1 Corinthians 9:16

It is a ministry of necessity that Christ calls for, that the world needs, that a revived Church supplies today. We need not ministers that may or that will, but ministers that must preach the gospel. We need members not that may or that will, but that must live the gospel.

I. The work. They preach the gospel. (1) Without opening his lips to preach, or putting his hand to missionary work, every one who bears Christ's name either helps or hinders the gospel by his spirit and his life. Thousands of opportunities are thrown away through thoughtlessness and a self-pleasing, worldly habit of mind. (2) Another department of ministry is word and work directly contributed to the kingdom of Christ. The methods and opportunities are manifold and various as the characters and circumstances of Christians. "She hath done what she could," is the standard of measurement.

II. The motive. It is worthy of remark that the Apostle confesses frankly that he was kept at his work as a slave is by the sound of the whip behind him. Look at some of the particular forces that press a human soul to diligence in the work of the Lord. (1) The love of Christ constraining it; (2) the new appetite of the new creature; (3) the need of a sinning, suffering world. The life that is placed under the play of these three kindred powers will be an active life. These three may well stir the stiffest out of all his fastenings to the earth, and send him off, like flaming fire or stormy winds, on errands of mercy at God's command and for man's good.

W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul, p. 182.

References: 1 Corinthians 9:17.—F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi., p. 207. 1 Corinthians 9:22.—E. Jenkins, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxiii., p. 280. 1 Corinthians 9:24.—J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons, p. 81; F. W. Farrar, In the Days of thy Youth, p. 275; H. E. Manning, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. i., p. 145; T. Kelly, Pulpit Trees, p. 283.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27The Race and the Prize.

I. The prize, in the contest that St. Paul speaks of, is a different kind of prize from that which these Corinthians were seeking after in their games. It was not a light thing, as men call lightness, which these racers sought after. The man who seeks to be wondered at because he is so rich, or because he is so learned, or even because he is so kind and charitable,—this man seeks just the same sort of reward that the runners and the wrestlers and the leapers and the throwers among the Corinthians coveted. St. Paul was a man who had as hard a fight to fight in this world as you have. Dreams would not have satisfied him any more than they would you; he wanted realities, he complained of the things men in general are seeking after, not because they are too substantial, but because they are not substantial enough, because there is no food in them to content the appetites of hungry men. He desired to know God, and desiring this he did not desire a vain thing; he desired the most real of all things—he desired that which the spirit of you and of me and of every man on this earth is desiring, and which we must have, or perish discontented and miserable.

II. I have shown you how this race differed from the race to which St. Paul compared it. Now I will show you wherein they are both alike. (1) They are alike in this, that the prize is set before all. (2) All run, but some only receive the prize. (3) The races resemble each other in the conduct of those who do win the race and obtain the prize. They keep under their bodies and bring them into subjection. St. Paul does not make it any merit to restrain the body from its indulgences and lusts: it is merely a point of wisdom which no one who is really in earnest, really means to seek God and His glory, can neglect. We do neglect it, alas! but we do it at our peril; we neglect it, because we neglect, at the same time, the thought of the glorious prize which God is offering us, that prize of being found in Christ, that prize of awaking up in His likeness, and of being satisfied with it.

F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons, p. 89.

1 Corinthians 9:25I. We may take it as an undoubted fact that Christianity does make a vast difference as regards self-denial, by strengthening and multiplying the motives which induce us to submit to it, and by infusing into each man a higher nature offering a Divine help which tends to make self-denial easy and delightful. But does Christianity, which so much increases our power to endure self-denial, make any alteration in our conception of the nature of self-denial? Does it turn it from a means into an end, or condemn pleasure as being in itself evil?

