What’s the cost of being “all things to all people”?

Imagine. You’re a Chilean miner for the San Jose gold and copper mine. One day, while you and 32 others were working in the mine, a cave-in occurs, trapping you all inside. You’re 2,300 feet underground and you only have two days’ worth of food. What do you do?

I suppose the more honest question to ask is, what could you do?

But on the outside of the mine, the Chilean government was coordinating an ambitious search and rescue. Rescue workers began drilling holes into the mine through which they sent listening probes in hopes of detecting the survivors. 17 days later, their exact location was discovered. That enabled rescuers to transport food and first-aid to the miners while drilling rigs began boring a wide enough tunnel through which the miners could escape. And on October 13, all 33 miners were rescued.

That rescue operation took 69 days, it involved hundreds of people, and the search and rescue cost upwards of 20 million dollars. But to save those 33 men, it was all worth it.

It’s amazing how seeing people in need of saving puts all costs into perspective. We immediately free up our resources. We stop counting the hours. We’ll roll up our sleeves and throw every fiber of our being into the fray. That’s what the Apostle Paul is saying here. To be all things to all people entails sacrifice – but for the sake of saving even some, it’s all worth it.

The freeness of the gospel - at all possible costs

To really understand Paul’s line of logic in 1 Corinthians 9, we have to go back to the beginning of this chapter. There, Paul lists a series of rights or freedoms that he has as an Apostle – rights and freedoms he willingly sacrifices for the sake of the gospel. He is free to get married and take a believing wife along with [him], as do the other apostles, but Paul never did; for Paul, being a bachelor freed him from the work-family balance and allowed him to give undivided attention to meet people, evangelize, plant churches, and train the next generation of Christian leaders. Paul had the right to food and drink – but Paul would also tell you he knows what it is like to go without food and drink (2 Corinthians 11:27). Paul had a right to financial compensation from the Corinthians, too. Christ himself commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

But Paul never asked for so much as a penny from the Corinthians. While he served there, he sacrificed his right to a salary and worked as a tentmaker to provide for himself.

Why? Because receiving compensation from the Corinthians would somehow negatively impact his witness and hinder the gospel of Christ.

Instead of being seen as all the other travelling lecturers or spiritual charlatans who blow into town, say their spiel, and disingenuously collect their pay, Paul wanted to offer the gospel free of charge.

Paul was willing to not make full use of his rights and freedoms for the sake of removing any barriers or obstacles that stood between people and the Savior that he proclaimed. After all, the gospel is the good news of God’s love for the entire world – that God so loved the world that he would willingly sacrifice himself for the sins of the world! We needed to be rescued. And for Paul, seeing people in need of saving put all costs into perspective. For the sake of reaching his Corinthian context, it meant forgoing a salary. Rescuing them was worth it.

This example of setting aside of his rights and freedoms for the sake of proclaiming the gospel uniquely to a given context is just one of many examples in Paul’s ministry. Though he was a Roman citizen, he wouldn’t cite that legal status at the expense of proclaiming the gospel – just as Paul would cite that Roman status when it was advantageous for the gospel. Paul had no problem reminding his Jewish Christian audience that the Jewish ceremonial laws were “a shadow of the things to come.”

But Paul doesn’t exercise the freedom he has in Christ to the detriment of the message of the gospel; that same Paul would lovingly abide by those Jewish customs – if it meant getting close to members of the Jewish community so as to win a hearing for the gospel. Paul had no problem sparring with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of Greece – but the fact he was able to do that showed that Paul wasn’t afraid to shoulder up with people not like him, listen to them, and learn to speak their language – all for the sake of communicating the gospel for them to them.

Faith comes from hearing this message. Paul became “all things to all people” that by all possible means, he might rescue some.

“all things to all people” entails radical self-sacrifice

That call has been extended by God to us. And such a calling requires we not only strive to be faithful to the Word of God, but be faithful with the Word of God, too. Faithful handling of Scripture necessitates knowing God’s Word, but also knowing your unique context. It means imitating Christ – becoming a servant to all. We enslave ourselves to learning and loving the people we are called to reach – tailoring our gospel presentation to every unique audience. Paul, for example, spoke Greek in one context, and then spoke Aramaic in other. Paul would eat pork at one table, and refrain from eating it at another. Paul would heavily cite Old Testament in one context and cite it less in another.

Paul would set his liberties aside for the sake of communicating the universality of the gospel – that whether his audience was Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, they had a Savior from sin, death, and hell, and his name is Jesus; that’s good news for the world, and good news for the world is news that we, by all possible means, want to share, isn’t it? After all, people’s eternities are hanging in the balance. And when people need rescuing, the cost is put into perspective. All our flexibility, all our accommodation, all our self-sacrificing for the lost – it’s all worth it, even if all that sacrificing only resulted in the saving of some.

