2 Corinthians 11:16–33
16 I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little. 17 What I am saying with this boastful confidence, I say not as the Lord would1 but as a fool. 18 Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast. 19 For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! 20 For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. 21 To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!
But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food,2 in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?
30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. 31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. 32 At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, 33 but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.
1 Greek not according to the Lord 2 Or often in fasting
Section Overview: Confidence through Hardship
Paul does not want to, but he is forced to it—if the Corinthians are listening to the boasts of the super-apostles, Paul too will boast. But not with the kind of boasting anyone would expect. He boasts of his weaknesses and hardships. Throughout this passage Paul cites twenty-eight hardships (counting pairs such as “in toil and hardship” or “in hunger and thirst” singly). The list is diverse and comprehensive. No part of Paul’s life goes untouched.
Throughout the passage Paul is standing toe to toe with his opponents in Corinth, yet playing by a different set of rules. He exposes to his dear Corinthians the folly of being duped into a misguided appreciation of outward impressiveness, even to the point of their own hurt (2 Cor. 11:20). He loves his friends in Corinth. For that reason he proceeds to do what makes him deeply uncomfortable: talk about his own life. But what he says only drives home the point that the super-apostles are right: he is weak and unimpressive. And therein lies the secret to his power, informed by a gospel of a crucified Christ.
Section Outline
IV.B. Paul’s Paradoxical Boasting (11:16–33)
1. The Setup for Paul’s Boasting (11:16–21)
a. Paul’s Strategy (11:16–18)
b. The Corinthians’ Behavior in the Past (11:19–21)
2. The Content of Paul’s Boasting (11:22–28)
a. Old Covenant Strengths (11:22)
b. New Covenant Weaknesses (11:23–28)
3. The Conclusion to Paul’s Boasting (11:29–33)
a. Weakness (11:29–30)
b. Truthfulness (11:31)
c. Autobiographical Example (11:32–33)
Response
The Christian gospel saves and forgives, but it does not leave us the way we were: it also reorients. What once we fled we now embrace. We glory in what made us cringe. Why? Real Christians have seen the glory of Christ. We have been turned around and placed on a pathway to heaven and restored to perfect communion with him. Any hardships that lie in our way along that path, while painful, at times overwhelmingly so, are part of the calling he has placed on us as we journey toward him. But our eyes are on him. His beauty outstrips all pain here.
But we do not merely put up with our weaknesses. We boast in them (11:18, 21, 30). We exalt them. We draw attention to them. For this is safe ground. Glorying in our weaknesses, we lift up Christ and prevent the insidious creep of spiritual pride. More than this, we confound the world’s strategies and instincts and cause unbelievers to wonder and ask about us. The gospel goes forth.
When life is hard, we glory in Christ, who is all to us. We let our countenances shine with the beauty of the Lord when circumstances defy us. We form a living picture of the security and the happiness of the gospel to those around us.
Greek not according to the Lord
Or often in fasting
11:16 This verse opens in striking resemblance to verse 1, with the opening “I repeat” perhaps specifically alluding back to verse 1:
verse 1: “I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me!”
verse 16: “I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little.”
This is shrewd of Paul. He views as foolish the indictments against him. But if some are indeed going to insist that he is a fool, so be it: he will boast like one! At one and the same time, then, he exposes the folly of his opponents while demonstrating his own credibility when playing by their rules. And so he alerts the church to the fact that he is about to do a little boasting of his own. But here is the real genius of Paul’s strategy: while starting out with some positive traits, he will shift quickly to boasting of precisely what makes the Corinthians cringe—his weaknesses. In this way he even more deeply exposes the shallow superficiality and worldliness of his opponents, by whom the Corinthian believers are being seduced.
11:17 Paul adds further clarification to the nature of his boasting, lest the Corinthians misunderstand. The apostle speaks very strongly here and in the broader context. Even as we read his letter today we can wonder how his language comports with his own calls elsewhere for gentleness (Gal. 5:23; Eph. 4:2), not least in this very letter (2 Cor. 10:1). He continues to clarify, therefore, that his present strategy is uncomfortable for him and deployed now only as an attempt to break through to the Corinthians and adequately expose his opponents.
