2 Corinthians 11:23-30 sits inside this longer paragraph.
16I say again, let no one think me foolish. But if so, yet receive me as foolish, that I also may boast a little. 17That which I speak, I don’t speak according to the Lord, but as in foolishness, in this confidence of boasting. 18Seeing that many boast after the flesh, I will also boast. 19For you bear with the foolish gladly, being wise. 20For you bear with a man if he brings you into bondage, if he devours you, if he takes you captive, if he exalts himself, or if he strikes you on the face. 21I speak by way of disparagement, as though we had been weak. Yet in whatever way anyone is bold (I speak in foolishness), I am bold also. 22Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the offspring of Abraham? So am I. 23Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as one beside himself.) I am more so: in labors more abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above measure, and in deaths often. 24Five times I received forty stripes minus one from the Jews. 25Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I suffered shipwreck. I have been a night and a day in the deep. 26I have been in travels often, perils of rivers, perils of robbers, perils from my countrymen, perils from the Gentiles, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, perils among false brothers; 27in labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, and in cold and nakedness.
28Besides those things that are outside, there is that which presses on me daily: anxiety for all the assemblies. 29Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is caused to stumble, and I don’t burn with indignation? 30If I must boast, I will boast of the things that concern my weakness. 31The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, he who is blessed forever more, knows that I don’t lie. 32In Damascus the governor under King Aretas guarded the Damascenes’ city, desiring to arrest me. 33I was let down in a basket through a window by the wall, and escaped his hands.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv23–30 23. Are they ministers of Christ? Now when he…
23. Are they ministers of Christ? Now when he is treating of matters truly praiseworthy, he is no longer satisfied with being on an equality with them, but exalts himself above them. For their carnal glories he has previously been scattering like smoke by a breath of wind, by placing in opposition to them those which he had of a similar kind; but as they had nothing of solid worth, he on good grounds separates himself from their society, when he has occasion to glory in good earnest. For to be a servant of Christ is a thing that is much more honorable and illustrious, than to be the first-born among all the first-born of Abraham’s posterity. Again, however, with the view of providing against calumnies, he premises that he speaks as a fool “Imagine this,” says he, “to be foolish boasting: it is, nevertheless, true.”
In labors. By these things he proves that he is a more eminent servant of Christ, and then truly we have a proof that may be relied upon, when deeds instead of words are brought forward. He uses the term labors here in the plural number, and afterwards labor What difference there is between the former and the latter I do not see, unless perhaps it be, that he speaks here in a more general way, including those things that he afterwards enumerates in detail. In the same way we may also understand the term deaths to mean any kind of perils that in a manner threatened present death, instances of which he afterwards specifies. “I have given proof of myself in deaths often, in labors oftener still.” He had made use of the term deaths in the same sense in the first chapter. (2 Corinthians 1:10.)
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30 In danger of present death.
In danger of present death.
Paul being honorable indeed, defendeth his ministry openly, not for his own sake, but because he saw his doctrine come into hazard.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv23–30 23 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as…
23 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.
Ver. 23. In labours more abundant] Chrysostom calleth Paul, Insatiabilem Dei cultorem, an unweariable servant of God.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv23–30 Will they glory in this, that they are ministers…
Will they glory in this, that they are ministers of Christ, employed as the servants of Christ in preaching the gospel? I should not boast about this, (in that I may seem to speak as a fool), but I am much more a minister than they, both with respect to my call to the work, and also my performing of it. I had a more immediate call and mission to the work than what they can boast of, and I have done more in that work than any of them have done.
In labours more abundant; I have travelled more to preach it, I have laboured more in the propagation of it.
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In stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent; I have suffered more for the preaching of it, I have been oftener whipped, oftener imprisoned, than any of them ever were: see 2Co 6:4,5.
In deaths oft; I have been oftener in hazard of my life: he calls dangers threatening death, deaths, as 2Co 1:10.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv24, 25, 28, 29, 30 The law in Deu 25:3 allowed forty stripes to…
The law in Deu 25:3 allowed forty stripes to be given to them that were worthy to be beaten, but forbade them to exceed that number: But it being their custom to beat them with a whip that had three cords, they must either stop at thirty-nine, or exceed and go to forty-two.
Here observe, That the apostle contending with these false teachers, proves the truth of his ministry and apostleship; not, as elsewhere, from the miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, which did accompany his preaching, but from his sufferings, as being the things which these false apostles could not pretend unto, and so could not glory that they were like unto him in them.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv23–30 Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes…
Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. We have no account in the Acts of the Apostles, or elsewhere, of any one of these five scourgings, which the apostle underwent from the Jews; but there is no doubt to be made of them. The number of stripes he received at each time agrees with the traditions and customs of the Jews. The original law for scourging a delinquent is in Deu 25:2 where it is said, "forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed"; according to the nature of the case, forty stripes and no more might be inflicted, but fewer might suffice in some cases; the apostle's having but thirty nine at a time was not because the Jews thought his crime did not require full forty; or that they out of tenderness and compassion to him abated him one; but they proceeded with him to the utmost rigour of this law, according to their interpretation of it; for so runs their tradition (i),
"with how many stripes do they beat him? (a criminal,) it is answered, , "with forty save one"; as it is said, "with the number forty"; that is, which is next to forty; R. Judah says, with full forty is he to be beaten;''
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but the decision is not according to R. Judah, as the commentators say (k); and this is the general sense of their (l) interpreters of that law, and what they take to be the genuine meaning of it; so that the apostle was punished according to the extremity of it, in their account. This is a settled rule and point with them, (m), "that scourging according to the law is with forty stripes save one"; Maimonides (n) observes, that
"they did not add to forty, if a man was as strong and robust as Samson, but they lessen the number to a man that is weak; for if a weak man should be beaten with many stripes, he may die; wherefore the wise men say, that if he be never so robust, they scourge him but with "thirty nine";''
so that no mercy shown to Paul, or any regard had to his weak constitution, for it was the utmost they ever inflicted; besides, according to their manner of scourging; see Gill on Mat 10:17, they could not have given him another stroke, without giving him three stripes more, which would have made it forty two, and so have exceeded, which the law forbids; for they whipped with a scourge of three cords, and every stroke went for three; so that by thirteen strokes, thirty nine stripes were given, and if a fourteenth had been added, there would have been forty two stripes; agreeably to which they say (o),
"when they condemn a delinquent to how many stripes he is able to receive, they do not count but by stripes that are fit to be trebled; if they reckon he is able to bear twenty, they do not say he is to be beaten with twenty one, so that they may be able to treble, but he is to be beaten with eighteen; they condemn to receive forty, and after he begins to be beaten, they see he is weak, and they say he cannot receive more than these nine or "twelve" with which he is beaten, lo, this is free; they condemn him to receive twelve, and after he is scourged they see he is strong and able to receive more, lo, he is free, and is not to be beaten any more upon the estimation:''
so that you see that, according to their own canons, they could if they would have mitigated this punishment of the apostle's; but such was their cruelty and malice, that they carried it to the utmost height they could.
(i) Misn. Maccot. c. 3. sect. 10. (k) Maimon. & Bartenora in ib. (l) Targum Jon. & Jarchi in Deut. xxv. 3. Zohar in Deut. fol. 119. 3. Joseph Antiqu. l. 4. c. 8. sect. 23. Moses Kotsensis Mitzvot Tora, pr. Affirm. 105. (m) T. Hieros. Nazir, fol. 53. 1. (n) Hilchot Sanhedrin, c. 17. 1. (o) Ib. sect. 2. Misn. Maccot, c. 3. sect. 11.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30 I am more so than they. In deaths often…
I am more so than they. In deaths often - Surrounding me in the most dreadful forms.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv23–30 Verse 23. Are they ministers of Christ] So we…
Verse 23. Are they ministers of Christ] So we find that these were professors of Christianity; and that they were genuine Jews, and such as endeavoured to incorporate both systems, and, no doubt, to oblige those who had believed to be circumcised; and this appears to have been the bondage into which they had brought many of the believing Corinthians.
I am more] More of a minister of Christ than they are, and have given fuller proofs of it. I have suffered persecution for the cross of Christ, and of the Jews too; and had I preached up the necessity of circumcision, I should have been as free from opposition as these are.
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In labours more abundant] Far from sitting down to take my ease in a Church already gathered into Christ; I travel incessantly, preach every where, and at all risks, in order to get the heathen brought from the empire of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son.
In stripes above measure] Being beaten by the heathen, who had no particular rule according to which they scourged criminals; and we find, from Ac 16:22; Ac 16:23, that they beat Paul unmercifully with many stripes. See the note on the above passage.
In prisons more frequent] See Ac 21:11, and the whole of the apostle's history; and his long imprisonment of at least two years at Rome, Ac 28:16; Ac 28:30. It does not appear that there is any one instance of a false apostle having been imprisoned for the testimony of Christ; this was a badge of the true apostles.
