Embracing Cultural Adaptability in Ministry: Insights from 1 Corinthians 9

In this sermon, Don Carson discusses the importance of adapting to different cultural contexts in Christian ministry. Carson uses 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 to illustrate Paul’s method of becoming relatable to various groups to effectively share the gospel, emphasizing the balance between cultural adaptability and maintaining core gospel truths.

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Male: “After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on earth or sea or against any tree. I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to damage earth and sea, saying, ‘Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.’

And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel: From the tribe of Judah twelve thousand sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand, from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand, from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand, from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand, from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand, from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand, from the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand, from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand, from the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand sealed.

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’

And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’ Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows.’

Then he said to me, ‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’ ”

Let us pray.

God, our gracious heavenly Father, please by the power of your Spirit make us today quick to learn, quick to be cross-culturally aware, quick to see deep changes we need to make in our lives and ministries. Then help us to make those changes for Christ’s sake, that we may win many to Christ for your glory. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.

Don Carson: The topic before us is astonishingly convoluted, and to enable us to think through some biblical materials first, I want to begin by reading a paragraph from 1 Corinthians 9, verses 19–23.

“Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 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. 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. 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. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

In 1998 in Evangelical Missions Quarterly, pages 407 and 408, there appeared a very brief article titled, “The C1 to C6 Spectrum: A Practical Tool for Defining Six Types of Christ-Centered Communities.” The name of the author was John Travis, which is a pseudonym for a husband and wife team that had been living and ministering for about 20 years in a tightly knit Asian Muslim community. The C stands for Christ-centered community, and the C1 to C6 categories they laid out are as follows:

C1: Traditional church using non-indigenous language. Its believers exist as an ethnic religion minority, but the church is viewed in the culture as an essentially foreign entity. Thus, for example, all English meetings in Japan or something like that.

C2: Traditional church using indigenous language. Apart from this linguistic factor, the Christian community looks and sounds like an alien community. For example, Western, if it has been planted by Western missionaries.

C3: Christ-centered community in the indigenous language and happy to adopt those cultural features of the local church that are non-religious. If the converts were once Muslims, they are now former Muslims but now Christians.

C4: Contextualized Christ-centered communities. Now there is indigenous language, adopting many Islamic forms wherever it is believed that the Bible does not actually forbid the practice. Why have services on Sunday? Why not turn to Friday? Many forms of worship are Islamic, let us say, but the converts are not viewed as Muslims by Muslims. There is still a difference at that level.

C5: Believers remain Muslims within the Muslim community. On analogy of messianic Jews, they are now messianic Muslims. They will reject or modify specifically unbiblical Muslim practices, but they are pretty generous in their estimates of what is unbiblical.

C6: Small Christ-centered underground communities in a country like Saudi Arabia where the hostility is extreme.

That two-page essay exerted huge seminal influence. It kicked off many books and essays. In mission theology circles, things are still highly debated along these lines all over the world. Those who defend the C5 approach.… The C5 approach will find believers from a Muslim background, let us say, who remain worshiping in Muslim contexts. They reject something that is specifically unbiblical, but they’re pretty generous in what they think is unbiblical.

Those who defend a C5 approach to evangelism and conversion, especially in the Muslim world, appeal to Acts 15. The Gentiles, they say, are not forced to change to become circumcised Jews, so change as little as possible. Muslims don’t have to change too much. As for reciting the Shahada, the Muslim creed, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet,” some C5 supporters say that C5 Christians can still say this.

After all, at the end of the day, God is God, and Muhammad did say some true things. You can’t be wrong all the time. He did say some true things, and insofar as he said some true things, in this sense he was speaking for God, and in that sense he was a prophet. C5 supporters regularly appeal to the text I’ve just read, and that’s why I read it. “To the Jew I became a Jew, that I might win the Jews. To a Muslim I became a Muslim, that I might win the Muslims.”

Similar arguments are deployed in some wings of the so-called emerging church. “To the postmodern I became a postmodern, that I might win the postmoderns.” After all, are there not other indications in the Bible of how flexible early Christian churches could be? There’s Paul preaching in Acts 13 within a synagogue context. It sounds quite different from the way he sounds in Acts 17 when he’s preaching in entirely pagan circles.

