1 Corinthians 6
ABSChapter 6. The Christian Ministry: Its Authority and SupportIn 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. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me. I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of this boast…. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Corinthians 9:14-15, 1 Corinthians 9:27)This chapter expounds the principles underlying the authority and support of the gospel ministry, and also its true spirit and aim. It is a good thing for the pew sometimes to hear the pulpit preach to itself; and it is a very good thing for the pulpit to preach to itself, and to be thoroughly imbued with the apostolic spirit so finely exemplified in Paul.
Section I: The Authority of the Ministry
Section I—The Authority of the MinistryPaul asks, Am I not an apostle?… Are you not the result of my work in the Lord?… For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord…. I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!… I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. (1 Corinthians 9:1-2, 1 Corinthians 9:16-17) This is surely a sufficient basis for the authority and obligation of the Christian ministry. A Trust First, he tells us that a dispensation of the gospel has been committed unto him. The word “dispensation” means stewardship or trusteeship. He has been appointed a steward of the treasures of his Lord and of the supplies of his Lord’s household. Such a dispensation is committed to every true minister, and it is a very solemn thing to be invested with an office so responsible and standing under an accountability so tremendous. Next, he tells us not only has this trust been committed to him, but he has accepted it with such a profound sense of obligation that it has become an imperative necessity to his conscience and his life. It has put the woe on him, and the go in him, that he must preach. This is the true secret of successful service, not to take a text, but to have the text take us, and to be so baptized with our message that we can honestly say, like the apostles after Pentecost, “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). It is this “cannot help” that tells. It is the bursting fountain coming from the depths and drenching the heights. Like the old astronomer who was forced for a time by the thumb screws to recant his heresy of the earth going around the sun, but the moment the pressure was removed, almost unconsciously to himself, the honest expression burst from his lips, “It moves all the same.” The Seals Further, he can point to the seals of his apostleship and his work in the Lord. He has more than a prefix to his name; he has a lot of glorious suffixes—the souls that have been added to him and into whose faces he can look and say, “In Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15). Every true servant of Christ ought to be successful, and to be able to point to the actual fruits of a faithful ministry. The Bible has no sympathy with the idea that it is all right to go on for a quarter of a century doing our best and seeing no results. The anomaly of 1,000 churches in one of our great denominations that have not had a single addition during the past year by profession of faith, has no recognition of the New Testament. Such churches do not deserve to die, for they are dead already. Only today a gentleman told us of the conversion of a girl who served in his kitchen, through a few loving acts of personal kindness in helping her to pump the water and getting her through the hard places. She told him with innocent frankness she had never been used that way before, and it quite broke her down; in the first test that came to her she yielded her heart to God. Your workshop, your store, your office, can each become a sacred pulpit and a birthplace of souls if you have the “cannot but” running over from your own heart.
Section II: The Rights of the Ministry
Section II—The Rights of the MinistryThe Necessities of Life The minister has a right to the necessities and comforts of life. “Don’t we have the right to food and drink?” (1 Corinthians 9:4). The minister of Christ has a right to have a living. Some good people scarcely concede this. It is said that once a committee waited upon Lyman Beecher to ask him to secure for them a pastor for their church in one of the New England towns. They wanted a man of great ability, good in the pulpit and good out of it, with attractive gifts and deep piety. The doctor asked them about how much they expected to give this extraordinary minister. They said if he was all right they could probably raise $300 a year for him. The keen witted doctor suppressed a rippling smile, and cooly suggested to the brethren that the only man he could think of that met their standard was the late Dr. Dwight; and he would suggest that they send a message to the angel Gabriel to send him back to take charge of this church, and, especially as he had been in heaven so long and had obtained a spiritual body, he would probably be able to live on $300 a year. The time was when his sarcasm was more deserved than it is today, but there are not wanting many sections of the country where the faithful ministry is still starved. Paul claims the right of support. “Is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living?” (1 Corinthians 9:6). He claims for himself and his brother the right of their appropriate support. There is no reason why he should be compelled to toil with his own hands for the livelihood of himself and his brother. And yet the fact was that he went through his ministry not merely living a life of trust, but living a life of toil. His entrance to a Roman town found him among the day laborers at the loom earning his wages like a common workman, and at the end of the week paying his board and supplying the wants of his brother from his hard-earned wages. But this he had no right to do. He then proceeds to establish the right of the ministry to a proper support from a most cogent and conclusive argument. First, he says even nature ought to teach us this. “Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk?” (1 Corinthians 9:7). Even under the ancient law the ox that trampled out the grain must not be muzzled. “Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he?” (1 Corinthians 9:9-10). Next, he shows that under the old dispensation God made ample provision for the support of His ministers. “Those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar” (1 Corinthians 9:13). One whole tithe of the income of the Hebrew people went to the support of the Levites, and surely God is not estimating at a lower value the lives of His servants in the larger blessing of the New Testament dispensation. But, further, he tells us that this is an ordinance of the New Testament distinctly appointed and commanded. “In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14). It is as much a divine ordinance as any of the sacred appointments of the Holy Scriptures. It is well that God’s people should fully understand this, and it is well that some of us are able to stand in a position of such freedom in this matter that we can speak frankly to our brethren without being misunderstood or supposed to be seeking our own advantage. The church or the Christian that does not definitely and systematically contribute, not merely for general missionary objects, but for the support of those who minister to them in the Lord, will lose spiritually. This rests upon the law of equity, and there is no answer to his invincible argument, “If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you?” (1 Corinthians 9:11). A Home Life Paul claims the right to home life and to his ties of affection. “Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles?” (1 Corinthians 9:5). The ministry is not improved by celibacy. It needs the gentle touch of human kindness, loving sympathy, and to be able to speak from every avenue of human life to every variety of human experience.
