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 the whole year through, waiting for the day of harvest.

At the auction market, though, prices are set by the quality of the produce rather than by the farmer’s toil, so farmers must raise crops that will fetch a good price.

Farmers therefore give it everything they have, hoping their sweat will be rewarded.

In chapter 9 Paul speaks with a pastor’s heart, and it is the same earnest longing a farmer feels to see the worth of the harvest recognized.

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

He had the faith to eat food offered to idols as he pleased, and he could have lived proclaiming the gospel on his own terms; yet he laid aside the freedom he had been given for the sake of saving people’s souls.

The reason is that Paul had met Jesus in person and been born again.

Those who have met Jesus in person know that an eternal world awaits, whatever freedom they are given. So they willingly set aside the spiritual freedom they could enjoy, and they cannot help living as Jesus Christ wills.

For they know that, whether they act of their own will or under the compelling work of God, they can save souls only by showing their own obedience to 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 again and again, I was deeply moved, because I know how much Paul wanted to say through them.

Paul said that even if others did not acknowledge it, he trusted that the Corinthians at least would know he had not counted his life dear for the gospel, and had given up his own way of life for the saving of souls.

He poured all his strength into founding the church in Corinth, and he gave himself without reserve so that its people would live as children of God and nothing else.

Whatever hardship and persecution came, he surrendered every freedom he had in order to build up that church, and he labored so that the Corinthians might meet Christ and be set free.

Paul had given his utmost, and he longed earnestly for the Corinthians to live with a faith just as full.

Because he served with such faith, his faithfulness will be recognized by God, regardless of the Corinthians’ unfaithfulness.

Still, it was a church to which he had brought the gospel at the cost of his life, and he wanted its members to grow in the fullness of grace.

But the Corinthians, no different from the world around them, were rotting like fruit blown down in a storm. That is why they threw away so easily the gospel Paul had preached, and why they ridiculed him, an apostle who proclaimed the gospel in truth.

If Paul’s mission in other regions was to have strength behind it, the Corinthians needed to live faithfully by the word and become his boast.

Only when the church in Corinth displayed a Christian faith could Paul tell people elsewhere with conviction that they, too, must be saved as the Corinthians had been.

Paul had abandoned all worldly comfort for the salvation of their souls, and yet, when the Corinthians fell into corruption, he was bitterly disappointed.

Though they had heard the true gospel, they committed the sin of taking a father’s wife, shattered the sanctity of marriage with lives of sexual immorality, and brought into the church the world’s false gospels, its power, and its wealth, diluting the truth.

And they doubted the apostleship of Paul, who had brought them the gospel, and sneered at his frail body.

To people so wicked, Paul called once more for repentance and gave them another chance to turn back.

The Corinthian Christians were themselves the seal, in the Lord, that proved Paul an apostle, and this made him grieve all the more over their faithlessness and rebuke them.

In plain terms: it is because of the faith of the people of Watercourse Church that God can acknowledge me as a pastor.

It is because there are those who have truly met God through the word I teach that God has recognized me as a pastor.

Perhaps nothing would have hurt Paul more than this: the very people he cherished were rotting away, and now they were turning against him.

The Corinthians had lived as slaves in the world, without hope, and Paul made known to them that there is an eternal world.

They had served their masters as though they were kings and scraped by on the little money they were paid; Paul brought them to meet God, the Master of all things.

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

But these people, as dear to Paul as his own life, had changed for the worse.

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

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

Why were the Corinthians committing such sins?

Why would they cast off Paul, who had helped them find so easily the grace of God that no human effort could ever earn?

People keep a small gift from someone they love for the rest of their lives, yet they discard so lightly the grace of God, who has granted them an eternal heaven, and the one who brought them the gospel.

The reason is that they had not been born again in spirit.

They did not truly believe that Christ is the King of heaven — Creator, Savior, and Judge. Their unbelief is what drove them to act this way.

Paul told them to forsake the world.

His reason was that only when the world is cast out of our hearts can we at last see the eternal world.

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

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

When ministers do not proclaim the truth and use the church to serve merely human ends, the congregation ought rightly to judge them and stop them from preaching.

Provided, that is, the congregation is able to discern that what the pastor preaches is not the truth.

But Christians who are right with God must help a minister like Paul, one whom God approves, preach the gospel all the more vigorously.

If the church in Corinth had received Christ as a gift through Paul, then, as people who had been saved, their calling would be to help Paul do his work.

