Typical Objections to the Biblical Teaching that Ministry Should Be Free

The Common Objection from “The Laborer Deserves His Wages”

In this episode, John Conley and I got together for a call to discuss some of the common objections that typically come up when people encounter resistance to the Jesus trade. There are a lot of people with their entire lives invested in a system that monetizes ministry like everything else on the market.

And when we point out that the Bible condemns the sale of ministry, but commends the support of ministry through the free generosity of God's people, there are a few knee-jerk reactions that tend to come up often.

So we're going to have a conversation about these typical objections and do our best to respond. We hope this is helpful and edifying and we realize that not everything we say in these conversations will be perfect or exhaustive, and so we encourage you to diligently search the Scriptures for yourself and weigh what we have to say in the more thorough articles and resources over at sellingjesus .org.

The usual comeback that we hear is, the worker is worthy of his wages, which means that I can sell any kind of ministry because I need my wages. When I'm working as a servant of Christ, I need my wages, so that means I have to get those wages by selling what I do.

Whether it's a book, whether it's biblical counseling, whether it's worship music, I have to sell it and this verse gives me the permission to do that. So yeah, maybe we could read the full context of that.

Do any of you guys have that handy to read? The first time that comes up in.

Luke 10, Matthew 10, and 1 Timothy 5 on Supporting Ministry

Scripture is in Luke 10. Jesus tells the disciples, the 70 disciples, how they are to go out and share the gospel. He says in verse 3 of Luke 10, Go your way. Behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.

Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you and remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages.

Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. And it goes on. Of course, there's a lot more context than what I just read, but he's describing to the disciples how they are supposed to be supported during this time.

And so they are to expect others to support them because the laborer deserves his wages. And in Matthew 10, it says the laborer deserves his food. So Paul quotes the same verse later in 1st Timothy 5.

So in 1st Timothy 5, it says, Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor. The widows are supposed to be honored, and so the elders are supposed to be double honored, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

For the scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer deserves his wages. So here Paul is acknowledging Jesus' words as being scripture, and the laborer once again deserves his wages.

Honor in scripture is often used to describe a price of something or wages. So here it is talking about money when it's talking about honor primarily. And it is indeed the case that elders and other ministers who are working for the kingdom do deserve, they deserve wages, they deserve to be compensated for the work that they're.

Doing. So in your guys's experience, how do you think this has come into the whole discussion as a knee-jerk reaction with people, quoting this verse thinking that it automatically applies to sales or the selling of ministry?

Because it seems that it's like embedded or ingrained in people when you have this discussion with them. It's like this automatic reaction. Yeah, what I.

Found is that people will read modern financial practices into the text, and so we'll think of things like copyright and royalties and the way that we've established things today, and we'll read them into it and say, well yeah, Paul's talking about those kind of things, that he would be totally fine with those things.

But if we actually think about, you know, Paul's day and the practices they had, it's hard to imagine, you can't even really think of one example where Paul would be doing some kind of selling, or any of the Apostles would be doing some kind of selling.

For example, it'd have to be like charging an entrance fee to go listen to them speak, or selling an album of worship music. I mean, it's really hard to think of any early New Testament example that would be equivalent to what we're doing today.

Yeah, I think there's just a fundamental.

Misunderstanding of what we're saying that would cause somebody to think this verse is remotely relevant to contradicting what we've said. Because we have positively asserted it is indeed the case that workers are supposed to be compensated for their work.

The question is how, and by whom, and with what mindset, and we've provided answers to all that. So to go back to this fundamental proof text that we have as our foundation, is to misunderstand what we're offering.

We're offering a distinction to explain how it is that a worker can be supported while not violating the other commands that Christ has given, such as, freely you.

Have received, freely give. Yeah, I think part of it, maybe to add to what John was saying, is people are so far removed from the biblical world. Many people are so far removed. They cannot put themselves in the shoes of those first-century people like Paul, or Jesus for that matter.

And I remember my pastoral ministry professor, he told me a story about a woman who came to him after church, and she said, I love your preaching pastor, but I just wish you would wear a tie when you preached.