In deaths oft.] That is, in the most imminent dangers. See 1Co 15:31; 2Co 4:11. And see the apostle's history in the Acts.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv23, 26, 28 2Co 11:23-25. Are they ministers of Christ? — “St.…
2Co 11:23-25. Are they ministers of Christ? — “St. Paul does not compare himself with the false teachers as an apostle, but as a minister of Christ simply. And to show how much he exceeded them in that inferior character, he mentions his labours in the ministry, and his sufferings undergone in his many journeys and voyages, for the sake of spreading the gospel. And from his account it appears, that none of the heroes of antiquity, however vehemently actuated by the love of fame, or of military glory or power, either did or suffered as much in the pursuit of their objects, as the Apostle Paul did and suffered for Christ and his gospel.” I am more so than they; in labours more abundant — Sustained for a long series of years; in stripes above measure — All endured for Christ and his cause. In prisons more frequent — In the narrative of Paul’s travels and sufferings, contained in the Acts, we only read of his being imprisoned once, before this epistle was written, namely, at Philippi. But doubtless many particulars of his life, besides the imprisonments here referred to, were omitted in that history, for the sake of brevity. In deaths oft — Surrounding me in the most dreadful forms. Of the Jews five times received I — In their synagogues, and before their courts of judgment; forty stripes, save one — According to the law, punishment by stripes was restricted to forty, at one beating, Deu 25:3; but the whip with which these stripes were given, consisting of three separate cords, and each stroke being counted as three stripes, thirteen strokes made thirty-nine stripes, beyond which they never went. See Whitby. As the apostle, before his conversion, had been very active in inflicting this punishment on the disciples of Christ, he could not complain when he himself was treated in the same manner by the zealots for the law. Thrice was I beaten with rods — By the Roman lictors or beadles, at the command of their superior magistrates. In his history, contained in the Acts, we find no mention made of his being punished with stripes, and only one instance occurs there of his being beaten with rods. See the margin. Once was I stoned — Namely, at Lystra, at which time he was left for dead. Thrice I suffered shipwreck — Before his voyage to Rome, in which he was shipwrecked at Malta; of these we have no account in the Acts. A night and a day I have been in the deep — Probably floating on some part of a shipwrecked vessel, by which, possibly, he escaped to shore. This, it is likely, happened in one of the three shipwrecks mentioned in the preceding clause.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv23–30 Are they ministers of Christ? - Though Jews by…
Are they ministers of Christ? - Though Jews by birth yet they claimed to be the ministers of the Messiah.
I speak as a fool - As if he had said, “Bear in mind, in what I am now about to say, that he who speaks is accused of being a fool in boasting. Let it not be deemed improper that I should act in this character, and since you regard me as such, let me speak like a fool.” His frequent reminding them of this charge was eminently suited to humble them that they had ever made it, especially when they were reminded by an enumeration of his trials, of the character of the man against whom the charge was brought.
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I am more - Paul was not disposed to deny that they were true ministers of Christ. But he had higher claims to the office than they had. He had been called to it in a more remarkable manner, and he had shown by his labors and trials that he had more of the true spirit of a minister of the Lord Jesus than they had. He therefore goes into detail to show what he had endured in endeavoring to diffuse the knowledge of the Saviour; trials which the had borne probably while they had been dwelling in comparative ease, and in a comfortable manner, free from suffering and persecution.
In labors more abundant - In the kind of labor necessary in propagating the gospel. Probably he had now been engaged in the work a much longer time than they had, and had been far more indefatigable in it.
In stripes - In receiving stripes; that is, I have been more frequently scourged; 2Co 11:24. This was a proof of his being a minister of Christ, because eminent devotedness to him at that time, of necessity subjected a man to frequent scourging. The ministry is one of the very few places, perhaps it stands alone in this, where it is proof of special qualification for office that a man has been treated with all manner of contumely, and has even been often publicly whipped. What other office admits such a qualification as this?
Above measure - Exceedingly; far exceeding them. He had received far more than they had, and he judged, therefore, that this was one evidence that he had been called to the ministry.
In prisons more frequent - In the Book of Acts , Luke mentions only one imprisonment of Paul before the time when this Epistle was written. That was at Philippi with Silas, Act 16:23 ff. But we are to remember that many things were omitted by Luke. He does not profess to give an account of all that happened to Paul; and an omission is not a contradiction. For anything that Luke says, Paul may have been imprisoned often. He mentions his having been in prison once; he does not deny that he had been in prison many times besides; see on Act 16:24.
In deaths oft - This is, exposed to death; or suffering pain equal to death; see on 2Co 1:9. No one familiar with the history of Paul can doubt that he was often in danger of death.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv23, 24, 25, 28 They are ministers of Christ: I am more. To…
They are ministers of Christ: I am more. To wit, an apostle chosen and sent by Jesus Christ, appointed in a special manner to be the apostle of the Gentiles, your apostle. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv23–30 I speak as a fool--rather, as Greek, "I speak…
I speak as a fool--rather, as Greek, "I speak as if beside myself"; stronger than "as a fool."
I am more--namely, in respect to the credentials and manifestations of my ministry, more faithful and self-denying; and richer in tokens of God's recognition of my ministry. Old authorities read the order thus, "In prisons above measures, in stripes more abundantly" (English Version, less accurately, "more frequent"). Acts 16:23-40 records one case of his imprisonment with stripes. CLEMENT OF ROME [First Epistle to the Corinthians] describes him as having suffered bonds seven times.
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in death oft-- (Co2 4:10; Act 9:23; Act 13:50; Act 14:5-6, Act 14:19; Act 17:5, Act 17:13).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv23–30 2. By incomparably greater sufferings, 2Co_11:23-33.
2. By incomparably greater sufferings, 2Co_11:23-33.
With consummate skill St. Paul, (in whose ears are echoing the retorts of his foes, “What a boaster!”) shows off here, not his victories and conquests, not the oratory he had displayed, the converts he had gained, the Churches he had founded; but the unparalleled sufferings and disgraces he had undergone. He enumerates them almost statistically, classifying their sorts, and giving their figures. But, all the while, the more profoundly he thus humbles himself, the more transcendent is his superiority over his easy-living adversaries.
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Of a large number of the sufferings here undergone, Luke’s brief sketch in the Acts gives no account. This confirms Paley’s argument for the truth of Christianity, drawn from the sufferings of the early Christian preachers. It shows, too, that in accounting for the writing of some of the epistles we may easily suppose voyages and journeys unmentioned by Luke. When, for instance, Luke informs us (Act_20:31) that Paul spent three continuous years at Ephesus, it is as when we say that a young man spends four years at college; that is, without counting three months each year of vacation.
As both a catalogue and a picture the present section is strikingly parallel to 2Co_4:8-12; 2Co_6:5-10.
The endurances enumerated are, 2Co_11:23-27, bodily; 2Co_11:28-29, mental; 2Co_11:32-33, a single notable event.
2Co_11:23 gives four general bodily endurances, of which all that follow are specials.
23. Ministers—The Greek word technically for deacons, and genetically for humble servitors of any kind.
As a fool—The echo from the other side is a stronger term for madness than any yet used. Are they servants of Christ? And now I am, by their outcry, a greater infatuate than ever when I boldly reply, I more. The abrupt and concise υπερ εγω, above, I is, indeed, a bold fling. It may mean, above them am I, that is, as a servant of Christ; or it may mean, above a servant of Christ am I. The import, at any rate, is, If these are, forsooth, servants of Christ, I am something above that; and the result is, If I am merely a servant of Christ, they are below that—none at all. That this last inference is meant is plain from 13-15.
Labours… stripes… prisons… deaths—Four generic bodily endurances. The details that follow are specialties included under the four.
The next two verses give the numerical figures of bodily sufferings so severe as to leave distinct traces on the memory of the number.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv23–30 23. Are they ministers of Christ?] St Paul here…
23. Are they ministers of Christ?] St Paul here cannot be content with the simple ‘so am I.’ These men (see ch. 2Co_10:7; 1Co_1:10) claimed to be in some special sense Christ’s ministers. But when the Apostle thinks of the singleness of his devotion to Christ’s cause, of which he had so frequently boasted (ch. 2Co_2:17, 2Co_4:5, 2Co_6:4-10, 2Co_7:2, &c.), and of the nature of his services as compared with theirs, his spirit rises within him. ‘I may speak like a madman,’ he cries (see next note), ‘but I cannot contain myself at such a charge. What have they done for the cause of Him whose name they falsely arrogate to themselves, compared to the services I have rendered? I use no mere words of vaunting, but appeal to the devotion of a life to His Gospel.’
I speak as a fool] Rather as a madman (scarse wise, Rhemish. Our translation is Tyndale’s). The word in the original is stronger than that in 2Co_11:16; 2Co_11:19. St Paul is not thinking here so much of the impression his words may produce on the Corinthians, as of the fact that all ‘boasting’ in God’s sight is ‘excluded’ by the ‘law of faith’ (Rom_3:27; cf. Luk_17:10). Mad indeed is it to boast of anything as constituting a claim on God for reward. But facts are facts, and they may be appealed to, not for self-glorification, but (ch. 2Co_12:11) to confute pretensions which ought never to have been advanced.
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in labours more abundant] Cf. 1Co_15:10. He now commences the proof of this assertion, and it consists not in words but in deeds. He appeals to “a life hitherto without precedent in the history of the world. Self-devotion at particular moments, or for some special national cause, had been often seen before; but a self-devotion involving sacrifices like those here described, extending through a period of at least fourteen years, and in behalf of no local or family interest, but for the interest of mankind at large, was up to this time a thing unknown.” Stanley. De Wette would translate more abundantly (the word is an adverb in the original) and connect it with what has gone before, ‘in labours I am more abundantly a minister of Christ than they.’
in prisons more frequent] “What is left out is more than is enumerated.” Chrysostom. There is but one imprisonment mentioned up to this time in the Acts (ch. Act_16:23). So there is but one beating with rods (see below). The Acts of the Apostles, being written with a special purpose (see note on ch. 2Co_1:8, 2Co_6:5), does not attempt to give a full account of St Paul’s labours and sufferings. See Stanley’s note on 2Co_11:21 and Paley, Horae Paulinae, Ep. to Corinth. 9. Estius accounts it a proof of St Paul’s modesty that he had never mentioned these things even to a friend so intimace as St Luke.
in deaths oft] Cf. ch. 2Co_1:9-10, 2Co_4:11; 1Co_15:31. “Perils containing death,” i.e. as a possible event. Chrysostom.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv23–30 (23) Are they ministers of Christ?—It is obvious that…
(23) Are they ministers of Christ?—It is obvious that this title was claimed by the rival teachers in some special sense. They were “ministers of Christ” in a nearer and a higher sense than others. This again falls in with all that has been said as to the nature and pretensions of those who said, “I am of Christ.” (See Notes on 2Co_10:7; 1Co_1:12.)
