You Are the Seal of My Apostleship in the Lord

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 did not use this right, but we bear all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the Good News of Christ. 13Don’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? 14Even so the Lord ordained that those who proclaim the Good News should live from the Good News. 15But I have used none of these things, and I don’t write these things that it may be done so in my case; for I would rather die, than that anyone should make my boasting void. 16For if I preach the Good News, I have nothing to boast about; for necessity is laid on me; but woe is to me, if I don’t preach the Good News.

Every farmer sweats all year long, waiting for the day of harvest.

At the auction market, though, prices are set by differences in quality rather than by the farmer’s toil. So the crop has to be raised to be worth selling.

That is why farmers do their very best to be rewarded for the sweat they have poured out.

In chapter 9 the apostle Paul expresses, with the heart of a pastor, the earnest longing of a farmer who wants the worth of the fruit they have raised to be recognized.

The apostle Paul said that although he was free and an apostle, he had given up all that freedom for the salvation of the souls God had entrusted to him.

He had the faith to eat things sacrificed to idols as he pleased, and he could have lived preaching the gospel as he pleased. Yet for the salvation of people’s souls he gave up the freedom he had been given.

That is because the apostle Paul was someone who had met Jesus in person and been born again.

Someone who has met Jesus in person knows that there is an eternal world. So, whatever freedom they may be given, they cannot help setting aside, of their own accord, the freedom they could enjoy spiritually, and living according to the will Jesus Christ desires.

For they know that, whether it comes of their own will or through a work that compels them, they can save souls only by showing that they obey the Word.

1 Corinthians 9:2

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.

As I read these words of the apostle Paul again and again, they moved me deeply, because I know how much of what Paul wanted to say is packed into them.

The apostle Paul said that even if others did not recognize it, he trusted the Corinthian believers at least to recognize two things: that he had not spared his life for the gospel, and that he had given up his own life for the salvation of souls.

He founded the Corinthian church with every ounce of his strength, and he devoted himself with all he had so that its believers would live as nothing but children of God.

Whatever hardship and persecution he suffered, he gave up all the freedom he had been given in order to build up the Corinthian church, and he labored so that they could meet Christ and be free.

Paul had given his very best, and just as earnestly he longed for the Corinthian believers to live with a full faith.

Because he devoted himself with such faith, his faithfulness will be recognized by God regardless of the unfaithfulness of the Corinthian believers.

But still, because it was a church to which he had preached the gospel at the cost of his life, he wanted its members to grow in the fullness of grace.

The Corinthian believers, however, no different from the people of the world, were rotting like fruit knocked down in a storm. So they abandoned all too easily the gospel the apostle Paul had preached, and they mocked an apostle like Paul who preached the true gospel.

If the Corinthian believers were to give strength to the apostle Paul’s missionary work in other regions, they had to live faithfully by the Word and become Paul’s boast.

For only if the Corinthian church showed its faith as Christians could Paul, when he preached the gospel in other regions, tell people with power that they too must be saved, just like the Corinthian church.

Paul had thrown away all the comforts of the world for the salvation of their souls, yet the Corinthian believers fell into corruption, and he was bitterly disappointed.

Though they had heard the true gospel, they committed the sin of taking a father’s wife, broke sacred marriage apart with lives of sexual immorality, and brought the world’s false gospels, power and wealth into the church, watering down the truth.

And they doubted the apostleship of the apostle Paul, who had brought them the gospel, and laughed at his weak body.

To such wicked church members Paul gave yet another call to repent and another chance to turn back.

The believers of the Corinthian church were the very seal in the Lord that marked Paul as a recognized apostle. That is why the apostle Paul grieved all the more over their lack of faith and rebuked them.

Put simply, I can be recognized by God as a pastor because of the faith of the believers of Watercourse Church.

Because there are believers who have fully met God through the Word I taught, God has recognized me as a pastor.

For Paul, perhaps nothing hurt more than seeing the believers he cherished so much rotting away and even turning to attack him.

To the Corinthian believers, who were living lives of servitude in the world without hope, Paul made known that there is an eternal world.

