The Minister and Manual Work
While Paul was careful to set before his converts the plain teaching
of Scripture regarding the proper support of the work of God, and
while he claimed for himself, as a minister of the gospel, the “power
to forbear working” [
1 Corinthians 9:6
.] at secular employment as a
means of self-support, yet at various times during his ministry in the
great centers of civilization, he wrought at a handicraft for his own
maintenance....
It is at Thessalonica that we first read of Paul’s working with his
hands in self-supporting labor while preaching the word. Writing to
the church of believers there, he reminded them that he “might have
been burdensome” to them, and added” “Ye remember, brethren, our
labor and travail: for laboring night and day, because we would not be
chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.”
[
1 Thessalonians 2:6, 9
.] And again, in his second epistle to them, he
declared that he and his fellow-laborers while with them had not eaten
“any man’s bread for naught.” Night and day we worked, he wrote,
“that we might not be chargeable to any of you: not because we have
not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us.”
[
2 Thessalonians 3:8, 9
.] ...
When Paul first visited Corinth, he found himself among a people
who were suspicious of the motives of strangers. The Greeks on the
seacoast were keen traders. So long had they trained themselves in
sharp business practices, that they had come to believe that gain was
godliness, and that to make money, whether by fair means or foul, was
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commendable. Paul was acquainted with their characteristics, and he
would give them no occasion for saying that he preached the gospel in
order to enrich himself. He might justly have claimed support from
his Corinthian hearers; but this right he was willing to forego, lest his
usefulness and success as a minister should be injured by the unjust
suspicion that he was preaching the gospel for gain. He would seek
to remove all occasion for misrepresentation, that the force of his
message might not be lost.
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