This is not a matter of helping a mere human being. It means bearing God’s work together, so that his servant can accomplish even more.

1 Corinthians 9:11

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

This is what a church ought to look like: the pastor studies the Bible and prays, then teaches God’s true will to the congregation simply and accurately; and the congregation learns God’s will and word from the pastor and carries the gospel to more and more people.

But pastors today, rather than staking their lives on the gospel, treat ministry as a job and cling to worldly ambition, and because of this they are becoming a public scandal.

Because they use their congregations as a means of making a living, they are condemned by society, and their own members do not respect them.

Only when pastors carry the authority of their office does the word proclaimed through them carry authority.

And when a congregation cannot respect the pastor who brings them the word, that too is a deep spiritual misfortune.

Ministers today have fallen spiritually and no longer teach their people the way of truth. So although churches are everywhere, God’s glory is being hidden rather than revealed.

Heretical groups have taken up the fullness of the Holy Spirit that the church ought to proclaim. And as pastors misuse offerings for their own success, church members, though they plainly ought to give, have lost their fear of God and spend that money however they wish.

Church members ought to offer up their time, their money, and their bodies in service. But because they have been taught to bargain their faith for worldly blessing, they leave the church when worldly success is not guaranteed.

Because pastors have failed to stand upright, all of this has ended instead with false gospels leading the flock out of the church.

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

One of the matters the Corinthian Christians brought to Paul in Ephesus had to do with the support that ministers received.

Paul, Apollos, and Peter had laid aside worldly life and done their utmost for the church. Even so, some members grumbled about the support ministers were given, and Paul speaks plainly about the matter.

You must not think of anything God has given you as your own. Acknowledge in faith that it was God’s complete protection that kept your family, your health, and your possessions, and bring your offerings with a grateful heart.

The tithe is not so much a law as the least offering we can give to God.

We do not give offerings in order to pay the pastor’s salary.

An offering is simply giving back to God what is already his, as is right.

Pastors have been given the charge of studying the word of truth and helping the congregation walk the way of Christ.

For those in the pews, life in the world does matter; but hearing the spiritual word through their pastor at church is more important than anything else.

That is because, however far someone may rise in society, a life without salvation ends in hell and vanishes like a mist.

The Corinthians stumbled because it seemed to them that ministers who received support were simply taking for free what the members had worked hard to earn.

But think deeply about this: when this 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 so much.

I do not tolerate even a moment of dozing during the sermon, because dozing itself shows that Satan has already seized that person.

Years ago, when I attended church as a layperson, the pastor never rebuked anyone who dozed during the sermon, so I assumed it must be all right to sleep like that.

But dozing while worshiping almighty God comes from having no real interest in him. The same is true of a pastor who fails to rebuke it, and that is why such behavior goes unchallenged.

Once I began preaching myself, though, I came to see how great a sin against God it is to doze during worship, and I realized that it is a wicked act that keeps the word from being engraved on the heart.

People may hear the same word, but unless the soil of the heart becomes good ground, even the finest seed cannot take root.

In other words, even when a pastor proclaims the truth, it does no good if the listener’s heart is shut.

Those who stumble even after hearing the truth never stop to think that they themselves might be the rocky ground that cannot receive God’s word rightly. So they drift back into the world with little fear.

As I was praying in preparation for worship, I received this word.

I was to tell you to come as though you might stand before him just as you are now in worship, and to set in order your dress, your bearing, and your heart.

He said that when you meet him one day, he will ask whether the clothes you are wearing now are fit for worship; and if he asks why your thoughts wandered during worship and why you were nodding off, how will you answer?

When I think it over again, it is a fearful word indeed.

It means that those who give God no thought even during worship will make no effort to live by his will once they go out into the world.

Satan works to keep people from hearing the word proclaimed, and that very fact shows how precious the truth is. Pastors, who will one day have to give an account to God for the souls placed in their care, live every day on a spiritual battlefield that wrings them dry.

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

Those who complain about the support provided so that such pastors can give themselves to the word are, in the end, showing that they have no heart for the saving 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,

We leave the ox unmuzzled and let it eat its fill because its work brings in so much more.

Comparing a pastor to an ox may sound unflattering, but the congregation supports its pastor for this very reason: the members can share more richly in the spiritual grace the pastor gains through study of the word and persistent prayer.

So Paul asked them whether, having sown spiritual things among them, it was a great thing if he reaped their fleshly things.