I speak as a fool.—The form of the Greek verb is slightly varied, and means, more emphatically than before, I speak as one who is insane; I speak deliriously. In this instance, as before, we must believe that the Apostle is using, in a tone of indignant irony, the very words of insult which had been recklessly flung at him.
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In labours . . .—All that follows up to 2Co_11:28, inclusive, is a proof of his claim to call himself a minister of Christ. The word “labours” is, of course, too vague to admit of more than a general comparison with the picture of his life presented in the Acts of the Apostles. The more specific statements show us that the writer of that book tends to understate rather than exaggerate the labours and sufferings of the Apostle. It tells us, up to this time, only of one imprisonment, at Philippi (Act_16:23), and leaves us to conjecture where and under what circumstances we are to look for the others. In the “deaths oft,” we trace an echo of the “sentence of death,” the “dying daily” (see Notes on 2Co_1:9; 2Co_4:10); but the words probably include dangers to life of other kinds as well as those arising from bodily disease.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv23–30 I speak as a fool. Not merely as before…
I speak as a fool. Not merely as before aphron, but paraphronon," I speak as a madman." It is downright insanity on my part to enter into this contest of rival egotism. The verb does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament; the substantive is used of "downright infatuation" in 2Pe_2:16. I am more. I may claim to be something beyond an ordinary servant of Christ. (comp. 2Co_11:5) This is the "frantic" boast which he proceeds to justify in a fragment of biography which must ever be accounted as the most remarkable and unique in the world"s history. And when St. Paul lived the life was, as Dean Stanley says, "hitherto without precedent in the history of the world." No subsequent life of saint or martyr has ever surpassed St. Paul"s, as here sketched, in self-devotion; and no previous life even remotely resembled it. The figure of the Christian missionary was, until then, unknown. In labours more abundant; literally, more abundantly. The best comment is 1Co_15:10. In stripes above measure. The expression is partly explained in the next verse. In prisons. St. Clement of Rome says that St. Paul was imprisoned seven times. The only imprisonment up to this date recorded in the Acts is that at Philippi. (Act_16:23) The imprisonments in Jerusalem, Caesarea, and Rome all took place later. He says later," The Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city that bonds and imprisonment await me". (Act_20:23) In deaths oft. He alludes to the incessant opposition, peril, and anguish which make him say in 1Co_15:31, "I die daily". (comp. 2Co_4:11; Rom_8:36) With the whole passage we may compare 2Co_6:4, 2Co_6:5.
Ministers of Christ.
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It was not congenial to St. Paul"s nature to beast. He would have preferred to keep himself in the background, that his Lord might be prominent and might attract the attention and the admiration of all men. But his apostolic authority and consequently the value of his life work, the credibility of his doctrines, the soundness of the Churches he had founded, were all at stake. As to his national position, that was comparatively immaterial. But the great question was this Was he, or was he not, a true minister of Christ? His adversaries made great pretensions; he had no choice but to overwhelm them with his own unrivalled credentials: "Are they ministers of Christ? I more!
I TRUE MINISTERS ARE APPOINTED BY CHRIST. Whatever be the human, the ecclesiastical agency by which men are summoned to, prepared for, employed in, the ministry of the gospel, all true Christians are agreed that the real appointment is by the Divine Head of the Church. It is he who, from the throne of his glory, places one minister in this position, and another in that, holding the stars in his right hand.
II TRUE MINISTERS ARE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. It was Paul"s justifiable boast "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord." His ministry had for its one great theme the character, the life, the sacrifice, the redemption of the Divine Saviour. A ministry which, professing to be Christian, is concerned with anything rather than with Christ, discredits and condemns itself. Inadequate as is all human witness to our Lord, it is required to be sincere and outspoken.
III TRUE MINISTERS ARE FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST. Upon this the apostle lays great stress. His own ministry was, in many of its circumstances, a copy of his Lord"s. His labours, privations, and sufferings were all akin to those of the Lord whose spirit he shared, and in whose steps he trod. The outward circumstances of the ministerial life may vary, but the temper, and aim must ever be those of the Divine Master.
IV TRUE MINISTERS LOOK FOR THEIR REWARD TO CHRIST. Had the apostle expected an earthly recompense for all he undertook and underwent, bitter indeed would have been his disappointment. But he and every faithful minister must have one supreme desire and aim to receive the approval and the acceptance of the Divine Lord himself. T.
Labours and prisons.
This is one of those passages which enable us to institute a comparison between the Book of the Acts and the apostolic Epistles. It is true that some of the circumstances alluded to in the context have nothing corresponding with them in St. Luke"s narrative. But this exception proves the independence of the documents, whilst the coincidences, which are numerous and striking, confirm our faith in the authority and validity of both.
I THE VARIOUS ENDURANCES INVOLVED IN THE APOSTOLIC LIFE.
1. Labours abounded, both of body and of mind; almost incessant toil was continued throughout long years. Journeyings, preaching, writing, were a constant strain upon his whole nature.
2. Hardships, sufferings, perils, and persecutions were even more painful to endure. There are many, especially in the prime of life, to whom toil and effort are congenial; but none can do other than shrink from pains and imprisonments. Paul"s enumeration of his privations and afflictions shows how deep an impression they had made upon his nature.
II THE AIM OF THE APOSTOLIC LIFE IN VIEW OF WHICH THESE EXPERIENCES WERE CHEERFULLY ACCEPTED. His purpose was, not his own exaltation, but the spread of the gospel and the salvation of his fellow men. His benevolent heart found in the extension of that kingdom, which is "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," an object worthy of all his devotion and all his endurance.
III THE MOTIVE OF THE APOSTOLIC LIFE. If it be asked How came St. Paul to voluntarily engage in a service which involved experiences so bitter? there is but one solution of the problem, but that is a sufficient and satisfactory one: "The love of Christ constrained" him. No inferior motive can be relied upon for the production of such results.
IV THE PRACTICAL ADVANTAGES ACCRUING TO MANKIND FROM THIS APOSTOLIC LIFE.
1. It has an evidential value. Why should such a man as Saul of Tarsus have lived a life of obloquy, poverty, and suffering? Is any other explanation credible than this that he knew and felt that he was witnessing to the truth?
2. It has a moral value, both in the beneficent results of the ministry and in the illustration afforded of the power of the gospel and of the Spirit of Christ to raise a true Christian above the control of influences and interests merely earthly and human. T.
Vers. 23-33.
Apostolic experiences on earth.
I THESE EXPERIENCES, AS NARRATED HERE, ASSUME A GLOOMY CHARACTER.
1. Painful.
(1) Bodily suffering. Excessive toil, prison privations, scourgings, stoning, shipwrecks, a night and day in the deep, sleeplessness, coldness, foodlessness, nakedness.
(2) Mental suffering.
(a) Persecution from Jews as well as Gentiles. His "own countrymen" hated him more fiercely than any.
(b) Hostility of false brethren. Peculiarly painful to such a noble nature as Paul"s.
(c) Anxieties respecting the numerous Churches.
(d) Acute sympathy with the weak and hindered ones (ver. 29).
2. Perilous. What a catalogue of perils in ver. 26. how extreme the one instanced in vers. 32, 33! how pathetic and suggestive the expression, "in deaths oft" (ver. 23)! Paul lived on the margin of the next world. Of him was it peculiarly true that he knew not what a day would bring forth.
II MUCH OF THE PAINFUL AND PERILOUS EXPERIENCE OF THE APOSTLE AROSE FROM HIS MARVELLOUS ZEAL AND ENTERPRISE. He might bare avoided not a little by:
1. Being only moderately active. That delightful "mean" coveted by so many it was too mean for Paul!
2. Being more compliant. If he bad been a man of expediency, and not, as he was, a man of principle. If he had bent to the storm; but he intended that the storm should bend to him, or rather to those God-truths which he proclaimed.
3. Placing Gods honour in the second place. The servant was persecuted so vindictively because he would talk so much of his Master. It was not Paul that Jew and Gentile hated so much, but Christ; but where Paul was there men could hear of nothing but the contemned Nazarene;
4. Loving himself more than a perishing world. It was a question which should suffer, Paul or the world; Paul said, "I will." In his sphere he thus imitated his Lord, who, though he was rich, for our sakes became poor.
III NO SUFFERING OR PERIL SUCCEEDED IN DAMPING THE APOSTOLIC ARDOUR. How keen must have been his love for Christ and for his fellow men! Ever before him he had the future exaltation of Christ and the "saving some." We haste here a marvellous triumph of mind over matter, and a still more marvellous one of spirituality over carnality. The life of the apostle was so vigorous that he could bear to die daily. What little aches and pains stop us! An avalanche of grief and trial failed to arrest Paul!
IV IT WAS ONLY WHEN SUBJECTED TO GREAT PRESSURE, AND THEN ONLY UNDER PROTEST, THAT THE APOSTLE ALLOWED HIMSELF TO DWELL UPON THIS PERPETUAL MARTYRDOM. He rejoiced in it; yet he did not like to speak about it. He almost calls himself a fool for doing so. The martyr has sometimes sullied his crown by pride; but the apostolic affliction seemed strangely sanctified to him. Some are not great enough to suffer much for Christ. God does not allow it. It would make them so intolerable that prayer would ascend on all hands for their transference to a world where they would have a humble opinion of themselves. Paul went through all the privation, anguish, peril, catalogued here, and came out from it with the spirit of a little child. H.
