3. The Ugliness of Spiritual One-Upmanship
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The Ugliness of Spiritual One-Upmanship
How Not to Boast in the Lord
7You are looking only on the surface of things. If anyone is confident that he belongs to Christ, he should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as he. 8For even if I boast somewhat freely about the authority the Lord gave us for building you up rather than pulling you down, I will not be ashamed of it. 9I do not want to seem to be trying to frighten you with my letters. 10For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.” 11Such people should realize that what we are in our letters when we are absent, we will be in our actions when we are present.
12We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise. 13We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you. 14We are not going too far in our boasting, as would be the case if we had not come to you, for we did get as far as you with the gospel of Christ. 15Neither do we go beyond our limits by boasting of work done by others. Our hope is that, as your faith continues to grow, our area of activity among you will greatly expand, 16so that we can preach the gospel in the regions beyond you. For we do not want to boast about work already done in another man’s territory. 17But, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” 18For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.
2 Corinthians 10:7–18
The theme of boasting dominates the text from here to the end of 2 Corinthians 12:10. Small wonder. Paul, as we have seen, is confronting intruders in the Corinthian assembly, leaders who advance their prestige and enhance their personal reputations by adopting worldly postures on a wide range of matters. More accurately, they not only adopt worldly postures, they treat these like Christian virtues, making it difficult for the spiritually immature Corinthians to resist the seduction. Near the heart of their style of leadership is a kind of triumphalistic self-promotion that Paul detests; but he finds himself in the awkward position of needing to present his own credentials as forcefully as possible—and what is this but another form of the boasting he despises?
The way Paul handles this extraordinarily difficult situation is to sidle up to his topic. He will not actually embark on his list of boasts until the last half of 2 Corinthians 11. First he must dispense with various false charges, dispel certain misconceptions, and set out a truly Christian framework which, if properly grasped, already sentences triumphalism to its doom.
A. The Ugly Problem and Paul’s Response (10:7–11)
1. Looking at the facts (10:7a). The Greek text in the first line of verse 7 is a trifle ambiguous. It could be taken one of three ways. First, it might be a question, as in the King James Version: “Do ye look on things after the outward appearance?”—i.e., “do you see (only) what is material or fleshly?” There is little to commend this rendering; for although it suits the context of the preceding paragraph, it does not easily link up with what follows. Second, the sentence might be rendered as in the NIV: “You are looking only on the surface of things.” This would mean Paul is not discouraging the Corinthians from checking credentials, but charging them with using superficial and worldly criteria. This can be shown to make a lot of sense in the context. Yet there are two weaknesses to this interpretation that encourage us, on balance, to adopt a third rendering: (1) the verb used is normally in the imperative in Paul; and (2) there is nothing in terms used here to suggest that what the Corinthians are looking at is worldly or superficial. These considerations prompt us to adopt the translation of the NIV footnote: “Look at the obvious facts.”
This suits the context exactly. Paul has been appealing to the Corinthians to clean up their church, to inject obedience into their faith. Such obedience would be demonstrated by the disciplinary action they are exhorted to take against the interlopers. But to take such steps, they will have to make some judgments as to whether Paul or the intruders are to be believed and followed. All along, the Corinthians have been under the seductive influence of the false apostles. If they are to break free from their guile and reestablish truly Christian priorities, the Corinthian believers will have to change their evaluations, not least their evaluations of Paul. That is why the apostle now tells them, “Look at the obvious facts”—and then proceeds to offer obvious answers to some of the most scurrilous charges against him.
All this presupposes that a local church has the responsibility to make judgments; but the judgments should be based, not on powerful personalities capable of leading a church astray by the sheer energy of their will and personal attractiveness, but by more objective criteria, by obvious facts, by standards of Christian maturity. Some of these facts and standards emerge in the rest of 2 Corinthians 10; others appear in subsequent sections (e.g., 11:23–28; 12:9–10, 12–15; 13:5–6). This balance is something every church must constantly seek to attain. Some churches and some Christians are very harsh in their judgments of others. Their criteria for judging leave something to be desired. Other churches and Christians, repulsed by what they feel is narrow sectarianism, advocate the broadest tolerance, and remind everyone that Jesus taught, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matt. 7:1). But they overlook the fact that by adopting this stance they are passing judgment on those whom they judge to judge too harshly! Moreover, Jesus’s teaching is in reality a condemnation of judgmentalism, not an invitation to vacuous moral indecision; for he himself elsewhere insists, “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment” (John 7:24).