It is right and proper, he means, for the church to provide for the livelihood of the pastor who shares deep spiritual grace with it. In other words, the congregation brings its offerings to God, the pastor receives a living from God, and in this way each gives themselves to the church.

As the founder of the church, Paul had more right than Peter or Apollos to claim material support, but he did not use this right.

He boldly asked them to prepare in advance the offerings meant for mission, but when it came to money for himself, he was reluctant to accept it.

Still, to instruct the church, he wrote 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 himself takes responsibility for the lives of those who live for the gospel.

And yet the human heart is a strange thing.

It is ministers like Paul, who lay no burden on their people for the gospel’s sake, who are cared for less.

When a pastor pressures members to give by dangling worldly blessings, or tells them they will be blessed only if they treat the pastor well, they give and serve with all their might, even while they grumble.

But when no pressure is applied, they do not give to God of their own accord.

Worse, when an offering is called for, they say the pastors are being corrupted.

We must know that God does not accept offerings given the way milk goes to the baby who cries loudest — offerings squeezed out under a pastor’s pressure.

Paul says that God’s Kingdom cannot be extended without the dedicated service of his people.

If those who have been saved do not labor, after all, the Kingdom of God cannot advance.

When our associate pastor came home to Korea from the United States, my first thought was that, since the church had little money to spare, the associate pastor would earn a living outside the church.

But as I prayed, it struck me that society is moving so fast that, without full attention to ministry, it would be impossible to feed the congregation spiritual food.

In my view, our associate pastor has every ability and qualification needed to hold down an ordinary job.

But a secular job would swallow up too much time, and the hours left for studying Scripture and praying would shrink by comparison.

When a pastor stops studying the Bible and spends less time in prayer, it is a sad loss for the members, who must hear the word that pastor proclaims and win their spiritual battles by it.

So I made sure the associate pastor took no secular work, in order to stay focused on God.

Other ministers received support, but in Corinth Paul accepted no living and worked as a tentmaker instead. That deserves our respect and praise.

But Paul’s record of work for the gospel shows that he received a great deal of help from his fellow workers.

In a church as full of talk as Corinth, he took no living from them and preached nothing but the gospel; yet that good deed is what made them think less of him.

There was no thought of serving Paul more generously, though he had poured himself out for the gospel.

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

Paul stayed in the home of Lydia, a seller of purple cloth, baptized her household, and preached the gospel with her full support.

Since purple cloth was worn only by royalty, the fact that Lydia sold it suggests she must have been a woman of great wealth.

Lydia repented after hearing the gospel Paul proclaimed. She is said to have supplied much of the mission funding Paul needed for his ministry, and her house became the first church established in Philippi.

And in founding the church in Corinth, Paul had the help of Priscilla and Aquila.

This husband and wife were fellow workers who moved ahead of Paul to every place he made his mission field, and they set up everything so that he could do nothing but preach.

I mention these co-workers not to say that pastors must receive a living, but to make the point that in God’s work a pastor can do nothing alone, without co-workers.

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

He had seen for himself that this world is not all there is, that an eternal world waits once the body is laid aside. So he staked his whole life on preaching the gospel alone.

Without co-workers to help him, Paul would not have been able to give himself fully to the gospel, because he would have had to earn his own bread.

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

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

The congregation supports the pastor’s physical needs so that the pastor can study nothing but the word and pray more deeply; the pastor, in turn, helps the congregation win its war against Satan in Christ. Only when both do this can the Kingdom of God expand.

We are meant to help one another as members of one body. But because pastors seek to be served and members will not give themselves, churches are 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.

He knew how weighty the calling to proclaim the gospel is, and that knowledge left him no choice but to preach it to save souls.

He knew, after all, that there is a fire of hell that never goes out.

Whether they preach of their own will and gladly, or because God’s hand compels them, those who have received the calling must carry it through.

Paul said that if the saints preach the gospel willingly, their service is a faithfulness that God greatly rewards.

The fruit pastors will present to God is their people.

God will see what kind of fruit the congregation has become, and by that fruit he will judge whether the pastor was faithful to the calling or idle.

Helping the pastor who does the work of the Spirit, then, is the work of God; and for the pastor, keeping the flock from losing its way is the work of God.

When the pastor fulfills the pastor’s calling and the congregation takes up its own, the church will be built up and stand firm, and Christ, the ark of salvation, will be filled with many souls.

I hope you will live as Christians who do not insist on every freedom you could enjoy, but know how to give yourselves for the glory of God.

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