009:002 If to other men I am not an Apostle, yet at any rate I am one to you;
for your very existence as a Christian Church is the seal
of my Apostleship.
009:003 That is how I vindicate myself to those who criticize me.
009:004 Have we not a right to claim food and drink?
009:005 Have we not a right to take with us on our journeys a Christian
sister as our wife, as the rest of the Apostles do--
and the Lord's brothers and Peter?
009:006 Or again, is it only Barnabas and myself who are not at liberty
to give up working with our hands?
009:007 What soldier ever serves at his own cost? Who plants
a vineyard and yet does not eat any of the grapes?
Or who tends a herd of cattle and yet does not taste their milk?
009:008 Am I making use of merely worldly illustrations?
Does not the Law speak in the same tone?
009:009 For in the Law of Moses it is written, "Thou shalt not muzzle
an ox while it is treading out the grain."
009:010 Is God simply thinking about the oxen? Or is it really in our
interest that He speaks? Of course, it was written in our interest,
because it is His will that when a plough-man ploughs,
and a thresher threshes, it should be in the hope of sharing
that which comes as the result.
009:011 If it is we who sowed the spiritual grain in you, is it a great
thing that we should reap a temporal harvest from you?
009:012 If other teachers possess that right over you, do not we possess
it much more? Yet we have not availed ourselves of the right,
but we patiently endure all things rather than hinder in
the least degree the progress of the Good News of the Christ.
009:013 Do you not know that those who perform the sacred rites have
their food from the sacred place, and that those who serve