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?
2. 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.
3. My defense to those who examine me is this:
4. Do we not have a right to eat and drink?
5. 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?
6. Or do only Barnabas and I not have a right to refrain from working?
7. 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?
8. I am not speaking these things according to human judgment, am I? Or does not the Law also say these things?