1 Corinthians 9

¹Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Haven’t I seen Jesus Christ, our Lord? Aren’t you my work in the Lord?

²If to others I am not an apostle, yet at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

³My defense to those who examine me is this:

⁴Have we no right to eat and to drink?

⁵Have we no right to take along a wife who is a believer, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?

⁶Or have only Barnabas and I no right to not work?

⁷What soldier ever serves at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard, and doesn’t eat of its fruit? Or who feeds a flock, and doesn’t drink from the flock’s milk?

⁸Do I speak these things according to the ways of men? Or doesn’t the law also say the same thing?

⁹For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it for the oxen that God cares,

¹⁰or does he say it assuredly for our sake? Yes, it was written for our sake, because he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should partake of his hope.

¹¹If we sowed to you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we reap your fleshly things?

¹²If others partake of this right over you, don’t we yet more? Nevertheless we didn’t use this right, but we bear all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the Good News of Christ.

Don’t you know that those who serve around sacred things eat from the things of the temple, and those who wait on the altar have their portion with the altar?