Human Rights - Part 1

Applies to contents of this very blog.
But does it apply to me personally?

Where do rights come from?
How do I know what my rights are?
To what extent should I assert my rights?

I’ve been mulling over these questions for a couple of weeks. An unfortunate consequence of childhood is that I sometimes didn’t know how to balance things I heard. I have heard people describe their experience of entire sanctification as, “I gave up all of myself to God. I’ve given up my rights. I’m holding nothing back. I’m completely surrendered to His will.” As a child, hearing “I’ve given up my rights” conveyed the impression that there must have been something wrong with having rights.

I started working with 1 Corinthians for a class project this semester. I was surprised to see Paul affirming his own rights repeatedly! That drove me to ask the questions above.

I started in the New Testament because that's where I found a believer talking about his personal rights and because I'm more familiar with Greek than Hebrew. The word Paul uses to talk about his rights in 1 Corinthians is ἐξουσία, so I started by surveying the uses of that word. Here's what I've learned so far.

Godly humans have no problem affirming their rights. Paul does so most frequently, but he also wrote more letters than anyone else in the New Testament. Paul tells us that a Christian has the right to eat any kind of food that doesn’t violate his conscience (1 Cor. 8:8-9). Paul affirms that as an apostle he has the right to eat and drink (1 Cor. 9:4), to have a Christian wife (1 Cor. 9:5), to refrain from working (1 Cor. 9:6), to receive benefits from a church he founded (1 Cor. 9:12), to enjoy luxuries due to his position (1 Cor. 9:18), and to have compensation for his Kingdom work (2 Thess. 3:8-9). The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we have benefits in the new covenant that even those who worked in the tabernacle under the old covenant did not have a right to (Heb. 13:10).

Rights are a consequence of authority. That is, you have rights if 1) you have authority personally or 2) a person or institution that does have authority has given/ordained rights for you. Paul is an example of someone who had authority personally which was the basis for his rights. He was 1) an apostle and 2) the founder of both the church at Corinth and the church at Thessalonica, and he reminds both churches of his rights that stem from both of those grounds for authority. An example of rights being given is John 1:12, where John tells us that Jesus gives those who receive Him the right to become children of God.
I've just started mining what Scripture says about the topic. This post will hopefully be followed by others. There are plenty of directions for expansion!