Why wouldn’t we want to be all things to all people?

is it worth it?

Several years ago, I was guest preaching at a small church in Wisconsin. Before the service, I got to talking with a woman who was a member there. During the conversation, I shared how I had served as a foreign missionary for two years in East Asia, how exciting it was to learn the history and culture of the people, how amazing it was to share the gospel in a language not originally my own, and how blessed we are as Christians – called to carry the good news to the world – to not have to travel very far, as God has planted people from every nation in our own backyard.

But this woman didn’t share my excitement.

“That’s all fine,” she said, “but if people are going to move to America, they better learn to speak English.”

You could see the fear in her eyes; there was a lot that could have been said to her, but I simply told her I was really glad there weren’t policies like that where I was serving in East Asia.

Fear really can get in the way of us telling people about Jesus. But Paul is alluding to something else getting in the way of giving Jesus to others – and that’s a lack of humility. We like the idea of winning as many [people] as possible for Christ, but we don’t like Paul’s sentiment of becoming a slave to everyone to do it.

We don’t want to change – not our rhythms, not our routines, and not how we carry out Christ’s commission. Because change frequently comes with discomfort. And we want to be comfortable Christians. Comfortability has become our golden calf – and we’ll sacrifice all the wrong things to worship it – including a love for the reaching the lost. We’ll busy ourselves vying for our own preferred style of worship, we don’t even bother to consider how our worship style is inherently part of our outreach and should be tailored to reach our target audience.

We exhaust ourselves quibbling with each other over petty things, when all the while, there are people spiritually trapped in the cave of sin, and without outside intervention, they will die.

People need rescuing.

you were worth it

But that’s exactly why Jesus came. Our world needed rescuing.

When Jesus had every right to retain the honor, splendor, and glory that was due him, he set that aside for a time – to make himself a servant – a slave to all – including you.

The Lord of all creation didn’t come to be served, but to serve, and to give up his life for the world he had made. Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be retained or exercised for his own benefit or advantage, but he emptied himself, taking on the very nature of a servant – becoming obedient to death on a cross.

It’s Jesus who tangibly assures us our lives have meaning, purpose, and value – because he would come to die and redeem us. It’s Jesus who won for us absolute forgiveness; he, as God, has the right to forgive our wickedness and remember our sins no more. Jesus is who gives us life in the face of death – because he lives. Jesus was “all things to all people” because he desired that “all people be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.” To rescue a world from sin, suffering, and death, Jesus would take our sin on himself, suffer, and die – to give us life. And how is the message of your God’s undying love for you not the greatest message ever?

When the sickness of our sin would have left us dead and dying, our Savior burst into our broken world like a field medic to give us the antidote we needed – just as he had in the life of Paul. Paul had reason to be proud, but Paul’s “boast” wasn’t that he was a proclaimer of the gospel; he, self-admittedly, didn’t have a choice in that matter: it was Christ who rescued him. It was Christ who called him to faith, just as it was Christ who commissioned him to be his apostle and proclaim his saving name to the world.

Whether Paul sprung out of bed or merely rolled out of bed every morning to proclaim the good news of Jesus, in the end, it didn’t matter to him: Paul was under orders by God to share the gospel, and the urgency, the eternal relevance and significance, and the goodness of that life-saving, life-giving good news compelled Paul to preach it. It compelled him, as it compels us, to be “all things to all people”.

Christ’s self-giving, self-sacrificial love for us not only moves us to love the lost, but empowers us to be “all things” for them.

Any cost to reach them is put in perspective.

saving the lost is worth the cost

Not long ago, I was speaking with a woman who grieving the changes that were happening within her church.

No, the changes hadn’t come at a cost of biblical doctrine, her churches confession of faith, or their fidelity to credal Christianity and biblical orthodoxy.

But the changes were coming at a cost to her comfortability.

She didn’t care for the new music. She didn’t like how different everything was done. She didn’t like having to rethink everything their church had historically done and had grown comfortable doing. She didn’t like the rigor of reacquainting herself with the surrounding community that was constantly changing.

This woman also was grieving the fact her children had weren’t going to church with her anymore.

“I know these changes aren’t easy for you,” I said, “but if these changes meant your kids would come back to church, wouldn’t these changes be worth it?”

If your loved ones were buried in that collapsed mine, wouldn’t their rescue be worth the cost of 20 million dollars? Without a doubt.

May Christ’s self-giving love for us free us to freely give our lives to be all things for all people – that we might save some.