Free Enough to Lose
1 Corinthians 6:7b - “Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?”
Paul asks two questions here that go against the grain of everything in us. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? He’s speaking to people with a legitimate grievance and a strong case, and he tells them there’s another road to take: absorb the wrong, accept the loss, and leave it there. But every instinct in us recoils from this.
We hear words like that and brace to obey them by sheer willpower, swallowing the unfairness, playing the martyr while resentment quietly pools underneath. But Paul is pointing at something much freer, and the clue sits in the form of his words. He puts it as a question, and the question assumes that something has already happened to us.
Here’s what has happened: in Christ, we’ve been handed an inheritance that cannot be touched. Peter calls it imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us. Think back to that ruined estate in the courts, every coin swallowed by the fight. Nothing like that can ever happen to what God is keeping for you. And if your real wealth is beyond the reach of any thief, then being wronged cannot actually make you poor. Someone already rich beyond losing can afford to be cheated of a few coins. That is the freedom hiding underneath Paul’s strange question.
And we’re being asked to walk a road our Lord walked first, only He did it on an infinitely larger scale. When He was reviled, He didn’t revile in return; when He suffered, He made no threats. He absorbed the greatest injustice in history, the spotless one condemned in the place of the guilty, and He did it without grasping for vindication, entrusting Himself instead to the Father who judges justly. The wrong done to Him was real, and He let it land on Himself so that we could go free. This is the very life now living inside everyone who belongs to him.
So we absorb the wrong and leave it unavenged, trusting the same Father Jesus trusted, the One who keeps perfect books and misses nothing. The wrong still mattered; we simply hand it to the only Judge who will get it perfectly right. And in that handing-over, we’re living out the life of Christ Himself, who gave up His rights for our sake. This is part of what it means to be a Surrendered Servant: someone who has signed over the deed to their own rights and can lose a battle without losing their peace.
There’s a strange and beautiful lightness waiting on the other side of this. The grip loosens. The ledger closes. You stop carrying a debt you were never meant to collect, and you find that the freedom was never in winning. It was in being free enough to lose.
Today: Find a place where you can be quiet for a few minutes, and bring to mind a single wrong that was done to you, something you’ve been holding, keeping a record of, waiting to collect on. Simply hold it before God, and in the silence, hand it to Him. Let go of your right to settle the account, and trust the Father who judges justly to keep it. Let this be the place you finally put the weight down.
Prayer: “Father, thank You for an inheritance no one can take from me, kept safe in heaven while I walk around down here. Thank you that your Son absorbed the worst injustice ever done, opening a way for me to go free. Because my treasure is secure in You, I can loosen my grip on the small accounts I keep, because in Christ, I have nothing left to lose that truly matters! Amen.”
-PK