OUR FATHER WHO MAKES PROVISION FOR HIS SERVANTS IN THE LAW

1 Corinthians chapter 9 verses 1 - 18 records the apostle Paulˋs defense of his spiritual authority over the church of Corinth.

He asserted his apostleship as being one who was operating under his own volition and that he had also directly seen the Lord Jesus Christ. He pointed to the existence of the Corinthian believers as the seal of his apostleship towards them.

Paul, in that authority, wrote to the Corinthians about the rights of apostles and the obligations that the churches had towards them in response to the questioning that was aimed at him regarding his methods and practices likely related to his unmarried status and employment.

1 Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? 2 If I am not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you. For you are the [a]seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

3 My defense to those who examine me is this: 4 Do we have no right to eat and drink? 5 Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? 6 Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working? 7 Who ever goes to war at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk of the flock?

8 Do I say these things as a mere man? Or does not the law say the same also? 9 For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it oxen God is concerned about? 10 Or does He say it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope. 11 If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? 12 If others are partakers of this right over you, are we not even more?

Nevertheless we have not used this right, but endure all things lest we hinder the gospel of Christ. 13 Do you not know that those who minister the holy things eat of the things of the temple, and those who serve at the altar partake of the offerings of the altar? 14 Even so the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel.

15 But I have used none of these things, nor have I written these things that it should be done so to me; for it would be better for me to die than that anyone should make my boasting void. 16 For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if against my will, I have been entrusted with a stewardship. 18 What is my reward then? That when I preach the gospel, I may present the gospel of Christ without charge, that I may not abuse my authority in the gospel.

Other apostles were full time ministers who made a living from the work in the ministry and travelled with their wives as they carried out their callings in the regions they were assigned to. Paul commended this model of ministry as a scripturally valid mode of operations using verses from the law that verified that it was proper to get financial support from those whom the minister served.

Paul however, worked a secular job to earn a living and remained unmarried so that he could serve in the midst of the Corinthians without imposing the burden of his upkeep on them and to those who questioned this pattern, he wrote  that he had volitionally forgone the right to require a living from the Corinthians so that the propagation of the gospel would have no impedance whatsoever from the liability of his sustenance.

He declared that he would rather die than give up the boast that he sustained himself while preaching the gospel and he made the case that because of his calling, preaching the gospel was a duty that he had to fulfill and as such, would get no special reward for fulfilling his duty and so he undertook to derive a reward from his work by doing so at his own expense.

Amen.

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