1 Corinthians 9:5

5. Lead about Implying an itinerancy, not a settled pastorate.

A sister, a wife A sister of the Church, who is a wife of the apostle. The English version gives the exact verbal Greek, except that the latter word may signify either wife or woman. That here, however, the word does not mean woman is plain, for a sister is of course a woman, and the latter word would be superfluous. If sister express a relation, so must the latter term. Dr. Wordsworth, however, renders it, as do some of the Greek and Roman fathers, a Christian woman. But the word sister alone would express that meaning. Wordsworth’s rendering assumes that the apostles took upon their circuits female attendants of suitable character, who should perform those Christian offices, such as baptism for females, who were in that age inaccessible to the male minister. But of this practice there is no trace in the New Testament or earliest Church history. Nor is the case of those women who upon occasions ministered to our Lord at all parallel. This erroneous view of the text was probably the occasion of the later introduction into the Church of an order of women called after this passage συνεισακται , which led to such immoralities that it was abolished by the Council of Nicea. The Rhemish (Romanistic) version unscrupulously transposes the terms, and reads a woman, a sister, which would give the same sense as Wordsworth, liable to the same objection. Tradition (which Romanism usually presses upon us as a binding authority) asserts, as this passage also implies, that several of the apostles were married, and Matthew 8:14 asserts that Peter (claimed as the first pope) was. Paul declares that “a bishop must be the husband of one wife.” When Orientalism became more fully developed in the Church, about the middle of the second century, virginity began to become an exaggerated virtue. As the popedom developed itself, the celibacy of the clergy, contrary to the above quoted express Scripture, was found to be a powerful aid to the central despotism. Separated from all other ties, the clergy became, as now, the devotees of absolute ecclesiastic power. Hence the pope has been the most violent advocate of celibacy, and the late enactment of the infallibility of the pope renders the dogma of clerical celibacy absolutely immutable.

The brethren of the Lord Who were not of the twelve apostles, but who, after the Lord’s resurrection, became apostolic men. See note on Matthew 13:55.

Cephas Mentioned here specially as the high authority with the Judaizers whom Paul is answering.