It is quite impossible for either an individual or a church to make no judgments; for even the failure to make decisions is in fact a decision based on the implicit assumption that the circumstances are not weighty enough to force a judgment. If the Corinthian church in the situation before us decided to make no judgments, it would in fact be deciding to disobey the apostle. Neither an individual Christian nor a church can avoid responsibility by refusing to make judgments; for that very refusal is already a judgment, an evaluation of commitments, strategies, priorities, and competing truth claims.
What this means is that since we cannot avoid making judgments we had better commit ourselves to making good ones. We will eschew cheap judgmentalism, remembering that we ourselves are at best poor sinners saved by grace. We will constantly ask God for the grace and wisdom to avoid decisions based on flattery, personal prejudice or pique, faulty understanding of Scripture, carelessness, or other impure or lazy motives. Instead, we will want to be fair and just, to test everything by Scripture maturely understood, to judge evenhandedly and on the basis of the immutables of the gospel of Jesus Christ and its practical entailments. If the Corinthians had practiced such distinctively Christian discernment and judging, they would not now be in the position of having to make extraordinarily painful and difficult decisions. They would not have been deceived by the interlopers in the first place, and would not now be called on to remove them. Life is built up of a series of interlocking decisions. Failure at a relatively easy level frequently returns to haunt us.
2. Putting Paul down (10:7b–11). If these verses provide Paul’s response to some specific charges made by the interlopers, they also show what two of those charges were.
First, the false apostles claimed to belong to Christ in some special sense (10:7b). Exactly what this special sense consisted in is difficult to determine at this distance. It cannot simply mean that the opponents claimed to be Christians (which is the meaning “belonging to Christ” has in 1 Cor. 15:23), for all the Corinthian believers would cheerfully claim the same thing, and therefore to belong to Christ in this sense would not constitute any distinctive claim to leadership in the Christian community. Moreover, as harsh as the intruders seem to be toward Paul, there is little evidence that they went so far as to say Paul was not even a Christian. Some scholars have therefore suggested that these opponents claimed to belong to the “Christ-party” mentioned in 1 Corinthians 1:12. But if that were so, why would Paul respond that he belongs to Christ as much as anyone else? The Paul who denounced the schismatic spirit in 1 Corinthians 1 would not likely now be claiming to belong to one of those parties himself. Moreover, judging by the kind of support the false apostles enjoyed in the entire Corinthian assembly, it appears they were not identified exclusively with some subgroup in the assembly. In other words, although “belonging to Christ” in 1 Corinthians 15:23 means something like “being a Christian,” and in 1 Corinthians 1:12 means something like “belonging to some self-proclaimed ‘Christ-party’ (as opposed to a ‘Peter-party’ or ‘Paul-party’ or ‘Apollos-party’),” neither meaning fits the context in 2 Corinthians 10:7.
As a result, some modern writers have put forward various other explanations of doubtful worth. But perhaps the true explanation is a rather subtle one. The intruders quite clearly claimed to be “servants of Christ” in some special sense (see comments on 2 Cor. 11:23), and perhaps also “apostles of Christ” (11:13) and “servants of righteousness.” Their claim to belong to Christ was therefore probably of a piece with the many other labels they proudly supported as means to win the Corinthians’ confidence. As Barrett suggests, the opponents would need only say, with the right sort of inflection and tilt of the head, “I am Christ’s man”—and they would simultaneously be claiming something for themselves and hinting that Paul was not Christ’s man, that he did not belong to Christ in exactly the same way. The person who makes such a claim, and not Paul, is the authentic and authoritative apostle. Perhaps the proud boasts of these intruders held other connotations now lost to us: e.g., some of the leaders may have actually known the historical Jesus in the days of his flesh, may have claimed to know the resurrected Christ with special, mystical intimacy (cf. 12:1–10), or have even hinted that if Paul claimed to be their equal, his very standing as a Christian could be called into question. But these possibilities are not certain, and not central. What is clear is that Paul was presented to the Corinthians as someone who did not belong to Christ in the superior way claimed by the false apostles.
