For even if you were to have ten thousand spiritual instructors–for all that you could not have several fathers. It is I who in Christ Jesus became your father through the Good News.
making it my ambition, however, not to tell the Good News where Christ's name was already known, for fear I should be building on another man's foundation.
But you –and it is all God's doing– are in Christ Jesus: He has become for us a wisdom which is from God, consisting of righteousness and sanctification and deliverance;
In discharge of the task which God graciously entrusted to me, I –like a competent master-builder– have laid a foundation, and others are building upon it. But let every one be careful how and what he builds.
If other teachers possess that right over you, do not we possess it much more? Yet we have not availed ourselves of the right, but we patiently endure all things rather than hinder in the least degree the progress of the Good News of the Christ.
What are my wages then? The very fact that the Good News which I preach will cost my hearers nothing, so that I cannot be charged with abuse of my privileges as a Christian preacher.
For a time is coming when they will not tolerate wholesome instruction, but, wanting to have their ears tickled, they will find a multitude of teachers to satisfy their own fancies;
In accordance with His will He made us His children through the Message of the truth, so that we might, in a sense, be the Firstfruits of the things which He has created.