Have I committed an offence (literally, a sin) in abasing myself...? — The rival teachers apparently boasted of their disinterestedness. “They didn’t come for what they could get.” St. Paul, we know, more than most men, had acted on the law of which they boasted as their special distinction, and in 1 Corinthians 9:1-18, in the discussion on the question of eating things sacrificed to idols, had dwelt with a pardonable fulness on his own conduct in this matter, as an example of foregoing an abstract right for the sake of a greater good. His enemies were compelled to admit this as far as his life at Corinth was concerned; but they had detected what they looked on as a grave inconsistency. He had accepted help from the churches of Macedonia (2 Corinthians 11:9), and in this they found ground for a two-fold charge: “He wasn’t above taking money from other churches — he was only too proud to take it from that of Corinth;” and this was made matter of personal offence. To take money at all was mean; not to take it from them was contemptuous.
He does not deny the facts. He repeats the irritating epithet, “abasing myself”; he adds the familiar antithesis (Matthew 23:12; Luke 1:52; Luke 14:11; Luke 18:11), “Yes, but I did it that you might be exalted,” perhaps with reference to elevation in spiritual knowledge, perhaps, because the fact that he laboured for them without payment was the greatest proof of disinterested love for them which could be given.