1 Corinthians / Paul's Rights, Mission Strategy, and Self‑Discipline

Paul's Rights, Mission Strategy, and Self‑Discipline

1 Corinthians 9:1-27

Chapter 9

¹ Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? ² If I am not an apostle to others, yet surely I am to you—for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. ³ My defense to those who examine me is this. ⁴ Do we not have authority to eat and to drink? ⁵ Do we not have the right to take along a sister as wife, like the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? ⁶ Or do only Barnabas and I not have the right not to work? ⁷ Who ever serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its fruit? Who shepherds a flock and does not eat the milk of the flock? ⁸ I do not say these things as a man, or does the Law not say these things? ⁹ For in Moses' Law it is written: "You shall not muzzle an ox while it is threshing." Does God not care about the oxen? ¹⁰ The one through us surely says; for through us it was written, that the one plowing should plow upon hope, and the one threshing upon hope of partaking. ¹¹ If we sowed the spiritual things to you, is it a great thing if we reap your fleshly things? ¹² If others share in your right, do we not even more? But we did not use this right; instead, we put up with all things so that we might not hinder the gospel of Christ in any way. ¹³ Do you not know that those who work in the sacred things eat from the temple, and those who attend the altar share in the altar? ¹⁴ In this way also the Lord ordered those proclaiming the gospel to live from the gospel. ¹⁵ But I have not used any of these things. Nor did I write these things so that it might happen this way with me, for it is better for me to die than—my boast no one will empty. ¹⁶ For if I proclaim the gospel, there is no boast in me, for necessity is laid upon me; for woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! ¹⁷ For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if unwillingly, I have been entrusted with a stewardship. ¹⁸ What then is my reward? That, while preaching the Gospel, I might make the Gospel without expense, so as not to make full use of my authority in the Gospel. ¹⁹ For though I am free from all, I have made myself a slave to all, in order that I might gain the more. ²⁰ And I became to the Jews as a Jew, in order that I might gain Jews; to those under law as under law, not being myself under law, in order that I might gain those under law. ²¹ to the lawless as a lawless one, not being lawless toward God but lawfully subject to Christ, so that I might gain the lawless ²² I became weak to the weak, so that I might gain the weak; I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I might save some. ²³ But I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a partaker of it. ²⁴ Do you not know that those in a stadium who run all indeed run, but one receives the prize? In this way run in order that you may attain. ²⁵ And everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They do so in order therefore that they may take a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. ²⁶ I therefore run in this way, as not unclearly; I box in this way, as not beating air. ²⁷ but I discipline my body and enslave it, lest somehow, after proclaiming to others, I myself should become reprobate.