INTRODUCTION

The situation needed to be pretty dire in order to get Paul to talk about himself in a boastful way (even if the boasting was sarcastic), and we see in this passage just how dire it was. The Corinthians had been infiltrated by emissaries of Satan, the Lord of Lies himself, and some of the believers there were still under the influence of those lies.

THE TEXT

“Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ . . . As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia. Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth. But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we. For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Cor. 11:1–15).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

So Paul is going to boast, knowing it to be folly, and he wants them to bear with him in it (v. 1). The reason it is justified is because of Paul’s godly jealousy over their spiritual chastity (v. 2)—he wants them to be kept pure for Christ. His concern is that as the serpent beguiled Eve through nuance, they too may have been corrupted and turned away from the simplicity found in Christ (v. 3). He then moves into sarcasm. If someone shows up with a different Jesus, or a different Spirit, or a different gospel, they put up with it readily enough (v. 4). Paul does not believe himself to be inferior to any of these (false) but important apostles (v. 5). Though he was unpolished in speech, his knowledge was fine—as the Corinthians well knew (v. 6). Did Paul wreck his testimony by charging them no money (v. 7)? Other churches supported him to minister at Corinth (v. 8). Was that the problem? And when he was present there in Achaia, the Macedonians supported him (v. 9). He swears by the truth of Christ, nobody is going to be able to stop this boast of his in Achaia (v. 10). Is this because he doesn’t love the Corinthians? God knows the answer to that (v. 11). Paul will continue to do this in order to undercut the boast of the false apostles that they work on the same terms as Paul. They don’t (v. 12). These men are false apostles, deceitful laborers, dressing up as apostles of Christ (v. 13). This is no wonder because Satan himself appears as an angel of light (v. v. 14). Consequently, it is no big deal when Satan’s ministers wear the livery of ministers of righteousness (v. 15). But their end will be according to their actual works, not their pretended works (v. 15).

THE MISLEADING CARICATURES

The devil should not be thought of by us as having horns and a pitchfork. We wrestle against the prince of the powers of the air, and not against a cartoon villain. When the Lord Jesus was tempted by the devil himself, one of the temptations occurred when the devil showed Him all the kingdoms of men and their glory (Matt. 4:8). Put another way, Jesus was tempted to become a Satan-worshiper—but not the kind that plays around with severed goat heads, pentagrams, candles and spells. The temptation had to do with cathedrals, and moon landings, and empires.

Paul says in this passage that Satan looks like the opposite of what he actually is. It therefore follows that his ministers look the same—shiny and bright on the outside, and inside filled with bones and rotting flesh. Nobody will knock on your front door with grotesque literature and say, “Hello. I am representing the prince of darkness and have come to lead you stray.” So we must beware the allure of self-righteous respectability. And beware of anything that removes the offense of the cross.

THE SUPPORT OF MINISTRIES

We are taught in multiple places of Scripture that a laborer is worthy of his hire, and men who make their vocation from the proclamation of the gospel have every right to expect to be supported from that work. But, as we learn here, they also have the right, for tactical and strategic reasons, for reasons of the testimony, to refuse to take any money from people they are currently ministering to. You can see the pattern here. Paul says that he was supported by the Macedonians in order to minister at Corinth (2 Cor. 11:9), and he would be more than happy to receive the support of the Corinthians when he began ministering in the regions beyond them (2 Cor. 10:15-16). This was not morally necessarily, but it was tactically necessary. And why? Because there were liars on the loose.

SIMPLICITY IN CHRIST

When it comes to faithfulness and loyalty, life is pretty straightforward. If we maintain the kind of godly jealousy that Paul exhibits here, we are enabled by the grace of God to keep it that way.

Paul compares Christians being lured away from the simplicity of Christ to the temptation that our first mother was enticed by. That temptation began with little shadings, a little blurring. The serpent asked, “Did God really say you couldn’t eat from any tree in the garden?” (Gen. 3:1) In her reply, Eve said that they weren’t even to touch it, which was her addition (Gen. 3:3). Then the serpent came up to his direct challenge. You will surely not die (Gen. 3:4). What begins with a small lie can end with a great fall.

What is the simplicity of Christ that we preach? The message is straightforward. We preach the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We declare who He was—the very Son of God—and we declare what He did—He took our sins upon himself, endured the wrath of God for them, and sank down into death. Three days later, He came back from the grave, having left all of our sins behind Him, remaining in death forever.

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INTRODUCTION

The fundamental difference between Paul and the false apostles he was combating is that he surrendered to a standard from outside the world, and they submitted to a standard that arose from within. And when I use a word like standard, we are referring to both law and gospel. What is the standard for evaluating appropriate behavior? And what is the standard to telling men how they might be saved?

