2 Corinthians 11

12. Men observe each other’s actions and principles; and taking the general character of each which they find prevailing around them, erect it into a standard of morals to which they conform, and by which they try their own lives. Hence, the opinion of the world, the law of honor, the conventional usages of society, become tests by which men learn to judge of right and wrong—crooked rules, which, false in themselves, can but mislead those who apply them to the decision of their conduct. J. J.—A simpler and heartier reception of Christ within would expel this eternal self-reference, self-measurement, self-inspection. There was a grand thought in that saying of a believer of the primitive stamp: “I do not want to possess a faith; I want a faith that shall possess me.” The safest strength of the heart is the feeling of complete dependence. There is something in a self-renouncing and trusting temper that makes piety fragrant with the air of Gethsemane. You find it only where you find the life hid with Christ in God. F. D. H.

15,16. These words suggest these three important principles: the great general duty of extending and maintaining the ministry of the gospel beyond the more central, and prominent, and favored districts of its domain; the blessedness of that charity which voluntarily supports a distant ministry, even while maintaining its own; and the propriety of prosecuting the work in strict adherence to a settled distribution of ministerial labor, and especially—for on this the apostle eminently insists—with a careful recognition of the rights of the ministry previously located in each district of the Church. W. A. B.—Paul was now fettered in his plans of benevolence, and it was from the Corinthian disciples that he expected his release. The fulfillment of his hope depended upon their progress to higher attainments in faith. There is involved, then, in these words of an inspired and most successful missionary, a principle, that the missionaries of the Church require at her hands, for the extension and success of their efforts, an increase of faith. If we look to the period when the limits of the Church were most rapidly and widely extended, it will be found not the era when the worldly power, the learning, and the wealth of the Church were at their highest elevation, but in the age when, though lacking all these, by the energy of an overmastering faith, she rose superior to every impediment, and, destitute of all earthly aid and encouragement, dared to hope in God. Wise in his wisdom, and strong in his might, she devised her plans of conquest upon the broad and magnificent basis of the Saviour’s promises, and then, in humility, diligence, and simple devotion, called upon the Saviour’s faithfulness to accomplish the plans his own word had warranted and his own Spirit incited. And in most of the great revivals of faith and godliness in the modern Church, it will be discovered that the rising flood of religious feeling has opened anew, or found and followed the already open channel of missionary enterprise. W. R. W.

1. WOULD to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. 2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy; for I have espoused you to one husband, 3 that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the 4 serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the sim- 5 plicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not 6 preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, 7 which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. For I suppose I was not a whit 8 behind the very chiefest apostles. But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; 9 but we have been thoroughly made manifest among you in all things. Have I committed 10 an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the 11 gospel of God freely? I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service. 12 And when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man: for that 13 which was lacking to me the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied: and in all 14 things I have kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep myself. As 15 the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia. 16 Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth. But what I do, that I will do, that 17 I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion; that wherein they glory, they 18 may be found even as we. For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming 19 themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed 20 into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed 21 as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. I say again, Let no man think me a fool: if otherwise, yet as a fool receive me, that I may boast myself a little. That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly, in this confidence of boasting. Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also. For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise. For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face.

21. I speak as concerning reproach, as though we had been weak. Howbeit, whereinsoever any is bold, (I speak foolishly,) I am bold also. Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I. 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. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not. In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me: and through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.

HAVING given himself to God, Paul desired to bring with himself the whole world as an offering. To this end he traversed sea and land, Greece and the barbarous countries, everywhere plucking up the thorns of sin, that he might sow the seed of the gospel, and everywhere transforming men into angels. Chrys.—We see him, in the prosecution of his purpose, traveling from country to country, enduring every species of hardship, encountering every extremity of danger, assaulted by the populace, punished by the magistrates, scourged, beaten, stoned, left for dead; expecting, wherever he came, a renewal of the same treatment and the same dangers; yet, when driven from one city, preaching in the next, spending his whole time in the employment, sacrificing to it his pleasures, his ease, his safety; persisting in this course to old age (through more than thirty years); unaltered by the experience of perverseness, ingratitude, prejudice, desertion; unsubdued by anxiety, want, labor, persecutions; unwearied by long confinement, undismayed by the prospect of death. Paley.—Full of impassioned efficiency and yet full of cool discretion, he is restlessly at work for a spiritual object; he couples vigorous earnestness and manly strength with the tenderest mildness; his deep spirit overflows with love, yet without becoming soft and weak; he is able to accommodate himself to all conditions, bear all things, hope for all things, joyfully deny himself all things, even such as are lawful; he lets his own personal interest fade entirely from his view, so that he may labor for the invisible kingdom of God, and live for a crucified man, who was rejected by the world, and yet in the knowledge of whom he had found the highest good, and would willingly impart this good to all men. Ullmann.—The world may be challenged to find his superior in simple power of soul. Judged by the thought in his writings, he stands unsurpassed. There is nothing like them in iron logic, in profound insight, in comprehensive breadth, in all-embracing grandeur of view. There is nothing like them in their expression of a great human heart, in its compassion for man, in its love for God, in its devotion to Jesus Christ—bearing the burden of the apostate and perishing Jew, reaching out after the dying Gentile, and in visions of the ineffable glory anticipating the ecstasy of heaven. Where in all the centuries has there ever appeared another such indomitable will? D. S. G.

