Rights and the Labor of Ministry

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

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

3This is my defense to those who examine me.

4Do we not have the right to eat and drink?

5Do we not have the right to take along a sister as a wife, as also the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?

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

7Who ever serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its fruit? Or who shepherds a flock and does not drink from the milk of the flock?

8Am I saying these things from a merely human perspective, or does not the Law also say these things?

9For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is threshing.” Is God concerned about oxen?

10Or is he speaking entirely for our sake? Yes, it was written for our sake, because the one who plows ought to plow in hope, and the one who threshes ought to thresh in hope of sharing.

11If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?

12If others share in this right over you, do not we even more? But we have not made use of this right; instead, we endure everything so that we may give no hindrance to the gospel of the Messiah.

13Do you not know that those who work in the temple eat from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar?

14In the same way, the Lord also commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should live from the gospel.