There you find him circumcising Timothy in order not to cause offense and absolutely refusing to circumcise Titus. No wonder some people called Paul a bit of a man pleaser, playing to the crowd depending on where he is. So if we seek to be faithful to the gospel, should we not also seek to be flexible in different cultural contexts? “To the Jew I became a Jew to win the Jews. To the Muslim I became a Muslim to win the Muslims. To the postmodern I became a postmodern to win the postmoderns.”

On the other hand, you don’t go down that track too far before you realize there have to be some boundaries somewhere. How about, “To the adulterers I became an adulterer, that I might win the adulterers. To the drunks I became a drunk, that I might win the drunks. To the rich dudes I became a rich dude, that I might win the rich dudes. To the child molester I became a child molester, that I might win the child molester.” Precisely where do you draw the line?

How do the demands of faithfulness and apostolic flexibility play out and why? There are some voices who say that this entire discussion is nonsense, just not needed. All you have to do is preach the gospel. Be faithful preaching the gospel. Don’t worry about cultural analysis. If you’re faithful in preaching the gospel, the gospel will do its life-transforming work, borne along by the Spirit. You don’t need to worry about cultural analysis.

But then you still have to explain what Paul means by this passage. He makes himself something else in order to win some. What does that mean? What does it not mean? Why does he sound so different in Acts 17 and Acts 13? To understand this paragraph aright, we must follow the flow of the argument in chapters 8–9. The reason, in part, is because our paragraph already has the words in verse 22, “To the weak I became weak to win the weak.”

To understand who these people are that Paul designates weak we really have to step back to the beginning of this large unit, chapters 8–10, where these matters constitute one continuous argument. As a run-up to our text, we must learn two things: Paul’s approach to the weak and the strong in chapter 8 and Paul’s approach to his own rights in chapter 9. After that we’ll be in a place to understand what Paul means by our paragraph.

First, Paul’s approach to the weak and the strong in chapter 8. I don’t have time to unpack the entire passage, but it runs like this. There are certain people who have come out of pagan backgrounds who associate the eating of meat that has been offered to pagan idols and then sold out the back door in the meat market.… They associate eating that meat with idolatry. It has, after all, been offered to idols.

Paul says that the well-informed Christian knows full well that the meat is not transformed into something bad. It’s just meat. Slapping it down in front of a stone does not transform the meat. It’s one of the good gifts God has given freely for us to enjoy. If you have a strong conscience, you know that and can eat it with perfect liberty, but if you have a weak conscience, if you are weak in that sense, then you might think that it’s wrong.

Notice, then, what a weak conscience is. A weak conscience is one that thinks something is wrong when it’s not. What Paul says is that if you have such a weak conscience, if you think something is wrong when in reality it’s not, you still shouldn’t fly in the face of your conscience, because then you are going to damage the conscience function.

On the long haul, he would like those with a weak conscience to become a little richer in their theology so that they understand what is truly right and truly wrong, and then their conscience will become stronger, but as long as their conscience is weak, they shouldn’t defy their conscience, he says, because to defy the conscience is to weaken the conscience function.

When your conscience is telling you not to do something that really is wrong, if you’ve weakened your conscience function, you may go ahead and do something that’s wrong just because you’ve weakened your conscience function. Meanwhile, he says, those who are strong have to be careful not to hurt those with a weak conscience.

He says, for example, if somebody with a strong conscience is seen to go and buy meat in one of these back-door-to-the-pagan-temple markets and eat this meat, the person with the weak conscience will say, “If Peter Adam does it, I guess it’s probably all right. I mean, I don’t like to do it, but I suppose it’s all right. Peter Adam is doing it.” So they go and buy the meat, and they’re defying their conscience.

