Should Christians try to please other people, or not?

Paul uses the same Greek verb, areskō, in all three verses, but he is speaking of two different aims. In Romans and 1 Corinthians, pleasing others means putting their good before your own wishes. Romans 15:2 says at once what kind of pleasing it means: “for his good to edification”. The verse before forbids pleasing ourselves, and the model is Christ, who “pleased not himself” (15:3). In 1 Corinthians 10:33 Paul explains himself: “not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved”. He gave up his own rights and habits, such as eating meat that troubled someone else’s conscience, so as not to put needless obstacles in anyone’s way (10:28–33; 9:19–22).

In Galatians 1:10 pleasing men means letting human approval decide what you say and do. Paul had been accused of trimming his gospel to win favour. He replies that he seeks God’s approval, not men’s, and he has just pronounced a curse, twice, on anyone who preaches another gospel (1:8–9), which is hardly the way to be popular. Barnes takes ‘yet’ (eti) to look back to Paul’s former life, when he was making a name for himself in Judaism (1:13–14); he had given that aim up to serve Christ.

So Paul gives way to people for their good in matters of personal preference, but never in the message itself or in obedience to God. That is how the same man can write that he speaks “not as pleasing men, but God” (1 Thessalonians 2:4), and also that “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).

The same distinction for servants

Paul draws the same line when he writes to slaves. They are to “please them well in all things” (Titus 2:9), yet not “as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ” (Ephesians 6:6). Pleasing others is right when it is done as service to Christ, and wrong when the approval of others becomes the goal.