1 Corinthians 9:16

“For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; for woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”

Many have taken the first proposition as a general maxim. Paul would say, that in itself the act of preaching is not a cause of glorying to the preacher, whoever he may be. But why not, if he discharges this task with all his heart and in love to his Lord? For we shall immediately see what in Paul's sense is to be understood by a ground of glorying. Besides, in a passage of so personal a character as this, the first person singular can only designate Paul himself. If to him personally the act of preaching the gospel is not a ground of glorying, it is because this is a task which he is forced to discharge. In fact, if he does not do it, the threatening of a terrible condemnation hangs over his head. When dictating these words: “Woe to me if I do not...,” the apostle is no doubt thinking of the Lord's threatening: “It would be hard for thee (it would cost thee dear) to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9:5). What a difference between an apostleship thus conferred and that of the Twelve, who had become attached to Christ by an act of free faith! Their call, with such a preparation and ground, and the ministry which followed it, were a work of free will; while he, Paul, had been, as it were, seized with living force in the way of obstinate unbelief, and constrained by threatening to obey the call. Such an apostleship in itself offers nothing satisfying to the heart of him who is invested with it. By καύχημα, a cause of glorying, we are not here to understand a cause of boasting; such a thought would belie the apostle's entire evangelical conception. The word is well explained by Heinrici: “the joyous feeling of the moral worth of one's own action.” This is not the Pharisaical pride of merit connected with the work. It is the grateful heart which needs to feel that it is doing something freely to correspond to the love of which it has been the object. The reading χάρις, favour, in the Greco-Lat. and the Sinaït., would only have meaning if we understood it in the same sense as Luke 6:32-33: a title to Divine favour. But the close relation between this verse and the preceding speaks for the received reading and demands the term καύχημα.

Though the δέ after οὐαί (“ but woe...”) may be logically defended, the γάρ, for, being better supported and offering a simpler logical connection, should be preferred: No ground of glorying, for there is constraint; and there is constraint, for damnation awaits me if I withdraw from the task.