“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? 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.”

The issue of freedom was not a slam-dunk for the apostle Paul either. His words here in chapter 9 indicate that he, too, was being criticized for his lifestyle choices. Think of it: being an apostle did not exclude him from the judgmentalism of the very ones he had won to Christ! Nothing can be more ironically insulting than carnal Christians criticizing their spiritual forbearers. Paul is not so much forced to defend himself as he is using himself as a personal example of how to respond to such criticism.

Being criticized goes with the territory of serving Christ. Earlier Paul had been panned by legalistic Christians for associating with Gentile converts in Antioch (north of Jerusalem). Even Barnabas and Peter, by their own behavior, pressured Paul to conform (see Gal. 2, Acts 15). It took an all-church council in Jerusalem to settle the issue.

Now some Corinthian Christians have criticized Paul’s freedom in Christ. Although he gets into the specifics a few verses later, here he defends his apostleship in general, using a series of rhetorical questions that expect positive answers. First, in light of what he has just written, then just as he asserted the freedom that the Corinthians have in Christ, he asks, “Am I not free?” What is good for all Christians is certainly good for Paul. Then he asks, “Am I not an apostle?” He asks not out of insecurity, but expecting the Corinthians to recognize his stature among them. Interestingly there are only a few times in Scripture where Paul uses the “apostle card,” but most of these are with the Corinthians, as we shall see in his second letter to them. The truism that Jesus quoted, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household” (Matt. 13:57), could be expanded for Paul to include that lack of honor among those for whom he was spiritual father (1 Cor. 4:15).

The second credential affirms the first: an apostle must be one who has seen the Lord. He was a personal eyewitness of the Lord. This was a criterion identified in Acts 1:21–22, which Paul repeatedly applied to himself (Acts 9, 1 Cor. 15:8). Finally, he appeals to his Corinthian critics with his most compelling credentials: they themselves are proof of his apostleship. He was the very one (humanly speaking) to whom they owed an immeasurable debt of gratitude for bringing the gospel. So why in the world would they criticize him? As his letters unfold, their criticism comes up repeatedly.

Lord, help me resist criticizing the freedom of those who have taught me.