1. Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?
2. If I am not an apostle to others, yet indeed I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
3. This is my answer to those who examine me.
4. Do we have no right to eat and to drink?
5. Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife as do other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?
6. Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working?
7. Who goes to war at any time at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard, but does not eat of its fruit? Or who feeds a flock, but does not drink of the flock’s milk?
8. Do I say these things as a man? Or does the law not say the same thing also?
9. For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox while it treads out the grain.” Is God concerned about oxen?
10. Or does He say it completely for our sake? For our sake, no doubt, this is written so that he who plows should plow in hope, and that he who threshes in hope should partake of his hope.