As indicated by the ESV footnote, the phrase “not as the Lord would” circumscribing Paul’s boasting is literally “not according to the Lord.” He is saying not so much that he speaks in a way that the Lord Jesus would not but rather that his whole approach of temporarily paraded confidence is out of accord with the gospel of a crucified and weak Christ (13:4). The gospel washes blessings into the lives of those who empty themselves of all vaunted self-resourced confidence. The gospel does no such thing for those who, like Paul’s opponents, puff themselves up before others.
11:18 Paul has spoken before of those who act “according to the flesh” (5:16), and he does so again here: “many boast according to the flesh.” This is meant to be understood as the opposite of “according to the Lord.” To “boast according to the flesh” is to give vent to what comes most naturally to us, building a sense of significance through one’s own resources. It is an identity that is amassed in an inside-out way (from self) rather than outside-in (from another). It is to move through life looking down on others in strength rather than up to God in weakness. Boasting according to the flesh is natural to us; boasting in the Lord is surprising.
Essentially, to “boast according to the flesh,” even using Christian language and categories to do so, is what Luther called the “theology of glory.” Paul disrupts this with what Luther alternatively called the “theology of the cross.” The theology of glory is the complete anti-gospel mindset. Yet Paul temporarily adopts it (“I too will boast”) to shake the Corinthians out of their spiritual stupor—though he is not really adopting it, since he goes in the opposite direction of his opponents, boasting in his weaknesses rather than his strengths. A theology of glory eschews pain and weakness. A theology of the cross presses into pain and weakness—for that is where God’s power lies.
11:19 We can bring out the meaning of what Paul says here through the following paraphrase: “If you are so undiscerning as to put up with the foolish boasts of my opponents, surely you will put up with me if I boast like they do—since you are so ‘wise’!” This word for “wise” (Gk. phronimos) is not the more common term (sophos) but a word elsewhere translated “prudent.” Paul uses it here to highlight the way the Corinthians mistakenly think they are sound assessors of spiritual maturity and authenticity when in fact their seduction by the super-apostles proves their inability to detect spiritual fraudulence. An example of how they should have acted is the Bereans of Acts 17, who daily tested what they heard against the Scriptures (Acts 17:11).
11:20 Paul continues to expose the backwardness of the Corinthian Christians’ openness to the ministry of the super-apostles. He lists five actions the Corinthians oddly endure at the hands of the super-apostles. The verb in each case is a single word:
(1) “makes slaves [katadouloō] of you”
(2) “devours [katesthiō] you”
(3) “takes advantage of [lambanō] you”
(4) “puts on airs [epairō]”
(5) “strikes you [derō] in the face”
The Corinthians apparently consider it a kind of honor or nobility to be mistreated. What Paul is at pains to help the Corinthians see is that the super-apostles are not out for the Corinthians’ good. Their ministry, however outwardly slick, is ultimately self-serving. The super-apostles are using the Corinthians instead of serving them. Their actual posture is one of “your life for mine,” not “my life for yours.” The latter understanding of ministry, Paul’s own understanding, is the only true Christian ministry, for it is shaped by the gospel in which Christ himself said to sinners, “My life for yours, not your life for mine.”
11:21 Paul had not sought to control or shame the Corinthians for his own good, using them as a pedestal for self-exaltation, as the super-apostles did. For the super-apostles, the Corinthians existed for their sake. As for Paul, he existed for their sake. When Paul refers to his “shame” and being “weak” in this text, he does not capitulate to his opponents’ indictments. He uses a kind of mock acknowledgment to expose the Corinthians’ mistake. Paul does not deny that he is weak according to the world’s standards. He freely acknowledges it. He will spend the next several verses driving this point home. He denies that this worldly weakness corresponds to spiritual weakness. As he has been laboring to show throughout this letter, and as will come to climactic culmination in 12:7–10, Paul’s very weakness is his very qualification for gospel power. Human weakness is where God’s power dwells. Only empty cups can be filled.
And so Paul prepares to launch into one of the more remarkable passages in his writings. “So we are going to have a boasting contest, are we?” asks Paul with raised eyebrows and a smile. If the super-apostles want to trot out accomplishments, Paul would like to do the same. For no one can compete with his extensive list of reasons to boast—not typical human boasting, of course, hence his qualifying “I am speaking as a fool”—but rather of his many weaknesses and afflictions. What the world despises, God cherishes. Where we have nothing, God does something.