And he said, well why is that? She said, well because Jesus always wore a tie. That's kind of an exaggerated, this is a real story, but it's kind of an exaggerated example, but I think people really are very disconnected often from the first century, and they think of this industrial evangelical complex that we have around us, of everything being sold constantly, and they think, of course it's always been this way, and historically.

They can't imagine the alternative, right? Yeah, I remember a really funny comment on Facebook that I read that was a response to some of the things I wrote, and basically the guy compared himself to Paul, and actually genuinely believed that Paul was in a better financial position to be able to freely give than he was in today.

You know, someone in ancient society was in a better financial position than we are today. I mean, you can't really, even the poorest of poor in our society would still often be better off than Paul was.

I don't know how you'd get that in your mind. Yeah, yeah, so I think that.

The tendency so much that we see in the evangelical church is, well, my world and my worldview, this current modern world that I live in, and my church, and my experience as a Christian of everything being monetized, my job now is to take Scripture and find ways to make it map on to that world.

And so this one just immediately feels like, oh, okay, I can map this on. It lends itself to that when it really is speaking the opposite. So maybe Conley, if you could tell us, just unpack a little bit like you do in your book, who is supposed to give us our wages?

Is that supposed to be somebody who pays for our ministry, or who is supposed to give us our wages? And how can we apply that today? Right, so the.

Question is, yeah, in this analogy that's being given about workers and wages, which is not too stretch of analogy because they really are workers and they really do receive wages, but who is the employer in this context?

And both what you see in Matthew 9, which comes right before Matthew 10, and earlier in Luke 10, it is God who is the Lord of the harvest. So it says in Luke 10 too,. And he said to them, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

You know, these are the laborers that are worthy of their wages. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. So who is sending them out? The Lord is. God is the employer who is to supply his workers.

Now, how does he supply them? As we see in the rest of that passage, he supplies through those of his kingdom who willingly would supply. So yes, it is coming through men. It's not God from the sky raining down money or anything like that.

He chooses means, but those means are not sales. Those means.

Are willing co-laborers. Yeah, and I think it's helpful also just to point out the laborers are doing work that's unique from other kinds of work that you'd find in everyday life, right? So they're working for their master, the Lord, to do spiritual work.

I think it would be good if we could just have a brief discussion on, you know, what is this the nature of this work that we're talking about, right? We're not talking about working for a company, a secular company.

We're not talking about selling cars or something like that. I'll talk about.

Something briefly before that. Let's say, for example, we are talking about something similar like working in a secular company or something like that. We still actually treat God as a lesser master, as a lesser boss than we would a company, because if you worked in a company, then everything you produced would be owned by the company.

And so they would own the copyright to it. They would be in charge of it. You wouldn't have ownership of what you are employed to make. Whereas today we believe we're in the service of God, and yet everything we create, we think we have ownership of.

And so we actually treat God as a lesser master than even a regular boss today. But on top of that, we don't think that this is the same work as any other kind of secular work. This is the distinction between what's spiritual and what's not spiritual.

What's ministry and just what's ordinary activity. And that's a distinction that people are quite.

Confused about today. And it's a hard distinction. We all acknowledge that some of these things are not hard and fast, like you can put them in a grid and you're gonna get exactly, okay, this is defined as ministry, like black and white.

We acknowledge that there's overlap in our lives and our work in a lot of ways, and that's fine. I think this comes to a heart issue as well, and maybe we can talk about that a little bit as we talk about this.

But what is your main goal, and we talked about this in the video, is are you wanting to lead people to Jesus? So that's maybe an easier way to think about it. Do you want to lead people to Jesus is the primary object of what you're doing.

Pointing people to Christ, helping them understand the gospel better, to know and love him. And Conley, you were gonna add something here. Yeah, I was just going to.

Affirm what John said about how we treat other employers, you know, just to go with the analogy that's made right here in this passage. If you were working in a grain field and you took some of the grain and sold it yourself and pocketed the money, that would be theft.

The fact that the worker is worthy of his wages doesn't mean he gets to decide how his wages get paid. It's still the master that decides these things, and in this spiritual work, God has decided how his grain will be sold, and it should not be sold.