And he helped these people, who served their masters like kings and scraped by on the little money they were paid, to meet God, the Master of all things.

When they received the gospel and resolved to live for God, the apostle Paul made up his mind that for the salvation of souls he would gladly die.

But the very people who had been as dear to Paul as his own life had gone bad.

Without even knowing it was sin, they judged and criticized the apostle Paul, who had helped them gain eternal life, and mocked the weakness of his body.

Comparing Christ, Apollos, Peter and Paul, they forgot their gratitude to Paul and were committing the sin of doubting even his apostleship.

Why were the Corinthian believers committing such sins?

Why were they casting off Paul, who had helped them meet so easily the grace of God that no human effort could ever earn?

People treasure for a lifetime a small gift from someone they love, yet they are so quick to cast off the grace of God, who granted them eternal heaven, and the person who brought them the gospel.

This is because they had not been born again spiritually.

They acted like this because they did not truly believe that Christ is the King of heaven, and that he is the Creator, the Savior and the Judge.

Paul brought them the message that they must forsake the world.

He did so because we can at last see the eternal world only when we cast the world out of our hearts.

But far from casting the world out of their hearts, the Corinthian believers added to those darkened hearts the sin of judging and condemning an apostle.

Of course, I am not saying that it is a sin to criticize or judge a pastor.

Pastors who do not preach the truth but use the church for the sake of their own human lives ought rightly to be judged by the believers and stopped from preaching the Word.

That is, if the believers are able to judge that the word a pastor preaches is not the truth.

But right-minded believers must by all means help pastors like the apostle Paul, whom God recognizes, to preach the gospel all the more actively.

If the Corinthian church had received Christ from Paul as a gift, then helping the apostle Paul to do his work would be their mission as those who had been saved.

The point is not to help a human being. It is that we must carry out God’s work together, so that a person of God can do more of it.

1 Corinthians 9:11

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

The church is as it should be when pastors study the Bible and pray and then teach believers God’s true will simply and rightly, and when believers learn God’s will and Word from their pastors and carry the gospel to more souls.

But these days pastors, rather than staking their lives on the gospel, think of pastoral ministry as a job and cling to the greed of the world, and so they are causing social problems.

Because they use believers as a means of making a living, they are condemned by society, and believers do not respect their pastors.

Only when pastors have authority as pastors does the Word proclaimed through them carry authority.

It is a great spiritual misfortune, too, when believers cannot respect the pastor who brings them the Word.

Because pastors these days have fallen spiritually and are not teaching believers the way of truth, there are many churches, yet the glory of God is being hidden instead.

Heretics are using the fullness of the Holy Spirit that the church ought to be proclaiming. And when pastors misused offerings for their own success, believers stopped fearing God; although they ought to give their offerings as a matter of course, they spend that money as they please.

Believers ought to devote their time, their wealth and their bodies, but because they were taught to bargain their faith for the blessings of the world, they leave the church when worldly success is not guaranteed.

Because pastors have not stood upright, all of this has ended in false gospels leading believers out of the church instead.

Pastors living in these last days must repent before God now.

One of the issues the Corinthian believers came to Ephesus about was the living support that pastors received.

The apostle Paul, and Apollos and Peter with him, had given up life in the world and done their very best for the church. Yet some church members complained about the living support pastors received, and so Paul speaks plainly to this matter.

You must not think of everything God has given you as your own. Acknowledge in faith that God has kept your family, your health and your possessions through his complete protection, and give your offerings with a thankful heart.

The tithe is less a law than the least offering we can give to God.

Offerings are not given in order to provide the pastor with a living.

An offering is giving to God what belongs to God, and that is only natural.

Pastors have received the mission of studying the word of truth and helping believers go the way of Christ.

For believers, life in the world matters too, but hearing the spiritual Word through the pastor at church matters more than anything else.

For no matter how far someone rises in the world, if they are not saved, their life is one that falls into hell and vanishes like a mist.

The Corinthian believers were stumbling because it felt to them as if the pastor, in receiving living support, were taking for nothing what they had worked hard to earn.