They’re damaging their conscience function. That could do them really great damage, such that they will not be careful to discern between good and evil farther down the road. Paul says you must not do that. You don’t want to hurt those with a weak conscience. You don’t want to damage them. Out of love you might restrict yourself. So Paul says, “Under those circumstances, if a brother or sister is going to be hurt in this way, I will not eat meat while the world stands.” It’s remarkable. Self-denial for the sake of others.

We need to be clear on this quick skim through chapter 8 what the text is not saying. Occasionally, you’ll find people in a church, sometimes traditionalists of advancing years who don’t like what some of the young people are doing as a matter of principle, and they will make the appeal, “You mustn’t do that, because if you do that you’ll be offending me, and Paul says you’re not supposed to offend people.”

That’s not the kind of person Paul has in mind. In all fairness, this person does not have a weak conscience. This person certainly sees himself or herself as having a very robust conscience, thank you very much. Basically, they have succumbed to mere legalism. To such people I am inclined to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear you have a weak conscience. How did that happen?” Which generates an entirely different conversation.

Thirty years ago in the part of the world I come from there were quite a few Christians who would not drink alcohol. You would find some senior saints saying, “You must not drink alcohol, because if you do you’ll be offending me.” My response to that, I’m afraid, became, “If you really do have a weak conscience so that if by my drinking you are doing something in copying me to offend your conscience, I won’t drink, but if you’re telling me that I can’t drink because Christians don’t drink, then I say, ‘Pass the Beaujolais.’ ”

What you are now doing is jeopardizing the exclusive sufficiency of Christ, and that you must not ever do. You must not ever do it. You do not ever jeopardize the exclusive sufficiency of Christ. If someone says, “If you drink, you cannot be a Christian; if you are a Christian, you must not drink,” well, besides having to exegete Jesus turning the water into wine and other such passages, what you must not do is jeopardize the exclusive sufficiency of Christ. We need to understand, then, who these weak are.

Second, Paul’s approach to his own rights in chapter 9. The pastoral implication of his argument in chapter 8 is that those with a strong conscience may forego their liberty in the gospel for the sake of helping others. Because they do not want to hurt those with a weak conscience, they forego something of their liberties. What Paul says in chapter 9 is this is what has characterized his entire apostolic mission.

He has the right to be married and to bring his wife with him when he travels, as the apostle Peter does. He has that right, but he puts it aside, because in his ministry it’s a little more free for him to deny himself those privileges. He has the right to demand support, but because so much of his support is church planting, he never takes any money from those to whom he is currently ministering.

He will accept money from Philippi once he has moved on and is down in Corinth or Athens, but he won’t accept money from those in Corinth or Athens while he’s in Corinth or Athens, because in those days the more you paid a preacher, the more you paid a speaker, the more you were saying, “He’s really, really good and he’s our guy,” and all you had was increasing ego problems. So Paul wouldn’t accept those sorts of supports either. He has the support, but he passes it all up and instead supports his own team when there’s not enough support from previous churches.

Then eventually, after running through this argument several times, he says things like this (verse 12): “We did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple …” He’s talking about the Old Testament systems.

“… and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. But I have not used any of these rights.” They are rights, but he refuses to use them. Then he says something stunning.

“I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me. For I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not misuse my rights as a preacher of the gospel.”

Do you see what he’s saying? These verses are often quoted in the ordinations of young pastors. “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.” Feel the compelling force of it. But Paul is saying something quite distinctive. He says, in the case of Peter, in effect, Peter was called by Jesus, and he chose to leave his nets behind and go and serve.

In the case of Paul, he says, “In my case there was no choice. I was on the Damascus Road, heading to persecute Christians, when the exalted Christ so appeared before me that I was struck down, blinded, converted, called to the ministry, all in one shot. The whole thing was just one big package, and I cannot separate my conversion from my call to ministry. When Christ called me on the Damascus Road to serve him, he called me to salvation to serve him. I cannot separate these things at all. I didn’t volunteer in any sense.”

He didn’t say, “Oh, now you’ve appeared to me. This is a jolly good salvation. I’m quick to volunteer. May I be a missionary to the Gentiles?” No, the Master says to him, right with his conversion, “I will show you what things you must suffer for my name’s sake.” So from the very beginning he cannot separate his understanding of the gospel from his understanding of his call to ministry.

