Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.
— 1 Corinthians 9:19 (NIV)
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.
— 1 Corinthians 9:22b–23 (NIV)
It does not take long to notice how much of our public conversation is built around conflict. Headlines promise that someone has been “destroyed,” “blasted,” “shut down,” or “obliterated,” and interviews are often designed less to understand a guest than to catch them off guard and put them in their place. Even sports reflect the shift: baseball once had its “unwritten rules,” a shared sense that a player did not show up the opposing pitcher or the umpire, and a player who broke those rules was often corrected by his own teammates before anyone else said a word. People were not necessarily more respectful in the past, but there was at least a standard that most people felt obligated to live up to, and that standard has taken a nosedive.
Sadly, the same trend can be found among Christians. Some of the most embarrassing material online comes from Christian websites, blogs, and interviews in which believers seem more interested in shaming the other side than in reaching anyone. The desire to win, and sometimes the desire for revenge, is very human, but it is not helpful, and it is precisely the kind of stumbling block that Paul warns against in 1 Corinthians. Like Jonah, who did not want Nineveh to repent and would rather God had kept them out, we can find ourselves wanting the boundary between “us” and “the other” to grow firmer rather than wanting to cross it.
As our study through 1 Corinthians continues, we come to the second half of chapter 9, where Paul presents his own life as an example of the principle he has been teaching since chapter 8: care for others and the glory of God are more important than our knowledge, freedoms, rights, and privileges.
Do Not Tear Up the Road
Paul has just spent the first half of chapter 9 defending his rights as an apostle, including the right to receive financial support from the churches he serves and the right to bring a believing wife along on his missionary journeys. He establishes those rights from common sense, from the law of Moses, from the practice of the temple, and even from the command of the Lord Himself. Then he explains why he has refused to use them:
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
— 1 Corinthians 9:12b (NIV)
The word translated “hinder” (Greek enkopē) is a vivid one. It comes from a verb meaning “to cut into,” and it was used of an army breaking up a road or destroying a bridge behind it so that a pursuing enemy could not follow. To hinder the gospel, in this sense, is to dig up the road so that no one else can use it, which is very much like locking a door behind us so that no one else can come in.
Paul has already confronted the Corinthians about closing the door intentionally. From the opening chapters of the letter, they had divided themselves into factions, with some claiming to follow Paul, others Apollos, and others Cephas, and that kind of division deliberately keeps “the other” on the outside. In chapters 8 through 10, however, Paul turns to a danger that is just as serious and far easier to overlook: the ways in which we unintentionally tear up the road through our conversation and conduct. A believer exercising a legitimate freedom without regard for a weaker brother, or an apostle insisting on a legitimate right to payment, may never intend to block anyone’s way to Christ, and yet the result can be the same.
Paul’s response is remarkable. Although the Lord has commanded “that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel” (v14), Paul would rather die than give anyone a reason to say that he preached for profit. He cannot boast in preaching itself, since he has been entrusted with the gospel and is compelled to preach it, but he can offer it free of charge, and that freedom from any appearance of self-interest is his reward.
What Does “All Things to All People” Mean?
Paul then states the principle that shapes his entire ministry:
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 Corinthians 9:20–22a (NIV)
Words such as accommodate and contextualize help describe what Paul is doing. He presents the gospel in a way that people from a different culture and background can actually understand, rather than expecting them to first adopt his own culture before they can hear the message. Among Jews, he could observe the customs of the law without compromising the gospel, and among Gentiles, he could set those customs aside while remaining under “Christ’s law.” With the weak, those whose consciences were still tender and easily wounded, he was willing to restrict his own freedom.
Paul is not describing a chameleon who changes his convictions depending on his audience, but rather a servant who is so secure in the gospel that he is free to set aside everything else for the sake of the people in front of him.
Who Are the People Groups in Our Lives?
Missionaries often speak of “people groups,” and the term is helpful. In a country such as India, the caste system separates people into groups that do not ordinarily mix, and anyone hoping to share the gospel must understand those divisions in order to reach each group effectively. Paul encountered Jews and Gentiles, those under the law and those outside it, the strong and the weak, and even (as Romans 14 reminds us) believers who ate meat and those who ate only vegetables.
