Albert Barnes Commentary 1 Corinthians 9:11

"If we sowed unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we shall reap your carnal things?" — 1 Corinthians 9:11 (ASV)

If we have sown to you spiritual things. If we have been the means of imparting to you the gospel, and bestowing upon you its high hopes and privileges. (See Barnes on Romans 15:27).

The figure of sowing, to denote the preaching of the gospel, is often employed in the Scriptures. (and the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:3 and following).

Is it a great thing, etc.? (See Barnes on Romans 15:27).

Is it to be regarded as unequal, unjust, or burdensome? Is it to be supposed that we are receiving that for which we have not rendered a valuable consideration?

The sense is: "We impart blessings of more value than we receive. We receive a supply for our temporal wants. We impart to you, under the Divine blessing, the gospel, with all its hopes and consolations. We make you acquainted with God; with the plan of salvation; with the hope of heaven. We instruct your children; we guide you in the path of comfort and peace; we raise you from the degradations of idolatry and of sin; and we open before you the hope of the resurrection of the just, and of all the bliss of heaven. And to do this, we give ourselves to toil and peril by land and by sea."

Can it then be made a matter of question whether all these high and exalted hopes are of as much value to a dying person as the small amount that will be necessary to provide for the needs of those who are the means of imparting these blessings?

Paul says this, therefore, from the reasonableness of the case. The propriety of support might be further urged:

1. Because without it the ministry would be comparatively useless. Ministers, like physicians, lawyers, and farmers, should be allowed to attend mainly to the great business of their lives, and to their appropriate work. No physician, no farmer, no mechanic, could accomplish much if his attention were constantly diverted from his appropriate business to engage in something else. And how can the minister of the gospel, if his time is nearly all taken up in working to provide for the needs of his family?
2. Most ministers spend their early days, and many of them all their property, in preparing to preach the gospel to others. And as the mechanic, who has spent his early years learning a trade, and the physician and lawyer in preparing for their profession, receive support in that calling, why should not the minister of the gospel?
3. People, in other things, cheerfully pay those who work for them. They compensate the teacher, the physician, the lawyer, the merchant, the mechanic; and they do it cheerfully, because they believe they receive a valuable consideration for their money. But is it not so with regard to ministers of the gospel? Is not a person's family as certainly benefited by the work of a faithful clergyman and pastor, as by the skill of a physician or a lawyer, or by the service of the teacher? Are not the affairs of the soul and of eternity as important to a person's family as those of time and the welfare of the body? So the music teacher and the dancing teacher are paid, and paid cheerfully and liberally; and yet can there be any comparison between the value of their services and those of the minister of the gospel?
4. It might be added, that society is benefited in a pecuniary way by the service of a faithful minister to a far greater extent than the amount of compensation he receives. One drunkard, reformed under his efforts, may earn and save for his family and for society as much as the whole salary of the pastor. The promotion of order, peace, sobriety, industry, education, regularity in business, and honesty in contracting and paying debts, saves much more to the community at large than the cost of supporting the gospel. In regard to this, anyone may make the comparison at their leisure between those places where the ministry is established, and where temperance, industry, and sober habits prevail, and those places where there is no ministry, and where gambling, idleness, and dissipation abound. It is always a matter of economy for a people, in the end, to support teachers and ministers as they ought to be supported.

Reap your carnal things. Partake of those things which relate to the present life; the support of the body, that is, food and clothing.