Section III: The Voluntary Sacrifice of Rights
Section III—The Voluntary Sacrifice of RightsNow he rises to higher ground. Having claimed the right both for himself and his brother, he voluntarily renounces it on his own behalf, and takes the place of surrender, of sacrifice, of manual toil and of all the hardships incident to the great renunciation he has so gladly made. He does this with great deliberation. He is not by any means deceived about it. He has the glorious future in view, and the compensation which he feels will well repay him for all of the sacrifices involved. And it is this—he has no glory and no reward for preaching the gospel. That is simply a matter of duty and the honest discharge of a sacred trust. The only way, therefore, that he can add the element of recompense and bring into his ministry a higher quality of heroism and love is by the spirit of sacrifice. And so he adds, But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me. I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of this boast…. What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge. (1 Corinthians 9:15, 1 Corinthians 9:18) The teaching of the apostle in this matter is exceedingly clear and most important to understand. No man has a right to leave the ministry of Christ without support; but if a minister of Christ chooses himself to stand in a place of personal independence, to trust the Lord alone for his needs, or to toil with honest hands for his own support, he has the right. And he should be accredited the consideration which Paul asked for himself. In some respects he will have a freedom and a claim to disinterested service which may give his testimony a greater effectiveness for God and the cause of truth.
Section IV: The Principle of Accommodation
Section IV—The Principle of AccommodationNext there is the principle of accommodation to the prejudices and infirmities of others in order to do them greater good. This is a fine touch of Christian love. Though I am free and belong to no man, I make 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. 1 have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. (1 Corinthians 9:19-22) Now, let us carefully observe that while Paul yields much to the prejudices, weaknesses and sensibilities of those whom he seeks to win, yet he never compromises principle; he never stoops to their level. He says, “To those not having the law I became like one not having the law,” but he adds immediately, “though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law” (1 Corinthians 9:21). What he means is simply this—that he does not contend for petty theories, forms of speech, phases of doctrine, nonessential questions, but he does not once surrender his purity. He will meet the man of the world on his own ground, but he will not do what the man of the world does. Standing on a higher plane and reaching to him, he will lift him by his love and strength. This does not mean we are to marry ungodly people to save them; that we are to go to the theater in order to influence our husbands, wives or friends who go; that we are to play cards in order to get to the hearts of some of the players; that we are to get people in love with us that we may lead them to Christ; but it means that we are to approach men with the love of the gospel. We are not to come to them with our crotchets and our technicalities and our sharp angles; but we are to recognize in them what is good, and touch everything that can be made a point to contact with Christianity and in the right sense be all things to them that we may gain them for Christ and their own selves.
Section V: The High and Glorious Ambition
Section V—The High and Glorious AmbitionWinning the Prize Next comes his high and glorious ambition to win the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Every noble life must have an uplift, an attraction, an inspiration, a hope, a vision, a goal of attraction and expectation. Paul had a glowing heart alive with divine enthusiasm. He had caught the light of the Eternal Hills. He had seen afar the vision of the coming glory. He had anticipated the rapture of that hour when he should receive a crown from the glorified Lord. For this all else was counted loss, and “forgetting what is behind,” sacrificing the things that were secondary, he pressed “on toward the goal to win the prize” to which God had called him from on high (Philippians 3:13-14). Disqualification So he speaks to us, in the closing paragraph of this chapter, of the incorruptible crown which he himself set out to win. He reminds us that it is only for a few. “All the runners run, but only one gets the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24), and he is deeply sensible that this prize may be lost. Very solemnly does he speak of the possibility of his preaching the gospel to others and yet being “disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27); not lost, for Paul never contemplated such a prospect or doubted his final salvation, but rejected in the day of award and recompense. The word literally means “disapproved.” Therefore he pressed forward and trampled under foot everything that could hinder his holy ambition. “I beat my body,” he says, “and make it my slave” (1 Corinthians 9:27). The Greek word is, “I buffet my body.” It is the training of the athlete for the arena. It is the self-denial and abstinence from soft indulgences, and everything that could soften or emasculate the strength of manhood. This is what he means. We may have the easy place, if we will. We may take the rose-strewn path, if we want to. We may evade the cross. We may shun the trying ordeal. We may be popular and have things pleasant for a little while. Or we may endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, and beat our body for the incorruptible crown. Some day we will not regret a single tear or sacrifice when the heart’s blood will have congealed into rubies, and the teardrops will have become crystal jewels in an unfading crown. Oh, then we shall be so glad that we were not afraid to sacrifice or suffer for His sake, and be partakers of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that will be revealed!