Called and Commissioned

1 Corinthians 9:1-7    
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 doubtless 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 have no right to eat and drink? 5 Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the 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 ever goes to war at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk of the flock?

Paul was called and commissioned by Christ Himself on the Damascus Road, seeing Him there in that blinding light.  The Corinthians were fruit of his labor, demonstrating his apostleship.  To answer their criticism of his eating in freedom, no longer under the Law, to answer why he taught it is best to remain single to mind God’s work yet have a wife, to address the accusations that he did not have to work or earn his way with the gospel — these he defended in truth and directness.  He used examples of funded armies and being fed from he flock tended to show that God arranged those who labor in His work should be sustained by it and those being ministered to.