We encounter just as many groups. We will speak with atheists and agnostics, scientists and skeptics, Muslims and Mormons, people from other countries and other generations, and we would not approach each of them in exactly the same way. Political life provides an especially clear example, since conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, and those at the far edges of each often use the same words to mean very different things. The vocabulary that sounds perfectly ordinary to us may carry an entirely different meaning to the person we are speaking with.
The only reliable way to understand where someone is coming from is to ask. Clarifying questions, patient listening, and a genuine willingness to learn what another person means are not optional techniques for the Christian who wants to become all things to all people; they are the very substance of it.
It is also worth remembering that the most challenging people groups are not always the ones furthest from the church. People who have overcome serious struggles through their own effort, for example, may feel that they have no need for religion, for Jesus, or for the gospel, because they believe they have already solved their own problems. Reaching them requires the same patience and understanding as reaching anyone else.
The Limits of Becoming All Things
Becoming all things to all people does have limits, and Paul himself marks them within the passage. He became like one not having the law, “though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law” (v21). Several boundaries follow from this.
It Is Not Permission to Sin
Becoming all things to all people never means indulging in the sins of the people we hope to reach. The reasoning that says, “I need to participate in this so that I can relate to them,” crosses a line that Paul never crossed, and when we examine it honestly, it usually reveals a motivation other than love for the other person. Paul’s freedom was always freedom under Christ’s law.
It Is Not Permission to Change the Gospel
Beginning in the eighteenth century and accelerating into the nineteenth, many church leaders became desperate to make Christianity appealing to people shaped by the Enlightenment. Scientists and philosophers had concluded that miracles were impossible and that God, if He existed at all, was largely a product of human imagination. In response, some churches decided to quietly remove whatever seemed offensive to the modern mind, including the resurrection of Jesus, in order to present a gospel that enlightened people could accept. Many of those churches still exist, but they continue to decline even as they make more and more compromises.
That approach does not represent what Paul is describing. The gospel was a stumbling block in the first century, and for many of the same reasons, it remains one today:
…but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles
— 1 Corinthians 1:23 (NIV)
Jesus never softened His claims about who He was or what the gospel meant, and we have no authority to lower or alter the gospel to accommodate the culture. We can adjust our vocabulary, our approach, and our personal preferences, but we cannot adjust the message.
We Must Consider How Our Silence Is Understood
Another limit is more difficult to define. If someone says something outrageous in conversation and we do not object, they may reasonably assume that we agree. At the same time, there are people for whom any challenge only makes them more entrenched in their convictions, and there are moments when it may not be appropriate to argue at all. Jesus Himself remained silent before His accusers (Mark 14:61), and while we cannot discern these moments perfectly, His example reminds us that silence is sometimes the most effective response. The challenge is to be aware of what our silence communicates and to choose it out of wisdom rather than fear or convenience.
Do Not Be a Poser
The deepest limit, however, has to do with motivation. From the outside, two people may look as though they are doing exactly the same thing, but what separates them is why they are doing it. Are we trying to fit in so that we can manipulate someone? Are we doing it to feel better about ourselves, to earn a pat on the back from the church, or to position ourselves for leadership? Ambitious young leaders may feel this temptation most acutely, but there is a significant difference between holding a position of leadership and being the kind of leader Paul describes, whose motivations are pure.
In short, don’t be a poser. A poser is someone who pretends to be something he is not, and the effort usually backfires. Anyone who has grown up around cowboys knows that the more an outsider dresses and talks like a cowboy to be accepted, the more outlandish he appears and the more obvious it becomes that he is not part of the group. The same is true across generations: we can learn to understand the language of younger people, and we can genuinely enjoy what they enjoy, but pretending to be one of them in order to win them over is both transparent and manipulative. People can usually sense when someone is interested in them only as a project and does not really care about them.
Genuine care, on the other hand, is difficult to fake and difficult to hide. One speaker on body language observed that all the postures associated with good listening, such as leaning forward, making eye contact, and nodding, come naturally when we actually want to know what the other person thinks. When we do not, our bodies give us away, and others can intuitively tell that we are only waiting for our turn to object. If we want to know whether our motivation is right, we need to ask whether we genuinely care about the person in front of us.
