1 Corinthians 9

¹Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you yourselves not my workmanship in the Lord?

²Even if I am not 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 scrutinize me:

⁴Have we no right to food and to drink?

⁵Have we no right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?

⁶Or are Barnabas and I the only apostles 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 fruit? Who tends a flock and does not drink of its milk?

⁸Do I say this from a human perspective? 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?

¹⁰Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf? Indeed, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they should also expect to share in the harvest.

¹¹If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much for us to reap a material harvest from you?

¹²If others have this right to your support, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not exercise this right. Instead, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.

Do you not know that those who work in the temple eat of its food, and those who serve at the altar partake of its offerings?