If Anyone Will Not Work, Neither Let Him Eat

Now he no longer offers them the advice of a teacher or a physician, but proceeds with the severity of a judge’s sentence. Taking up his apostolic authority again, he pronounces sentence on those who despise him as if from the judgment seat. I mean that power which, when he wrote with threats to the Corinthians, he declared had been given him by the Lord, when he charged those caught in sin to hurry and amend their lives before he came. He charged them this way: “I beg you that when I am present I may not have to be bold against some, with that power which has been given me over you.” And again: “For even if I boast a little more of the power which the Lord has given me for building up, and not for your destruction, I will not be ashamed.” With that power, I say, he declares, “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.” He punishes them not with a sword of the flesh but with the power of the Holy Spirit, forbidding them the goods of this life. So if perhaps they think little of the punishment of death to come and still remain obstinate through love of ease, they may at last be compelled to obey his saving command, forced by the demands of nature and the fear of immediate death. [a]