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, at least I 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 to drink?
5Do we not have the right to lead a sister as a wife, just as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas do?
6Or are we the only ones who do not have the right not to work, Barnabas and I?
7Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not eat from the milk of the flock?
8Am I not speaking according to human standards? 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 does he speak altogether for us? For it was written for us, because the one who plows should plow with the hope, and the one who threshes with the hope of sharing.
11If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your fleshly things?
12If others share in your authority, do we not even more? But we did not use this authority; instead, we endure all things so that we may not give any cause for offense to the gospel of the Messiah.
13Do you not know that those who serve in the sacred things eat from the things of the temple, and those who attend at the altar share in the altar?
14In the same way, the Lord commanded those who proclaim the gospel to live from the gospel.
15But I have not used any of these things. I did not write these things so that it would happen to me this way, for it is better for me to die than—no one will deprive me of my boasting.
16For if I preach the gospel, I have no reason to boast, for necessity is laid upon me; woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.
17For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if unwillingly, I have been entrusted with a stewardship.
18What then is my reward? That, preaching the gospel without cost, I may not abuse my authority in the gospel.
19For although I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, so that I might win more.
20And I became to the Jews as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law as under the law, not being myself under the law, in order to win those under the law;
21To the lawless as lawless, not being lawless toward God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win the lawless.
22I became weak to the weak, in order to win the weak; to all I have become all things, so that I might save some by all means.
23But I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a partner in it.
24Do you not know that those who run in a stadium all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
25Everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything. They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.
26Therefore I run in this way, not aimlessly; I box in this way, not beating the air.
27But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, so that after preaching to others I myself may not become disqualified.