Vers. 23-30.
The evidential value of sufferings borne for Christ"s sake.
Recall Paley"s use of the labours and sufferings of the early Christians as an argument for the truth of Christianity. Carefully observe under what limitations such an argument must be set. There have been martyrs of all sorts of opinions. Men intense on any subject are usually willing to bear much for its sake; and the enthusiast or fanatic does not shrink from giving his life for his faith, though his faith may be unreasonable or absurd. We can only go so far as to say that willingness to bear suffering proves
I PERSONAL SINCERITY. Men"s hearts must be in that which they will maintain at cost of toil, sorrow, disability, and pain. Christianity must be true to the man who can die for it; but it is not therefore proved to be absolutely true.
II A DIVINE CALL OR COMMISSION. It is one of the indications of such a call. Not sufficient if it stands alone, but very helpful as a buttress to other arguments and considerations.
III THAT THERE IS A FINE MORAL STRENGTH CULTURED BY CHRISTIANITY. This, perhaps, is its chief value. The noble endurance illustrates Christianity, and shows what the almighty grace in it can do.
That must be worthy, and it may be Divine, which nerves men to such heroic labour, such patient submission, and such triumphs over ills and death. So, when kept within due limits and carefully combined with other considerations, the sufferings and martyrdoms of the Christian saints become an evidence of the Divine origin of Christianity. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv26, 27, 30 In journeyings often.
2Co_11:26
In journeyings often.
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The Christian away from home
Paul was a traveller. His journeyings by sea and land formed an important part of the educating influences that formed his Christian life. Notice--
I. The mental stimulus gained. Monotonous toil wears us out. It is good to get out of ruts, to look on new objects, to talk about new subjects, to freshen up our spirits. It is good to get out of ones home, store, city, out of ones country even, and see new heavens and a new earth, though for a little while. The rust and the dust of routine life are removed. This mental stimulus of travel is threefold. It is awakened by anticipation, it is intensified by actual enjoyment, and it continues in the joy of reminiscence.
II. The actual presence and guidance of God is more impressively felt in journeyings oft. It has been truly said that the spectre of uncertainty haunts the cabin of every departing ship. So of all vehicles and modes of travel. Their history has its tragedies, and the beginning of any journey should elicit the prayer, If Thy presence go not with me, carry me not up hence. Sweetly to the believer comes the answer, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land, for I will not leave thee. Is thy journey by the sea? The sea is His. Passing through the waters, He will be with thee. So in malarious districts or in heated climes the same shelter is guaranteed. Not only in peril, but in perplexity, do we prove the truth of these pledges. He leadeth me when in doubt as to what is best to do, saying, This is the way, walk in it. We enter a foreign city alone, and unacquainted with the language. Such exigencies of travel are educating. An uplift is gained by the trustful soul that is never lost (Job_31:32).
III. The fellowship of saints is realised abroad as it can never be in the familiar intercourse of home. How Pauls heart did leap within him at Appii Forum! Ten miles farther on, another group, at Three Taverns, welcome him.
IV. Absence endears the localities, friendships, privileges, and employments of home.
V. Our journeyings remind us that life itself is a journey, to be pursued with thoughtfulness, with reference to lifes great ends and our eternal home. (E. P. Thwing, D. D.)
In perils.--
In perils of water
It required courage to be a voyager in olden times, the ships were small and clumsy, the rocks and shores so poorly defined; no weather probabilities, signals or lighthouses. Yet there are as great perils now, notwithstanding our sea-charts, lighthouses, ironclads, storm-signals, etc. The danger arises now from the multiplicity of crafts. Note--
I. The responsibility of those who hold the lives, or the property, or the souls of men in keeping.
1. Captains, guards, engineers, architects, have very great responsibility, and God will hold them to account.
2. Pastors of churches, private Christians who hold in their hands the souls of people, had better obey the injunction: Watch!
II. When we part from our friends, reunion is uncertain.
III. Elegant surroundings are no security. Iceberg, and storm, and darkness, and collision can see no difference between magnificent mail steamship and whaler with rusty bolts and greasy deck. Do not think that brilliant surroundings will keep off the last foe.
IV. Some Christians are nearer to glory than they think. Some of you are spending your last Sabbath, singing your last song, giving your last salutations.
V. The world has not yet been persuaded of the nonsense of prayer.
VI. The importance of always being ready for transition. (T. de Witt Talmage, D. D.)
In perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness.--
Environment
Let us talk a little about what is known as environment. Men are apt to think they would be better if their circumstances, their surroundings were of another kind and quality. They do not go in upon themselves and say, We are to blame. We must get rid of that delusion before we can make any real progress in life. All history shows us that whatever a mans environment may be he can conquer it; or he can respond to it in the degree in which it is Divine, beautiful, and fascinating. Where did man first fall, according to the Biblical history? Was it in some narrow, ill-lighted street? Was it in soma swamp or wilderness? It was possible to fall in Eden. Therefore do not say that if you were in Eden you would be safe. Men say that, if they were only in the city, at the very centre of civilisation, if they had the security of social life as it is to be found in the metropolis of any country, all would go well. The Apostle Paul answers that in our text, In perils in the city. You thought you would be safe in the city. Here is Paul in all kinds of cities, classical, advanced, thoughtful, immoral; and he says he was in perils in the city. Men think that if they could be only in the city, in the metropolis, where there is an abundance of literature, where all kinds of galleries are open to the people--picture-galleries, museums, art-repositories, music of every hue and range--then they would have something to think about, and to engage their attention, and to divide at least the intensity of the temptations by which souls are besieged. Paul says, let us repeat again and again, In perils in the city. The city grows its own weeds; the city opens its own fountains of poison-water. The city is eating out the best life of the nation. In perils in the city. Yet how many of these perils do we make ourselves, and how eagerly do we avail ourselves of many an open door that invites us to enter and go down to hell! I have seen this in the city--namely, young men, certainly not five-and-twenty years of age, before ten oclock in the morning going into public-houses. Not vagabonds, but men who were evidently going to some kind of business afterwards, well-dressed young men. What would you say about an instance of that kind, except that it means ruin? You cannot trifle with that state of affairs. You cannot begin a little reform now and a little then. You must throw your enemy now! In perils in the city. What a temptation there is there to bet and gamble and trifle with other peoples money! You do not suppose that a young man makes up his mind to be a thief. In many instances he knows that he is honest in purpose, and he says that, if he can only succeed, no man shall lose a penny by him; he will only back his own judgment against some other mans judgment. He says, What harm can there be in my setting up my sagacity against the sagacity of some other man? You cannot be fortunate in betting and gambling. Do not say that you know instances in which men have made tens of thousands of pounds, and are in great prosperity. There are no such instances. They may have all the pounds, but they have not the prosperity. There is no prosperity in wickedness. Do not think you can trifle with the spirit of evil and succeed. Resist the devil, and he will flee from thee. Then what do men say? They continue in this fashion--namely, If I could only get away from the city, if I could get into the country somewhere, if I could get into some quiet place, then all would be well. In perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness--in the solitude, in the great emptiness; as much peril in the wilderness as there is in Cheapside; as much peril in the desert as there is in the Stock Exchange. How often in passing through beautiful places have we said, Surely there must be peace in that habitation and in yonder dwelling. Go where you will, you will find the devil has been there before you. There are great perils even in solitude: in fact, it is possible that solitude may be the greatest peril of all. It is the voice of history that the devil comes to men individually, and not to them in crowds only. All the great tragedies are connected with individual instances. Solitude gives us a false standard of self-judgment. It is only by man meeting man, comparing himself with his fellow-men, seeking the judgment of higher minds than his own, that he becomes chastened and thus ennobled; rebuked, and thus elevated. Observe, then, that circumstances cannot give us security. You thought that, when you made ten thousand pounds, you would be perfectly secure. No man ever rested content with ten thousand pounds; there was always another sovereign which some other man had which he wanted; there was always another field which, if he obtained, would beautifully sphere out his estate; and going after fields is like going after the horizon, there is always another. Do not imagine that if you were rich you would be good. Let no man be discouraged because of his environment. You say, What can a young man do in my circumstances? He can do everything through Christ strengthening him. If men begin to sit down and say, What can I do with only five shillings a week? what can I do with only a workhouse education? what can I do with people such as these round about me? they will never come to anything. A man must not look at his surroundings, but he must look at his universe and at God enthroned above its riches and forces; and he must say, It is my business by the blessing of God to take hold of circumstances and twist them and bind them and round them into a garland or a diadem. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v30 Chapter 26
Chapter 26
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.- 2Co_11:30-33; 2Co_12:1-10 (R.V)
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THE difficulties of exposition in this passage are partly connected with its form, partly with its substance: it will be convenient to dispose of the formal side first. The thirteenth verse of the eleventh chapter-"If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things that concern my weakness"-seems to serve two purposes. On the one hand, it is a natural and effective climax to all that precedes; it defines the principle on which Paul has acted in the "glorying" of 2Co_11:23-29. It is not of exploits that he is proud, but of perils and sufferings; not of what he has achieved, but of what he has endured, for Christs sake; in a word, not of strength, but of weakness. On the other hand, this same thirtieth verse indubitably points forward; it defines the principle on which Paul will always act where boasting is in view; and it is expressly resumed in 2Co_12:5 and 2Co_12:9. For this reason, it seems better to treat it as a text than as a peroration; it is the key to the interpretation of what follows, put into our hands by the Apostle himself. In the full consciousness of its dangers and inconveniences, he means to go a little further in this foolish boasting; but he takes security, as far as possible, against its moral perils, by choosing as the ground of boasting things which in the common judgment of men would only bring him shame.
