1 Corinthians 9:3-14

3This is my defense to those who scrutinize me: 4Have we no right to food and to drink? 5Have we no right to take along a believing wife,1 as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?2 6Or are Barnabas and I the only apostles who must work for a living?3

7Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not drink of its milk?

8Do I say this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”4 Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf? Indeed, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they should also expect to share in the harvest.

11If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much for us to reap a material harvest from you? 12If others have this right to your support, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not exercise this right. Instead, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.

13Do you not know that those who work in the temple eat of its food, and those who serve at the altar partake of its offerings? 14In the same way, the Lord has prescribed that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.