It should be sold for nothing, just as it says in Isaiah 55 1, without money and without price. And he has determined that his workers will be supplied through willing co-laborers. Yeah, and like John said, again, it is a spiritual work.

It is something special.

And it would be kind of like somebody embezzling money from their company and then responding, well, the worker is worthy of his wages. I'm a worker. I can't I do this? Well, we understand that instinctively in the real world, but somehow we've come to this point in Christianity that when we basically steal money from God's people by charging them for ministry, we turn to God and say, well, I'm worthy of my wages, instead of waiting for Him to pay us as.

He wants to pay us. Right, or maybe not even stealing from the people, but rather stealing from God, because it's His Word that we've taken and then not distributed the way He would have us distribute, but rather are charging for it.

Yeah. So, yeah, the primary wrong that's being done there is to the Lord.

Himself. Yeah, and I imagine at this point there'd be a lot of listeners thinking, you know, where does the money come from then? Because it has to come from somewhere, and that's where it's really important to make the distinction between donations and support compared to sales, because donations are a source of income, and that's how church runs.

So church runs, most churches will run purely on donations, yet all the ministry they produce, the sermons, everything, everyone can come and listen for free. And so there is a biblical way to fund ministry, and it's not through sales.

Right. I've.

Repeatedly in this conversation used the phrase, a willing co-laborer. You see that right in this passage that we're talking about? It says, whatever house you enter first say, peace be to this house, and if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him, but if not it will return to you.

So here we have this notion of a son of peace, and in Matthew 10 it comes out as a worthy household. Right. The son of peace is the one that God has determined is to supply this person. So in today's church context, it's the church gathering and giving on the first day of the week, like it describes in 1st Corinthians 16, but none of these remotely resemble sales where the Word is being sold.

Yeah, and it's a.

Really simple solution, right? And we talk about this all the time amongst ourselves. Everyone today understands donations. It's not a foreign concept. It's not like introducing some weird thing, like some cryptocurrency that no one has ever heard of, that not everybody is comfortable with or familiar with it in any way.

Basically everybody who is a Christian has encountered the idea of donating money freely if they've gone to church, right? So it's really not out of left field what we're trying to talk about here. It's really, really simple that we're just trying to encourage the obedience to this passage that ministry is meant to live and function on donations.

But people really don't like that still. Why do you guys think people still have such a hard time grasping that, grappling with that? Yeah, I have.

Some ideas, but I'll let you guys. Well, I think to echo what you just said a second ago, is this is not radical, right? A lot of people see it as being very radical when they hear it, and in a sense it is, because a lot would need to change.

But if you think about what it is that needs to change, very little of that is the core day-to-day activity of the Christian in the church, right? It's a lot of what happens on the peripherals of kingdom life that would need to be radically upended.

Really nothing at the core of it, if you're just thinking about typical church operations. And so, yeah, just what you said, what we're describing is not really that radical when it comes to the way the church operates, and has operated for a very long time.

But then to your second question here of why is it that people have difficulty with this, I think because they see how much the peripherals would need to be upended, and that makes them nervous. You know, the idea of watching tables actually be.

Flipped, that is concerning. Yeah, and I think one of the challenges too for our generation is that those peripheral, those parachurch activities have in some ways become really important parts of someone's spiritual life.

And so, you know, it's quite often you'd expect uni students to go to conferences, or go to, or people in your church to go to conferences to get that extra boost of spiritual teaching, that extra depth that they feel like they can't get at church.

And that's a real danger. I guess there's a conversation to be had about whether that stuff is necessary at all. But the fact that it has become part of many people's spiritual lives, that they feel they've gone so much deeper in their faith by attending these parachurch activities.

But unlike the church, those things have a cost, and they're charged for. And so if you are poor, or if for whatever reason you're not able to attend, you're missing.

Out on that kind of spiritual depth. And I will add that we have to admit that there is a consumerist mentality in many people in the West, right? And we like the therapeutic kind of comfort that we find in purchasing things.

