<p>9:2 <i>If to others I am not an apostle, yet at least I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord- </i>Paul repeatedly speaks of his authority over the Corinthians because he has been the source of their conversion to Christ. He claims to be their spiritual father, and they were his &quot;work&quot; in the Lord (:1) and the proof in fact that he is an apostle to them. And yet he is clear in chapter 1 that he baptized very few of them. We could infer from this that he had preached to them and taught them, but had been careful to get others to perform the baptisms. We could also infer that since he had left Corinth, there had been relatively few baptisms by anyone else; unless we are to understand the entire correspondence as being addressed only to those within the church whom he counted as 'his work'. But that seems unlikely and there is no hint of that being the case. The &quot;others&quot; who didn't count Paul as an apostle would presumably be other purportedly Christian teachers who had visited Corinth and sought to poison them against Paul by claiming he was not in fact an apostle. This would presumably refer to the Jewish satan, an organized attempt to undo and discredit Paul's work in every church he founded. And this would explain the hints we have that Corinth had been troubled by Judaizers. Paul claims the very fact the Corinthians were his converts was evidence enough that he had been 'sent' to them and was indeed therefore their 'sent one' or apostle. Whilst we are not apostles in the sense that Paul specifically was, it remains true that those who bring others to Christ have some authority over them and should be afforded appropriate respect throughout their spiritual journey.</p>