My Rights
“But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.”
Today’s Text: 1 Corinthians 9:11-18 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
Whether one is a preacher of the gospel or a recipient of the preaching of the gospel, Paul leaves no room to wiggle out of the calling we have as followers of Jesus Christ. “What then is my reward?” … To “not make full use of my rights.”
No one can really understand what that means except those who have conscientiously decided in their hearts that following Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is the very top priority of their lives.
Because that is what Jesus meant when He said -
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
— Mark 8:34b
That is also why the word of God says -
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
— Isaiah 55:9
But that is also why Jesus had to go to the cross for us—precisely because God’s ways are higher, God’s thoughts are higher.
And yet, when we are saved by the gospel, we are called to strive to be like Christ in going to the cross, even knowing that we cannot truly be like Him. We serve Christ and His gospel, because that is the most important thing for our lives. Faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ is what has saved us and continues to sanctify us.
In other words, simply to receive our salvation and not collect on our “reward” is to miss out on the fullness of life that Christ promises us—and along with it, trials of many kinds.
It’s almost as if the trials of many kinds that we encounter when we take up our own cross is the vehicle or the platform through which we receive the fullness of life that life as a follower of Jesus Christ promises to us.
Such spiritual principles of discipleship continually lead us to ask ourselves, “What does that really look like in my life, and how is that kind of life even possible.” And I realize too—I am asking myself those questions because my flesh is acting as if it is deathly allergic to suffering of any kind.
But really, that suffering in the flesh comes from the prospect of not following me-myself-and-i, not getting what me-myself-and-i wants. We can never truly experience our reward without mortifying that flesh.
Father, Your ways are truly higher. Your thoughts are incomprehensible to me-myself-and-i. Yet Your Spirit dwells in me through faith. And Your Spirit plants in me a seed of hope that sprouts into the abundance of life through faith—through the cross. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