II. Before answering this I will revert to another consideration which distinguishes the self-denial of the believer from that of the unbeliever. While the agnostic recognises a comparatively superficial duty to man alone, the Christian recognises besides a paramount and exhaustless duty to God. The secret of the Christian's strength is faith, the sight of Him who is invisible. But to maintain this faith with vigour much self-denial is required. With the Christian, as with other men, what is out of sight is in danger of being out of mind, and strong resolution and steady perseverance are needed to overcome this tendency. And besides the self-denial which is thus deliberately chosen, there is the self-denial which is impulsive. It was no thought either of duty or expediency which prompted David's refusal to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem when his soldiers brought it to him at the hazard of their lives. So it was neither duty nor expediency which caused St. Paul to rejoice that he was allowed to share in the sufferings of Christians; it was that delight to which none of us can be entirely strangers, the delight of sacrificing something for a friend, and so giving a deeper utterance to our affection, and, as it were, realising it to ourselves. I return now to the question I asked before. Must not a change like this, in the scope of self-denial, necessitate a change also in our conception of self-denial? The question is, which is the truer form of Christianity, ascetic Christianity in either of its developments, puritanic or monastic, or what we may call Shakespearian Christianity? In the Bible we never find the ascetic disposition reckoned among the fruits of the Spirit, nor do ascetic practices form a prominent portion of the Christian's armour. The virtues and duties on which our Lord and His apostles lay stress are the virtues and duties of everyday life. The great mischief of wrong asceticism is that it confounds men's ideas of right and wrong, and shuts them up in a little ecclesiastical world of their own, where vice and virtue are thrust into the background by a crowd of imaginary sins and imaginary virtues. Of such a system it may be said that Christianity has had few more dangerous enemies, whether we regard it in its effect on those who have accepted it or on those who have been repelled by it.

J. B. Mayor, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, Feb. 26th, 1880.

1 Corinthians 9:25Christian Temperance.

I. To be temperate, in the primary sense of the word, is to be under command, self-governed, to feel the reins of our desires, and to be able to check them. It is obvious that this of itself implies a certain amount of prudence, to know when, at what point, to exercise this control. There is such a thing as negative as well as positive intemperance. God made His world for our use; He gave us our faculties to be employed. If we use not the one and employ not the other, then, though we do not usually call such an insensibility by the name of intemperance, it certainly is a breach of temperance, the very essence of which is to use God's bounties in moderation, to employ our faculties and desires, but so as to retain the guidance and check over them. And such being the pure moral definition of temperance, let us proceed to base it on Christian grounds, to ask why and how the disciple of Christ must be temperate.

II. Our text will give us ample reason why. The disciple of Christ is a combatant, contending in a conflict in which he has need of all the exercise of all his powers. He has ever, in the midst of a visible world, to be ruled and guided by his sense of a world invisible. For this purpose he needs to be vigilant and active. He cannot afford to have his faculties dulled by excess, or his energies relaxed by sloth. He strives for the mastery, and therefore he must be temperate in all things.

III. A Christian man must be temperate in his religion. It is not a passion, carrying him out of his place in life and its appointed duties; nor a fancy, leading him to all kinds of wild notions, requiring constant novelty to feed it and keep it from wearying him; nor, again, is it a charm, to be sedulously gone through as a balm to his conscience. It is a matter demanding the best use of his best faculties. Temperance must also be shown in the intellectual life, in opinions and in language. The end of all is our sanctification by God's Spirit to God's glory; the perfection, not of stoical morality, but of Christian holiness.

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. v., p. 199.

References: 1 Corinthians 9:26.—E. M. Goulburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion, p. 191. 1 Corinthians 9:27.—C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 108. 1 Corinthians 10:1.—G. T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 141. 1 Corinthians 10:1-5.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 481; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 89. 1 Corinthians 10:1-6.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 22; vol. viii., p. 88. 1 Corinthians 10:3, 1 Corinthians 10:4.—J. Edmunds, Fifteen Sermons, p. 164. 1 Corinthians 10:4.—C. Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons, p. 282; W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice, p. 176; C. J. Elliott, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 53; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. iii., p. 87. 1 Corinthians 10:6.—Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 109. 1 Corinthians 10:7.—T. Wilkinson, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 1; R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons, p. 95.