The Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapters 8 - 13
8 WE MUST TELL YOU, friends, about the grace and generosity which God
has imparted to our congregations in Macedonia. The troubles they have
been through have tried them hard, yet in all this they have been so
exuberantly happy that from the depths of their poverty they have shown
themselves lavishly open-handed. Going to the limit of their resources, as
I can testify, and even beyond that limit, they begged us most insistently,
and on their own initiative, to be allowed to share in this generous service
to their fellow-Christians. And their giving surpassed our expectations;
for they gave their very selves, offering them in the first instance to the
Lord, but also, under God, to us. The upshot is that we have asked Titus,
who began it all, to visit you and bring this work of generosity also to com-
pletion. You are so rich in everything — in faith, speech, knowledge, and
zeal of every kind, as well as in the loving regard you have for us — surely
you should show yourselves equally lavish in this generous service! This
is not meant as an order; by telling you how keen others are I am putting
your love to the test. For you know how generous our Lord Jesus Christ
has been: he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his
poverty you might become rich.
Here is my considered opinion on the matter. What I ask you to do is in
your own interests. You made good beginning last year both in the work
you did and in your willingness to undertake it. Now I want you to go on
and finish it: be as eager to complete the scheme as you were to adopt it,
and give according to your means. Provided there is an eager desire to give,
God accepts what a man has; he does not ask for what he has not. There is
no question of relieving others at the cost of hardship to yourselves; it is a
question of equality. At the moment your surplus meets their need, but
one day your need may be met from their surplus. The aim is equality;
as Scripture has it, 'The man who got much had no more than enough, and
the man who got little did not go short.'
I thank God that he has made Titus as keen on your behalf as we are!
For Titus not only welcomed our request; he is so eager that by his own
desire he is now leaving to come to you. With him we are sending one of
our company whose reputation is high among our congregations every-
where for his services to the Gospel. Moreover they have duly appointed
him to travel with us and help in this beneficent work, by which we do
honour to the Lord himself and show our eagerness to serve. We want
to guard against any criticism of our handling of this generous gift; for
our aims are entirely honourable not only in the Lord's eyes, but also in
the eyes of men.
With these men we are sending another of our company whose enthu-
siasm we have had many opportunities of testing, and who is now all the
more earnest because of the great confidence he has in you. If there is any
question about Titus, he is my partner and my associate in dealings with
you; as for the others, they are delegates of our congregations, an honour
to Christ. Then give them clear expressions of your love and justify our
pride in you; justify it to them, and through them to the congregations.
9 About the provision of aid for God's people, it is superfluous for me to
write to you. I know how eager you are to help; I speak of it with pride to
the Macedonians: I tell them that Achaia had everything ready last year,
and most of them have been fired by your zeal. My purpose in sending
these friends is to ensure that what we have said about you in this matter
should not prove to be an empty boast. By that I mean, I want you to be
prepared, as I told them you were; for if I bring with me men from Mace-
donia and they find you are not prepared, what a disgrace it will be to us,
let alone to you, after all the confidence we have shown! I have accordingly
thought it necessary to ask these friends to go on ahead to Corinth, to see
that your promised bounty is in order before I come; it will them be await-
ing me as a bounty indeed, and not as an extortion.
Remember: sparse sowing, sparse reaping; sow bountifully, and you will
reap bountifully. Each person should give as he has decided for himself;
there should be no reluctance, no sense of compulsion; God loves a cheer-
ful giver. And it is in God's power to provide you richly with every good
gift; thus you will have an ample means in yourselves to meet each and every
situation, with enough and to spare for every good cause. Scripture says of
such a man: 'He has lavished his gifts on the needy, his benevolence stands
fast for ever.' Now he who provides seed for sowing and bread for food will
provide the seed for you to sow; he will multiply it and swell the harvest of
your benevolence, and you will be rich enough to be generous.
Through our action such generosity will issue in thanksgiving to God, for
as a piece of willing service this is not only a contribution towards the needs
of God's people; more than that, it overflows in a flood of thanksgiving to
God. For through the proof which this affords, many will give honour to
God when they see how humbly you obey him and how faithfully you
confess the gospel of Christ; and will thank him for your liberal contribu-
tion to their need and to the general good. And as they join in prayer on
your behalf, their hearts will go out to you because of the richness of the
grace which God has imparted to you. Thanks be to God for his gift
beyond words!
