2. If to others I am not an apostle, yet 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. Have we no right to eat and to drink?
5. Have we no right to take along a wife who is a believer, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?
6. Or have only Barnabas and I no right to not work?
7. What soldier ever serves at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard, and doesn’t eat of its fruit? Or who feeds a flock, and doesn’t drink from the flock’s milk?
8. Do I speak these things according to the ways of men? Or doesn’t the law also say the same thing?
9. For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it for the oxen that God cares,
10. or does he say it assuredly for our sake? Yes, it was written for our sake, because he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should partake of his hope.
11. If we sowed to you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we reap your fleshly things?