1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 9.
Paul the Free Servant of Christ. 1 Cor. 9, 1-27.
Defending his Christian liberty: Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ, our Lord? Are not ye my work in the Lord? V. 2. If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you; for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord.
Paul had stated the guiding principle of his life to be: All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient, chapter 6, 12. In accordance with this principle he had been practicing self-denial out of love to the Lord and to his brethren, he had renounced his own rights and privileges for the sake of winning souls for Christ and spreading the Gospel. And therefore he now defends his position and his Christian liberty in one of the most elevated and beautiful passages in the entire New Testament.
He has the same rights as other Christians, as other apostles, and if he chooses not to exercise these rights, this fact does not deprive him of his privileges, but should rather cause the Corinthian Christians to esteem him all the more highly for his self-denial in their behalf.
These were his prerogatives: He was free, he had become a partaker of the liberty wherewith Christ had made him free, and in the exercise of this liberty was accountable to no man; he was an apostle, and this in spite of the fact that some deceivers were casting suspicions on the certainty of his call, 2 Corinthians 11, 13.
So far as the Corinthians are concerned, his apostleship is substantiated in two ways: He has, with the eyes of the body, seen the Lord, their common Lord, Jesus Christ, Acts 9, when the Lord appeared to him on the way to Damascus; the Corinthians themselves are his work, the concrete evidence of his calling, through his work the Lord had created them to be new creatures, the preaching of the Gospel had been effective in their case, what they had received was the Lord's grace and blessing which is given through the word and work of His servants.
The apostle feels constrained to emphasize this point: If to others I am not an apostle, at any rate, most certainly, I am to you. In other congregations, where the Judaizing teachers were very strong, they might deny his apostleship, in their view or opinion his claims may not be well founded.
But so far as the Corinthians were concerned, they surely cannot but acknowledge him, since the simple fact of their conversion was a constant confirmation of his contention: they were the seal of his apostleship in the Lord. The Lord affixed His seal to the work of His servant by making his words powerful for the conversion of the Corinthians. Compare John 3, 33.
Paul had been among the believers of Corinth with the signs of an apostle, 2 Cor. 12, 12, and the Lord had given the increase in such a signally wonderful manner as to confirm Paul's commission in the eyes of all men that were not blinded by prejudice. And this is the apology, the answer to his critics, to those that question his apostleship, that wish to investigate his claims; he simply points to the Corinthian congregation, as he needed no other defense.