2 Corinthians 11

Notes

Ver. 1. But as a little glorying in opposition to these pretended apostles among you is necessary for my vindication, and for enabling you to silence their proud boasts, I beg and hope that ye will bear with me a little in this, which without necessity would be extremely foolish. 2. For with a holy and religious fear I am deeply concerned lest any of you be drawn off from Christ and his gospel, or even a due regard to me his apostle, and the instrument by which ye were savingly turned and united to the Lord Jesus Christ; and that I may have the honour and pleasure of presenting you to him as a pure, uncorrupted, and faithful spouse. 3. But considering the artifices of your new teachers, I am afraid lest the devil, who, in the form of a serpent, beguiled our first mother Eve, to the general ruining of mankind, should pervert you in your principles, tempers, and practices, and turn you aside from the purity of doctrine and sincerity of manners becoming persons vitally united to Christ. 4. Indeed if any of your new preachers exhibit to you a more excellent Saviour than I and Apollos preached to you—or if by their ministrations ye have received a more excellent spirit, and more eminent gifts and graces, than ye did by ours—or if their gospel be more worthy of God, or more answerable to the condition of fallen men, than what we preached—ye may very justly own them, and prefer them to me. 5. It is nevertheless certain that I am not inferior to any of Christ's inspired apostles—no not to Peter, of whom some of you boast. 6. And though my style be plain and simple, and my pronunciation less graceful than that of Apollos, my knowledge of the mysteries of the gospel, which I received by revelation from Christ, is inferior to none; the efficacy of which, with respect to all the principal points of faith and obedience, ye experienced with such power of the Holy Ghost when I was among you, that I need only appeal to your consciences to attest it. 7. Is it reasonable to upbraid me that, to show I had no mercenary views upon you rich people of Corinth, but merely desired that you might be enriched with the blessings of salvation, I humbled myself to labour for my daily bread, and preached to you for nothing? 8. Nay, in pursuit of my studious concern for your spiritual advantage, I took gifts from other churches, that, for your greater edification, I might minister freely to you. 9. Accordingly I never complained to you when I was straitened for the necessaries of life, nor became less diligent; for whatever I needed more than what I gained by my own labour, my friends in Macedonia supplied; and as I have preached, so I hope I shall ever preach the gospel to you without putting you to any charge. 10. And this conduct I am so far from being ashamed of, that I reckon it my honour; and I solemnly resolve that neither reproaches nor kindnesses shall stop my continuance in it among you Christians of Achaia. 11. And I can appeal to God that this refusing to take subsistence from you is not because I have taken some disgust at you. 12. But I have preached and will preach the gospel freely to you, to stop the reproachful revilings of your false teachers, and to induce them to oppress you as little as I do. 13. For whatever they pretend, they are not real apostles of Jesus Christ, sent and commissioned by him, but falsely claim that high character, and deceitfully corrupt the Word of God, and serve themselves instead of him. 14. And it is no wonder they labour to impose upon you by specious appearances, when even the devil, their master, often pretends holiness and kindness in order to perpetrate the greatest mischiefs. 15. It is therefore nothing strange or impracticable that his servants and emissaries should dissemble their true character, as if they were singularly holy, and taught men the way of righteousness to eternal life. But God will quickly judge and reward them according to their hypocrisy and wickedness. 16. Considering therefore how these pretenders to apostleship set off themselves to the deceiving of multitudes, I hope that ye will indulge me in a little necessary though foolish commendation of myself. 17. I do not pretend any express command or example of Christ in it; but their selfish boasting of themselves, and mean insinuations against me and what I preach, oblige me to cry up myself in their foolish manner. 18. For if they boast of descent from Abraham, or of circumcision and other external privileges, I have as much ground to boast on these heads as any of them. 19. And I hope that ye, who are so wise in your own conceits, and can bear so much with their false and foolish boasting, will bear a little with me. 20. For if they attempt tyrannically to enslave your consciences, and subtly to make a prey of your substance, and exalting themselves insolently contemn and abuse you, ye can patiently put up with it all. 21. Let them then invidiously paint me out as a despicable wretch, incapable of apostolic powers and privileges, as they will, I dare boldly compare myself with them in everything worth mentioning. 22. In external Jewish honours, I am a Jew who speak the Hebrew language—a descendant of Jacob, the prevalent wrestler with God, by his beloved Benjamin—a descendant of Abraham, the friend of God, to whom and to his seed he promised to be a God in all generations. 23. In the honours of the gospel church I am a minister of Christ, a distinguished apostle, who have laboured, and suffered more scourging, imprisonment, and imminent dangers of death, in his cause, than any or all of them. 24, 25. Five times the enraged Jews have scourged me to the utmost degree of severity allowed by their law. At three different times I have been whipped according to the Roman law. At Lystra I was, at the Jews' instigation, stoned by the mob till I was accounted dead. Thrice I have been cast away at sea, and once tossed about a whole day and a night by the waves, lying on a part of the wreck. 26. Great and many have been my labours in preaching the gospel, and great my dangers from floods or rivers in the way.—Often have I been in danger of falling among robbers who infest the road; of being murdered by Jews or heathens; and of being killed by outrageous mobs in cities.—In travelling through desolate places I have been often in danger of being attacked by ruffians, or devoured by wild beasts, or of falling into other mischiefs.—At other times I have been in danger of perishing by storms, or of being taken by pirates; or have been insulted, abused, and nearly betrayed, through the treachery of Jews or pretended Christians. 27. In prosecuting my ministerial work, I have undergone the most fatiguing and painful services by day, and been deprived of proper rest and sleep by night. At other times I have been distressed for want of necessary food, and have spent much time in religious fasting. I have been often exposed to the severities of the weather, without sufficient clothing to keep me warm. 28. And besides all these bodily troubles, my anxious and careful concern for the spiritual welfare of all the Christian churches, and my grief on account of their corruptions or calamities, have not a little distressed my mind. 29. For there is not a member of the church, to my knowledge, afflicted in body or mind, or weak in gifts, graces, or attainments, whom I do not sympathize with and endeavour to relieve. There is none in danger of falling from the faith, hope, or holiness of the gospel, but my heart burns with grief, godly jealousy, and holy zeal to encourage, confirm, and recover him. 30. But since my enemies make a kind of boasting necessary for me in the present circumstances, I rather choose to glory in the hardships, persecutions, and reproaches which I have met with to humble me, and afford Jesus Christ an opportunity to manifest his strength in my weakness, than in my high privileges, and the great things which he has done by me. 31. And however ignorant ye be of many of my fore-mentioned trials, or even ready to suspect them as incredible, I dare appeal to the ever-blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose I am, and whom I serve, and who has graciously supported me under and carried me through them, that I have said nothing but the truth. 32, 33. Nay, I had not long begun to preach the gospel when the governor whom Aretas king of Arabia had placed in Damascus resolved to gratify the Jews in murdering me, and shut up and strictly guarded the city to prevent my escape.—But, by the directing providence of God, my Christian friends let me down from one of their houses, which was on the wall, and thus I got out of their hands, to preach the gospel in other places.