Psychologists call the ability to anticipate how another person will hear and respond to what we say “theory of mind.” The term may be recent, but the idea is not, and Paul clearly practiced it. Part of becoming all things to all people is cultivating the self-awareness to consider what the other person is actually hearing, and part of it is simply caring enough to want to know.
Learning to Listen and Converse Well
There is a great deal of unhelpful material on the Internet, but there are also valuable resources written by Christians who model what Paul describes, people who know how to communicate with those who disagree with them and who are seeking unity rather than trying to embarrass the other side.
Nabeel Qureshi’s memoir, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, offers a moving example. It recounts how a Christian friend patiently and lovingly engaged him over the course of years, asking questions and walking alongside him through Scripture until Nabeel came to faith in Christ. The relationship shows not only how to speak with someone from another background, but why it matters to do so with genuine love.
Greg Koukl’s Tactics is another helpful resource. The title may sound manipulative, but Koukl is careful to explain that he is not describing manipulation at all. Drawing on his own conversations as an apologist, as well as those of his wife, he shows how to engage people who do not share our convictions using questions and vocabulary that open conversations rather than shutting them down. Articles on how to listen well and how to have a constructive disagreement can also be valuable, and they reflect the wisdom Paul gives elsewhere:
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
— Colossians 4:6 (NIV)
For the Sake of the Gospel
Paul concludes this section by explaining why he does all of this: “I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings” (v23).
The phrase “for the sake of” translates the Greek preposition dia, from which we get words such as diameter. Its basic meaning is “through” or “across,” and like most Greek prepositions, its precise sense depends on the grammar and context in which it appears. “For the sake of” can mean “for the benefit of,” but it can also mean “because of” or “on account of.” In this verse, nothing in the construction requires us to choose between those meanings, and both are true to Paul’s experience.
The Gospel Is Paul’s Motivation
In one sense, Paul becomes all things to all people because of the gospel. The gospel transformed him from a persecutor of the church into an apostle, freeing him not only from sin but from the love of sin. He is now enslaved to the love of God, and that love makes him a lover of every person and every people group. The gospel determines his motivation.
The Gospel Is Paul’s Aim
In another sense, Paul does this for the benefit of the gospel and those who will hear it. Negatively, he refuses to dig a hole in the road that would keep anyone from entering the kingdom, and positively, he goes beyond merely avoiding harm and actively becomes all things to all people. His aim is the good of others, that they would believe the gospel and be adopted into God’s family.
The Gospel Is Paul’s Goal
Paul also wants to “share in its blessings.” He is not looking for recognition or advancement, but for the prize of pleasing God, which is the natural desire of someone who has become a child of God. If God is pleased, that is enough.
Paul knew that it was possible to build with the wrong materials. Earlier in the letter he warned that each person’s work will be tested by fire:
If what has been built survives, the builder will be rewarded. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved, even though only as one escaping through the flames.
— 1 Corinthians 3:14–15 (NIV)
If we water down the gospel or manipulate people to gain their approval, we may feel elevated in our position within the church, but we have not done those people any favors. We may escape the burning building, but the people we “reached” through inferior materials may not.
Paul also recognized a more sobering possibility. Elsewhere he acknowledges that Christ can be preached “from false motives” and still bear fruit (Philippians 1:18), which means that people may genuinely believe and enjoy the blessings of the gospel even when the one who preached it did not. Yet the preacher himself may lose the prize. That is why Paul ends chapter 9 with an athlete’s resolve:
Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to 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 9:26–27 (NIV)
We Are Always Becoming
It is significant that Paul says, “I have become all things to all people.” He was not born this way; he became this kind of person, and he continued becoming that person throughout his life. The same is true for us. Becoming all things to all people does not happen automatically, but it happens more effectively when we discipline ourselves the way an athlete trains, not by literally beating our bodies, but by paying attention to the moments when we are merely posing and by honestly asking what our real motivation is and whether we truly care about the other person.
In the end, our motivation, our aim, and our goal are all found in the same place. Our motivation comes from the gospel rather than from personal ambition, our aim is the benefit of others so that they too might believe the gospel, and our ultimate goal is to please God. That is how we live the gospel, and it is why we never outgrow it. We are always becoming more and more of what the gospel calls us to be.
As we go about our week, we can ask ourselves whether our conversations and conduct are building roads for others to come to Christ or quietly tearing them up behind us.