Paul’s Cultural Penetration and Strategy
All foreigners must have a point of entry into an alien culture. In opportunities to minister on several occasions in Pakistan, I have gone through immigration with the proper documents. Once in that country, I endeavor to assimilate as best I can: eating with chapatti, sitting cross-legged on the floor, following customs of greetings and protocol for passing food.
But even as I don the salwar kameez, I know that my cultural penetration is superficial at best. What penetration strategy is necessary? Should I relocate to that country, learn the language, study its history, art, music, and politics and engage in its economy? Certainly we need men who are willing to do such things in order to penetrate into cultures for Christ. But what does Paul emphasize as integral to his strategy?
First, we must be confident in our identity and freedom in Christ: I am free from all men (v19a). We must be free from all men and all cultures, so as not to be defined by any other point of reference than Jesus Christ. Nothing and no one can displace our allegiance to Jesus Christ.
“Free from all men – what a weight these few words carry! Paul had broken with his entire past, with his own nation, and was not understood by many of his fellow believers. He had learned to endure envy and hate, to face danger and persecution, to look death in the face again and again – alone, depending only up his Lord. He [would not] bow to the opinions and the will of men. He is free, he enjoys the whole of Christian freedom, he is wholly sure of himself, he is dependent on no man, he is proud with a sacred pride, unyielding to the demands of any man.”21
This freedom is not that of that the Stoic who, by means of cauterizing his affections, detaches and isolates himself from men in his subjective feelings-free fortress.
Paul is speaking about an objective, real freedom. In Christ he is truly free. He stands justified before his Divine Judge, free from condemnation. He has received the gift of the Spirit of adoption and enjoys the liberty of the sons of God. As a son of God, he is now free to be a peacemaker, and ambassador of reconciliation. He is free as Christ’s freeman. It was Augustine who said: “Man is most free when controlled by God alone.”
Second, we must exercise our freedom by making ourselves slaves: for though I am free from all men, I made myself a slave to all (v19a,b). Here is the key to Paul’s missionary strategy: voluntary enslavement by a liberated freeman! “Paul does not say, ‘I let all men (or any man) make a slave of me.’ To be made a slave [of men] is the very subversion of Christianity – 1 Cor 7:23 You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.”22
Paul refuses to deny his freedom in Christ. He will not relinquish his allegiance to His King and the culture of the Kingdom. That Kingdom transcends and survives every passing earthly kingdom, for it is the Kingdom of Him whose name is above every named that is named, in this age and in the age to come (Eph 1:21).
But, for the sake of the gospel (v23), Paul transforms himself into a δούλoj – a lowly slave without privilege or personal prerogative. A δούλoj is a servant of the lowest rank who simply does what he’s told to do: the menial, undesirable tasks. It was Martin Luther who said: “A Christian man is a most free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian man is a most dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”
Why would the free citizen of the Kingdom of God which is supreme over all earthly kingdoms, voluntarily enslave himself to all men and become as all men, yet without compromise to his King?
Because, thirdly, this method is the most productive way to evangelize and advance the rule of King Jesus in this present age: that I might win the more. “Let it be understood that [Paul] is not vying with other apostles to bring in the most converts. Instead, he hopes to gain more adherents with the strategy of being a slave than by any other method.”23
Succinctly stated, here is Paul’s missionary strategy: I make myself a slave to all. Here is his point of entry into foreign cultures: he assumes the role of a servant, he adapts culturally as best he can without moral compromise and then seeks to serve others, assuming the lowest place in the social order and doing those things most helpful to advance the gospel.
21. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians, 375.
22. Ibid., 374.
23. Simon Kistemaker, Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 305.