1 Corinthians 9:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Am I not, &c. It appears from this, and several other passages of the epistles to the Corinthians, that some of them, influenced probably by false teachers, who had crept in among them, objected to St. Paul's being an apostle, because he had not asserted his privilege in demanding and receiving such maintenance from the churches as was due to that office, inferring from this circumstance that he did not judge himself entitled to any such privilege, and therefore had wrought at a trade, to support himself thereby. Hence, after deciding some very difficult questions, which the Corinthians had proposed to him, and particularly after affirming, in the end of chap. 7., that he had decided these questions by the inspiration of the Spirit; and after showing himself a faithful apostle of Christ, by declaring, in the end of the last chapter, his resolution on all occasions to abstain from things indifferent, rather than, by using his liberty respecting them, to lead his fellow-Christians into sin; he with great propriety introduces the proof of his apostleship, and answers all the objections and calumnies whereby his enemies endeavoured to discredit him in the eyes of the Corinthians. Am I not As truly as any man living; an apostle? Divinely appointed and commissioned by the Lord Jesus? Am I not free To act as I think best, with regard to receiving a maintenance from those to whom I minister or not? Have I not the liberty of a common Christian, yea, and that of an apostle, so as to have a right to preach the gospel without reward, if I think fit so to do? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord After his resurrection, so as to be able to bear witness to that important fact on my own knowledge, as confidently as those who saw him before I did? Unless he had seen Christ, he could not have been one of his first grand witnesses, could not have borne testimony to his resurrection on his own knowledge thereof. Are not you In respect of your conversion, gifts, graces, privileges; my work in the Lord The fruit of my ministry as an apostle among you, by means of God's grace and power working with me? If I be not an apostle to others So visibly and demonstratively; yet doubtless I am to you Who, of all people in the world, can show the least excuse for questioning my mission; for the seal of my apostleship The certain evidence of my divine call; are ye in the Lord Who have not only received faith by my mouth, but all the gifts of the Spirit by my hands.