And we feel like when we have that in Christianity, it makes it feel more interesting, or more comforting, or more familiar. I don't want to discount that heavy influence of materialism that we have in our society, in our culture, that makes people think if we lose that in the church, the church is going to look too different, too weird, too foreign.

And I don't like that. I want the church to feel relevant, and feel like the rest of my week does. I'm curious if you could elaborate on what.

You mean by therapeutic. Like, what comes to mind for me is the Barbie meme, math is hard, let's go shopping. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure, for sure. I think it would be naive if we thought that that mentality isn't somewhere in the church, isn't infiltrating our.

Churches, right? Yeah, what I've found is that people are aware that we can be very consumeristic, and they are concerned about it. So, I think there are a lot of people concerned about materialism and consumeristic mentalities in the church, but they don't have the theology or the kind of grounding in Scripture they need to do something about it.

And so often we, you know, think, yeah, this can be a problem, we should look out for this. But then, you know, they don't do anything, and they continue to sell ministry. Whereas if we actually put these concerns to Scripture, you know, be willing to make some hard looks at how we do things, we might actually see.

Some change in the church. Right. The other thing I wanted to mention is the idea of donations for many people, that I hear over and over, this objection that, okay, well, maybe donations is correct, but we can't expect people to give that much, right?

We can't coerce them, we can't, and at the end of the day, it's a lack of faith, right? People are like, well, number one, either I don't have enough faith to rely on donations to do ministry, or number two, I'm not good at raising money, at raising support.

That I hear so much. People, oh, I'm an introvert, you know, I'm not gonna be good at raising support, or, you know, I don't feel like it's my gift to go talk to people to raise money, or whatever. And so there's those two things.

It can't work, because number one, I don't have enough faith, and number.

Two, I'm not good at raising support. So there's two classes of answers to a lot of these objections, right? One is the principled answer, right? The principled answer is, it doesn't matter if you're bad at it.

If this is really what the Bible has commanded, then we don't have the option of going outside of the framework of giving freely, as Jesus commanded in Matthew 10. Now, the other class of responses, which are not invalid, but they aren't really getting at the core, is, you know, is that pragmatic concern really, is it really valid?

And for this particular one, I would say, first of all, well, if you're bad at it, if you're bad at raising support, should you be doing it, first of all? And then, secondly, have you tried? Do you know whether or not God's people would not, you know, radically give?

And what you see in Scripture is, when the people are called on to volunteer, God supernaturally enables their hearts to do so, when it is His will that they do so. You look at the of the temple, or the, rather, the tabernacle, when Moses is collecting supplies.

You look at Deborah's song, as she's praising God for volunteers. You look at Psalm 110, that talks about the hearts of volunteers. You know, God repeatedly, throughout Scripture, when He desires something to take place for the good of His kingdom, will supernaturally give His people, corporately, the heart.

Necessary in order to supply that work. Yeah. Amen. If people who are listening haven't listened to the Pragmatism versus Principle podcast, it's a good one to hear. We're working through that issue in that podcast conversation, because that's such a big issue in this conversation, that trumping of principle with pragmatism, just saying, well, it's not practical, so it doesn't matter what Scripture says.

It doesn't matter what Christ commands. It doesn't seem like.

It will work, so we throw it out. Yeah, I was just gonna say that I remember the story you gave of someone who decided to freely give their book, and all they did was put a donations box next to it, instead of, you know, collecting payment.

And so, it can be very simple. You don't need to have, you know, business skills, and in some ways, it's better not to go about it in a business-like way. All you need to do is put a donations box next to your books, or put a donate button on your website, so it's not too difficult to do.

And if you put, you know, a fee or a cost to your product, then you're also limiting what people might give. And so, someone, you know, you put a $20 cost on your book, and they'll give $20, but if you ask them to support the work, maybe they'll give hundreds of dollars.

Maybe, you know, some people will give me thousands of dollars for something that people tell me I should put, like, a very nominal small fee on. So, you don't.

Want to limit people's generosity either. Amen. And one thing we talked about in that podcast episode is how God uses this means to communicate to us whether we should be doing something or not. You know, this is a great litmus test for everyone who's in ministry.

