The Gospel Above All

Most of us have a list of things we feel we have earned. The right to be recognized for hard work. The right to be compensated fairly. The right to live the way we choose. These are not small things — in many cases, they are legitimate. They are real. And yet the apostle Paul, writing to a church in the ancient city of Corinth, makes a decision that most of us would find almost incomprehensible: he takes a long list of rights he genuinely possessed, and he lays every single one of them down. Not because he was weak. Not because he was confused about what he deserved. He did it because something mattered to him more than all of them put together — the unhindered advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul is writing to a church that had lost its bearings. The believers in Corinth were shrewd about claiming their freedoms — they ate whatever they wanted, pursued their preferences, and expected to be served. Paul had spent eight chapters carefully reorienting them, and now he turns the lens on himself. He had the right to receive financial support from the churches he planted. He had the right to travel with a spouse. He had the right to step away from his tent-making trade and give himself entirely to ministry — just as the other apostles did. These were not opinions. They were authorized by Scripture, supported by common sense, and confirmed by the command of Jesus himself. And Paul used none of them at Corinth. He chose, instead, to preach free of charge — so that no one could ever accuse him of mixed motives, and so that nothing would become a stumbling block between a lost person and the gospel they needed to hear.

“Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.”  — 1 Corinthians 9:16

What is perhaps most striking about this chapter is not the sacrifice itself — it is the reason behind it. Paul is not surrendering his rights out of reluctant duty. He is doing it because he has been laid hold of by something he cannot put down. “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel,” he writes — and in those words you can hear a man who has been changed from the inside out. Paul had not chosen the gospel the way a person chooses a career. He was stopped on a road to Damascus, blinded by a light he wasn’t looking for, and commissioned by the risen Christ to carry a message to the nations. From that moment forward, the gospel was not something Paul did. It was something that had been done to him, and it drove everything else. His reward, he tells the Corinthians, was not a salary. His reward was the joy of preaching without charge — the deep satisfaction of removing every possible obstacle so that the message could travel freely.

That same gospel-above-all conviction shapes the way Paul relates to every kind of person. He writes that he has “become all things to all people” — and it is one of the most misunderstood phrases in his entire body of writing. Paul is not describing a lack of conviction. He is not a man who says whatever the room wants to hear. He is describing something far more costly: a willingness to cross whatever cultural, social, or personal distance stands between him and the person he is trying to reach. To Jews, he lived as a Jew. To Gentiles, he set aside his Jewish customs. To new and fragile believers, he laid down his freedoms so their tender consciences would not be wounded. He never changed the message. He changed how far he was willing to go to deliver it. The gospel did not become more convenient or more comfortable for its audience. Paul did.

There is a paradox at the center of this chapter that deserves careful attention. Paul describes himself as “free from all” — belonging to no human master, owing nothing to any court of human opinion. And then in the very next breath, he says he has made himself “a slave to everyone.” For most people, those two things cannot coexist. You are either free or you are a servant. Paul would say that only a person who is truly free can choose, without bitterness or resentment, to serve absolutely everyone. When your identity is not held hostage to what other people think of you, when your worth is not dependent on being recognized or compensated or appreciated, you have nothing left to protect. And a person with nothing to protect can give themselves away completely. That is the freedom the gospel produces — not freedom from responsibility, but freedom from self-protection. And it is only possible for people who have discovered that their standing before God in Christ is already settled.

“Although I am free from all and not anyone’s slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone, in order to win more people.”  — 1 Corinthians 9:19

Paul closes the chapter with an image every Corinthian would have recognized immediately. The Isthmian Games were held just outside the city, and the athletes who competed in them trained under strict rules for months — watching their diet, regulating their rest, submitting their bodies to whatever discipline the prize demanded. Paul looks at that kind of focused, sacrificial preparation and says: that is what the Christian life requires. Not the casual Christianity that drifts along on good intentions, but the life of someone who has looked at the prize and decided it is worth training for. “I discipline my body and bring it under strict control,” he writes. The language is vivid — the image of a boxer who has decided that his greatest opponent is himself, and who will not let comfort, appetite, or laziness cost him what matters most.

What makes Paul’s warning in verse 27 so sobering is that it is addressed to a preacher. He is not warning the immature or the uncommitted. He is warning himself. After all the sermons, after all the miles traveled and churches planted and letters written, he could still find himself disqualified — not from salvation, but from the faithful finish he had devoted his life to. It is the kind of honesty that only comes from a man who takes the race seriously. And it is a reminder that no amount of past faithfulness is a substitute for present discipline. The race is not over until it is over. The prize belongs to those who finish well.

This Sunday, we will open 1 Corinthians 9 together and sit with one of the most searching questions this letter puts to its readers: Is the gospel above all in your life — above your rights, your preferences, your comfort, your body? Paul answered that question with everything he had. His life was not organized around what he was owed. It was organized around what the world most desperately needed. That kind of life is not produced by trying harder. It is produced by the same encounter Paul had on that road to Damascus — the moment a person is stopped in their tracks by the risen Christ and never quite the same again. If you haven’t had that moment, we would love to talk with you. If you have, we hope Sunday’s message calls you, as it calls all of us, to run like the prize is real.

Join us this Sunday

Union Avenue Baptist Church  |  2181 Union Avenue

Sunday Worship  |  10:45am  |  In person & online at unionavenue.org