11:22 Paul begins his litany of reasons to “boast” (v. 21) with three matters related to his ethnicity (cf. Phil. 3:5). At the outset, then, Paul begins with claims to ministry legitimacy that he simply inherited by virtue of his birth. Why does he begin this way? The opposition was probably suggesting to the Corinthian church that Paul, as the “apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13) and as one who had been born outside of Israel (Acts 21:39), was a Diaspora Jew—thus not, according to the super-apostles’ likely insinuations, a real Jew. This Paul denies.
All three terms connote venerability, ancientness, solemnity. “Hebrews” (Gk. Hebraioi) occurs in just two other NT texts (Phil. 3:5; Acts 6:1) and likely denotes Palestine as the primary influence in forming Paul’s cultural and linguistic instincts. “Israelites” (Gk. Israēlitai) is found in eight other texts, though only two in Paul’s letters (Rom. 9:4; 11:1). It hearkens back to Jacob-turned-Israel (Gen. 32:28) and the patriarchal promises inherited by all true members of God’s people. And “offspring of Abraham” immediately draws the reader back to the original promises made to Abraham by God, promises that brought Israel into existence, with Abraham as the patriarchal fountainhead (Gen. 12:1–3; 17:7; 22:18).
11:23 Paul shifts from old covenant associations to the dawning of the new covenant age. And here he begins to raise the matter not only of what one is born into but of how one conducts oneself. His overarching claim is that he is a true servant of Christ—not a surprising claim to hear from Paul, as this is precisely how he occasionally begins his letters (Rom. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; cf. 1 Cor. 3:5; Titus 1:1).
“I am talking like a madman.” As Paul claims to be a better servant of Christ than his opponents, he is once again compelled to remind the Corinthians that this whole boasting project is utterly ridiculous and cuts against the grain of the gospel. But Paul loves the Corinthians too much to let his discomfort about self-boasting keep him silent.
Paul now moves from claims his opponents would have sought to make for themselves to those that show not his superiority but his weakness. He begins with four of these, each one heightened by a strong adverb. Paul has endured not simply “labors,” but “far greater labors”; not just “imprisonments,” but “far more imprisonments”; not merely “beatings,” but “countless beatings”; not only “near death,” but “often near death.” Paul’s hardships have not been passing or light. If hardships demonstrate one’s commitment to a cause, Paul is without peer.
11:24–25 Having just spoken of being “often near death” (v. 23), Paul drills more specifically into that and mentions some of the concrete experiences that have brought him to death’s door. He first speaks of being whipped by Jewish leaders five times. The law (Deut. 25:3) allowed no more than forty lashes lest the one being punished be “degraded,” so thirty-nine was a way of ensuring the law was not breached in the event of a miscount. There is no specific word for “lashes,” but it is assumed (Paul literally says, “By the Jews five times the forty less one I received”) and likely refers to flogging, whereby bits of scrap metal and wood were tied to a whip used on the back.
Here, then, stands Paul, the man who more than any other has explained to the world the true meaning of the OT law and its glorious fulfillment in the Messiah, Jesus Christ—acknowledging that he has himself suffered the very punishment this OT law requires for those who break it.
Three times Paul was “beaten with rods.” The “rods,” a Roman punishment, would have been stiff instruments of pain as opposed to the whips of the Jewish punishment. On one occasion, recounted in Acts 14:19, Paul was stoned so severely that he was dragged from the city presumed dead, as had been the case in Stephen’s stoning (Acts 7:58–60), but his disciples nursed him back to life. Shipwreck was not a matter for which any opponents of Paul were culpable, of course. But it was a repeated hardship for Paul as a matter of course, given his evangelistic commitments to take the gospel throughout the known world. And in a world with no life jackets or Coast Guard, a shipwreck was a truly terrifying experience. In one of these, Paul recounts, he was adrift at sea for twenty-four hours. The cold and soggy misery of such an affair can hardly be imagined.
11:26–28 Paul broadens out now from a few particularly dire experiences in which he almost died to more general hardships, though hardships no less depleting. Aside from the first item in verse 26, “frequent journeys,” which is the broad context for all of Paul’s various straits, the remaining eight items in verse 26 are all linked with “danger” (Gk. kindynos; the only other NT occurrence of this word, aside from the eight occurrences in this verse, is Rom. 8:35). Five of these refer to danger “from” a particular threat (“rivers,” “robbers,” “my own people,” “Gentiles,” “false brothers”), and three of danger “in” or “at” a certain location (“the city,” “the wilderness,” “at sea”). Some are morally charged (“robbers,” “false brothers”), while some are morally neutral (“rivers,” “sea,” “city”). That Paul refers so often to the dangers of these experiences underscores the emotional and psychological pressure such episodes exert.