THE TEXT

“Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ’s, let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ’s, even so are we Christ’s. For though I should boast somewhat more of our authority, which the Lord hath given us for edification, and not for your destruction, I should not be ashamed: That I may not seem as if I would terrify you by letters. For his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible  . . . But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth” (2 Corinthians 10:7–18).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Paul is preparing to mount an attack on the apostles of the superficial (v. 7). If any of these men think they belong to Christ, Paul also does (v. 7). Paul is gearing up for some ironical boasting in the next chapter, and here he says that if he boasted of his authority, he would not be ashamed. And why? Because his authority gave, and did not grab (v. 8). The point was not to be a literary terrorist (v. 9). He is here referring to the charge that he writes a hot letter, but his pulpit presence is weak, and his eloquence is well beneath the standard (v. 10). Paul has already indicated this next point, but he says it again. On the next visit, the letters and the actions will match (v. 11). Paul has a standard outside himself. Those who measure their yardstick with another yardstick are not wise (v. 12). Or even worse, they are not wise who measure a yardstick by holding it up to a mirror. Paul says that he uses the measure granted by God to him, and to them as well (v. 13). Paul is not getting outside his lane by dealing with the Corinthians, because he was the one who had first shared the gospel with them (v. 14). Paul refuses to encroach on another man’s ministry, but is of course open to mutual edification (v. 15). He is certainly open to having the Corinthians help him in the task of preaching the gospel in regions beyond them (v. 16). The one who glories should do so in the Lord (v. 17). Self-congratulation establishes nothing—only God’s commendation counts for anything (v. 18).

THE PROBLEM OF HYPOCRISY

We live in a subjective age, and so many people are not ashamed to say that their standard is provided by the guidance of their own heart. But the Scriptures reject this as truly foolish.

“He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: But whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered” (Proverbs 28:26).

But there are two kinds of fools. There are those who trust in their own hearts, and say that this is what they are doing. Here the folly is out in the middle of the table. The second kind is the one who trusts in his own subjective understanding, but clothes it in the more orthodox language of objective truth. We can see this in the parable Jesus told about the conceited Pharisee who went down to the Temple to pray. Jesus spoke the parable against those who “trusted in themselves” (Luke 18:9). But the language the Pharisee used was good, solid Reformed stuff. “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are . . .” (Luke 18:11). “Lord, all the credit for me being so wonderful goes to You, and only to You.” Something is still off. And beware. How many of us read that parable and thank God that we are not like that Pharisee?

In this passage, Paul was genuinely submitting the whole thing to God. When we pray, we should talk like we mean it.

THE POSSIBILITY OF FAILURE

One of the best ways to tell if you are using a subjective or objective biblical metric is by whether or not there is any possible scenario where you would receive correction. How good are you are removing the beam from your own eye (Matt. 7:1-5)? How good are you at considering yourself, lest you also be tempted (Gal. 6:1)? How good are you at not judging others with a standard that would also flunk you (Rom. 2:1-3).

Suppose the existence of an invisible recording device hung around every neck that only recorded moral judgments leveled against others. “She ought not . . . I can’t believe he . . . Those people are awful . . . Did you see what . . .” Suppose God distilled an ethical code from all of those statements, and then judged each person in strict accordance with thatstandard. All of us would be condemned. We would be in the position of David talking to Nathan about Bathsheba, before he knew they were talking about Bathsheba.

By way of contrast, we know that Paul was the real deal because of statements like this.

“For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God” (1 Corinthians 4:4–5).

BOASTING IN THE LORD

This is a matter that requires real spiritual wisdom. The occasions for boasting in the Lord will arise when people think that you had something to do with it. God is being very good to us here in this Moscow project, and there is no way to talk about it without referring to it. But I still wince inside whenever I hear it referred to this way. Even when I refer to it this way. And why? Because we should boast in the Lord.

But we have to look at it from the other side as well. We cannot boast in the Lord, who dwells in the highest heaven, and does nothing in particular. It is not boasting in the Lord to talk about the attributes of God in a way that is detached from all human history. God reveals Himself in His great and wonderful works. Miriam was not dancing beside the sea because she had just finished reading a chapter in a theological tome on the divine aseity. She was dancing because Jehovah had bared His strong right arm, and “Pharaoh’s army got drownded.”

And when we ask what this external objective standard is, we must immediately correct ourselves. The question is not what the standard is, but rather who the standard is. And the answer to that question is the Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The central message from Christ is not “go over there and do those good deeds.” The central message is “come, follow me.”

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