An Apostolic Example of Self-Denial

1 Corinthians 9:1–7 AV

Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord. Mine answer to them that do examine me is this, Have we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working? Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?

One thing that the Bible insists on is that the leaders of the church of Jesus Christ must be examples to the flock. Most of the qualifications for the offices of pastor, elder and deacon are things that every believer should strive to see in his or her own life — things like blamelessness, vigilance, sobriety, hospitality, and so forth.

In this evening’s text the apostle Paul uses himself as an example of self-denial for the Corinthians. I hope to show you why I say this as we proceed. It all begins by noting the continuity of thought between chapters 8 and 9.

Unfortunately, the continuity between these chapters is precisely what many unbelieving commentators deny. They argue that the books we call 1 and 2 Corinthians are a composite of four letters. A long time ago, a scribe with nothing better to do combined two of the four letters and thereby produced what we call 1 Corinthians. He then combined the other two into 2 Corinthians. Strangely, the same commentators then complain that the scribe who did this must have been half asleep, since the insertion of chapter 9 between chapters 8 and 10 completely interrupts the flow of thought. Chapter 8 discusses meat offered to idols. Chapter 9 explains why preachers should be paid. Then chapter 10 returns to sacrificed meat. They say that this arrangement makes no sense.

Actually, what makes no sense is the unfounded assumption that 1 and 2 Corinthians have been tampered with. Let me assure you that there is absolutely nothing in the manuscript evidence to support this. Rather than submitting their thoughts to the Word of God, these so-called scholars let their imaginations run amuck.

More to the point, it isn’t necessary to explain the seemingly abrupt transition between chapters 8 and 9 for two reasons. One is that 1 Corinthians is filled with abrupt transitions because the apostle had to confront numerous problems in the church, which often had little to do with one another. The other is that the supposed abruptness is not nearly as harsh as imagined. As we saw a few weeks ago, the main issue in chapter 8 is not meat offered to idols but the right of believers to eat or not to eat that meat, as long as we do not insist that weaker brothers violate their consciences by joining them. Paul told us what his position was in the last verse of the chapter. He wrote, Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend. Chapter 9 is a defense of his position. Then in chapter 10 he actually dealt with the meat issue.

In the few verses that we’re considering this evening, Paul relates this discussion to two points: his apostleship in verses 1 and 2, and his rights as an apostle in verses 3 through 7.

Paul’s Apostleship

Let’s begin with Paul’s apostleship in verses 1 and 2. He wrote, Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord. Paul didn’t have to make up something to illustrate his right as an apostle to do certain things. He was an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ.

However, there were some in Corinth who were questioning, if not outright denying, his credentials as an apostle of Jesus Christ. We don’t know who these people were. They could have been Judaizers, seeking to discredit him as an imposter. Or more likely, there were the leaders of the various factions within the church — the Apollos, Cephas or Christ parties. Whoever they were, they asked a legitimate question: how do we know that Paul is genuine apostle? After all, he doesn’t seem to have the necessary qualifications. When the eleven apostles sought a replacement for Judas after he hanged himself, they insisted the replacement have the same qualifications that they had, viz., that he had been with Jesus from his baptism until his ascension and was specifically a witness to Jesus’ resurrection (cf. Acts 1:21–26). However, there is nothing to suggest that Paul had these credentials.

Paul responded to this by asking several questions. His first question was, Am I not an apostle? That’s precisely the issue. Note this: Paul didn’t wait for others to raise this objection against him. He brought it up on his own because he wanted to put an end to it once and for all.

There are two parts to Paul’s response to his own question.

First, he asked, Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? If the chief qualification of an apostle was having seen the risen Lord, Paul said, “I’ve done that.” He saw the resurrected Christ while on his way to Damascus to arrest and torture believers (Acts 9:1–9). By the time that Paul wrote to the Corinthians, the report of his conversion was widely circulated. Everyone had heard the story. And it wasn’t based solely on Paul’s testimony. Remember that there were others with him. Acts 9:7 says, And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. They could confirm everything that Paul told them. This was his objective and historical argument.

To this, Paul added a subjective argument. He asked the Corinthians, Are not ye my work in the Lord? Before Paul went to Corinth on his second missionary journey, the Corinthians had been enslaved to the darkness and idolatry of sin. But as Paul proclaimed salvation and life to them through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, their shackles fell off and they found a freedom that they never before could have imagined. They knew that this was none other than the work of God. That’s what Paul wrote. Jesus Christ, the one whom he saw on the Damascus highway, is our Lord. The Corinthians were Paul’s work in the Lord, as he wrote in verse 1. In the second verse he added that they were the seal or the corroboration of his apostleship in the Lord. That is, only the Lord can appoint apostles, and only the Lord can build his church through those whom he chooses to use. The Corinthians knew this not because they had observed it with their eyes, but because the transforming power of God’s grace had fundamentally and forever altered the disposition of their souls.

Other churches established by different ministers of the gospel could perhaps be excused for not having a firsthand knowledge of the power of Paul’s preaching, but not the Corinthians. The Corinthians had no excuse. Paul wrote, If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you.

