A right the apostle refuses to use
1Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? 2If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you: you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. 3This is my defense to those who put me on trial. 4Do we not have the right to eat and to drink? 5Do we not have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as the other apostles do, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? 6Or are Barnabas and I the only ones who have no right to give up working for a living? 7Who ever soldiers at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not drink its milk? 8Am I saying this on merely human authority? Does the law not say the same? 9For it is written in the law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is threshing.” Is it oxen that God is concerned about? 10Or is he speaking entirely for our sake? Yes, it was written for us, because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher thresh in hope of a share in the crop. 11If we sowed spiritual seed among you, is it too much that we should reap a material harvest from you? 12If others have this claim on you, do we not have it all the more? Yet we have never used this right; we put up with everything rather than place any obstacle in the way of the gospel of the Christ. 13Do you not know that those who work in the temple eat what comes from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14In the same way the Lord commanded that those who announce the gospel should live by the gospel. 15But I have used none of these rights, and I am not writing this to have them applied to me. I would rather die than let anyone empty my boast of its meaning. 16For if I announce the gospel, that is no boast of mine: I am under compulsion, and it would go badly with me if I did not announce it. 17If I do it willingly, I have a wage; if unwillingly, I am still entrusted with a charge. 18So what is my wage? Just this: to announce the gospel free of charge, and so not make full use of my right in the gospel.
A slave to everyone, a runner in the race
19Free as I am from everyone, I have made myself everyone’s slave, to win as many as I can. 20To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law I became like one under the law, though I am not under the law myself, to win those under the law; 21to those outside the law I became like one outside the law, though I am not outside God’s law but under the law of the Christ, to win those outside the law; 22to the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that by every means I might save some. 23I do all this for the gospel, to have a share in it myself. 24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one takes the prize? Run to win. 25Every athlete in training goes without everything. They do it for a wreath that withers; we for one that does not. 26So I do not run aimlessly, and I do not box like a man punching the air. 27I bruise my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself am not disqualified.
