1 Corinthians 9:1-27

PAUL’S FIFTH RESPONSE: TO THE QUESTION AFFECTING HIS APOSTOLICITY, 1 Corinthians 9:1 to 1 Corinthians 10:13

The intense purpose of sacrificing his own rights in regard to eating meat, expressed so vividly in the last chapter, (see note on the closing verse,) suggests to St. Paul a parallel sacrifice of his own apostolic rights which he had thus far practiced through his whole mission. Fully maintaining the right of an apostle to be maintained by the Church, he had abdicated that right in his own case, and had earned his living by the skill of his own hand and the sweat of his own brow. His Christian calumniators, so far from appreciating this magnanimity, made it the ground of a charge against him, that he did not claim his maintenance because he was conscious of not being a true apostle. He was not one of the twelve. He had never seen the living Christ. He was no brother or kinsman of Jesus. He was, therefore, a spurious apostle, and not worthy the pay he dare not claim. Paul now replies, and replies here, because this self-sacrifice of his lies in direct line with the self-sacrifice expressed at the close of the last chapter. The following is his train of self-explanation.

1 . He asserts his apostolic freedom and prerogative, 1 Corinthians 9:1-6.

2 . Maintains the minister’s right to pecuniary support from the Church by the law of compensation, 1 Corinthians 9:7-14.

3 . Declares why he renounced that right, namely, because his glory and his reward were a gratis gospel, 1 Corinthians 9:15-19. In accordance with this self-sacrifice, 4. He made himself, within the limits of right, all things to all men, in order to win them to Christ, 1 Corinthians 9:20-22.

5 . Thus to attain the final prize, like an athlete, he earnestly disciplines and subdues himself that he may not become at last a castaway, 1 Corinthians 9:23-27.

6 . Precisely in continuance with this train of thought, in the next chapter he charges the Corinthians, not in the image of an athlete, but by the example of Israel in the wilderness, to escape a like cast-away finality, 1 Corinthians 10:1-14. Then the digression being closed, (as noted in our last note on chap. 8,) he resumes the topic of idol sacrifice.