10 BUT I, PAUL, appeal to you by the gentleness and magnanimity of
Christ — I, so feeble (you say) when I am face to face with you, so
brave when I am away. Spare me, I beg you, the necessity of such bravery
when I come, for I reckon I could put on as bold a face as you please against
those who charge us with moral weakness. Weak men we may be, but it is
not as such that we fight our battles. The weapons we wield are not merely
sophistries and all that rears its proud head against the knowledge of God;
we compel every human thought to surrender in obedience to Christ; and
we are prepared to punish all rebellion when once you have put yourselves
in our hands.
Look facts in the face. Someone is convinced, is he, that he belongs to
Christ? Let him think again, and reflect that we belong to Christ as much
as he does. Indeed, if I am somewhat over-boastful about our authority —
an authority given by the Lord to build you up, not pull you down — I shall
make my boast good. So you must not think of me as one who scares you
by the letters he writes. 'His letters', so it is said, 'are weighty and powerful;
but when he appears he has no presence, and as a speaker he is beneath
contempt.' People who talk in that way should reckon with this: when I
come, my actions will show the same man as my letters showed in my
absence.
We should not dare to class ourselves or compare ourselves with any of
those who put forward their own claims. What fools they are to measure
themselves by themselves, to find in themselves their own standard of
comparison! With us there will be no attempt to boast beyond our proper
sphere; and our sphere is determined by the limit God laid down for us,
which permitted us to come as far as Corinth. We are not over stretching
our commission, as we should be if it did not extend to you, for we were
the first to reach Corinth in preaching the gospel of Christ. And we do not
boast of work done where others have laboured, work beyond our proper
sphere. Our hope is rather that, as your faith grows, we may attain a posi-
tion among you greater than ever before, but still within the limits of our
sphere. Then we can carry the Gospel to lands that lie beyond you, never
priding ourselves on work already done in another man's sphere. If a man
must boast, let him boast of the Lord. Not the man who recommends him-
self, but the man whom the Lord recommends — he and he alone is to be
accepted.
11 I wish you would bear with me in a little of my folly; please do bear with
me. I am jealous of 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. 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. 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.
Have I in any way come short of those superlative apostles? I think not.
I may be no speaker, but knowledge I have; at all times we have made
known to you the full truth.
Or was this my offence, that I made no charge for preaching the gospel
of God, lowering myself to help in raising you? It is true that I took toll of
other congregations, accepting support from them to serve you. 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. 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. Why? Is it that I do not love you? God knows I do.
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. Such men are sham-apostles, crooked in all their
practices, masquerading as apostles of Christ. There is nothing surprising
about that; Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is therefore
a simple thing for his agents to masquerade as agents of good. But they will
meet the end their deeds deserve.
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. I am not
speaking here as a Christian, but like a fool, if it comes to bragging. So
many people brag on their earthly distinctions that I shall do so too. How
gladly you bear with fools, being yourselves so wise! 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. And we, you say, have been weak! I admit
the reproach.
But if there be bravado (and here I speak as a fool), I can indulge in
it too. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Israelites? So am I. Abraham's descen-
dants? So am I. 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. Five times the
Jews have given me thirty-nine strokes; 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. 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 seam dangers from false friends. 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.
Apart from these external things, there is the responsibility that weighs
on me every day, my anxious concern for all our congregations. If anyone
is weak, do I not share his weakness? If anyone is made to stumble, does
my heart not blaze with indignation? If boasting there must be, I will boast
of the things that show up my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord
Jesus (blessed be his name for ever!) knows that what I say is true. When
I was in Damascus, the commissioner of King Aretas kept the city under
observation so as to have me arrested; and I was let down in a basket
through a window in the wall, and so escaped his clutches.