Like, if I'm bulldozing forward on my own strength, on my own carnal wisdom, to get, you know, I think God needs this for his kingdom done. You know, I need to get this done for God, and he doesn't provide for it.

I think that's a pretty good sign that maybe I'm leaning on my own understanding and not really doing something that's strategic for his kingdom and what he wants. So, when we take that away from our Master as a clear signal to go another direction or whatever, that's really unfortunate.

Yeah, I think that's key, that.

We shouldn't be doing this on our own strength. We shouldn't, like Abraham, taking Hagar, decide that we aren't going to rely on the promises but rely on our own strength. And to give another example that's not as stark as, you know, becoming a missionary versus not becoming a missionary, you have the example of Paul.

In Acts 18, verse 4, it says,. Every Sabbath he, that's Paul, reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks alike. And when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself fully to the Word, testifying to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ.

Now, in that first verse, verse 4, he's reasoning every Sabbath. Then, in the next verse, when some visit him from Macedonia, Macedonia, he says in Philippi, was the only one who had partnered with him in giving and receiving.

And you see later in 2nd Corinthians, has supplied him in order to do the work that he's doing in Corinth that we're reading about here in Acts 18. What's happening here is Silas and Timothy are coming with support.

And at this point, he then devotes himself fully to the Word. He then goes full-time. So, Paul, when he did not have the supply to be full-time, was not full-time. Then, when he did have the supply to be full-time, was full-time.

So, even Paul himself, an apostle of God, was operating on this principle of only doing what the Lord had supplied him for.

“You Shall Not Muzzle an Ox” and the Limits of Profit

Yeah, that's a really good observation there, and thank you for bringing us back to the text. Let's continue with another really, really common objection that you shouldn't muzzle the ox when it treads out the grain.

We hear this constantly when we have conversations with people, just like the worker is worthy of his wages. This is the standard snarky comeback that we might see if you encourage people to stop selling the gospel, which you would hope was just a very simple thing, but it comes back over and over.

I'll just say.

Something briefly, and that's that this, and also all the other metaphors and examples that Paul, for example, gives about how ministry should be financed, it's very flawed to understand that in terms of sales.

So, if you're saying that you shouldn't muzzle the ox means that you can sell ministry, basically you're saying that the ox will take a bite out of every single piece of grain. And so, you know, if you think of all the grain of all the ministry you're doing, and you're charging a fee for every book that's sold, every conference ticket, then you're saying that the ox is going around and biting every single piece of grain.

Whereas what that is saying is that the ox is, you know, supplied and is able to eat while it's working, but it's not taking advantage of.

Every single thing it's doing. Yeah, and to expand on that further, or it would be like the ox refusing to do anything until you gave it grain up front, right?

Yeah, I think those are a lot of good points. Just to let people know where this is coming from in the text, that's 1st Corinthians 9 and 1st Timothy 5, and really this is no different than the first objection that we looked at.

These two come side-by-side in 1st Timothy 5. He says that, for the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer deserves his wages. So, Paul groups these two things together.

Those who are objecting with one are objecting the same way with the other. And so, really everything that we've just said about the worker is worthy of his wages applies to this text as well. Yeah, I agree.

So, I guess we can.

Move on. That said, not spend too much time with the ox. Conley, you just wrote an article about this objection that we're going to talk about now, and it's on the website, sellingjesus .org. People can go check that out at length, and the objection is that Jesus's command doesn't apply today.

So, it's great that you guys understand Matthew 10a and all. Hurrah. But, yeah, it doesn't apply to me.

Today. First of all, I guess it's worth pointing out that to someone who is reading this text directly, it might really seem like it doesn't apply today. It says, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons, you receive without paying, give without pay.

That really does sound like it might just be talking about miracles. It might just be talking about the first disciples. However, there's a couple of things to point out. First of all, the previous verse says, and proclaim as you go, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

So, that's included in the list of things that are covered by this, not just miracle working, but proclaiming the gospel. And secondly, a reason is given here. He says, you received without paying, give without pay, or in most translations, freely you received, freely give.

So, if it is still the case that we freely receive the gospel, it's still the case that we should be freely giving the gospel. And if you think about the way this text is preached, typically, it's not just, oh, here's this interesting thing that happened a long time ago in the first century.

