In 1 Corinthians 9:22, Paul writes, “To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” Dr. Darrell Hall, who spoke on preaching across generations at the Jude 3 Project’s virtual preaching conference, calls it a passage “that a lot of us have oftentimes quoted,” and it is usually quoted to justify adapting to an audience. Read in context, though, the verse raises a narrower question: What was Paul’s flexibility attached to, and what did he refuse to bend?
The surrounding chapter gives a clear answer. Paul gives up rights, customs and preferences. He does not revise what he proclaims. In the verse just before, he binds himself to Christ in a parenthesis that is easy to skip. The pastors and teachers gathered here, nearly all speaking to Jude 3 Project audiences, apply the same order to preaching today. The text comes first, read whole and with Christ at its center. Adapting to a people comes after that, and the hot-button topic comes last.
Their warning is that the gospel rarely bends first in the sermon on the controversial issue. It bends earlier, when a passage is read through an unhealed wound, a generational preference or a crowd’s appetite for a shout, and the result is announced as the Word of God. Following that warning means reading a handful of passages the way these voices read them: 1 Corinthians 9, Ezra 3, Acts 15, Genesis 22, Judges 19, Proverbs 22 and Numbers 13.