1 Corinthians4chapter 4

Paul calls himself and Apollos stewards — the household managers, often slaves, who ran a wealthy man's estate and answered only to the owner for how they handled it. A steward's job was faithfulness with what belonged to someone else, and no one else's opinion of his performance finally counted.

The image of apostles as men led out last in the procession, a spectacle to the world, is drawn from the arena. Condemned prisoners were brought out at the end of the day's programme to die in front of the crowd. Paul places himself at the bottom of the social ladder, the very opposite of the reputation the Corinthians wanted.

He lists what that actually meant: hunger, thirst, poor clothing, beatings, homelessness, and working with his own hands. Manual labour was despised by the leisured classes as fit only for slaves, which is precisely why he mentions it.

The "guardian" he contrasts with a father is the paidagogos, a household slave who walked a boy to school and disciplined him. Corinth had countless such figures; a father was something else entirely, and Paul claims that role because he begot them through the gospel.