They had a second way of putting Paul down: they charged him with inconsistency, especially in the contrast between his powerful letters and his unimpressive personal presence. “His letters are weighty and forceful,” they said. “But in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing” (2 Cor. 10:10). In one sense, of course, they were right: charges that sting, even when false, usually approximate the truth in certain respects, or else they would have no credibility. Certainly some of Paul’s letters were weighty, a point later recognized by Scripture itself (cf. 2 Peter 3:16). The Corinthian believers, as we have seen, had already received at least three letters from Paul. The second of these is our 1 Corinthians—a “forceful” letter if ever there was one; and the third, though effective, was painful and severe (cf. 2 Cor. 2:4; 7:8–13). But when Paul showed up in person, he conveyed no personal aura or charisma, and his speaking invited contempt. In part, this doubtless sprang from the self-acknowledged deficiencies in his training (11:6); but at a deeper level, it sprang from his own commitment to eschew gimmickry and persuasive eloquence (1 Cor. 1:17; 2:1–5) in order that the faith of his converts might rest, neither on his personality nor on his rhetoric, but on the power of God.
Whatever Paul’s reasons, his opponents interpreted the facts in the worst possible light, and charged him with being guilty of a miserable inconsistency. Indeed, the charge is more cutting than first meets the eye; for it is not just that Paul’s letters and Paul’s presence prove inconsistent but that only the letters are impressive. There is an implicit charge of duplicity, of phony boldness: he manages to present a brave front by using his gifted pen, but when Paul the man is assessed, he turns out to be far inferior to his writings. It was easy to make the charge credible among those who felt that true Christian leadership should be impressive, bold, visionary, triumphalistic, and characterized by signs and rhetoric. All the opponents had to do was confuse meekness with weakness, and so adhere to the temporary standards of polished rhetoric (not to truth, integrity, or righteousness!) that they could brand “his artless preaching as being unworthy of the attention of educated Greeks” (Wilson).
How easily do we stoop to one-upmanship! When we hear stories of some interchange, does the narrator slant his account in such a way as to appear to have come out on top? Are we any different when we tell personal stories whose tone and shading constantly cry out, “I sure told them where to step off!” We may be so enamored of the inner-ring syndrome that we long to be inside some special group and are prepared to sacrifice Christian integrity in order to win that group’s approval. It is arguable, e.g., that the most divisive aspects of certain forms of the charismatic movement, and of certain aspects of Reformed theology, are the strong in/out stances they project. You are either in (agreeing with them, participating with them, defending them, depreciating others) or out (disagreeing with them, not participating with them, sometimes attacking them, consolidating a flank with others against them). The polarization can become strong enough that the out group begins to constitute its own in mentality, based on antipathy to the opposing group. This is the stuff of schism.
Of course, I am not naively suggesting that theological distinctions are of little or no importance. I am referring rather to attitude. A charismatic, a Baptist, or a Reformed theologian who presses his case humbly, gently, prayerfully may be completely innocent of this inner-ring mentality. Indeed, it may be in some cases that the only inner ring to poison relationships is found in the closing ranks of the opposing majority who are threatened by the challenge. Rarely, however, is all the fault on one side; and the doctrinal questions are easily intermingled with a great deal of emotional one-upmanship unseemly among brothers in Christ. Certainly the Corinthian interlopers joined their doctrinal aberrations (see comments on 11:4) with a proud triumphalism designed to promote themselves into some inner circle of elite elect, accomplished in part by putting Paul down. And surely our one-upmanship is not more meritorious when we engage in the same exercise for no doctrinal reasons whatsoever—when we condescendingly refer to fellow believers whose theological structures are similar to our own and (invariably in their absence) talk about them in ways so sophisticated that although we have not libeled them we have decisively demeaned them and put them down.
3. Paul’s defense (10:7b–11). Paul answers this pair of charges and the attitudes underlying them by making three points.
First, he insists he belongs to Christ no less than do his opponents: “If anyone is confident that he belongs to Christ, he should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as he” (2 Cor. 10:7b). The word “again” probably means that such a person should take another look at himself, and on the basis of the fresh information conclude that the apostle Paul belongs to Christ no less than he. Whatever “belonging to Christ means,” Paul “argues that the right to make a subjective claim based on personal conviction cannot fairly be granted to his opponents and yet denied him” (Harris).
Yet doubtless there is a deeper principle at stake, even if it does not explicitly surface. After all, Paul is not at this point arguing that he is intrinsically superior to the others, or that he belongs to Christ more than they do. Later on when he is forced to talk about his visions (2 Cor. 12:1–10), he refers to himself not as a great apostle entrusted with special revelations, but as “a man in Christ” (v. 2), a mere Christian, who was graciously accorded an ineffable vision. Even when he is forced to defend himself or when he argues there are different levels of Christian maturity and different roles to play in the body, he is careful not to erect any fences that might enclose inner-ring groups of Christians. Different roles, different gifts, different levels of maturity and understanding—yes; categorically different sorts of Christians, never!
