The Rights of an Apostle
1Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? 2Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
3This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. 4Don't we have the right to food and drink? 5Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas? 6Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living?
7Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk? 8Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Doesn't the Law say the same thing? 9For it is written in the Law of Moses: "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain." Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more? But we did not use this right.
Dig Deeper
Many commentaries and Bible passage headings, such as in the NIV, give exactly the wrong impression of what this section is about. While the passage here is entitled “The Rights of an Apostle,” this is not what Paul is defending here. In fact Paul only lists the rights of an apostle to demonstrate two things: that he is an apostle and has God-given access to these rights, and that he is intentionally not using them. Without that understanding this chapter seems a bit of a detour from Paul’s train of thought from chapter 8, one that he will pick up clearly in chapter 10. Yet when understood properly, we see that what Paul is doing here is giving illustrations to make his point that just because someone has rights doesn’t mean that exercising them is at all the best course of action or the loving thing to do.
Paul’s set of rhetorical questions in verse 1 would all be answered with an obvious affirmative response. In fact they are all interrelated. If the answer to any of those questions is ‘no’, then the whole set of them fall apart. Of course, Paul’s point is that he is free, he is an apostle, he has seen the risen Jesus, and they are the result of his work so they had better pay attention to what he is trying to teach them here. He is laying the foundation of the point that as an apostle he has certain rights so that he can move on to his real point: there are times when the correct thing to do is to not act on your rights.
Paul briefly mentions the existence of some disputation of his apostleship in passing (probably among a small faction of Jewish Christians that originated in Jerusalem). This is not his main point here, he only mentions it to emphasize the fact that they are the proof of his apostleship. At this point in Corinth, this was not a major issue. By the time he writes 2 Corinthians it will be. It is possible that Paul’s refusal to do what normal teachers did and take money from the church that he was actually ministering in, angered some of the Corinthians. It would have been expected that Paul would be paid by them and would show the proper deference to the wealthier members of the congregation. His practice of accepting support from other churches but not the ones in which he is ministering will become a source of irritation.
Paul points out that the other apostles, including Peter, and Jesus’ brothers all exercise their right to be supported by the believers where they are ministering. The language in verse 5 also implies that, not only did they bring their wives with them, the wives were also supported by the churches. Paul doesn’t mention all of this to imply that the apostles shouldn’t have or use these rights. He describes what they do as a way of contrast with what he and Barnabas have done.
Paul makes clear that he doesn’t at all begrudge them the right to be supported for their ministry. In fact, he follows with a slew of analogies to show that people should be supported as a result of what they do. Soldiers, farmers, and shepherds all reap a reward as a result of their fruit. Paul would vigorously defend the right of any minister and his family to be supported by the Church for the work that they do. He does not think of this as a salary, however, he believes that churches supply their ministers with resources so that they may serve freely. Paul, really wanting to drive home the right of an apostle or minister to be supported, then appeals to the law. He deals with a passage from Deuteronomy 25:4 in which the law says to allow oxen to eat while they are treading grain. Paul is not seriously supposing that this passage was written for his present time. What he is saying, though, is that if God’s principle is that if oxen are to be rewarded for their labor, then humans should be as well. Paul is making a logical move from lesser to greater. If animals deserve to be rewarded for their labor, then how much more are humans made in the image of God, doing the work of full-time Christian ministry.
If the point wasn’t clear already, Paul then asks another rhetorical question with an obvious answer. He has already reminded them of the fact that he is an apostle, as demonstrated by their mere existence, so of course he has the right to be supported and reap a harvest for his labor. If the other apostles have the right to be partially supported by the Corinthian giving, which Paul believes they clearly do, then he does all the more because they are a direct fruit of his labor.
At this point, the Corinthians in the Church who were upset that he was not taking support from them may have been getting rather excited thinking he was laying down this argument because he was about to start. If so, they would have become quickly disappointed as he says, we do not use this right. Paul is setting an example for the Corinthian congregation, and the point of his example is that although he has this right, he has not exercised it. In our reading for tomorrow, he will explain why he has not.
Devotional Thought
How are you doing when it comes to your ‘rights’? Do you find yourself more often in the position of demanding your rights or in the position of freely forfeiting your rights for the good of others? How you answer those two questions will tell you a lot about your own character. How are you doing?
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