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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
35. πάντα ὑπέδειξα ὑμῖν, in all things I gave you an example. Cf. Joh 13:15, ὑπόδειγμα γὰρ ἔδωκα ὑμῖν.
ὅτι οὕτως κοπιῶντας, how that thus labouring, i.e. as I myself laboured and you beheld and knew. The verb implies ‘wearying toil.’ He had spared for no fatigue. He speaks of this toil (2Co 11:27) ἐν κόπῳ καὶ μόχθῳ.
δεῖ ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι τῶν ἀσθενούντων, ye ought to help the weak. By ἀσθενοῦντες does St Paul here mean those standing in need of material or moral help? Grimm (s. v.) takes it for the poor, those who are in want from any cause, as those must have been who could not support themselves, and whose wants the Apostle supplied by his own labour. Yet this is a very rare sense, as he admits, for the verb to have, and ‘feebleness’ of faith and trust is much the more common meaning. And that sense suits well here. If among new converts large demands should be made for the support of those who minister, they who are weak in the faith as yet may be offended thereby, and becoming suspicious, regard the preacher’s office as a source of temporal gain. An example like St Paul’s would remove the scruples of such men, and when they became more grounded in the faith, these matters would trouble them no more. For the use of ἀσθενής and ἀσθενέω in the sense of moral, rather than physical, weakness, cf. Job 4:3-4; Isa 7:4; 1Ma 11:49.
τῶν λόγων τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ, the words of the Lord Jesus. St Paul appeals to these words as though the saying was well-known, and as we notice this, we cannot but wonder at the scanty number of the words which have been handed down as ‘words of Jesus’ beyond what we find in the Gospel. This is the only one in the New Testament, and from all the rest of the Christian literature we cannot gather more than a score of sentences beside. See Westcott, Introd. to Study of the Gospels, pp. 428 seqq.
ὅτι αὐτὸς εἶπεν, how He himself said. The emphatic pronoun should not be overlooked.
μακάριόν ἐστιν μᾶλλον διδόναι ἢ λαμβάνειν, it is more blessed to give than to receive. In support of what has just been said about strengthening the feeble in faith, these words seem as readily applicable to that view of the Apostle’s meaning, as to the sense of ‘poverty.’ What would be given in this special case would be spiritual strength and trust; what is referred to in λαμβάνειν is the temporal support of the preacher, which St Paul refrained from claiming. We cannot doubt that he felt how much more blessed it was to win one waverer to Christ than it would have been to be spared his toils at tent-making by the contributions of his converts.