Making Use of One’s Rights

Sadly, many people see God’s law as entirely negative or oppressive. Certainly, the law of God is a burden for those who have not yet been converted to Christ; however, we cannot blame that on the law. The fault lies with sinners, whose unregenerate hearts make the law burdensome (Rom. 7:7–12). The law in itself is a good thing, the Lord’s gift to bless human beings. Paul demonstrates as much in 1 Corinthians 9:8–10, where he notes that a law given to benefit oxen (Deut. 25:4) also had human beings in view. If lesser animals such as oxen have a right to eat of the fruit of their labor, people made in God’s image have the right to a wage for their work.

Paul makes this argument while defending his Apostleship. Since he did not take financial support from the Corinthians but other Apostles received wages for their gospel ministry, many Corinthians concluded that Paul may not have been an Apostle. Clearly, the Corinthians thought that since Apostles have the right to earn a living from preaching the gospel, all true Apostles will be supported by the gospel and anyone not thereby supported could not be an Apostle.

As is often the case in 1 Corinthians, Paul agrees with the premise of his audience but not with their conclusion. In today’s passage, he says once more that Apostles have a right to financial remuneration for gospel ministry. He uses rhetorical questions to prove that the spiritual benefits granted to the Corinthians through his preaching and teaching entitled him to receive material benefits from them. In fact, since other Apostles who had been less instrumental in the work in Corinth had a rightful claim to material support from the Corinthians, Paul was even more deserving because he planted the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 9:11–12a; see Acts 18:1–11).

Of course, Paul had the right to financial support and therefore the right to be called an Apostle. The issue was that the Corinthians did not understand that merely possessing a right does not mean one must take advantage of it. Sometimes it is better for believers, including the Apostles, to freely not make use of their rights for a greater good. In this case, Paul did not take financial support from the Corinthians because he thought doing so would have created an unnecessary obstacle to the gospel (1 Cor. 9:12b). Many first-century religious teachers and philosophers went about peddling their teaching in a clear attempt to steal from the faithful. Paul did not want gospel teachers to be associated with such charlatans.