Apostolic Rights

Now, you might have noticed by now that I haven’t said anything about Paul’s second question in verse 1: Am I not free? That is, now that Paul was an apostle, does this mean that he no longer had any rights or liberties in the church? This is the second topic that we find in today’s text, to which Paul responded in verses 3 and following. He wrote, Mine answer to them that do examine me is this, Have we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working?

In effect, Paul put himself on trial here. The word translated answer in verse 3 is ἀπολογία, from which we get our word apology. Its most common meaning is a defense given in a court of law. Without admitting that anyone had a right to judge him, the apostle welcomed an inquiry into his conduct. He wanted to defend himself. So, to make it happen, he also prosecuted himself.

But why did Paul have to defend himself? The short answer is that it seemed like he was not being fully honest. He had written in the last verse of chapter 8 that he would willingly refrain from eating meat for the sake of his weaker brother. But his opponents could easily have said, So what? Wasn’t he a Jew? As a Jew, wouldn’t he have been naturally disinclined to eat meat that had been sacrificed to pagan gods? So, how does Paul’s willingness not to eat meat prove anything?

Well, to answer this we have to go back to the main point. The subject of previous chapter was not so much about eating meat offered to idols as the right to eat meat and how our choice affects others. It’s about rights or liberties that we have in Christ. Paul insisted that he had the right to eat meat, just like anyone else did, and that he chose freely not to exercise his right.

To establish this point further, Paul explained that there was another very important right that he chose not to exercise, viz., the right to be paid in money for his spiritual labors in the gospel. This, in fact, is the whole point of verses 4 through 7 and beyond.

Look how Paul made his case. Again, he asked a series of rhetorical questions. His first question is in verse 4: Have we not power to eat and drink? The plural pronoun we shows that Paul had broadened his inquiry to include all the apostles. Of course the apostles have the right to eat and to drink. No one, especially those involved in Christian service, is under any obligation to starve himself to death. But Paul’s point actually goes beyond this. He wanted to know if those who serve the church have a right to eat food that was purchased with money provided by the church. Do ministers of the gospel have that right? The answer is yes.

Paul’s second question at first seems a little off target. He asked in verse 5, Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? Here the two words, sister and wife, go together. Maybe the best way to indicate this would be to insert a hyphen between them. Paul meant wives who are sisters in the Lord. So, the question is, do the apostles — all of them, not just Paul — have a right to have their believing wives accompany them while they do the Lord’s work?

Before I explain what this means, I want you to see that this verse says very clearly that some of the apostles were married. We know that Peter was married, first, because Jesus healed his mother-in-law in Mark 1:29–31, and, second, because Paul mentioned him by name in our text. It’s even possible that Paul mentioned specifically him because he and his wife had visited Corinth and was therefore known to the church. In any case, the fact that some of the apostles were married explodes the myth that celibacy is a preferred state for ministers of the gospel. All men have a right to marry, including those who exercise a leadership role in the church.

Again, the point here is not just that Paul had a right to marry. I doubt that anyone in Corinth was arguing otherwise. Rather, this question follows the same line of thought as the previous one, viz., does an apostle or any minister of the gospel have a right to marry, realizing that taking a wife will increase his financial needs and thus place an additional burden on the church? The answer is yes. Servants of the church have a right to expect that the church will support them and their families.

Third, the apostle asked the church directly in verse 6, Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working? Paul made tents to support himself financially. We have no idea what Barnabas did, although as a Levitical priest he had no doubt learned some kind of trade. But apparently some of the other apostles didn’t take up outside employment. So, was this requirement exclusive to Barnabas and Paul? Or do they also have the right to stop working outside the church and expect the church to provide for them? The answer is the same: yes, Paul and Barnabas had a right to be supported entirely by the church.

To nail his argument down, Paul gave three examples in verse 7 to show that the principle of deriving one’s livelihood from his labors is not unusual. Soldiers are paid by the government for rendering service to the government. Viticulturists enjoy the fruit of their vines. And shepherds likewise drink the milk of their flock. If this principle is how the world generally operates, why shouldn’t it be good for the ministry, too?

Sometimes when a pastor argues for his rights, as Paul did in our text, it comes across as self-serving. He wants something. But that’s not so here. Paul wasn’t looking for a salary. He wrote this letter to the Corinthians while he was living hundreds of miles away in Ephesus. He had no expectation of the Corinthians sending him a paycheck. In fact, he denies that this was his purpose in verse 15, where he wrote, But I have used none of these things: neither have I written these things, that it should be so done unto me: for it were better for me to die, than that any man should make my glorying void.

In our text, Paul wasn’t looking to get something but to give something. He wanted to give the Corinthians — and others, including us — an example of how we should place the good of the body of Christ above our own personal interests. At times this means sacrificing things that we would rather have. It means giving up things that are important. It means laying aside our rights.

But isn’t it worth it? If our small sacrifice helps a brother advance in his walk with the Lord, so that he becomes a little more like Christ in his thinking and behavior, aren’t we all better off? Shouldn’t that be our goal?

Let me remind you, though it really doesn’t need saying, that that’s exactly what Jesus did for you. Being innocent, he had the right not to be condemned. Because he was perfectly just, he had the right to live. But he chose to set aside his rights to give us life without end. He endured the cross and its shame for us. Let’s keep that in mind whenever we might be inclined to demand our rights, particularly in the body of Christ. This is the apostolic example is self-denial that we find in today’s text. Amen.