At this point we are startled by a sudden appeal to God, the solemnity and fullness of which strike us, on a first reading, as almost painfully gratuitous. "The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed for ever, knoweth that I lie not." What is the explanation of this extraordinary earnestness? There is a similar passage in Gal_1:19 -"Now touching the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not" - where Lightfoot says the strength of the Apostles language is to be explained by the unscrupulous calumnies cast upon him by his enemies. This may be the clue to his vehemence here; and in point of fact it falls in with by far the most ingenious explanation that has been given of the two subjects introduced in this paragraph. The explanation I refer to is that of Heinrici. He supposes that Pauls escape from Damascus, and his visions and revelations, had been turned to account against him by his rivals. They had used the escape to accuse him of ignominious cowardice: the indignity of it is obvious enough. His visions and revelations were as capable of misconstruction: it was easy to call them mere illusions, signs of a disordered brain; it was not too much for malice to hint that his call to apostleship rested on nothing better than one of these ecstatic hallucinations. It is because things so dear to him are attacked-his reputation for personal courage, which is the mainstay of all the virtues; his actual vision of Christ, and divinely Authorized mission-that he makes the vehement appeal that startles us at first. He calls God to witness that in regard to both these subjects he is going to tell the exact truth: the truth will be his sufficient defense. Ingenious as it is, I do not think this theory can be maintained. There is no hint in the passage that Paul is defending himself; he is glorying, and glorying in the things that concern his weakness. It seems more probable that, when he dictated the strong words of 2Co_11:31, the outline of all he was going to say was in his mind; and as the main part of it-all about the visions and revelations-was absolutely uncontrollable by any witness but his own, he felt moved to attest it thus in advance. The names and attributes of God fall in well with this. As the visions and revelations were specially connected with Christ, and were counted by the Apostle among the things for which he had the deepest reason to praise God, it is but the reflection of this state of mind when he appeals to "the God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed for evermore." This is not a random adjuration, but an appeal which takes shape involuntarily in a grateful and pious heart, on which the memory of a signal grace and honor still rests. Of course the verses about Damascus stand rather out of relation to it. But it is a violence which nothing can justify to strike them out of the text on this ground, and along with them part or the whole of 2Co_12:1 in 2Co_12:1-21. For many reasons unknown to us the danger in Damascus, and the escape from it, may have had a peculiar interest for the Apostle; haec persequutio, says Calvin, erat quasi primum tirocinium Pauli; it was his "matriculation in the school of persecution." He may have intended, as Meyer thinks, to make it the beginning of a new catalogue of sufferings for Christs sake, all of which were to be covered by the appeal to God, and have abruptly repented, and gone off on another subject; but whether or not, to expunge the lines is pure willfulness. The Apostle glories in what he endured at Damascus-in the imminent peril and in the undignified escape alike-as in things belonging to his weakness. Another might choose to hide such things, but they are precisely what he tells. In Christs service scorn is glory, ignominy is honor; and it is the mark of loyalty when men rejoice that they are counted worthy to suffer, shame for the Name.
When we go on to 2Co_12:1-21., and the second of the two subjects with which boasting is to be associated, we meet in the first verse with serious textual difficulties. Our Authorized Version gives the rendering: "It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord." This follows the Textus Receptus: Καυχασθαι δη ου συμφερει μοι ελευσομαι γαρ κ.τ.λ., only omitting the γαρ (for I will come). The MSS. are almost chaotic, but the most authoritative editors-Tregelles, Tischendorf in his last edition, and Westcott and Hort - agree in reading Καυχασθαι δει ου συμφερον μεν ελευσομαι δε κ.τ.λ.
This is the text which our Revisers render:
"I must needs glory, though it is not expedient; but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord." Practically, the difference is not so great after all. According to the best authorities, Paul repeats that he is being forced to speak as he does; the consciousness of the disadvantages attendant on this course does not leave him, it is rather deepened, as he approaches the highest and most sacred of all subjects-visions and revelations he has received from Christ. Of these two words, revelations is the wider in import: visions were only one of the ways in which revelations could be made. Paul, of course, is not going to boast directly of the visions and revelations themselves. All through the experiences to which he alludes under this name he was to himself as a third person; he was purely passive; and to claim credit, to glory as if he had done or originated anything, would be transparently absurd. But there are "things of his weakness" associated with, if not dependent on, these high experiences; and it is in them, after due explanation, that he purposes to exult.
He begins abruptly. "I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not; or whether out of the body I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up even to the third heaven." A man in Christ means a Christian man, a man in his character as a Christian. To St. Pauls consciousness the wonderful experience he is about to describe was not natural, still less pathological, but unequivocally religious. It did not befall him as a man simply, still less as an epileptic patient; it was an unmistakably Christian experience. He only existed for himself, during it, as "a man in Christ." "I know such a man," he says, "fourteen years ago caught up even to the third heaven." The date of this "rapture" (the same word is used in Act_8:39 1Th_4:17 Rev_12:5 : all significant examples) would be about A.D. 44. This forbids us to connect it in any way with Pauls conversion, which must have been twenty years earlier than this letter; and indeed there is no reason for identifying it with anything else we know of-the Apostle. At the date in question, as far as can be made out from the Book of Acts, he must have been in Tarsus or in Antioch. The rapture itself is described as perfectly incomprehensible. He may have been carried up bodily to the heavenly places; his spirit may have been carried up, while his body remained unconscious upon earth: he can express no opinion about this; the truth is only known to God. It is idle to exploit a passage like this in the interest of apostolic psychology; Paul is only taking elaborate pains to tell us that of the mode of his rapture he was absolutely ignorant. It is fairer to infer that the event was unique in his experience, and that when it happened he was alone; had such things recurred, or had there been spectators, he could not have been in doubt as to whether he was caught up "in the body" or "out of the body." The mere fact that the date is given individualizes the event in his life; and it is going beyond the facts altogether to generalize it, and take it as the type of such an experience as accompanied his conversion, or of the visions in Act_16:9; Act_22:17 f., Act_18:9. It was one, solitary, incomparable experience, including in it a complex of visions and revelations granted by Christ: it was this, at all events, to the Apostle; and if we do not believe what he tells us about it, we can have no knowledge of it at all.
"Caught up even to the third heaven." The Jews usually counted seven heavens; sometimes, perhaps because of the dual form of the Hebrew word for heaven, two; but the distinctions between the various heavens were as fanciful as the numbers were arbitrary. It adds nothing, even to the imagination, to speak of an aerial, a sidereal, and a spiritual heaven, and to suppose that these are meant by Paul; we can only think vaguely of the "man in Christ" rising through one celestial region after another till he came even to the third. The word chosen to define the distance (εως) suggests that an impression of vast spaces traversed remained on the Apostles mind; and that the third heaven, on which his sentence pauses, and which is a resting-place for his memory, was also a station, so to speak, in his rapture. This is the only supposition which does justice to the resumption in 2Co_12:3 of the deliberate and circumstantial language of 2Co_12:2. "And I know such a man-whether in the body or apart from the body (I know not) God knoweth-how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words that it is not lawful for a man to utter." This is a resumption, not a repetition. Paul is not elaborately telling the same story over again, but he is carrying it on, with the same full circumstance, the same grave asseveration, from the point at which he halted. The rapture had a second stage, under the same incomprehensible conditions, and in it the Christian man passed out and up from the third heaven into Paradise. Many of the Jews believed in a Paradise beneath the earth, the abode of the souls of the good while they awaited their perfecting at the Resurrection; {Luk_16:23, Luk_23:43} but obviously this cannot be the idea here. We must think rather of what the Apocalypse calls "the Paradise of God," {Rev_2:7} where the tree of life grows, and where those who overcome have their reward. It is an abode of unimaginable blessedness, "far above all heavens," to use the Apostles own words elsewhere. {Eph_4:10} What visions he had, or what revelations, during that pause in the third heaven, Paul does not say; and at this supreme point of his rapture, m Paradise, the words he heard were words unspeakable, which it is not lawful for man to utter. Mortal ears might hear, but mortal lips might not repeat, sounds so mysterious and divine: it was not for man (ανθρωπω is qualitative) to utter them.