It's, this is the prototypical mission. Let us consider every way that it applies to us and our missions and our evangelism. And does this reason not still apply to us? It does, just as many other things in the passage do.

Why is it that we are supposed to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves? Because we're still being sent out as into the midst of wolves. You know, these things are still the case throughout the passage.

There are many principles to be applied when there is a reason given that still applies to us, and here there is a reason given that still applies to us. And I guess just one more thing that I would point out is that some people think that well, this doesn't apply to us today because what we are giving is not a supernaturally given gospel.

What we're giving in a lot of our teaching is just something that we've earned or worked hard for with natural study, right? You know, I'm not giving the gospel. I'm not selling the gospel. I'm just selling teaching to those who already know the gospel, perhaps.

Maybe I'm teaching Christians and I'm teaching them stuff that I've learned by hard, natural study. But 1 Corinthians 2 makes it very clear that what we are offering is not words taught by natural reason, but words that are taught by the Spirit.

And that's the case to believers too, not just to unbelievers. And if we're teaching words that cannot be taught by human wisdom and must be taught by the Spirit, it is still the case that this understanding is one that has been freely given to us and therefore we must be freely giving it to others.

Right. And basically what you're saying, if it isn't given by the Spirit, is that the work you're doing, the Holy Spirit has no part in. So, you know, I think most people would hope to be able to say that the Holy Spirit was guiding them in.

Their work. Yeah, absolutely. And as stated before, this is something we've.

Recently published an article on, and Lord willing, it will soon be an episode in this podcast, and so we'll dive much deeper into that one there. Yeah, if you.

Go to sellingjesus .org and you click on learn, you'll find it there. I think.

The other thing I was going to say is that the current understanding of how ministry should be financed is mainly based on those teachings about the worker being worthy of his wages and don't muscle the ox.

But that's kind of like a lower limit, like that's, you know, we shouldn't let pastors and ministers go poor, they should have food to eat. It sets a minimum standard, but there's no upper limit, there's no restriction on how much can be earned, and it's very subjective as to when you think a minister is getting paid too much.

And there's no really standard to kind of put a cap on that, which is why this verse is so important, because it does put a cap on it. It says, you know, you can be supported, but you shouldn't be selling, you shouldn't be profiting from ministry.

And so without this verse, there is no biblical limit on how much you can earn and how much you can profit and peddle the Word of God. Yeah, or what.

You can sell, as far as like baptism, the Lord's Supper. Yeah, the Lord's Supper is an interesting one. We value it. I think all most Christian circles value it highly in different ways, and that leads us to another objection, which is really, really common.

It's the next, I think, the next really snarky one after the don't muzzle the ox, is people don't value what they don't pay for. So I guess we don't value the Lord's Supper very much, because we do not pay for it.

I'm gonna, this is one of my pet peeves, so I'm gonna talk about it a little bit, and I'll let you guys chime in. So I think the first problem with this is it, the reasoning assumes that this modern conventional wisdom from the marketing manipulation machine allows us to obey our own kind of ideas and disobey Scripture.

And Paul's policy was to do ministry free of charge, and we've already talked about that. So it assumes that that this modern wisdom allows us to to disregard Scripture. I've tried to trace this idea throughout history.

The farthest I've gotten back so far, because it's kind of a hard, hard, hard idea to trace, but maybe I'll get there someday. So far I've found this to be the mentality all the way back to 1804, with the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society, who actually said that they were going to charge money for Bibles, even if it was a very small amount, and even if it was to the poor and the destitute.

They were going to sell Bibles because of this principle, what they thought was a principle, that you don't value what you don't pay for. And so it goes all the way back to that society, which has been kind of a hallmark of the Bible societies in general to this day, that they're known for, as far as being different from other missions, and being more for profit model, kind of more secular financial practices and models.

Number two, it fails to account for many facts and realities that exist all around us. So Google, we don't pay for Google searches, it's free, we value it extremely. I doubt anybody would say, no, I don't value the ability to search with Google, because I don't pay for it.