Dear friends,
Welcome again to Two Ways News. We do appreciate your fellowship in recommending this podcast to friends and colleagues.
Today we are looking at freedom from slavery in the beginning of 1 Corinthians 9, but we decided to call this episode ‘My Rights’, for the way the passage has been translated raises the question of ‘rights’. The passage is really about the authority of the Apostle—an authority he does not use in his concern for other people’s salvation.
It is an extraordinary explanation of the nature of Christ’s work of salvation, preached in the apostolic gospel and lived out by the Apostle Paul.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: I remember the sermon that Sir Marcus Loane spoke when he became Archbishop in 1966, because he preached on the passage that we will be looking at today. He spoke on the end of 1 Corinthians 9:16, “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” I remember as a young man being very impressed with the idea that we had an Archbishop whose view of himself and his ministry was centred around the fact that by becoming Archbishop, he was taking upon himself that necessity to preach the gospel which the Apostle Paul also had.
Peter: 1 Corinthians 9:1–18
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?
Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.
Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.
But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.
This passage flows straight on from Chapter 8. He hasn’t changed the discussion; he’s just widened it. It’s interestingly autobiographical, but now it seems rather defensive in a way which seems at odds with, say, 1 Corinthians 4:3, “I do not even judge myself,” or 1:31, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” It may be that he was under criticism, but I also see it as part of his teaching method, namely to model the faith. That comes out in a number of places in his writings. After all, in the very early days of Christianity, there were few whose example you could appeal to. So 11:1, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” is a very useful thing to say. It’s part of his teaching. But even now, when we have so much history, it’s still right for the pastor to be an example. In this case, he’s finished the previous chapter with a powerful point, that the wellbeing of his brother and sister is more important than exercising undoubted freedom: in that case, to eat meat. The law of love sets us free—that is, free to serve. Do you think Paul was under critical attack?
Phillip: I’m sure he was, but I’m sure he also used these criticisms to address key points. It’s a pattern of Paul’s writing. For example, in chapter 8, he raises the presenting issue of food offered to idols, then he seems to move on to a completely different subject: his own ministry, and not using certain privileges that he has. Then in chapter 10 he comes back to talking about idols. As another example, in chapter 12, Paul talks about gifts, prophecy and tongues, which he returns to in chapter 14—but in chapter 13, he sets out the basic principle of love that governs how gifts and tongues are used. We saw the same thing in chapter 7, where there was a little section in the middle about contentment which seemed, at first, to be changing the subject, though it wasn’t at all.
So yes, he’s under some degree of criticism, but he’s using the way he responds to the criticism in order to illustrate his point at the end of chapter 8 about not causing your brother to stumble. You can see him addressing the criticism in 9:3, “This is my defense to those who would examine me.”
But what are they examining him about, and what is his defence? We’re only listening to one side of the argument; we haven’t actually seen the allegations against him. Were they questioning whether he was a true apostle or not? That question may be at the very heart of the passage: what authority does he have as an apostle? For the apostle’s authority is derived from Christ, whereas human authority is derived from the law. But he’s talking about his role as an apostle, about how the law directs the way that workers are to be treated. I say ‘authority’ because the word ‘rights’ is not in the original text. The Greek word is ‘exousia’ (that is, ‘authority’) every time. There is no word for ‘rights’ in the New Testament. So we need to work out why it is ‘authority’. The King James version uses the word ‘power’ every time, but the Greek word is ‘authority’, as in, the authority that he received from Christ. That is, he is under Christ as an apostle, but an apostle has a certain authority which he chooses not to use. So he is discussing his choice not to use his authority, rather than the issue of rights and authority itself. Apostleship is key. It could be that he’s saying, “I’m not like those Sophist preachers who make money from their teaching. I deserve to take money from you, and those who are taught the word should share all good things with those who teach.”
Paying for workers is, as scripture says, a perfectly good thing to do. But I suspect that it’s more about apostles.
Peter: Yes, for he claims the title of ‘Apostle’.
Phillip: He fights for it in other epistles.