But why, we may ask, if this rapture has its meaning and value solely for the Apostle, should he refer to it here at all? Why should he make such solemn statements about an experience, the historical conditions of which, as he is careful to assure us, are incomprehensible, while its spiritual content is a secret? Is not such an experience literally nothing to us? No, unless Paul himself is nothing; for this experience was evidently a great thing to him. It was the most sacred privilege and honor he had ever known; it was among his strongest sources of inspiration; it had a powerful tendency to generate spiritual pride; and it had its accompaniment, and its counter-weight, in his sharpest trial. The world knows little of its greatest men; perhaps we very rarely know what are the great things in the lives even of the people who are round about us. Paul had kept silence about this sublime experience for fourteen years, and no man had ever guessed it; it had been a secret between the Lord and His disciple; and they only, who were in the secret, could rightly interpret all that depended upon it. There is a kind of profanity in forcing the heart to show itself too far, in compelling a man to speak about, even though he does not divulge, the things that it is not lawful to utter. The Corinthians had put this profane compulsion on the Apostle; but though he yields to it, it is in a way which keeps clear of the profanity. He tells what he dare tell in the third person, and then goes on: "On behalf of such a one will I glory, but on behalf of myself will I not glory, save in my infirmities." Removere debemus το ago a rebus magnis (Bengel): there are things too great to allow the intrusion of self. Paul does not choose to identify the poor Apostle whom the Corinthians and their misleading teachers used so badly with the man in Christ who had such inconceivable honor put on him by the
Lord; if he does boast on behalf of such a one, and magnify his sublime experiences, at all events he does not transfer his prerogatives to himself; he does not say, "I am that incomparably honored man; reverence in me a special favorite of Christ." On the contrary, where his own interest has to be forwarded, he will glory in nothing but his weaknesses. The one thing about which he is anxious is that men should not think too highly of him, nor go in their appreciation beyond what their experience of him as a man and a teacher justifies (2Co_12:6). He might, indeed, boast, reasonably enough; for the truth would suffice, without any foolish exaggeration; but he forbears, for the reason just stated. We are familiar with the danger of thinking too highly of ourselves; it is as real a danger, though probably a less considered one, to be too highly thought of by others. Paul dreaded it; so does every wise man. To be highly thought of, where the character is sincere and unpretentious, may be a protection, and even an inspiration: but to have a reputation, morally, that one does not deserve-to be counted good in respects in which one is really bad-is to have a frightful difficulty added to penitence and amendment. It puts one in a radically false position; it generates and fosters hypocrisy; it explains a vast mass of spiritual ineffectiveness. The man who is insincere enough to be puffed up by it is not far from judgment.
But to return to the text. Paul wishes to be humble; he is content that men should take him as they find him, infirmities and all. He has that about him, too, and not unconnected with these high experiences, the very purpose of which is to keep him humble. If the text is correct, he expresses himself with some embarrassment. "And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations-wherefore, that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted overmuch." The repetition of the last word shows where the emphasis lies: Paul has a deep and constant sense of the danger of spiritual pride, and he knows that he would fall into it unless a strong counter-pressure were kept up upon him.
I do not feel called on to add another to the numberless disquisitions on Pauls thorn in the flesh. The resources of imagination having been exhausted, people are returning to the obvious. The thorn in the flesh was something painful, which affected the Apostles body; it was something in its nature purely physical, not a solicitation to any kind of sin, such as sensuality or pride, else he would not have ceased to pray for its removal; it was something terribly humbling, if not humiliating-an affection which might well have excited the contempt and loathing of those Who beheld it; {Gal_4:14, which probably refers to this subject} it had begun after, if not in consequence of, the rapture just described, and stood in a spiritual, if not a physical, relation to it; it was, if not chronic or periodic, at least recurrent; the Apostle knew that it would never leave him. What known malady, incident to human nature, fulfils all these conditions, it is not possible with perfect certainty to say. A considerable mass of competent opinion supports the idea that it must have been liability to epileptic seizures. Such an infirmity Paul might have suffered under in common with men so great as Julius Caesar and the first Napoleon, as Mahomet, King Alfred, and Peter the Great. But it does not quite satisfy the conditions. Epileptic attacks, if they occur with any frequency at all, invariably cause mental deterioration. Now, Paul distinctly suggests that the thorn was a very steady companion; and as his mind, in spite of it, grew year after year in the apprehension of the Christian revelation, so that his last thoughts are always his largest and best, the epileptic hypothesis has its difficulties like every other. Is it likely that a man who suffered pretty constantly from nervous convulsions of this kind wrote the Second Epistle to the Corinthians after fourteen years of them, or the Epistles to the Romans, Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians later still? There is, of course, no religious interest in affirming or denying any physical explanation of the matter whatever; but with our present data I do not think a certain explanation is within our reach.
The Apostle himself is not interested in it as a physical affection. He speaks of it because of its spiritual significance, and because of the wonderful spiritual experiences he has had in connection with it. It was given him, he says: but by whom? When we think of the purpose-to save him from spiritual pride-we instinctively answer, "God." And that, it can hardly be doubted, would have been the Apostles own answer. Yet he does not hesitate to call it in the same breath a messenger of Satan. The name is dictated by the inborn, ineradicable shrinking of the soul from pain; that agonizing, humiliating, annihilating thing, we feel at the bottom of our hearts, is not really of God, even when it does His work. In His perfect world pain shall be no more. It does not need science, but experience, to put these things together, and to understand at once the evil and the good of suffering. Paul, at first, like all men, found the evil overpowering. The pain, the weakness, the degradation of his malady, were intolerable. He could not understand that only a pressure so pitiless and humbling could preserve him from spiritual pride and a spiritual fall. We are all slow to learn anything like this. We think we can take warning, that a word will be enough, that at most the memory of a single pang will suffice to keep us safe. But pains remain with us, and the pressure is continuous and unrelieved, because the need of constraint and of discipline is ceaseless. The crooked branch will not bend in a new curve if it is only tied to it for half an hour. The sinful bias in our natures to pride, to sensuality, to falsehood, or whatever else-will not be cured by one sharp lesson. The commonest experience in human life is that the man whom sickness and pain have humbled for the moment, the very moment their constraint is lifted, resumes his old habit. He does not think so, but it is really the thorn that has been keeping him right; and when its sharpness is blunted, the edge is taken from his conscience too.
Paul besought the Lord, that is Christ, thrice, that this thing might depart from him. The Lord, we may be sure, had full sympathy with that prayer. He Himself had had His agony, and prayed the Father thrice that if it were possible the cup of pain might pass from Him. He prayed, indeed, in express submission to the Fathers will; the voice of nature was not allowed in Him to urge an unconditional peremptory request. Perhaps in Paul on this occasion-certainly often in most men-it is nature, the flesh and not the spirit, which prompts the prayer. But God is all the while guarding the spirits interest as the higher, and this explains the many real answers to prayer which seem to be refusals. A refusal is an answer, if it is so given that God and the soul thenceforth understand one another. It was thus that Paul was answered by Christ: "He hath said to me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for [My] strength is made perfect in weakness."
The first point to notice in this answer is the tense of the verb: "He hath said." The A.V with "He said" misses the point. The sentence is present as well as past; it is Christs continuous, as well as final, answer to Pauls prayer. The Apostle has been made to understand that the thorn must remain in his flesh, but along with this he has received the assurance of art abiding love and help from the Lord. We remember, even by contrast, the stern answer made to Moses when he prayed that he might be permitted to cross Jordan and see the goodly land-"Let it suffice thee: speak no more unto Me of this matter." Paul also could no more ask for the removal of the thorn: it was the Lords will that he should submit to it for high spiritual ends, and to pray against it would now have been a kind of impiety. But it is no longer an unrelieved pain and humiliation; the Apostle is supported under it by that grace of Christ which finds in the need and abjectness of men the opportunity of showing in all perfection its own condescending strength. The collocation of "grace" and "strength" in the ninth verse is characteristic of the New Testament, and very significant. There are many to whom "grace" is a holy word with no particular meaning; "the grace of God," or "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ," is only a vague benignity, which may fairly enough be spoken of as a "smile." But grace, in the New Testament, is force: it is a heavenly strength bestowed on men for timely succor; it finds its opportunity in our extremity; when our weakness makes us incapable of doing anything, it gets full scope to work. This is the meaning of the last words-"strength is made perfect in weakness." The truth is quite general; it is an application of it to the case in hand if we translate as in the A.V (with some MSS.): "My strength is made perfect in [thy] weakness." It is enough, the Lord tells Paul, that he has this heavenly strength unceasingly bestowed upon him; the weakness which he has found so hard to bear-that distressing malady which humbled him and took his vigor away-is but the foil to it: it serves to magnify it, and to set it off; with that Paul should be content.
And he is content. That answer to his thrice-repeated prayer works a revolution in his heart; he looks at all that had troubled him-at all that he had deprecated-with new eyes. "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities-that is, glory rather than bemoan them or pray for their removal-that the power of Christ may spread its tabernacle over me." This compensation far outweighed the trial. He has ceased to speak now of the visions and revelations, perhaps he has ceased already to think of them; he is conscious only of the weakness and suffering from which he is never to escape, and of the grace of Christ which hovers over him, and out of weakness and suffering makes him strong. His very infirmities redound to the glory of the Lord, and so he chooses them, rather than his rapture into Paradise, as matter for boasting. "For this cause I am well content, on Christs behalf, in infirmities, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions and distresses; for when I am weak, then am I strong."
With this noble word Paul concludes his enforced "glorying." He was not happy in it; it was not like him; and it is a triumph of the Spirit of Christ in him that he gives it such a noble turn, and comes out of it so well. There is a tinge of irony in the first passage {2Co_11:21} in which he speaks of weakness, and fears that in comparison with his high-handed rivals at Corinth he will only have this to boast about; but as he enters into his reel experience, and tells us what he had borne for Christ, and what he had learned in pain and prayer about the laws of the spiritual life, all irony passes away; the pure heroic heart opens before us to its depths. The practical lessons of the last paragraphs are as obvious as they are important. That the greatest spiritual experiences are incommunicable; that even the best men are in danger of elation and pride; that the tendency of these sins is immensely strong, and can only be restrained by constant pressure; that pain, though one day to be abolished, is a means of discipline actually used by God; that it may be a plain duty to accept some suffering, or sickness, even a humbling and distressing one, as Gods will for our good, and not to pray more for its removal; that Gods grace is given to those who so accept His will, as a real reinforcement of their strength, nay, as a substitute, and far more, for the strength which they have not; that weakness, therefore, and helplessness, as foils to the present help of God, may actually be occasions of glorying to the Christian, -all these, and many more, are gathered up in this passionate Apologia of Paul.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv23–30 23. Are they ministers of Christ? Speaking foolishly, that…
23. Are they ministers of Christ? Speaking foolishly, that is, commending himself (see verse 1), he is more; not only a minister, but a pre-eminent sufferer for Christ. To show how much he exceeded them, he gives some account of his sufferings. In labors more abundant. The record of Acts shows how his labors abounded. In stripes above measure. See verse 24, 25. In prisons more frequent. Clement, who wrote about the close of the first century, says in his Epistle to the Corinthians that Paul was imprisoned seven times. In Acts only one occurrence is named before the date of this letter, that at Philippi. It is evident from this enumeration that Acts is only a part of the history of his labors. In deaths oft. Often in peril of death.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v30 2Co_11:31.—Grammar makes certain that the ejaculated benediction belongs to…
CRITICAL NOTES
2Co_11:31.—Grammar makes certain that the ejaculated benediction belongs to the Father. He who is.—The emphatic Greek recalls the Greek equivalent for Jehovah. Look at the Divine present tense in Rom_9:5, and in Joh_1:18; Joh_3:13; Joh_6:46; Joh_8:47; Rev_1:4; Rev_1:8. I lie not.—Choose between
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(1) an asseveration in regard to what he intended (but in fact has only begun) further to relate of his life; and
(2) “This purpose” (of boasting about “weakness”) “is from a human point of view so unlikely, that in asserting it Paul appeals to Him Who alone knows his motives” (Beet).