In that sense, he says, “When I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” That is, “I’m damned if I don’t. If I don’t preach the gospel, I’m abandoning the whole thing. I’m abandoning the gospel. I’m abandoning salvation. I’m not in any sense a volunteer. I was turfed in. If I preach voluntarily, well, there’s something to be commended in that case, by all means. But if not voluntarily, I’m just discharging the trust committed to me.

So then where is my reward? How can I show that I’m doing this out of my own heart, not just because I was turfed in? Just this: That in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge. I choose not to use all my rights so I can demonstrate I’m doing this out of my whole heart, self-sacrificially for others.”

That’s Paul’s approach to his own rights, and that sets the stage for his argument in the verses that follow. Paul tells us that in preaching the gospel he has to flex. To the Jew, he says, he becomes a Jew, that he might win the Jews. To the Gentile he becomes a Gentile to win the Gentiles. Why?

1. Paul has to flex because he does not belong to either of the other two categories.

“To the Jew I became a Jew.” In other words, he does not see himself as a Christian Jew who has to flex in order to win Gentiles. He sees himself as something else who has to flex to win the Jews and who has to flex to win the Gentiles. In the Latin tradition, what Paul adopts is the tertium quid, a third position.

He’s not a Christian Jew who flexes to win the Gentiles. In some contexts, of course he acknowledges that he’s a Jew, but theologically that’s not where he is. He says, “To the Jew I became a Jew. I became as one under the law, though I am not myself under the law …” He’s not in that sense a Jew at all. “… that I might win the Jew. To those not under the law, those not having the law, I flex toward them as well, though I am not myself lawless. I am under Christ’s law.”

In other words, Paul has to become this, and he has to become that. Then he says, “To the weak I became weak,” and that’s how he ties this passage to what precedes. He has to tie himself to act like those pagans who have become Christians and have this weak conscience. He becomes lawless but willing to flex to become weak in order to serve these people, minister to them, not do any damage to them.

So on the one hand, he strengthens his submission to the Old Testament law, though he is not bound up with the law covenant anymore. He’s not under the old covenant; he’s under the new. Over here on the right-hand side, yes, he’s prepared to become like the people who don’t have any law, though he is not himself completely lawless. There are limits to his flexibility. He is under Christ’s law.

What Paul does not do is sort out here what kind of continuities there are between being under the law of God in the Old Testament and being under Christ’s law. Those are interesting questions, but he doesn’t sort them out here. All he is saying is he sees himself in his ministry as needing to flex to win the Jews and needing to flex to win the pagans.

2. Paul has to flex because he wants to win people in both of these categories.

He’s not flexing like this just to be a man-pleaser. He’s not flexing like this just to get along a little better in society. He says in verse 22, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” He wants to win them.

On the other hand, if he wins them, they become Christians the way Paul is a Christian, and they will then have to flex to win their own people. He doesn’t want to win them so that they remain as they are; he wants to win them to Christ. If he wins them to Christ, they will become as he is. Once they become as he is, then they are in the tertium quid. They’re in the third position, and thereafter, if they are going to win their fellow people, they will have to flex.

They will have so changed in becoming Christians that they will be like Paul, now in a separate condition, who now flexes in order to win Jews and flexes to win Gentiles. To put this into contemporary terms, if we win a Muslim, it’s not so that the Muslim may remain a Muslim (C5), but that the Muslim may become a Christian.

The Christian is now in this third position, and to win Muslims, that now converted Muslim will have to flex in order to win Muslims, as that Muslim would have to flex in order to win Hindus or Christians or secularists, because being a Christian is so different you don’t belong in any of the other camps. You just don’t. In other words, one of the things wrong with C5 defenders is that they fail to recognize how radical conversion is in any society.

That’s the point of the Timothy/Titus matter I mentioned earlier, where Paul is willing to circumcise Timothy but he’s not willing to circumcise Titus. The reason he’s willing to circumcise Timothy is because nobody is saying he has to be circumcised. It’s a matter of voluntary submission to Jewish sensibility so that this young man from mixed background can enter synagogues and participate freely and there bear witness to Christ.