Many of the children of God are far better than we are, and the worst one in his family has some points in which he is better than we are. I feel, sometimes, as though I would give my eyes to be as sure of heaven as the most obscure and the least in all the family of God; and I think that such times may come to some of you if you imagine yourselves to be so great and good. You strong cattle, that push with horn and with shoulder, and that drive back the weak ones, the Lord may say to you, “Get you gone; you belong not to me, for my people are not thus rough and boastful—not thus proud and haughty; but I look to the man who is humble, to him who has a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my Word.”
Did you ever try to pray to God under the influence of a consciousness of possessing the higher life? Did you ever try to pray to God that way? If you ever did, I do not think you will do it a second time. I tried it once, but I am not likely to repeat the experiment. I thought I would try to pray to God in that fashion, but it did not seem to come naturally from me; and when I had done so, I thought I heard somebody at a distance saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” and he went home to his house justified; and then I had to tear off my Pharisaic robes, and get back to where the poor publican had been standing, for his place and his prayer suited me admirably. I cannot make out what has happened to some of my brethren, who fancy themselves so wonderfully good. I wish the Lord would strip them of their self-righteousness, and let them see themselves as they really are in his sight. Their fine notions concerning the higher life would soon vanish then. Brethren, the highest life I ever hope to reach to, this side of heaven, is to say from my very soul—
“I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.”
I have not the slightest desire to suppose that I have advanced in the spiritual life many stages beyond my brethren. As long as I trust simply to the blood and righteousness of Christ, and think nothing of myself, I believe that I shall continue to be pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ, that this joy will be in me, and that my joy will be full.
C. H. Spurgeon
Thus, although all Paul insists on here is that he does not belong to Christ any less than do his opponents, his protestation emerges from the matrix of a profound grasp of every Christian’s indebtedness to grace, and from his utter revulsion of “Christian” one-upmanship.
Second, Paul points out that whatever authority has been entrusted to him, it was given for building believers up, not tearing them down. Indeed, the Greek text emphasizes the point by offering a suggestive comparison. Paul says, in effect, “I have boasted (in a rather paradoxical way) about belonging to Christ; but even if I boast about something beyond that, namely, the authority the Lord gave me [NIV’s “even if I boast somewhat freely”], I will not be ashamed of it—that is, my boast would be substantiated by the facts. For the authority the Lord gave me was for the purpose of building up believers; and everyone knows I founded the church in Corinth and built you up. Can the self-proclaimed apostles, the intruders, claim so much? Have they not rather introduced friction and worldly categories that have pulled you down?”
Elsewhere (Gal. 1:1, 11–12, 15–16), Paul emphasizes that both his call to apostolic ministry and the gospel he preaches are of divine origin. The ultimate source of his authority as an apostle, and the ultimate authority behind the gospel he proclaims, is God himself. In 2 Corinthians Paul occasionally stresses something similar (cf. 3:5–6; 13:10); but in this passage (10:8) his point is a little different: he emphasizes not so much the origin as the purpose of the authority about which he prefers not to boast. That purpose is beneficent—i.e., he wields his authority not to gain advantage for himself, or to promote himself, still less to tear others down, but to build up the church. This building-up language is an extension of the common metaphor of the church seen as a building or a temple, built on the foundation, Jesus Christ. Expert builder that he is, Paul builds on this foundation, and exhorts others to be careful what materials they use when it is their turn to build (1 Cor. 3:10–17). Using the same metaphor, Paul says he was given authority to build up the Corinthians, not to pull them down, like a wrecker intent on demolishing a building.
Paul does not mean, of course, that he has no authority to exercise discipline or to pass judgment; for elsewhere he insists that if he is forced to take such unpleasant steps, he is not only prepared to do so but fully able to uphold his judgments (cf. 2 Cor. 13:1–4). He is not restricting himself to a polite power-of-positive-thinking approach, committed above all to offending no one, not even the devil himself. Rather, he is insisting that the central purpose of the authority entrusted to him is the edification (the building up) of God’s people. In exactly the same way, the central purpose of the Son of God’s coming into the world was not to condemn the world but to save the world (John 3:17)—even though one of the entailments of that coming is to pronounce judgment and doom on those who will not repent and believe. So Paul: he may have to wield the rod of discipline, but that is auxiliary to the central purpose of his mission and of that authority he exercises.
