Paul’s rights as an apostle
9
📚✭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 📚✭Even if I am not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.3 📚✭This is my defense to those who judge me: 4 📚✭Have we not the right to eat and to drink? 5 📚Have we not the right to take along a wife, a sister in the Lord just as the other apostles, and as the brothers of the Lord✭, and Cephas✭? 6 📚Or have only I and Barnabas not the right to refrain from working for a living?
7 📚✭Whoever 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 from the flock? 8 📚Do I say these things on my own as a man? Does not the Law also say the same thing? 9 📚For it is written in the law of Moses,
You shalt not muzzle the mouth
of the ox that treads out
the corn.
Is it for oxen that God is concerned? 10 📚Or does he say this altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, so that the one who plows might plow in hope, and the one who threshes in hope might share in his hope. 11 📚✭If we have sown spiritual seed✭ in you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things✭? 12 📚✭If others are taking part in this privilege among you, should we not even more? Nevertheless we have not used this privilege, but endure all things, so we would not hinder the gospel of Christ.
13 📚Do you not know that those who work among the holy things of the temple eat of the offerings of the temple? And those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 📚✭Even so the Lord has ordained 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 to me like this. For I consider it better to die than have anyone make this boast of mine void. 16 📚For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast about, for necessity presses on me. Yes, woe is me, if I do not preach the gospel! 17 📚Now if I do this willingly, I have a reward, but if against my will, still a stewardship of the gospel has been entrusted to me. 18 📚What is my reward then? That when I preach the gospel, I may set forth the gospel of Christ without charge, that I do not misuse my privilege in the gospel.
Paul’s use of his freedom
19 📚✭For though I am free from bondage to all, yet I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 📚✭And to the Jews I became like a Jew, that I might win the Jews; to those who are under the Law, like one under the Law, that I might win those who are under the Law; 21 📚to those without the Law✭, like one without the Law (not being without law toward God, but under Christ’s law) that I might win those who are without the Law. 22 📚To the weak I became like one weak, that I might win the weak✭. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. 23 📚✭And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might share in it with you.
How believers can gain a crown
24 📚✭✭Do you not know that those who run in a race all run but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may get the prize. 25 📚And everyone who competes for the prize uses self-control in all things. Now they do it to get a perishable crown✭, but we an imperishable one. 26 📚✭Therefore I run accordingly, not uncertainly; I fight accordingly, and not like someone who beats the air, 27 📚but I roughly discipline✭ my body, and treat it like a slave, lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be approved✭ for the prize.