12 I AM OBLIGED TO BOAST. It does no good; but I shall go on to tell of
visions and revelations granted by the Lord. I know a Christian man who
fourteen years ago (whether in body or out of it, I do not know — God
knows) was caught up as far as the third heaven. And I know that this same
man (whether in the body or out of it, I do not know — God knows) was
caught up into paradise, and heard words so secret that human lips may not
repeat them. About such a man as that I am ready to boast; but I will not
boast on my own account, except of my weaknesses. If I should choose to
boast, it would not be the boast of a fool, for I should be speaking the
truth. But I refrain, because I should not like anyone to form an estimate
of me which goes beyond the evidence of his own eyes and ears. And so,
to keep me from being unduly elated by the magnificence of such revela-
tions, I was given a thorn, for the flesh, which came as Satan's mes-
senger to bruise me; this was to save me from being unduly elated. Three
times I begged the Lord to rid me of it, but his answer was: 'My grace is
all you need; power comes to its full strength in weakness.' I shall there-
fore prefer to find my joy and pride in the very things that are my weakness;
and then the power of Christ will come and rest upon me. Hence I am well
content, for Christ's sake, with weakness, contempt, persecution, hard-
ship, and frustration; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
13 I AM BEING VERY FOOLISH, but it was you who drove me to it; my
credentials should have come from you. In no respect did I fall short of
these superlative apostles, even if I am a nobody. The marks of a true
apostle were there, in the work I did among you, which called for such
constant fortitude, and was attended by signs, marvels, and miracles. Is
there anything in which you were treated worse than the other congrega-
tions — except this, that I never sponged upon you? How unfair of me! i
crave forgiveness.
Here am I preparing to pay you a third visit; and I am not going to
sponge upon you. It is you I want, not your money; parents should make
provisions for their children, not children for their parents. As for me,
I will gladly spend what I have for you — yes, and spend myself to the limit.
If I love you overmuch, am I to be loved the less? But, granted that I did
not prove a burden to you, still I was unscrupulous enough, you say, to use
a trick to catch you. Who, of the men I have sent to you, was used by me to
defraud you? I begged Titus to visit you, and I sent our friend with him.
Did Titus defraud you? Have we not both been guided by the same Spirit,
and followed the same course?
Perhaps you think that all this time we have been addressing our defence
to you. No; we are speaking in God's sight, and as Christian men. Our
whole aim, my dear people, is to build you up. I fear that when I come
I may perhaps find you different from what I wish you to be, and that you
may find me also different from what you wish. I fear I may find quarreling
and jealousy, angry tempers and personal rivalries, backbiting and gossip,
arrogance and general disorder. I am afraid that, when I come again, my
God may humiliate me in your presence, that I may have tears to shed over
many of those who have sinned in the past and have not repented of their
unclean lives, their fornication and sensuality.
This will be my third visit to you; and all facts must be established by the
evidence of two or three witnesses. To those who have sinned in the past,
and to everyone else, I repeat the warning I gave before; I gave it in person
on my second visit, and I give it now in absence. It is when I come this
time, I will show no leniency. Then you will have the proof you seek of the
Christ who speaks through me, the Christ who, far from being weak with
you, makes his power felt among you. True, he died on the cross in weak-
ness, but he lives by the power of God; and we who share his weakness shall
by the power of God live with him in your service.
Examine yourselves: are you living the life of faith? Put yourselves to the
test. Surely you recognize that Jesus Christ is among you? — unless of
course you prove unequal to the test. I hope you will come to see that we
are not unequal to it. Our prayer to God is that you may do no wrong; we
are not concerned to be vindicated ourselves; we want you to do what is
right, even if we should seem to be discredited. For we have no power to
act against the truth, but only for it. We are well content to be weak at any
time if only you are strong. Indeed, my whole prayer is that all may be put
right with you. My purpose in writing this letter before I come, is to spare
myself, when I come, any sharp exercise of authority — authority which the
Lord gave me for building up and not for pulling down.
And now, my friends, farewell. Mend your ways: take our appeal to
heart; agree with one another; live in peace; and the God of love and peace
will be with you. Greet one another with the kiss of peace. All God's
people send you greetings.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and fellowship
in the Holy Spirit, be with you all.
The New English Bible (with Apocrypha)
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970
Posted Dec 29, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC · edited
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