In verse 27 Paul moves to dangers that are more personal and self-chosen, though not entirely (“cold and exposure” would not always have been avoidable). And verse 28 tops off the list by communicating that, as if all this was not already hard enough, he endures a constant burn of anxiety for all the churches he has founded throughout the Mediterranean. As his letters attest, Paul certainly has reason for such anxiety—the dysfunctions and factionalism in Corinth, the law-infected gospel gaining strength in Galatia, the Christ-detracting false teaching in Colossae, the rampant immoralities of Crete (in writing to Titus), the young and sickly Timothy forced to navigate hostilities in Ephesus, the Thessalonians all mixed up about the return of Christ.
What is striking in this list is the way in which Paul does not disentangle his hardships the way we just have. He lumps together all kinds of hardships—chosen on his own, suffered at the hands of other people, weather, sleep, emotional and psychological well-being; he does not pick and choose which sufferings he is willing to endure. He is all-in. He has died, and his life is hidden with Christ in God (cf. Col. 3:3). He no longer seeks self-preservation (Gal. 2:19–20). Or, as he puts it in this letter, he lives no longer “according to the flesh” but for Christ, who died for him (2 Cor. 5:13–16). He has yielded all that he is to his living Lord, handing himself over entirely, without reservation. Having suffocated the self, he has experienced the new life of the coming age exploding into existence in him through his weakness and pain. We might be tempted to overly revere Paul for what he has endured. He certainly commands our respect. But he is not a stoic, out to prove his human resilience. He has simply abandoned the self-cultivation project every fallen human is hardwired to pursue. He belongs to Christ. Like the sun outshining a candle, the sublime vision of the glory of Jesus Christ has eclipsed any lesser glories.
11:29–30 Paul shifts his gaze from the super-apostles to look more intently at the Corinthians. Lifting their chin to look him straight in the eye, he asks, Who of you feels weak, and I do not know what you are feeling? Who of you stumbles and sins, and I do not burn (the literal meaning of “am indignant”; cf. “flaming” in Eph. 6:16)? The point is Paul’s utter solidarity and identification with the Corinthians. He is not aloof, as his opponents in actuality were. He is one with them. Their difficulty is his; he is their father in the faith (1 Cor. 4:15).
And so, if he is forced to boast, he will boast of (lit.) “the things of my weakness” (2 Cor. 11:30). All that is low and despised, all that one wishes to avoid and escape, all our human inability and incapacity—here is where Paul’s claim to gospel ministry is founded.
11:31 Paul solemnly attests to his truthfulness by appealing explicitly to God. Whatever you Corinthians might be thinking, Paul says, God knows the truth. He knows of my integrity and honesty. This claim to truthfulness probably has an eye to the litany of experiences just recounted as well as the experience in Damascus he is about to relate, and possibly also the rapturous event described in the early verses of chapter 12.
But the key takeaway for readers of 2 Corinthians today is to be reminded in Paul’s claim to honesty of how deeply counterintuitive is all that he has been saying. Can it really be that this unimpressive, apparently accident-prone, often suffering (at times voluntarily), ineloquent man truly represents the inaugurated new age of glory (3:7–18)? Can human weakness really channel divine glory? Behind Paul’s claim to truthfulness we are reminded of the upside-down ways of the gospel.
11:32–33 Out of nowhere, apparently—without even a connecting conjunction—comes this autobiographical detail. But nowhere in Paul’s letters does he show himself to be a thoughtless writer; on the contrary, his writings reveal profundity and depths of meaning when pondered carefully. So it is here. Perhaps drawing on another occasion in which God’s servants were rescued by being lowered out of a window in a wall (Josh. 2:15), Paul very deliberately drives home his weakness. Picture the apostle, huddled in a woven basket, slowly descending vertically alongside the city wall. How silly! To the world, yes—but God does not work according to the world’s standards of nobility.
Paul does something even deeper by recounting this event. In chapter 12 he will relate an almost unbelievable episode in which he was caught way up high, even into heaven itself, and saw things too wonderful to put into words. Before describing going way up, he recounts going way down. Such is the pattern of a gospel-shaped life, as Paul has been laboring to make clear throughout this letter.