Ver. 1. In my folly. Not in absolute folly, but in what was charged as folly—that self-commendation which necessarily accompanied self-vindication. C.

Ver. 4. That is, if any one coming in the name of an apostle reveal another Saviour, minister another spirit, and preach another gospel, there is then good reason for bearing (not with him, the spurious apostle, but) with me in my jealous and urgent anxiety to win you back to the simplicity of 'the truth as it is in Jesus.' C.

Ver. 5. The assertion of this verse can never be reconciled with the imaginary supremacy of Peter and his successors in Rome. C.

Ver. 12. That they may be found (to subsist by their own labour, or by the contributions of their foreign friends) even as we. C.

Ver. 13. For such (as reveal another Saviour, &c.; see note ver. 4) are false apostles, deceitful workers; or, rather, 'such deceitful workers are false apostles.' C.

Ver. 14. Satan himself is transformed, &c. Of which transformation the most obvious example occurs in the temptation (Mat. iv.), where, by direct quotation of Scripture—the very testimony of the Holy Spirit, merely a little mutilated to suit his purpose—Satan attempted to seduce our Lord into rebellion, while appearing to inculcate an act of implicit faith. C.

Ver. 17. I speak it not after the Lord—'in whom there is neither Greek nor Jew,' Col. 3. 11; but I speak it as a Jew, boasting in the flesh (see ver. 18, 22), that by asserting my equality or superiority in all that the Jews value I may show them the vanity of boasting in things that 'I count but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.' C.

Ver. 19. This is neither 'irony nor ridicule,' as some inconsiderately represent it, but a plain declaration of fact—as if he had said, 'your superior wisdom enables you to bear with much that, in ceremonial observance or austerity of discipline, has in the sight of men the appearance of religion, yet in the sight of God is nevertheless foolishness.' C.

Ver. 24. Forty stripes save one. This was the utmost severity the Jewish law permitted, De. 25.3; and a salutary lesson of humanity for Christian legislators and rulers when corporal punishment is deemed advisable or necessary. C.

Ver. 25. Beaten with rods. This seems to refer to punishment by the Roman fasces—a bundle of rods borne by the lictors before the consuls.—Thrice I suffered shipwreck. These all seem to have been different from that recorded Ac. xxvii., for that was posterior to the date of this epistle. C.

Ver. 26. Waters. Rather, 'rivers,' as distinguished from 'the sea.' C.

Ver. 28. Besides those things that are without—that is, besides those troubles already mentioned, which are extern to my apostolic office. C.

Ver. 31. This, from its solemnity, evidently appears to refer to the catalogue of sufferings that precedes, not to the single danger that follows. C.

Ver. 33. There is no discrepancy between this account and that of Ac. 9. 20-25; the one account is merely more full than the other—ver. 32, 33 being a supplementary note to the foregoing enumeration. C.

Reflections.—With great care should ministers endeavour to prevent their hearers being seduced by Satan or his instruments, and to promote their spiritual espousals to Christ. To gain those ends, what temporal claims ought they not to forego! And what labours, dangers, and sufferings ought they not cheerfully to undergo! The devil and his preachers will turn themselves into diversified shapes in order to deceive men. And it is common for seducers to boast of their piety, learning, labours, and sufferings; yet how insignificant are all when compared with those of a faithful minister of Christ!—Seducers will always love the world in some shape or other, and embrace all opportunities of engrossing its riches, honours, or powers; and the world in return will always love its own.