2Co_11:32. Aretas (i.e. Hareth).—Father-in-law of Herod Antipas; his capital Petra (in Edom). Antipas had put away Aretas’ daughter; when Aretas cut off Herod’s army, Jewish sympathy with Aretas made it a “judgment on him for executing John the Baptist.” Help under Vitellius’ command was sent from Rome to Herod. Just then Tiberius died; Caligula (perhaps) gave Damascus to Aretas, or in the frontier wars Aretas seized it whilst Vitellius was absent, occupied with the changes consequent on Tiberius’ death. Thus the same occupation of Damascus by a pro-Jewish ruler, which favoured, or occasioned, Paul’s persecuting mission to Damascus, gave help to his Jewish enemies when he returned (combine Gal_1:17 with Act_9:22 sqq.) a Christian. Governor.—Lit. ethnarch, a mere provincial lieutenant. Farrar says that ethnarch was also a title of Jewish governors, permitted in heathen cities to exercise an authority over the Jewish community; e.g. such an official may have ordered one of Paul’s Jewish “scourgings” at Damascus. No date for Paul’s life can be very exactly fixed by all this (Tiberius died, A.D. 37). There are no Roman coins of Damascus belonging to this period.
2Co_11:33. Window.—Overhanging the town wall. Basket.—Not same word as in Act_9:25, where it is that mentioned in the feeding of the four thousand. (Different word, again, for. the “basket” of the five thousand.)
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—2Co_11:30-32
An Unwelcome Memory of the Past.
Perhaps this is only the first item in an intended recital of dangerous and humiliating experiences, from which—the whole topic of himself and his doings being distasteful—he turns aside when thus has only begun to touch it. “Damascus!”
1. What a name to him! There are days and places known and famous in heaven, but according to a scale of interest and importance very different from that which regulates the notice given to days, and persons, and places, in the news of the day or the history of the century. [The sites and dates of, e.g., “Decisive Battles of History,” are known there, or are little regarded, according as they bear upon the fate and progress of the kingdom of Christ. That little company travelling to Damascus with Saul; that same Saul in darkness, bewilderment, prayerful repentance; all the struggle in his heart;—these were watched in heaven, as no royal pageant, or even dynastic struggle, nor perhaps, a famous fight or political contest, would be.] There are days and places which even in the eternal retrospect will stand out, never fading into oblivion, even when the most permanent landmarks of earthly history are grown dim, or have disappeared. The soul will never forget where, when, how, it first met Christ. In heaven the interest of the city Damascus is now, and eternally will be, this,—Saul of Tarsus there first bowed the knee to Jesus of Nazareth.
2. Paul never forgot it. Yet another memory is associated with it,—that of his extreme peril and his escape by the wall. Confessedly a little difficult to see why this was so distasteful a memory to him; why this in particular should be accounted one of his “infirmities.” Perhaps the key to his feeling was some detail, some matter of vivid reminiscence, which was clearly present to his own mind as he dictated the sentences to his amanuensis, yet which he forgot to mention, and the omission of which may have been as perplexing to the Corinthians as to us. It was certainly his first taste of the deadly opposition which he was to meet with from his own countrymen and co-religionists, now that he had become a Nazarene. It may be allowable to fill out the brief narrative of Act_9:20-22 and to conceive of him returning from “Arabia” full of new convictions and knowledge and experience—full of his new Lord—and pleading with the Damascene Jews with an earnestness as full of hope of success as it was full of zeal. [As “young Philip Melancthon” expected that his testimony and his arguments would win “Old Adam” in other men for Christ, right away.] And then to see him in the reaction of comparative “failure”—for to confound men in argument, as he did abundantly, is only one-half of “success”; to see him obliged to go into hiding and to skulk about, until he could one night be dropped stealthily over the wall and fly. “After all, then, Rabban Saul is one thing, and Saul the Nazarene is another. Saul the Nazarene is ‘weak’ like other men; even he is not going to take a world by storm for his new Christ.” The first check to new zeal, the first disappointment and rebuff to the hope of soon bringing others to Christ; to win victories in argument, and then to find that the beaten foe can do mischief, and one must beat hasty retreat;—such are in one’s native “weakness” humiliating lessons to a proud, fervid spirit, a hard breaking-in for some temperaments; perhaps for his. [Especially if we know that our Damascene enemies are triumphing over the flight of the Nazarene champion; and that for years we shall hear the story told again and again, to our scornful disadvantage.] Perhaps his own feeling, more than appears on the surface of the letter here, or some mocking reference to it [if it became a sort of stock story of his opponents, to be told mirthfully to his prejudice] at Corinth, made the very mental recurrence to it, and much more this direct reference to it in writing, a painful thing.
3. Yet Paul will snatch the incident from the very mocking adversary, or from the rebelliously proud heart within him, which does not like even a reference to this. If it be a cross to self, the better, then, to crucify self upon! If his enemies taunt him with the “glorious retreat” he made from Damascus, he will make a “glory” of it. It was a shame put upon him, just because he had become Christ’s. And for that reason only does he refer to it.
4. And he makes oath and says, “Thus and thus did I escape.” There was going to be a sworn list of painful, humiliating reminders that he was only “weakness” before God. But he breaks off; the first incident stands alone; too small a finish for the solemn exordium. A good man speaks truth: (a) Always: “I lie not,” neither habitually, nor in this special instance; (b) As standing before a listening Judge. Israel’s God “shall know.” Every light—every more solemnly serious—word is spoken as in the presence of God. To him the very thought of that God is, in fact, in theology, in habitual memory, bound up with the most loving expression of His true Self,—He is “the God of” His “Lord Jesus Christ.” His name is “Father.” Yet is He a God of truth, Who neither speaks nor tolerates falsehood. To Him lying is awfully great in its sinfulness; it is mean, detestable, mischievous. He searches hearts; He hates falsehood; He will assuredly visit it. The character of the preacher of the Gospel is bound up with the character of the Gospel itself. If the preacher be only a lying braggart, how shall anything he preaches claim acceptance? (c) He can then, when fitting, call God to witness. But Paul passes off; something shunts him on to another line, a “thorn in the flesh,” concerning which the truth of all he says is only too notoriously and (to himself) painfully obvious. [The apologetic value of all such very human turns of thought in these letters is very great. These letters are valueless as bases of Christian Faith unless they be genuine and authentic. In just such traits as these does every competent student discover the indubitable marks of a document of unassailable historical character and value.]
SEPARATE HOMILY
2Co_11:30. We have more than a revelation of Paul’s personal character here; we also have a revelation of Divine power, bestowed through Christ, acting upon, elevating, that character. His rebuke is chastened; his boasting is mingled with modesty; both show the guiding influence of the Spirit of Christ. Further,
(1) he has been permitted to suffer,
(2) he has thus learnt to sympathise. These are his credentials. So also “as One who suffers and … who can sympathise … our Lord is best known to us.”
I. As One who suffers.—The heart-broken—where not heart-dead—world needs for its Loader One acquainted with grief. “To the Cross, to Gethsemane, to the sacred Face wet with tears and furrowed with agony, the soul turns in its hours of darkness, and never in vain.”
II. In that suffering it sees sympathy.—Not merely suffering for us, but with us. The gracious purpose of the Incarnation. “The Incarnation is that touch of God which makes the whole world kin.” “The gods of classic heathendom knew nothing of sympathy with the wants and woes of man; they stood aloof in sublime indifference; had they possessed some touch of humanity, they might have gained a hold over the affections of the people, which they never possessed. It was left for the Gospel to reveal to us a God who could love with so mighty and yearning a love that it brought Him down … that He might be … of us. It is in this revelation that the Gospel has conquered. Such are the marks of the Lord Jesus; suffering and sympathy. It is of these [?] St. Paul boasts.” Borne as they were in the spirit of his Master, these sufferings had not made him morose or hard. They had nourished a tender, thoughtful care for the sufferings of others, and even for their weaknesses also. “Had so entered into the mind of Christ that he could be tempted in all points even as his brethren were. Could make himself one with the over-scrupulous man, in a matter which to his own spiritual robustness was not of the slightest importance. Could so enter into this man’s weakness that in sympathy with him he was weak also, feeling the grievance almost as if it were his own. Could feel another man’s temptation, and battle with it, as if it attacked him personally. His rivals led men with glib tongues, ready manner, flattering speech; Paul by acts of sympathy, not words. If you are called to suffer for Christ’s sake, remember that the Hand which is laid upon you to sustain you is a Hand that has been itself pierced. Suffering and Sympathy! Such are the Arms of the Cross. On these the Son of Man is stretched out. In these arms He would embrace a fallen humanity.”—From Canon Hutton, “Clerical World,” i. 353.
