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The Second Letter of Paul to the CORINTHIANS. Chapter 11.

Paul and the False Apostles

¹ I wish you would bear with me in a little of my folly; please do bear with me. ² I am jealous for you, with a divine jealousy; for I betrothed you to Christ, thinking to present you as a chaste virgin to her true and only husband. ³ But as the serpent in his cunning seduced Eve, I am afraid that your thoughts may be corrupted and you may lose your single-hearted devotion to Christ. ⁴ For if someone comes who proclaims another Jesus, not the Jesus whom we proclaimed, or if you then receive a spirit different from the Spirit already given to you, or a gospel different from the gospel you have already accepted, you manage to put up with that well enough. ⁵ Have I in any way come short of those superlative apostles? I think not. ⁶ I may be no speaker, but knowledge I have; at all times we have made known to you the full truth.

⁷ Or was this my offence, that I made no charge for preaching the gospel of God, lowering myself to help in raising you? ⁸ It is true that I took toll of other congregations, accepting support from them to serve you. ⁹ Then, while I was with you, if I ran short I sponged on no one; anything I needed was fully met by our friends who came from Macedonia; I made it a rule, as I always shall, never to be a burden to you. ¹⁰ As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, I will preserve my pride in this matter throughout Achaia, and nothing shall stop me. ¹¹ Why? Is it that I do not love you? God knows I do.

¹² And I shall go on doing as I am doing now, to cut the ground from under those who would seize any chance to put their vaunted apostleship on the same level as ours. ¹³ Such men are sham-apostles, crooked in all their practices, masquerading as apostles of Christ. ¹⁴ There is nothing surprising about that; Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. ¹⁵ It is therefore a simple thing for his agents to masquerade as agents of good. But they will meet the end their deeds deserve.

Paul's Sufferings as an Apostle

¹⁶ I repeat: let no one take me for a fool; but if you must, then give me the privilege of a fool, and let me have my little boast like others. ¹⁷ I am not speaking here as a Christian, but like a fool, if it comes to is bragging. ¹⁸ So many people brag of their earthly distinctions that I shall do so too. ¹⁹ How gladly you bear with fools, being yourselves so wise! ²⁰ If a man tyrannizes over you, exploits you, gets you in his clutches, puts on airs, and hits you in the face, you put up with it. ²¹ And we, you say, have been weak! I admit the reproach.

But if there is to be bravado (and here I speak as a fool), I can indulge in it too. ²² Are they Hebrews? So am I. Israelites? So am I. Abraham's descendants? So am I. ²³ Are they servants of Christ? I am mad to speak like this, but I can outdo them. More overworked than they, scourged more severely, more often imprisoned, many a time face to face with death. ²⁴ Five times the Jews have given me the thirty-nine strokes; ²⁵ three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I have been shipwrecked, and for twenty-four hours I was adrift on the open sea. ²⁶ I have been constantly on the road; I have met dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my fellow-countrymen, dangers from foreigners, dangers in towns, dangers in the country, dangers at sea, dangers from false friends. ²⁷ I have toiled and drudged, I have often gone without sleep; hungry and thirsty, I have often gone fasting; and I have suffered from cold and exposure.

²⁸ Apart from these external things, there is the responsibility that weighs on me every day, my anxious concern for all our congregations. ²⁹ If anyone is weak, do I not share his weakness? If anyone is made to stumble, does my heart not blaze with indignation? ³⁰ If boasting there must be, I will boast of the things that show up my weakness. ³¹ The God and Father of the Lord Jesus (blessed be his name for ever!) knows that what I say is true. ³² When I was in Damascus, the commissioner of King Aretas kept the city under observation so as to have me arrested; ³³ and I was let down in a basket, through a window in the wall, and so escaped his clutches.

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