Your bridge group is intersectional, and so is the Catholic Church, and so is citizenship, and so is becoming a gang member. Every in-group has its code, and to have
credibility within that group, you must meet the requirements of the code.
UNSERIOUS
Now here’s a hard truth for modern Americans: just because everyone wants to be taken seriously doesn’t mean that everyone should be. We may like to think that all opinions are equal, but this is impossible—there are good opinions and bad opinions depending upon how well they square up with reality.
When Henny Penny rushes up to us, flush-faced and sweaty, demanding that we care as much as she does that the sky is falling, what do we do? Glance up? Do we patronize her until she goes and bothers someone else? That’s more likely than actually believing her. We’re probably not likely to take her seriously, nor those who are quick to take up her cause.
Today, America is full of Henny Pennies. They have their own shows on FOX and MSNBC. Their books top the New York Times bestseller list. They are anxious to get into your and my faces and demand that we care as much as they do that the sky is, in fact, falling indeed! Why, for God’s sake, aren’t we taking them seriously?
If you’ve ever been cornered by a mon0maniac at a party, then you know the feeling. There he stands, preaching you into silence or acquiescence—you can’t get a word in, you can’t get away—and you just have to keep nodding your head until he thinks you’ve got the message. You and I may tolerate his hectoring tirade for the moment, but we will do whatever is necessary to be rid of him, and one thing for sure: we will never take him or his message seriously.
Paul understood this only too well, and Corinth offers an appropriate analogy to California today.
EARNING THE RIGHT TO BE HEARD
Paul earned the right to be heard. He didn’t just corner people and preach at them. He didn’t feel he had the right to preach to them just because they had doorbells or an email address. He earned the right to be heard. Verse 22:
To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
Paul did not demand that others come into orbit around himself or his interests; he met the people where they were, as they were. He announced God’s love for them in Christ, and did not demand that they immediately conform to the code of Old Testament morality.
But neither did he approve of Corinthian sin; he called it out for what it was, but he only did so once he had established trust and built a relationship with the people.
As the Corinthian Christians divided over their own pet peeves and causes—and it seems they did so within minutes of Paul’s first departure—Paul refused to take sides lest the one side of the gospel be dragged into a particular camp or party. We must do the same.
There can be no Republican Christianity, no Democrat Christianity, no “woke” Christianity, no Progressive Christianity, no Conservative Christianity—the problem with and and all of these is that the center becomes something other than Christ himself. It becomes mostly traditional, republican, patriotism, but also Jesus; or mostly progressive ideology, but with Christ thrown in. This is unacceptable.
Paul became all things to all people only in order that Christ should be all in all—central to everyone and everything and otherwise untainted and unpolluted by politics or ideology.
CRUCIAL CREDIBILITY
There are legitimate grounds for our credibility as Christians. In short, the cross.
To be followers of Jesus means we bear crosses—this means we would sooner suffer than to serve self-interests. Our suffering is the basis of our credibility, just as it was for Paul, and just as we see in the cross of Christ.
Our suffering may take many forms: misfortune or mishap through which we are hurt, deprived, or otherwise knocked for a loop. Hardship and failure do not weaken our witness—on the contrary, they can bring credibility to our witness, for we can proclaim how we have survived or overcome the problems with joy and trust in our Lord.
Suffering may be voluntary. Credibility is also established by hard work, which means making sacrifices of time and effort toward a purpose. Hard work establishes credibility and contributes to others taking us seriously.
Selfless service—working hard for the good of others—is the first picture of agapé love and perhaps the most ear-opening activity possible. All of these involve a level of sacrifice, and sacrifice is the language of love that we see in the cross.
In my first week of seminary, we were told: “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” That’s what witnessing is about: care, love. Love earns a voice. Love earns the right to be heard.
Caring enough to put others first is the code of Christ and the path of the cross.
Christians should stop strategizing to increase their credibility—to do so turns good work into a mere stratagem for self-gain. Even if that self-gain is a self-gain for the church, it falls short.
Rather we should seek to love—to love with costly, sacrificial, agapé love—and should credibility result, that’s fine, but that is not our goal.
Our goal is to glorify God—to gear our lives around His glory and His gospel.
We are his servants—we are not our own—we have been bought with a price and our lives are our grateful response for having been redeemed from sin, death, and Hell.
So let love be our focus as we seek to serve those to whom God sends us. And let’s let all the other competing enthusiasms and passions just go their own way. We are in this for Christ and for Christ alone. We should have less care for all the other things. †