To the Corinthian believers, therefore, Paul is launching a challenge. They have heard the intruders putting Paul down on a number of points, not least in condescending dismissal of his authority. He responds that he prefers not to talk about the authority the Lord gave him (though if he did boast about it, he would not be ashamed—i.e., his claims would be valid); but he insists at the same time that whatever authority he has received, its purpose is to build up, not pull down—and thus he sidesteps the question of the origin of his authority and focuses the Corinthians’ attention on the purpose and results of his authority. If they reflect only a little, they would remember that Paul did the initial evangelization among them, founded their church, built them up in their faith, safeguarded them from various errors. The false apostles can claim none of those things. They have used their authority to criticize, divide a church, and lead God’s people away from the gospel they initially clung to for salvation. Small wonder Paul tells them to look at the obvious facts (2 Cor. 10:7)! Their challenge is to free themselves from the false criteria being taught by the intruders, and to look again at indisputable evidence in Paul’s favor.
It is true, of course, that results and effects do not always serve as adequate criteria of a valid ministry. Some faithful missionaries, e.g., have worked in particularly difficult areas and seen very little fruit; and conversely, some highly “successful” ministries may rightly be adjudged cultic. Gamaliel’s advice (Acts 5:33–39)—that the trappings of success prove a movement is from God—is frequently false. Nevertheless, the fruit of a person’s ministry must be at least one of the factors to be borne in mind when that person claims the prerogatives of leadership. Paul subtly reminds the Corinthians that they are Christians because of his ministry, and implicitly asks, “What comparable purposes and results can the ministry of the interlopers claim?” Thus although fine purpose and results do not automatically guarantee valid ministry, they can provide some support for claims to divine authorization.
The principle is a profound one with many applications. How many Christians with meager service records spend large blocks of time criticizing more productive servants of God? In specific cases, it is of course possible that the criticism is just and the productive minister some brand of phony; but in most cases the critics are more like the intruding false apostles than they might care to admit. Paul’s point is a challenge for Christian leaders in every generation: whatever authority is entrusted to them is for the purpose of building up fellow believers, not tearing them down.
The precise syntactical and logical connection between 2 Corinthians 10:8 and verse 9 is much disputed. It is possible there is an ellipsis (a few words left out, yet understood by both writer and reader). If so, the thought flows something like this: “If I were to boast about the authority the Lord has given me—given me for building people up, not pulling them down—I would not be ashamed; but I will not do so, lest I seem to be frightening you with my letters.” In other words, verse 9 provides additional reason why Paul will not boast of his God-given authority; for if he does so in this letter, his opponents will respond by saying his strong self-defense is typical of his weighty and forceful letters (v. 10), and completely atypical of his person. So Paul cleverly avoids the trap, and says, on the one hand, that if he chose to boast about his authority, there would in fact be substance to his claims; and on the other hand, that in any case this authority about which he chooses not to boast is for purposes of edification. The trap is wisely avoided; the important points are made.
Third, Paul insists he is consistent, contrary appearances notwithstanding. His opponent charged him with a literary false front: his letters might be weighty and forceful, but the real Paul, Paul in person, was (they said) unimpressive, and his speaking worthy of contempt. Paul responds by saying in effect that if the intruders continue making their accusations, they will bring down such wrath on their heads when Paul finally arrives that all will see the apostle is perfectly capable of taking them on in person and not through letters only: “Such people should realize that what we are in our letters when we are absent, we will be in our actions when we are present” (2 Cor. 10:11).
How competent a speaker Paul was we cannot know. By the time of the first missionary journey, he has emerged as the “chief speaker” (Acts 14:12) when he and Barnabas are on the road together; and the pagans of Lystra, mistaking them for gods because of a miracle they performed in Jesus’s name, dub Paul “Hermes,” the god who in Greek mythology carried messages; yet interestingly enough these citizens of Lystra did not mistake Paul for the brilliant, sonorous Apollos; and elsewhere Acts records that Paul’s preaching could not keep Eutychus awake (Acts 20:9; cf. Plummer). What Paul certainly lacked were the rhetorical flourishes frankly expected of speakers in certain strands of Hellenistic society; but the charge leveled against him by the intruders transcends this perceived deficiency and charges Paul with a duplicitous inconsistency. That is why Paul responds by defending his consistency.