But here is what you must think about deeply: when your short life is over, your soul will go to heaven or to hell according to the Word preached by the pastor of the church you attend.

That is why a pastor’s faith matters.

I do not tolerate even dozing off for a moment during a sermon, because dozing is itself evidence that a person has already been taken over by Satan.

In the past, when I too attended church as a layperson, the pastor did not rebuke people who dozed during the sermon, so I thought it must be all right to sleep like that.

But dozing while worshiping almighty God comes from having no interest in God. And the pastor who does not rebuke such people is no different, which is why that pastor lets such behavior pass.

But once I began to preach, I learned how great a sin against God dozing during worship is, and I realized that it is an evil act that keeps the Word from being engraved on one’s own heart.

Even when people hear the same Word, if the field of their hearts has not become good soil, the seed cannot take root, however good the seed that is sown.

In other words, even when a pastor preaches the truth, it is no use if the believer’s heart is closed.

Look at the spirits of those who hear the truth and still stumble. They do not think of themselves as rocky ground that fails to receive God’s word rightly. So even as they go off into the world, they are not much afraid.

While I was praying for the service, I received this word.

It was to tell you to set your clothing, your attitude and your frame of mind straight, keeping in mind that you could come before God just as you are now in worship.

God said that one day, when you meet him, he will ask whether the clothes you are wearing now are fit for worship. And if he asks why you drifted into other thoughts during worship and why you were dozing, how will you answer?

When I think this word over again, I find it a truly fearsome word.

For it means that a person who does not think of God even during worship will not strive to live by God’s will when they go out into the world.

Satan is at work to keep people from hearing the Word that is proclaimed, and that is evidence of how precious the truth is. Pastors, who one day must settle accounts with God for the souls entrusted to them, live each day on a spiritual battlefield that drains the very blood from them.

If you imagine the souls of the children entrusted to you falling into hell through your fault, you will understand how a pastor feels.

When people complain about the living support given so that such pastors can devote themselves to the Word, they are, in the end, acting with no interest in the salvation of souls.

1 Corinthians 9:9

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,

Because more can be gained through the work an ox does, it is not muzzled but allowed to eat its fill.

Of course, comparing a pastor to an ox is a bit much. But believers take responsibility for a pastor’s living because they can then enjoy all the more the spiritual grace the pastor has gained by studying the Word and giving themselves to prayer.

That is why Paul asked the Corinthians whether it was a great thing if those who had sown spiritual things to them reaped their fleshly things.

He means that it is only right for the church to take responsibility for the living of the pastor who shares deep spiritual grace. In other words, believers give offerings to God, and the pastor receives a living from God, and they each devote themselves to the other for the sake of the church.

As the one who founded the church, Paul had the right to demand more material support than Peter or Apollos, but he did not use the right that was rightfully his.

He boldly asked them to prepare in advance the offerings that were to be used for missionary work, but when it came to offerings used for himself, he was reluctant.

But to teach the believers, he said in verse 14 that even so the Lord ordained that those who proclaim the Good News should live from the Good News.

This means that God takes responsibility for the lives of those who live for the gospel.

But the human heart is a strange thing.

For pastors who place no burden on believers for the sake of the gospel, as Paul did, receive less care from the believers.

When pastors press for offerings with the blessings of the world as the bait, or say that people will be blessed only if they treat their pastor well, church members give and devote themselves with all they have, even while they complain.

But if they are not pressed, they do not give offerings to God of their own accord.

Instead, when the time comes to give, they say that pastors are becoming corrupt.

We must know that God does not accept offerings of the kind where the crying baby gets more milk, that is, offerings given because a pastor pressed for them.

The apostle Paul is saying that to expand the kingdom of God the devotion of believers is absolutely necessary.

For if saved believers do not work, the kingdom of God cannot be expanded.

When our associate pastor came back to Korea from the United States, my first plan was for the associate pastor to earn a living independently, because the church had no money to spare.

