This question that surrounds the tension between individual freedom and our responsibility in community is not a new question. And as we continue this series, we see Paul address this question head on by using his own life as an illustration that serves to answer how we are to balance individual freedom with community responsibility, beginning in 1 Corinthians 9:1:
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
Paul begins this section of his letter to the church at Corinth by reminding him of his role in God’s kingdom mission and in the church at Corinth through four rhetorical questions. Paul’s point was that his freedom and rights as an apostle are authenticated and confirmed by God’s activity in the lives of the members of the church. The church at Corinth, however, was still questioning his qualifications, authority and freedom that he had as an Apostle, in spite of what God had done through him in Corinth. So Paul transitions from establishing his credentials that should enable him to exercise a great many freedoms as a follower of Jesus, to defending his right to exercise those very freedoms based on the evidence of three specific witnesses. We see the first witness in 1 Corinthians 9:3-7:
My defense to those who examine me is this: Do we not have a right to eat and drink? Do we not have a right to take along a believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or do only Barnabas and I not have a right to refrain from working? Who at any time serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat the fruit of it? Or who tends a flock and does not use the milk of the flock?
Paul responds to his critics by stating that since the church was placing Paul on trial in terms of his authority and freedoms as an Apostle, he wanted to take the opportunity to defend himself. Paul begins his defense with a string of rhetorical questions designed to reveal the freedoms that he should have the right to exercise as a result of his role as a church leader.
What was happening at the church at Corinth was that although he was a leader in the church, he was not receiving any financial or material support from the church. Paul’s point is that as a church leader he should be able to exercise the freedoms and rights to receive financial and material support from the church so that he would be fed and supported. Paul was confronting the church and their opinion that Paul and Barnabas did not have the freedom to be supported financially and materially by the church as they served in the ministry of the church.
Paul then exposes the churches faulty thinking by asking three rhetorical questions that the church would be very familiar with in their day to day experiences. The point that Paul was making with these questions, if asked today, they would sound something like this: Who serves in the military without being paid for it? Who plants a vineyard and then does not receive sustenance from that field to support themselves? Who shepherds a flock and then does not receive sustenance from that flock to support themselves?
Paul's point to the church was that even their day to day experience testified to the reality that, as an Apostle, he should be able to exercise his freedom to receive financial and material support.
Tomorrow, we will look at two other witnesses that testify to our right to exercise the freedoms we have as a result of our relationship with Christ.
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