When I was in elementary school, I put together a terrarium in my bedroom and had two green anole lizards for pets. This type of lizard, which lives throughout the southeast, is sometimes called American chameleon and is not related to the chameleons of Madagascar. These lizards are able to change the coloration of their hides in shades between green and brown in order to hunt insects and avoid predators. I loved to sit in my room and watch them as they scurried around the terrarium, changing colors as they climbed onto the green plants or darted across the bare soil on the bottom of the enclosure. I was mesmerized.
This passage has often made me think of Paul as a chameleon, where he sought to be someone who could preach the gospel in such a way that it would reach all people wherever they were at the time they heard it. The way Paul writes here may be hard for us in twenty-first century America to understand. That’s why I’m thankful for Eugene Petersen’s The Message, a paraphrase Bible, which helps me when I come across a difficult passage like this one. The part of this passage that stands out most clearly in Peterson’s work reads, “I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever.”
God does not desire that the message of the Gospel be reserved for any one single group of people. He wishes for all people from all walks of life to know the grace that we can receive through Jesus Christ. Even as I write those words, though, I must admit that it can be difficult to follow the example that Paul offers to us. I don’t like to step outside of my comfort zone and “become all things to all people,” even though to do so means that “I might save some.” I can grow comfortable and complacent working with people who are like me, who think like me, and who believe like me, even though I know that this is not truly the mission God has placed upon the world.