Now it seems to me that the apostle Paul regularly comes under attack by those who read his words, and this is not because of any deception Paul writes nor because of any ill-will to a group of people, as in the planning some insurrection against them. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Although, I must confess that I too have gone through a period of misunderstanding with his words. No, Paul has only one intent, and it is a great thing -- for those of us who understand Paul, Paul is actually heroic in his words and actions, and we are encouraged to be like him, even as he has strongly attempted to be like Christ. No, Paul was a true disciple -- striving to imitate his Master in all things, including suffering and most importantly in love. So I would encourage you to put away your conspiracy theories about Paul -- Paul had only one aim and that was to help people as it was made possible for him to help them. We too should help others like this.

Having read the charge against him as expressed by Michoel Drazin, an anti-missionary consultant in Israel, that Paul "openly advocated 'pious fraud'" [a deeply-biased theory of Drazin's that New Testament writers lied under the pretext of holiness], (Chapter 1, page 2 of Their Hollow Inheritance, G.M. Pub., Safed, Israel © 1990, and on the Net at HTTP://www.drazin.com/chap1.htm), let us review Paul's thinking, as it is found in I Co.9:19-23. Here we see Paul's purpose both for others, as they are living in this world, and for himself. Paul's desire was to share what he knew as the life-giving truth, and therefore, the 'good news' or gospel to all people (see verse 23).

Always in hearing and reading, context is important to our understanding, and we so often seem to forget this, don't we? I am so often disappointed in my own failure to understand things that I have heard and yet that may not have been intended for me to hear, or that I may have heard only partially -- either way removing me and my understanding from the full context of the message. Here's an example: "..he should be shot today as he is walking up to give his speech.." Certainly, this sounds like some evil communication, doesn't it? But, if you already understood that the person speaking was a news broadcaster, perhaps you would have understood that he or she was talking about videoing an important event, instead of murder. And, likewise, we can take Paul's words completely out of context.

Now in I Co.9:19-23, Paul is actually talking about an important aspect of his (and all) missionary work and that we have more recently labelled as 'contextualization'. Paul said, and was saying, that in order for people to correctly understand the gospel, it was necessary for the one presenting it to appear in a form, and to speak in a form, that people could easily relate to. Can you imagine a people who see things under different conditions than you do? Well, actually, Paul was a very intelligent person. He had had a tremendous amount of training and experience, and he knew that every one views the world under different terms. Are you a retail clerk, and yet you imagine that a fisherman, or ship worker, understands things as you do? Do you think you could understand all of his or her needs and desires and priorities? These are sometimes quite different from yours. And, do you imagine, that if you talk to them about your difficulties and passions, that they would completely understand you? In fact, our world-views can all be slightly and sometimes significantly different, and what Paul is saying here is that to communicate effectively it is important for us to identify ourselves with them and speak in terms that they can understand. Paul was willing to do this to relate to people who were radically different from himself, and sometimes, I can imagine, unpleasantly so, for the sake of the Gospel (which is truth itself and worth supporting) and so that people could share in the benefits from understanding it.

Paul was a hero. We should all be heros like him.

For the author's homepage, see Shido
For a Japanese sermon based on I Co.9:19-23, see: Oita Evangelical Christ Church
For Oita Evangelical Christ Church sermon indicies, see: cHaPeL nOaH sErMoN iNdEx