In the case of Titus, some people in Jerusalem, according to Galatians 2, were saying, “You cannot be a Christian unless you become a Jew, because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. You cannot accept Jesus the Jewish Messiah until you yourself become a Jew. You have to become circumcised.” Paul says, “No, now you’re saying to be saved it is necessary to be circumcised, and that is jeopardizing the exclusive sufficiency of Christ.” At that point, Paul says, no way will he be circumcised. Absolutely no way.

His principle always is the gospel, the exclusive sufficiency of Christ. As soon as somebody says, “You must do this in order to be saved,” Paul says, “Absolutely no way,” but apart from that Paul can be remarkably flexible. The point is that Paul has to flex because he wants to win people in all of these categories. Paul may not be able to save all people. He simply writes, “I become all things so that I might save some.” But he is willing to use all means to save those some.

3. He wants to participate in the gospel category himself.

Look at verse 23. “I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” That’s the way most English translations run more or less, including the NIV, TNIV, and ESV. Then the thought is, “I flex like this, I deny myself for the sake of serving others, including the weak and the Jew and the Gentile, that I might share in eschatological blessings in the future, blessings at the end. Because I have served like this, great will be my reward, and I want to enjoy the blessings of the gospel in the new heaven and the new earth.”

The original is a bit more ambiguous. If I had to translate it literally, it would be something like, “I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may be a participant in it.” That’s exactly what is said. In other words, the gospel in its core is about the one who identified with others for their salvation. The Word became flesh. He became a human being. He identified with us. This God made flesh lined up with sinners and was baptized by John the Baptist, identifying with them.

In Matthew 20:20 and following, we are told that he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Christian leadership walks in that mold. It identifies with people and serves them. Of course, Christ himself went to the cross, my substitute. “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood.” Self-denial for the sake of others. This is the gospel we preach, and Paul wants to be a participant in it.

Paul says, in effect, “I want to be a joint participant with Christ in what the gospel truly is. I am not only preaching the gospel; I am living it.” If in Philippians 3 he says that he wants the power of Jesus’ resurrection, he also wants the fellowship of his suffering. If Jesus identified with the people he came to save, how can Jesus’ followers, who wish to be participants in the gospel, not want to identify with those whom they wish to win, whom they wish to be saved?

In other words, Paul has to flex not only to win some but to participate in his very existence in the gospel. The reason we need to learn to flex in cross-cultural communication is because we want to be gospel participants, dying to self, taking up our cross, as Jesus did. Anything less is sub-Christian. In other words, the flexibility and accommodation envisaged in this paragraph are the flexibility and accommodation of the messenger, not of the message.

There is no hint that Paul is transforming the gospel or so reshaping it that it loses connection with what precedes. It’s the accommodation and flexibility of the preacher, not of the convert. The converts then become Christians themselves, and as Christians they too die to self-interest. They live in another world, in another dimension, in this tertium quid, in this third position, and then when they actually go to win their own previously aligned people, they must flex to align with them.

Some of you know this in your own experience. Converted perhaps as adults from a very secular family. You loved pub-crawling and endless secularizing kinds of things. Hedonism was the name of the game. Then you got converted, and if you were genuinely converted you became attached to a community that was living in the light of eternity, that was seeking to promote Christ’s interests, that became interested in storing up treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not corrode, where thieves do not dig through and steal.

Suddenly you found that it was a little difficult to communicate with the people you sprang from, and part of your obligation as a Christian is to flex enough to be like them, within the limits and constraints of the gospel itself, that you may win some, and you do this from your new position as a Christian. Paul has to flex because he longs to remain in and participate in the gospel itself.

There are countless applications of this, some small and humorous, others weighty. My first internship as a young man, as a pastor, was with a chap called Ernie Keefe. Ernie Keefe had played hockey, which is Canada’s national sport, at the professional level. The Lord broke his ankle twice before he would bend the knee and was eventually converted.