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
2Co_11:19. A Common Sequence.
I. “Wisdom,” pluming itself that it is so wise.
II. Self-conceit, which leaves the door open for—
III. Humiliating slavery to egregiously foolish touching, to obviously shallow, but very confident, loud-asserting, leaders of opinion or practice. For self-gratification how much will men endure; for, and from, Christ, how little.
2Co_11:21-31.
I. What sufferings.
II. What devotion.
III. What faith.
IV. What triumph.—[J. L.]
[Notice how he puts a godly ancestry and a place amongst the covenant people of God, in the very forefront. It may be an occasion of everlasting thanksgiving to a man. Or, like a noble name inherited by an unworthy scion of a great house, a shame now, and a source of everlasting shame.]
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v30 Justification saves us from guilt, sanctification from depravity, and…
PAUL’S INFIRMITIES
Justification saves us from guilt, sanctification from depravity, and glorification from infirmities. These infirmities are the collateral effects of the Fall, reaching the soul through the media of the mind and body, which are not entirely restored till this mortal puts on immortality. As Wesley says: “While in these bodies, we can only think, speak and act through organs of clay.” These infirmities are sins of ignorance, which troop after us so long as we remain in this probation, involving us in the constant liability of doing wrong, aiming to do right, i. e., through failures of memory, errors of judgment, slowness of apprehension, feebleness of vision and general failure of bodily organs. The cities of refuge in the old dispensation beautifully emblematize the necessity of the atonement in the expiation of these infirmities, as well as other sins. Here is the person killing another accidentally. Of course, he is not guilty of murder in any sense, neither is he at all responsible, as he could not help the accident from happening. Yet be was unfortunately instrumental in killing the man and, if he does not fly quickly and with all his might to the city of refuge, the avenger of blood will over take and kill him. It was a matter of fact that the avenger of blood ran after and did his best to overtake him. This avenger of blood is the law, which says: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” The City of Refuge is Christ, and the man who commits an accidental or unknown sin is the fugitive. Hence these infirmities, or accidental, unknown sins, are utterly incompetent to endure the seventies of God’s judgments. Without the vicarious atonement, they would send us to Hell. So we must constantly fly to Christ for them, and as they are liable to occur ever and anon when we know not (hence they are truly sins of ignorance), therefore his absolutely necessary for us all to move at once into the City of Refuge and live there. The law specified that the fugitive should fly to the city of refuge and live there till the death of the high priest. As our Great High Priest never dies, therefore we are to fly quickly lest the avenger of blood overtakes us, and not only take refuge in the City, but live there forever, as our High Priest lives forever. But the man was still liable to commit sins of ignorance while living in the city of refuge, but that case insured from trouble, as the avenger of blood was not allowed to come in at the gate. So, after we are in Christ, secure, and sanctified wholly, and living in Him as the fugitive safe from the bloody avenger in the city of refuge, we are never again disturbed and chased by the avenger of blood, as we know he can not come in. So we shout night and day, amid all of our mistakes and blunders. Methinks my Lord in signal mercy keeps His hand over the dark group of infirmities hiding them from my spiritual insight ever and anon lest I might retrospect too much and give way to melancholy. Bright, elastic and buoyant, I am more efficient in His service. Now remember that our infirmities are included in the “all things” which “work together for good to them that love God.” We can have no adequate apprehension of the glory which God in His mysterious Providence brings out of our infirmities.
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30. “If it behooveth me to boast, I will boast of those things appertaining to my infirmity.
31. “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forevermore, knows that I lie not.” He makes this positive and strong affirmation doubtless because of the popular incredibility of the wonderful events he is going to write.
32. “In Damascus, Areta” (the governor of the king, i. e., who was stationed there by the Arabian king to rule the city as his subordinate) “was keeping the city of the Damascenes, wishing to arrest me.
33. “And through a window in a basket I was let down through the walls, and escaped from his hands.” (Act 9:25.) This was doubtless a rope basket prepared for the emergency, as we see about ships. This occurred after his return from Arabia, where he was sanctified, and was certainly a miraculous deliverance, as the whole city was under guard about all the gates around the wall purposely to secure his capture.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv23–30 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as one…
Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as one beside himself) I more; in labors more abundantly [ 1Co_15:10 ], in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths oft . [ 1Co_15:31 . On Jewish grounds Paul claimed equality, but as a minister of Christ, superiority. Knowing that his enemies would say that it accorded with his general insanity to thus assert his superiority, he ironically admits his madness in thus asserting that his ministerial labors exceeded those of his easy-living adversaries--theirs being in fact no labor at all, but rather an effort to steal the credit of his labors. This verse gives the general bodily distresses endured, while the next three tell of special cases. According to Acts, Paul had, up to this date, been imprisoned but once, and was afterwards imprisoned thrice. Clement of Rome, who wrote toward the close of the first century, says that Paul was imprisoned seven times. Paul's life for long periods was hourly exposed to death ( Act_9:23 ; Act_13:50 ; Act_14:5-6 ; Act_14:19 ; Act_17:5 ; Act_17:13 ); but the best comment on this expression is the catalogue of sufferings which follow.]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v29 A further recital of hardships and difficulties:
A further recital of hardships and difficulties:
v. 29. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?
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v. 30. If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.
v. 31. The God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed forevermore, knoweth that I lie not.
v. 32. In Damascus, the governor under Aretas, the king, kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me;
v. 33. and through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.
The first rhetorical questions contain a further explanation of the fact that Paul was burdened with the details of business concerning many congregations. If any important question of faith or of Christian life was to be decided, or when there was a quarrel, or when his advice was desired in any matter whatsoever, the apostle was invariably approached to give his assistance and decision. Not only the weal and woe of entire Congregations, however, rested upon his shoulders, but he also bore with the individual Christians. His apostolic sympathy went out to those that were weak in faith; he felt their weakness with them; he found the right word at the right time; he knew when to make allowances and when to use firmness; he became weak with the weak. On the other hand, when he heard that any person was being offended, was made to stumble, he was inflamed with righteous indignation. He felt the injury as though it had been done to himself. As a true pastor, he felt the spiritual troubles and perils of all his members everywhere and stood by their side with prayer and advice.
The principle which has guided the apostle thus far in his glorying he gives in the sentence: If it is necessary for me to boast, I will boast of my weakness. As though he would say: It is not my own free will, it is not my own choice to glory, but you Corinthians have compelled me to boast in order that the Gospel of Christ may remain in your midst. Since it is thus laid upon me as a necessity, I shall not boast as other people do, of my strength, of my successes, hut of that which belongs to my weakness, of my sufferings, of the persecutions and tribulations which I have endured. And herein the apostle solemnly protests that he is speaking the truth: The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. This exclamation shows the depth of the feeling which was agitating the apostle. God is his witness. Not his own person, not the truth of his doctrine, hut the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the honor of his Lord, is endangered, and therefore this solemn assertion in the midst of his impassioned speech.
Paul now adds an account of a which befell him shortly after his conversion It was after his return from Arabia, when he was preaching so openly and fearlessly in Damascus, that the Jews took counsel to kill him, Act 9:23-25. Their influence in the city was so great that they induced the ethnarch of King Aretas of Arabia, the father-in-law of Herod Agrippa, to guard the city by placing a watch at all the gates, while they themselves searched the city and made every attempt to apprehend Paul. But the Lord watched over His servant. It seems that one of the members of the Christian congregation at Damascus lived nest to the city wall, and so the disciples took him to this house. When night came, hey took him either to an opening in the city wall or to a window of the house where it was flush with the wall, and let him down in a basket. Thus he escaped from the city, and the plans of his enemies were frustrated, both those of the Jews and those of the ethnarch. Note that it is right for a Christian and also for a Christian pastor to flee for his life in times of persecution, when there is an opportunity and it may be done without a denial of the truth.
Summary
Paul censures the spirit which permitted the Corinthians to be led astray; he asserts that he as in no way inferior to his opponents, although he insisted upon supporting himself, a fact which served also as a challenge to the false apostles; he boasts of the perils and hardships of his apostolic labors.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv24, 27, 30 forty lashes minus one
forty lashes minus one
This was a common expression for being whipped 39 times. In Jewish law the most they were allowed to whip a person at one time was forty lashes. So they commonly whipped a person thirty-nine times so that they would be guilty of whipping someone too many times if the accidentally counted wrong.
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I was beaten with rods
This can be stated in active form. AT: "people beat me with wooden rods" (See: Active or Passive)
I was stoned
This can be stated in active form. AT: "people threw stones at me until they thought I was dead" (See: Active or Passive)
I have spent a night and a day on the open sea
Paul was referring to floating in the water after the ship he was on sank.
in danger from false brothers
The full meaning of this statement can be made explicit. AT: "and in danger from people who claimed to be brothers in Christ, but who betrayed us" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
translationWords
Jew
Gentile
desert
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv23, 25, 26, 28, 30 11:23-27 I have served him far more! Paul’s service…
11:23-27 I have served him far more! Paul’s service to Christ had entailed Christlike sufferings and toils. Some of the difficulties in this litany are recorded in Acts.
11:23-24 in prison more often: E.g., see Acts 16:22-23. Clement of Rome says that Paul was imprisoned a total of seven times. • thirty-nine lashes: This punishment was prescribed in Deut 25:1-3. The Jewish leaders punished Paul as a renegade Jew, and he faced death again and again.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.