An old adage tells us, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” That is surely not quite right: some inconsistencies—moral, intellectual, logical, spiritual—cannot possibly be the characteristics of great minds. Yet the old adage has a point. It pithily reminds us that although great minds may presume profound consistency at the level of principle, they may be extraordinarily flexible at the level of practice—so flexible, in fact, that lesser minds may unjustly charge them with inconsistency, because lesser minds are frequently slow to discern the principles marked by the more obvious practices.
The apostle Paul was certainly one of the most flexible believers to emerge from the early church. Who but he could readily become a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles, a slave to everyone so that by all possible means he might save some (1 Cor. 9:19–23)? A fine example of his flexibility comes from his handling of circumcision. On the one hand, when certain Jews insisted that Gentiles had to come under the Mosaic covenant by being circumcised and become Jewish proselytes before they could legitimately come under the lordship of the Jewish Messiah Jesus, Paul strenuously objected. He perceived that the result of such advocacy was to deny the sufficiency of Jesus’s cross-work and resurrection to restore men and women to God. And so Titus was not circumcised; for as Paul puts it, “We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you” (Gal. 2:1–5). On the other hand, according to Luke, Paul was perfectly happy to circumcise Timothy (Acts 16:1–3); for in that situation no one was suggesting that Timothy had to be circumcised if he was to be saved. Rather, everyone knew that although his mother was a Jewess, his father was a Greek, and the young man had never been “done.” This would have limited his usefulness as an assistant to Paul whenever the apostle attempted to enter synagogues and other Jewish centers to evangelize his own people.
Of course, a critic might charge Paul with inconsistency: the same Paul circumcises Timothy yet refuses to permit Titus to be circumcised. But those who knew Paul best, who understood the profound principles that dominated his life and thought, would have grasped the deep consistency implicit in these decisions. He was the sort of man who had such a profound grasp of the supremacy of the gospel, such a yearning to win people to Jesus Christ, and such balanced insight into the relationships between the old covenant and the new, that he felt perfectly comfortable eating meat the Old Testament forbade; yet he would not under any circumstances do so if he felt weaker brothers and sisters in Christ might have their faith harmed by his indulgence. He would gladly circumcise Christian males if it would increase the effectiveness of their witness, but would adamantly refuse to do so if it would jeopardize the sufficiency and exclusiveness of the gospel he loved and by which he was saved.
In a similar way, superficial observers, critics to a man, might charge Paul with inconsistency because they find his letters weighty and forceful but his personal presence unimpressive. But perhaps they have not considered certain relevant factors. Paul’s forceful letters have been written in response to dire developments in the Corinthian church. If similar developments take place just before his personal visit, they will discover he can be no less forceful and severe in person (2 Cor. 10:11; 13:2, 10) than in his letters. And meanwhile the critics should not check their own criteria of contemporary rhetoric lest they be seduced by form and remain unresponsive to content and truth (cf. 11:6).
Paul maintains he is consistent; and the intruders cannot fail to hear a veiled threat. For if Paul is right, then one day he will prove his point by displaying in person the forcefulness they deny he has; but then it will be directed toward their discipline and destruction.
B. Countercharge: Improper Boasting (10:12–18)
Throughout the embarrassed self-defense that characterizes so much of 2 Corinthians 10–13, it is easy to detect the range of charges and accusations leveled against Paul by the intruders. But here and there, Paul’s firm statements enable us to detect what charges he is making against them in return. Nowhere is this clearer than in 10:12–18, where Paul’s denials (vv. 12a, 13–15, 18) betray his understanding of what the false apostles have been up to, what he charges against them. Indeed, at one point (v. 12b) he refers to them directly and presents a specific condemnation of their activity. The heart of Paul’s countercharge in these verses is that their boasting is improper, their self-commendation unrestrained and dishonest, and their focus on man and not God. The text makes five crucial points:
1. Paul refuses to permit commendations to be definitive (10:12a). In this area Paul is indeed timid; he does not dare to classify or compare himself with some who commend themselves. Irony saturates Paul’s “admission.” Apparently Paul’s opponents were given to writing flowery letters of recommendation for one another, and perhaps as well letters of self-introduction stacked with self-praise—the ancient equivalent of a modern, unrestrained curriculum vitae. But Paul has little time for self-commendation. Because he is so concerned to win the Lord’s approval (1 Cor. 4:1–5), he does “not dare to classify or compare himself with some who commend themselves” (2 Cor. 10:12).