Peter: He does indeed. It’s a word which became full of meaning as it was used by Jesus. Jesus was surrounded by disciples, those who learned from him, but in the end, it is the 12 who are appointed apostles, the sent ones. Notice the need for Matthias to be appointed and his credentials checked in Acts 1:21–26. Namely, he knew Jesus and he witnessed the resurrection. In order to take the place of Judas, he was able to come on board because he had those credentials. It’s pretty important when we’re thinking about this. I think of John 17, where Jesus prays for his apostles, and he commits them as preachers of the word of God. “Your word is truth,” he says to God. They are given authority within the whole Christian movement, which lasts to this day. It’s not as though we can have contemporary apostles. A bishop is not a successor of the apostles; that idea takes away from the uniqueness of the apostles, and their sheer importance as those who witnessed the resurrection and had been with Jesus all that time. That is why their writings are called scripture. Paul describes himself in 1 Corinthians 15:8, as “one untimely born.” At that point, in 15:7–11, he is talking about the unusual way in which he had become an apostle. He’d been persecuting the Christians, but then he was met by the risen Jesus Christ, and he became a witness to the teaching of Jesus and to the resurrection. Still, despite his record of persecution, he was a genuine apostle and recognised as such by the others. He also points to his work as a sort of a seal on the authenticity of his gospel preaching, and the way in which he gathered the churches among the Gentiles. That’s in the beginning of the passage which we’ve just read. In that way, he is claiming authority. But it’s not the same, as you’ve pointed out, as what we call ‘rights’. That is to say, he could ask, “Have I got the right to be paid for this ministry?”
Phillip: His authority has to do with Christ. At the appointment of Matthias, they cast lots, because there were two men who had all the necessary qualities. Yet it was Christ’s appointment that they looked for. So when they had Christ appoint the apostle Matthias, it was in order to become the witness.
‘Witness’ here has 2 different meanings. The first meaning describes someone who has seen something. The second meaning describes being a professional, appointed preacher of something. Paul is adamant that he’s an apostle of Christ, because he had seen the risen Christ. But in seeing the risen Christ, he was then appointed, on the road to Damascus, to preach the risen Christ to the nations, as is recorded in the book of Acts.
Peter: I don’t think the other apostles regarded him as an interloper. It’s interesting that Peter, in his second epistle, refers to Paul’s writings as scripture.
Phillip: Yes, although they always distinguish between Paul and the 12 Apostles. You’ll find, in the book of Acts, that Paul is the 13th Apostle, because the 12 were the apostles to God’s people, Israel, whereas he was the Apostle to the Nations. But the point that is being used in this passage is that, while he has this authority as an apostle, freedom comes from not using his authority. It’s a funny argument, but it gives him the basis for which he can boast, or the ‘reward’, as he says. See, by witnessing to the risen Lord Jesus Christ, he had no grounds for boasting in preaching the gospel, because as an apostle, he had been appointed to do that task. That necessity was laid upon him, and he was like a slave. In Luke 17:10, Jesus says of the slave, “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”
Paul, in preaching the gospel, is only doing his duty. But when he preaches free of charge, that’s going beyond the requirements of being an apostle, and so at that point, he can say, “My lifestyle is matching the message.” Doing it by grace, free of charge, is like the Lord Jesus himself, who laid down his life. The sacrifice is what gives him the grounds for boasting.
Freedom is not absolute. For him, there was this necessity to preach the gospel, but his was to preach the gospel at no cost, because in preaching the gospel, he could have charged. He had every authority to, both from the law and from being an apostle. But his choice was not to take money from the Corinthians. Why? Because he didn’t want to put any obstacle in the way of the Corinthians responding to the gospel. So, in a sense, he’s marking himself out as being Christian, as opposed to being one of the Sophist preachers. We can still see it today. The ‘super apostles’ were very wealthy, just like today’s preachers. When people want to invite you to speak somewhere, and they want to tell the audience how important it is to listen to you, what do they say? They say, “This preacher’s a great preacher. Look, he’s preached on every continent of the world. He’s preached at these great platforms. He’s spoken in this context and that context. He’s written 57 books. He’s appeared on these television shows. He has his own television station and programs. His podcast audience has this many thousand people listening every week.” These are all the things that Paul was not. Paul was not going around Corinth as a great, wealthy man; he was making leather tents. He preached at no cost to his hearers, to demonstrate the message of Jesus by the way he preached.
Peter: This brings up some contemporary issues. When you’re in ministry, there will be times when you are instructing a person or a group, and it is sometimes tempting to ask them for money as soon as possible, especially if you are short of funds. I believe it is right for pastor-teachers to be remunerated in order that they can make a living, but there’s a danger of us becoming greedy and using our spiritual power to get people to give us money. All of us need to be careful about this.
Phillip: There’s also the shock of people that comes with not asking. I remember speaking to a very wealthy man who invited me to come and explain the gospel to him, and I said that I would do that on one understanding: that I wouldn’t be asking him for any money. I didn’t realise until later how much his approach to life was always to get an expert to explain to him whatever he was interested in. The experts always asked for money. He’d never had anybody not want his money before.
