You can do certain things.  They’re permissible, sure.  They’re not wrong per se.  Paul argue that’s not how we should choose to do things.   We might like them.  They might be fun.

Paul could have made money off of his preaching.  According to him in 1 Corinthians 9, he even deserved it.  Those who preach of the gospel, he said, should live of the gospel.  However, he willingly gave up that support for the sake of the gospel.  As an evangelist or missionary, taking monetary support for preaching the gospel could diminish the effects of his preaching.

The money Paul could have made was a type of gain.  It’s still a well-known type of gain.  Gain is an economics term, like “capital gains.”  Adam Smith in his classic, Wealth of Nations, begins chapter ten by saying:

The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others.

Then he names those five principles circumstances and elaborates on them.  You see his use of the word “gain.”  He uses it 17 times in that chapter.  In the next paragraph, he writes:

Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by. Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.

He says that honor is the reward of certain honorouble professions, rather than “pecuniary gain.”  “Pecuniary” is “related to or consisting of money.”  He implies there are other types of gain, like honor.  Honor is a kind of gain, not pecuniary, but one to be chosen over money apparently.  The profession brings honor, if it doesn’t bring money.

The Apostle Paul refers to gain again and again in scripture, and this is seen in 1 Corinthians 9 in a section that most label as a section on Christian liberty.  I respect that idea that 1 Corinthians 6-10 is about Christian liberty.  I don’t mind it, but it is worth looking at it from the perspective of the definition of real gain.

God created man for a relationship with Him.  The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 16:26,

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

There’s that word “gain.”  The implication here is that someone profits nothing, even if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul.  Luke 9:25 says,

For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

In the King James Version, Paul uses the word “gain” five times.  He writes first in 1 Corinthians 9:19,

For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.