What Does 1 Corinthians 9:6 Mean?
Or is it only I and Barnabas who have no right to lay down our work?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working?THE KEY
The “power” here is a right to stop working for one’s own provision, not merely the ability to do so.
THE MEANING
Your service does not erase the question of what support you have a right to receive. This verse treats the option to refrain from earning your own provision as a real authority, not an imagined possibility. That right can exist even when it is not exercised.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that someone who serves has no legitimate claim to support and must always finance that service through personal labor.
THE ROOT
ἐξουσίαν
exousian
GROWS FROM
ἐξουσία / ἔξεστι (exousia / exesti)
Right or authority: the standing that makes an action permissible or within one’s power.
English “power” can suggest force or raw ability; ἐξουσία (exousia) names a right or authority. Paired with not working, it reveals a concrete freedom: laboring for one’s provision is not the only legitimate shape of service.
ALSO GROWS
exesti: It is permitted; it is lawful.
ἔξεστι
This related expression frames authority as what is allowed, so the “power” in the question is a recognized right, not just strength.
exousiazō: To exercise authority; to have authority over.
ἐξουσιάζω
The verb carries the noun into action and makes visible the difference between holding authority and using it.
ἐργάζεσθαι
ergazesthai
GROWS FROM
ἐργ-
erg-
Work, labor, productive activity.
“lay down our work” in this verse is ergazesthai. This verb belongs to the same word family as “work” and “worker,” so the question concerns ceasing one’s own labor, not ceasing to serve. It places the right to forego self-supporting work beside ongoing service.
ALSO GROWS
ergon: Work; deed.
ἔργον
The noun names the work or deed produced by activity, connecting labor with what it accomplishes.
ergatēs: Worker; laborer.
ἐργάτης
The related noun names the person who works, making the verse’s question about labor itself concrete.
THE PATTERN
Service that sustains others carries a recognized right to material support.
You shall not muzzle the ox while he treads out the grain.And remain in that same house, eating and drinking what they give, for the worker is worthy of his pay. Do not step from house to house.So also the Lord has arranged that those who proclaim the good news should live from the good news.THE THREAD
If others share this right over you, are we not even more so? Yet we have not used this right, but bear all things, lest we block the good news of the Anointed One.The same Greek noun ἐξουσία (exousia, right or authority) appears here as “power.” In 9:6 the right is framed as permission to stop working; here its deliberate non-use separates possessing a right from choosing to exercise it.
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