Peter: It’s not because you’re a wonderful person that you refused his money, but rather because we can see here the apostle and Jesus doing this.
Phillip: It’s fundamentally Christian thinking.
Peter: You are a sinner.
Phillip: I am a sinner.
Peter: I’m glad to hear it. We’ve been talking about rights, and you’ve been distinguishing between rights and authority. But I believe in the human rights movement. I think it’s good to attribute rights to others and use it as a way of respecting or even loving others. Is that wrong?
Phillip: What you believe is in duties and responsibilities, which are said to be the flip side of rights. When you use the word ‘authority’, it immediately makes you ask the question: who gave you such authority? Whereas rights, especially since the Enlightenment, are something inherent in you. It’s a modern concept, written into our Bible translations, but it comes from the Enlightenment, which replaced God with humans. Though the word itself came before the Enlightenment; for example, there was the divine right of kings. I’m no great lover of the way in which Charles I used it, by the way—but the understanding was that government is there by God’s appointment, not just by human election. God may use human election to appoint a government, but the government is there by God’s appointment. Napoleon, I believe, put the crown on his own head, which is a sign of that humanism. Rights are also discussed by people like John Locke, who was anti-atheist before the Enlightenment, and who insisted that rights were given by God. There was even the Bill of Rights in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution of William and Mary. But that was all about the rights of kings as opposed to parliaments, as opposed to citizens, and the like.
It was in the Enlightenment that the word came into its present use: from the deists, the faux-atheists that they were. They would talk of the laws of nature equally to the laws of God, because God really didn’t govern their way of thinking. The American Declaration of Independence says
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
But these rights are not self-evident; they’re revealed by God. It was a late editorial change, I understand, that brought in this concept of them being ‘self-evident’, and that all men are created equal. Other than the fact that the Declaration was written by men about men, saying nothing about women, the very concept of being “created equal” sounds like they’re talking about the Creator. But of course, the Creator was not their driving point; it was that you, by nature, are equal. So you’ve been given these “unalienable” rights (we would say ‘inalienable’ today). These are things which are inherent in you as a person: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Peter: They are endowed by their Creator, let it be said.
Phillip: Yes, “endowed by their Creator” still is there. They’re struggling in their Christian nation with their non-Christian thinking. But others are inalienable rights. The word ‘inalienable’ means something that cannot be taken away from you or given away by you. But these people owned slaves, so where was the liberty in that? Furthermore, if I can’t give my liberty away, am I truly free? This is what the Apostle was doing. He was giving away these things which he had, supposedly, the right to, as it’s translated.
As for the inalienable right to life, does that mean they cannot go to war? Does that mean they shouldn’t have capital punishment? Does that mean they will not defend themselves by shooting anybody? This comes from the nation of guns, after all.
And where does the pursuit of happiness come from? Does this mean hedonism is a fundamental right in life? Rights as absolutes become the new religion, because once you say, “That’s my right,” there’s no argument left. If I have a right to something, then you can’t take it away from me. In fact, I can’t give it up either.
Peter: I think this is a subject which will haunt us in the next section as well.
Phillip: It haunts us in our society now. The United Nations, after the end of the Second World War, declared human rights in 1948, but not all the nations accepted it. In 1979, in the revolution that took place in Iran, the Ayatollah withdrew Iran from the United Nations Declaration of Rights. Why? Because he said that that declaration was a secular understanding of Judeo-Christian tradition. I hate to say it, but I think the Ayatollah is right. I’m not sure we should ever say that the Ayatollah is right in our present context. But I think he’s right in saying this. Indeed, in the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, the Muslim countries accepted that Sharia law rules over the top of the Declaration of Human Rights. So they’re not rights, just things that were made up. Indeed, in our own society, this is the case too, because we believe in multiculturalism; that is, each culture has to be respected, even though different cultures have different sets of so-called rights. I think that as a society, we’ve got a big problem with the word ‘rights’. So I’m unhappy that it’s brought into this discussion by our translation of 1 Corinthians 9. I think we should go back to reading it as ‘authority’, or as Paul saying, “I may do this.” You don’t have to say the word; all you need to say is, “I may take along a wife. I may take money.” It’s all in terms of permission. Then you must ask the question, where does the permission come from? For Paul, it’s from Christ.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this talk from Campus Bible Study 1977 on 1 Corinthians 9 called The Love that Captivates.
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