No longer is Timothy associated. The writer is, “I, Paul, myself.” And the tone becomes very firm, sometimes even stern and sarcastic. A strong anti-Pauline party had arisen at Corinth, headed by certain teachers, here designated “false apostles.” In reply to their objection that he had brought no commendatory letters, Paul maintains that he needed none, and that the converts under his ministry formed for him a sufficient testimonial. In knowledge, in labors, and in sufferings, he was not a whit behind the very chief of the apostles. It was painful to him to be obliged to make such statements. “I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me.” The brethren at Corinth were being misled by men who envied and calumniated the very founder of their Church. In such circumstances Paul was bound to vindicate himself, and to show how fully his apostolic position was evidenced by his apostolic life, his fruitful labors, patient sufferings, and abundant revelations. D. F.

3,4. Paul told them that better far than grace of language or eloquence was the fact that the truth he had preached was the essential truth of the gospel; and this truth he gives in a very few words, as Christ the risen and the crucified; Christ held in the heart and life, the spirit of the Cross and of the Resurrection: the spirit of the Cross sundering the heart, no matter how painfully, year by year, from the evil within us; the spirit of the Resurrection raising us to all things high and pure and noble, leaving in the grave behind us all despondency, sadness, and sin, and raising us up, as on angels’ wings, to contemplate, and gradually to have formed within us, the purity of Him who sitteth on the right hand of God. F. W. R.

3. Simplicity: “the simplicity that is in Christ.” It is a beautiful word. To speak what we think! to live what we believe! to seem what we are! to be far more anxious to stand well with our own conscience than in the opinions of others about us, and to be supremely anxious to please God, and to live in his love, and according to his laws. Such is the life of Christian “simplicity,” which, however, is at the same time a life as beautiful as the morning, and as grand as the mountains, and “as it were the body of heaven in its clearness.” A. R.

5. For “the very chiefest apostles” should stand “those over-much apostles”; i. e., those men who pretend to be more than the Apostles themselves. He means the false and rival teachers, not the apostles (see 12:11). A.

9. I wanted. We have been accustomed to think of his life as full of pains, toils, dangers, calamities; but we have also been accustomed to attribute his perils and sufferings to the persecutions which befell him as an apostle of Christ. It is pathetic, it touches us close home, to learn that some of these sufferings came upon him as a working-man; that he knew what it was to have an empty purse and a bare cupboard. Weary with his rough work, knowing that he must come back to labors that would extend far into the night, he dragged himself evening by evening to the synagogue, or to the house of Justus, that he might teach and argue of the things of Christ. Never was he more constant or more ardent in the ministry of his apostleship than during the eighteen months he spent at Corinth; yet it was in these very months that he “wanted.” Paul’s utter devotion to his

Master is a rebuke to us all; but it is the very gravest of rebukes to those who, professing and calling themselves Christians, can encounter any toils of business or pleasure, but are always too weary or too occupied to serve the Church; who usually find the means for schemes of recreation and gain, but are as generally too poor to contribute to the wants of their neighbors. For here was a man, often in want, yet forward to help and to give. Here was a man worn with handicraft toils, yet always fresh and vigorous for the ministration of truth and charity, always delighted to lavish his energies in any endeavor to teach men wisdom or to do them good. Cox.

13. We must consider that it is quite possible for some to deceive and others to remain true, and that the discovery of occasional hypocrites does not make all religion a pretense. If there were no reality, there could be no counterfeit. When hypocrites do startle us where we little expected them, our hearts must learn to fall back on the sincere who have fully approved themselves, the guileless and the good on whose foreheads the God of Truth has written his name in life and death—the beloved on earth and the blessed in heaven. Ker.

14. The Bible account of the fall in paradise gives us a key to the whole secret of the way and the power of temptation. Sin besieged the human heart, and carried it, and made its fatal entrance into the world, not as sin, but as the means to the knowledge of good and evil: Satan transformed into an angel of light.

Satan does not march his victim up to face perdition point-blank. He leads him to it by easy stages, and through a labyrinth that shows no danger. Round and round go those circling currents of the northern sea that swallow the ship; and by the same winding coil goes the spiritual decline that ends in spiritual death. It is gayety, not the grave, that youth is seeking when it steps inside the circle of forbidden pleasure. It is for social cheer, for good companionship, because he would not be morose, because he would scatter his despondency, that the drunkard drinks damnation, not for damnation’s sake. A worldly life is begun for the more decent uses that wealth may be put to; but it is followed afterward in servitude to that unscrupulous taskmaster, avarice. Tempting men imitate their great leader and prototype. They never go directly and openly to their object. If they would weaken the holy restraints that gird in, with their blessed zone, the innocence of childhood, they will urge some sly argument to an honorable pride, or else to a friendly sympathy, or else to a praiseworthy love of independence; and the first battery that has been plied against many a boy’s virtue has been the cunning caution that bade him not be afraid of his elders.