But while I was praying, the thought came to me that the world is turning so fast that unless the associate pastor concentrated on ministry, the believers could not be fed spiritual food.

As I see it, the associate pastor has more than enough ability and skill to hold a job in society.

But working in society would mean losing too much time to the world, and the time for studying the Scriptures and praying would shrink accordingly.

When a pastor does not study the Scriptures and spends less time in prayer, it is a great misfortune for believers, who must hear the Word the pastor proclaims and lead the spiritual war to victory.

That is why I did not let the associate pastor take on worldly work, so that all their attention could go to God.

Even though other pastors were receiving living support, the apostle Paul took no living support from the Corinthian church and worked at making tents. That deserves respect and praise.

But look at what the apostle Paul did in his work for the gospel. Then you see that he received a great deal of help from his fellow workers.

In a church as full of talk as the Corinthian church, he took no living support and preached only the gospel, but that good deed became a reason for them to look down on Paul.

They showed no thought of serving Paul all the more, though he had devoted himself to the gospel.

Acts 16:12-15 tells how, when the apostle Paul arrived in Philippi and went out to the riverside on the Sabbath to find a place of prayer, women had gathered there. When he began to preach the gospel to those women, one of them, named Lydia, heard the gospel and begged Paul to stay at her house.

Paul stayed at the house of Lydia, a seller of purple cloth, baptized the people of her household, and preached the gospel with Lydia’s full support.

Purple cloth was worn only by royalty. So, since Lydia sold purple cloth, she was probably a woman of great wealth.

Lydia, who repented when she heard the gospel Paul preached, is said to have supplied many of the offerings the apostle Paul needed for his missionary work, and her house became the first church established in Philippi.

And those who helped the apostle Paul when he founded the Corinthian church were Priscilla and Aquila.

This couple were fellow workers who moved ahead of time to every region the apostle Paul made his mission field, and set up everything around him so that he could do nothing but preach the gospel.

I mention these fellow workers who helped the apostle Paul not to say that pastors must receive living support, but to say that in God’s work a pastor can do nothing alone, without fellow workers.

Because Paul had been to the third heaven and had met Christ in person at Damascus, he was a man spiritually full.

He had seen with his own eyes that this world is not everything, and that there is an eternal world once we put off the flesh. So he staked his very life on preaching nothing but the gospel.

If there had been no fellow workers to help an apostle like Paul, he would have had to solve the problem of earning his bread, and he could not have devoted himself to the gospel.

Nor would he have escaped the Jews who pursued him to kill him.

In this way God has gathered into Christ spiritual members who help one another in spirit and in body, so that they work together for good.

The kingdom of God can be expanded only when believers help their pastors with physical things, so that the pastors can study nothing but the Word and pray more deeply, and when pastors help believers win the war with Satan in Christ.

We ought to help one another as members of one body, but because pastors seek to be served and believers are unwilling to devote themselves, the church is crumbling.

1 Corinthians 9:16

16For if I preach the Good News, I have nothing to boast about; for necessity is laid on me; but woe is to me, if I don’t preach the Good News.

This is the faith of Paul.

Because he knew how weighty the mission of preaching the gospel is, he could not help preaching the gospel to save souls.

For he knew that there is a fire of hell that is never quenched.

Whether one preaches the gospel willingly and with joy, or preaches it through the compelling work of God, it is something that anyone who has received a mission must carry out.

Paul said that if believers preached the gospel of their own will, that devotion would be a faithfulness greatly rewarded by God.

The fruit a pastor will offer to God is the believers.

God will look at what kind of fruit the believers are, and by that fruit he will judge whether the pastor carried out their mission well or was lazy.

Seen in this light, helping pastors who do spiritual work is God’s work, and for pastors, helping believers not to lose their way is God’s work.

When pastors carry out their mission as pastors and believers carry out their mission as believers, the church will go on standing firm, and Christ, the ark of salvation, will be full of many souls.

I hope you will not claim all the freedom you could enjoy, but will know how to devote yourselves for the glory of God.

When you look to God alone and devote yourselves to his kingdom, God will bless you to overflowing.