Whoever Will Not Work Is Restless

“Because we were not restless among you.” When he wants to prove by the evidence of his work that he was not restless among them, he shows plainly that those who will not work are always restless, through the fault of idleness. “Nor did we eat anyone’s bread for nothing.” With each phrase the teacher of the Gentiles presses his rebuke a step further. The preacher of the gospel says that he did not eat anyone’s bread for nothing, though he knew that the Lord had commanded that “those who preach the gospel should live by the gospel,” and again, “The worker deserves his food.” So if he who preached the gospel, doing a work so lofty and spiritual, did not dare to eat his bread for nothing by relying on the Lord’s command, what will we do? Not only has no preaching of the word been entrusted to us, but no care of souls has been committed to us except our own. With what confidence will we dare to eat our bread for nothing with idle hands, when the “chosen vessel,” though pressed by his concern for the gospel and his work of preaching, did not dare to eat without working with his own hands? [a]

“But in labor,” he says, “and weariness, working night and day so that we would not be a burden to any of you.” Up to this point he amplifies and adds to his rebuke. For he did not simply say, “We did not eat bread for nothing from any of you,” and stop there. It might have been thought that he was supported by his own private means and by money he had saved, or by other people’s money, though not by their collections and gifts. “But in labor,” he says, “and weariness, working night and day”: that is, supported especially by our own labor. And this, he says, we did not do of our own choice and for our own pleasure, as rest and bodily exercise might suggest, but because our needs and the lack of food compelled us, and not without great bodily weariness. For not only all through the day, but also by night, which seems to be given for the body’s rest, I kept steadily at the work of my hands, out of concern for food.