<p>9:16- see on Acts 20:26.</p><p><i>For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast about. For necessity is laid upon me- </i>We may need to read in an ellipsis here: 'If I preach the Gospel from a sense of necessity. The necessity, in the context, would be the necessity of preaching because he was a paid preacher and needed an income in order to survive. But he goes on to explain that because he is not preaching from the necessity of getting an income, his necessity is of a more spiritual kind. Again we see the contrast between the way of the flesh and that of the Spirit. The necessity he had was one laid upon him by God and the Lord Jesus; and not because of his material needs. &quot;Necessity&quot; is the same word translated &quot;compel&quot; in Lk. 14:23- &quot;compel them to come in&quot; and sit in their places at the marriage supper of the Lamb. The compulsion is laid upon us by the tragedy of human rejection of the places Christ prepared for them, and the wonderful, so easy possibility to be there. Significantly, this same Greek word is used elsewhere about the 'necessities' which are part of our ministry of the Gospel (2 Cor. 6:4; 12:10). The urgency of our task will lead us into many an urgent situation, with all the compelling needs which accompany them. But that compulsion, in this context, was from spiritual reasons and not because we want financial gain in this life.</p><p><i>For woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel</i>- The &quot;woe&quot; was because he would not be discharging his need before God to preach. It may be that in these words Paul is alluding to how the High Priest had to have bells so that &quot;his sound may be heard... that he die not&quot; (Ex. 28:35; this idea of the sound being heard is picked up in Ps. 19 concerning the spread of the Gospel). Whatever the predestined and foreknown purpose of God with Paul as a preacher may have been, the fact still stands that the record emphasizes the quite natural spirit of compulsion to preach which arose within him. Paul was under no financial necessity to preach- indeed he himself admits a tendency not to preach, to hold back from giving his all to fulfil that commission he had received to testify of the Gospel of God&rsquo;s grace (1 Cor. 9:16).&nbsp; He asks his brethren to pray that he would be able to &ldquo;make it manifest&rdquo; more than he did (Col. 4:4 cp. Eph. 6:20). He voluntarily, and not for financial motive, made himself a slave to all, selling himself as it were into slavery, in order to save them (:19).</p>