After he was converted, in due course, he was called to ministry and became a church planter in French Canada. That meant he had to learn another language, another culture … within the same country but, nevertheless, a really different culture. Different background, different history. Now we were about 30 years on, and I was an intern with him.

In those days, sometimes we would go out to one of the outlying villages to where the church was. It was a pretty hostile environment. We would go door to door, handing out literature, trying to start conversations about Christ and the gospel. In those days, if you did that, you couldn’t go back to that village for two or three months because there would be a riot. The police would be set on you. That’s just the way it was in French Canada in those days.

As we were driving in from one of these villages.… We’d been talking in French all day, and without thinking, I switched back to English. Driving along, he suddenly switched back to French and said, “Don, I’m sorry. I’m going to talk in French. I’m too tired to think in English.” He had so devoted himself to this people he came to serve he was willing to sacrifice a big chunk of his own heritage and culture, that by all means he might win some.

It was scandalous two centuries ago when J. Hudson Taylor grew his hair long, but it was part of winning Chinese as far as he was concerned. It shows up in so many little ways. Although I was brought up in French Canada and I happily kiss people on both cheeks, yet my parents were both born in the UK, and because they were born in the UK, it is in my genes, in my blood, that in social intercourse the proper distance between two adults is approximately 36 inches.

Then I go to Latin America. They labor under the delusion that the appropriate distance between two consenting adults is 18 inches. So they keep crowding closer, and I keep stepping back. I think they’re pushy. They think I’m cold. Eventually, I step back and step back, and I try an experiment. I leave my foot out. They step on it. It’s just culture; that’s all it is. I have to go through several gear changes and understand afresh, “You’re not in Chicago now. You’re not in London.”

What you cannot do is transgress anything that is embraced under Christ’s law. Paul still remains, as free as he is, under Christ’s law. Whatever is demanded by all that is bound up with the gospel and Christ’s teaching and Christ’s most Holy Word, that you cannot transgress, but within that framework, by all means flex to win some. Paul does not tone down his attack on idolatry and idolaters in Acts 17 when he’s dealing with the Athenians.

He’s very careful how he gets to the point, but he doesn’t tone down the actual attack on idolatry, nor does he duck what is the most offensive part of his address, namely the resurrection of Christ. Up until then they could put up with him, but that was just one step too far. He doesn’t tone it down, because he understands full well that it’s not a peripheral add-on extra. It is, as he says elsewhere, writing to the Corinthians in chapter 15, one of the matters of first importance without which the gospel is no longer the gospel.

Hear, then, what the apostle says. “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 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. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may be a participant in it.”

So my dear fellow Christian, exactly how does your self-denial for the sake of being a participant in the gospel, following the Master who denied himself for your sake, issue in the flexibility that enables you to win others? That’s the challenge. Let us pray.

We thank you, heavenly Father, for the grace that brought your Son down to us, abandoning all of his rights and prerogatives that he might identify with us, his creatures, who had rebelled against him. So heavenly Father, teach us afresh that it is unthinkable that we should be standing on our rights if those rights are inimical to gospel promotion, but grant us a passionate desire to participate in the gospel, not only by what we believe but by how we act. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

Any questions?

Male: How would you respond to the situation in some boroughs in Britain where there is substantive control of the city council or the school board system or the like, such that halal food is offered to the children in the cafeterias, and if a child from a Christian background objects to eating halal meat, then fish or some other substitute is offered, but the child isn’t going to get any meat?

Don Carson: In one sense, what I would say is as those things develop commonly in the UK today, and in some other parts of the Western world, they are filled with political overtones, and the so-called Christian kids, by and large, are not Christian in any deep sense of coming from devoutly Christian homes with a whole lot of sensibilities. It becomes an in-and-out thing, me versus them.

From the point of view of 1 Corinthians 8, I would say the strong Christian position there, if you have a strong and robust Christian, is eat the halal meat. It isn’t hurt. It’s still meat, something God has given freely to enjoy. But because this will be taken by some to indicate that you are really Muslim or succumbing to Muslim sensibilities, then probably, as a matter of political savvy, I would like to have as much flexibility as possible, but I’m not going to split a community over it. I’m not going to march endlessly.

