Paul Worked for Those with Him Too

Then he went to Miletus, and from there he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church of Ephesus. He instructed them how they ought to govern the church of God in his absence, and said: “I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold. You yourselves know how these hands have served my needs and the needs of those who were with me. I have shown you in all things that by laboring like this you ought to support the weak, and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” He left us a weighty example in his way of life. He testifies that he earned not only what would meet his own bodily needs but also what would be enough for the needs of those who were with him: those, I mean, who were taken up with necessary duties and had no chance to get food for themselves with their own hands. And just as he tells the Thessalonians that he had worked to give them an example to imitate, so here too he implies something of the same kind when he says, “I have shown you in all things that by laboring like this you ought to support the weak,” whether weak in mind or in body. That is, we should be diligent in supplying their needs, not from the store of our abundance, or from money laid by, or from another’s generosity and property, but by earning the necessary sum through our own labor and toil. [a]