1 Corinthians 9:18

18 What then is my reward? That [when I] proclaim the gospel, I may offer the gospel free of charge, in order not to make full use of my right in the gospel.

1 Corinthians 9:18 Meaning and Commentary

1 Corinthians 9:18

What is my reward then?
&c.] None at all, I have none to expect, hope for, or claim, in a way of debt; I am a servant intrusted by my Lord with the Gospel, and an unprofitable one I am; I do, at most and best, but what is my duty, and for that I can claim no reward: all the reward that remains is only this,

verily, that when I preach the Gospel,
which I am obliged to do,

I may make the Gospel of Christ without charge;
to them that hear it, as he did to the Corinthians, which was his glorying in ( 1 Corinthians 9:15 ) and is the same with his reward here; for this means not any reward from God, but his glorying among men, and against the false teachers; that when he preached the word at Corinth, he was not chargeable to any, nor would he ever be: his reason for it is,

that I abuse not my power in the Gospel;
his right of having a maintenance, whilst he was preaching the Gospel; to have made use of which would have been an abuse of it, since it would have given occasion to the false apostles to reproach and calumniate, and might have been an hinderance to the Gospel of Christ, and a stumbling to some weak minds.

1 Corinthians 9:18 In-Context

16 For if I proclaim the gospel, it is not to me a reason for boasting, for necessity is imposed on me. For woe is to me if I do not proclaim the gospel.

17 For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward, but if [I do so] unwillingly, I have been entrusted with a stewardship.

18 What then is my reward? That [when I] proclaim the gospel, I may offer the gospel free of charge, in order not to make full use of my right in the gospel.

19 For [although I] am free from all [people], I have enslaved myself to all, in order that I may gain more.

20 I have become like a Jew to the Jews, in order that I may gain the Jews. To those under the law [I became] as under the law ([although I] myself am not under the law) in order that I may gain those under the law.

Footnotes

• [a]. *Here "[when]" is supplied as a component of the participle ("proclaim the gospel") which is understood as temporal