I might not like all of these things that are happening, but it is more important to me that I find my way into the Muslim community in order to be able to bear witness to Christ. Higher up on the pecking order of my passions is promoting the gospel and the kingdom of Christ than it is to sort out the political problems of a borough of Great Britain.

This is not to say that there may not be a need for politically wise people and astute people to promote practices that push the common good with as much genuine empathy as possible. Nowadays in the name of tolerance there’s a great deal of intolerance, and a lot of it is only running one way. I agree with all of those things. On the other hand, as much as I want to be a wise head in that situation, more important to me than that is doing that which will promote the gospel for Christ’s sake.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: In the first case, if you are the renter and you really do desire to share the gospel with a Muslim landlord who takes offense at your black poodle.… If you are the renter and a Christian and you have a burden now to win this person to the Lord, I’d shift the poodle. It’s an obvious answer. If, on the other hand, you’re giving advice to a secular lass who is the renter and who’s just viewing this as a civil rights issue, let them sort it out.

You cannot expect the world to want to be a participant in the gospel. You should expect Christians to be participants in the gospel. In terms of flexing to become all things to all people, just because you go and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with somebody does not prove you’re actually.… It proves that you know them well enough to be able to sit there with them. Okay, fair enough.

It’s possible in the name of becoming all things to all people that you go and do what they do and eat what they eat and watch what they watch, and it’s not going anywhere. It’s not a friendship that’s probing. You’re not bearing witness to Christ. You’re not dealing with anything serious. Of course friendship has to be won, but you cannot isolate one individual thing and say, “I actually ate some halal meat; therefore, I am now actually doing something for Jesus’ sake.”

Well, maybe, but it’s part of a lifestyle that is seeking to get to know them to forge the connections of trust in which you can bear witness to Christ, and if part of that is sitting down one evening while you’re eating halal meat on your lap and watching a bit of Buffy, God bless you. If on the other hand, you go every week just so you can watch Buffy and declare yourself a Christian, then I don’t think you have the gospel very deeply into your own life yet.

Male: How do you relate verse 23, which you cited, with the rest of the chapter, where Paul speaks of pressing on for the prize in Christ Jesus and the upward call and beats himself and puts himself in submission, the famous verses at the end of the chapter? Is part of this prize the actual winning of people to Christ?

Don: I’m hearing less a question than a comment. If so, you’re quite right that if a Christian sees some people genuinely converted, it can become an enormously encouraging sort of thing. Because our hearts are so corrupt, it’s possible to leap from such encouragement to treating that as a kind of addictive high, and we start notching spiritual scalps on our belts. Obviously, that’s not what Paul has in mind.

My point in verse 23 is that the best translation is not “That I might receive its blessing,” and then the question is, “Is the blessing seeing their conversion?” I think, rather, the point of verse 23 is that I might be a participant in the gospel, in the self-denial that is aligned with Christ’s self-denial. That’s part of it.

As Paul puts it elsewhere in Philippians, chapter 3, he says, “Oh, that I may know him.” He knows him already; he wants to know him better. “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, being made conformable to his death.” That’s all part of what it means to be a Christian for him.

He cannot think of being a Christian as just having your sins forgiven and now getting on with a joyful life and every once in a while notching up a conversion or two. Part of being a gospel participant is self-denial for others as Christ, that I might share in his suffering. As he puts it in Philippians 1:29, “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on his name, but also to suffer for his sake.” That’s part of gospel existence.

If you don’t see that anywhere in your life or in your passion, to be identified with the cross such that you take up your cross to follow him, where is your Christianity? Where is the gospel participation? That’s what he’s talking about. Farther on, he changes the metaphor and uses the metaphor of an Olympic race, but that’s a bit of a different argument.

At this point in the argument, in verses 19–23, his whole passion to be a gospel participant means that he flexes the way Christ flexes. The heart of the gospel is the announcement of what God has done in Christ Jesus in abandoning everything in order to save us. How can we not do the same thing?