Nevertheless, Paul is caught in a difficult situation. As Goudge comments, “Self-defense is almost impossible without self-commendation. St. Paul’s opponents at Corinth made the former necessary, and then blamed him for the latter.” Already in 2 Corinthians 3:1, after explaining a little how he preaches the gospel as a faithful servant of Christ, he has to ask, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?” Surely not. Paul never was an apostle of men, sent out by them (Gal. 1:1), but an apostle of Christ Jesus: and Christ’s approval is all he seeks. He is of course glad to be commended by his own churches, since their coming into existence depended on him; but in that case their approval is nothing more than the courtesy of gratitude and a sign of their fidelity to the apostolic gospel. Their commendation of Paul is an acknowledgment, after the fact, of their dependence upon him, not a hurdle erected by them over which Paul must successfully leap if he is to secure their approval. As Paul tells the Corinthians, “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stones but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3–4).
In other words, far from needing letters from some unnamed source of authority in order for the Corinthians to accept his credentials, Paul claims the Corinthians themselves constitute his credentials, “written” by Christ in that Christ saved them and established them through Paul’s ministry. If Paul is forced again and again to defend himself, it is not at all because he cares for the praise of men. Rather, as he explains to the Corinthians in another passage, “We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than what is in the heart” (2 Cor. 5:12). As he testifies elsewhere, “Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord” (1 Cor. 9:2).
Unfortunately, the Corinthians were so seduced by the credential-waving false apostles that Paul is forced to use even stronger language and admit (with grim irony) that he would not “dare” use their procedures of extravagant self-glorification. He refuses to permit commendations to be definitive.
2. Paul insists that the lack of an objective standard is folly (10:12b). Paul is certainly not suggesting that there is no place at all for assessing competing claims. What he objects to so strongly about the intruders’ procedures for self-enhancement is that they utilize no objective standard. They simply “measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves”; and in this, “they are not wise.” Apparently these self-promoted apostles compared notes on their visions, their racial and cultural pedigrees, their training in rhetoric, their abilities to command fees and lead men—all relative criteria of little importance in God’s eyes.
Doubtless these false apostles had no intention of measuring themselves by the objective criteria preferred by Paul—allegiance to the gospel of Christ, growing conformity to the character of Christ, participation in the sufferings of Christ. But they failed to see that self-assessment based on relative standards means no real self-assessment at all. It is impossible to gauge the speed of a moving train while standing in another moving train on an adjacent track (unless of course you know the speed and direction of your own train—but in that case your real standard of comparison is objective and external to both trains). It is no less impossible to gain very meaningful appraisal of moral rectitude or spiritual leadership by comparing leaders. Some absolute standard of reference is necessary. Worse, because the false apostles who had invaded the Corinthian church had a distorted understanding of themselves (as judged by the objective gospel Paul preached), they suffered equally from a profound inability to understand their environment and circumstances. There is no evidence that they could really see the damage they were inflicting on the church, the schisms they were introducing, the duplicity and hypocrisy intrinsic to their treatment of Paul.
The lack of an objective standard is folly. Of the many applications of this principle, we may consider two. The first is most like the situation in Corinth. Many modern Christians have become so enamored of the styles of leadership found in politics or the entertainment industry that they are unwittingly transferring these essentially secular criteria to the church. Such secular criteria, however, are largely culturally conditioned, and swing with public opinion. The question Christians ought to ask about their aspiring leaders is: To what extent do they conform to biblical stipulations for the posts and functions they are considering? Repeated reading of, say, the Pastoral Epistles might help to change our thinking and bring it more closely into line with God’s thinking. Those of us who are leaders might resort less often to name-dropping and politics, and become more concerned about prayer, winsome integrity, humility, and conformity to Jesus Christ.
A second and no less disturbing development is taking place in the mainstream of Western society. Western democracies were not founded exclusively by Christians (in the biblical sense); but by and large they were founded by disparate groups (including Deists, unconverted church people, and many others), the majority of whom adhered to the existence of a law higher than those passed by our legislatures. That higher law was broadly identified with the ideal moral standards of the Judaeo-Christian heritage. In the last few decades, however, this loose consensus has increasingly broken down. Rising numbers of people want freedom from such law. The deep tragedy is that as a result we are for or against a piece of legislation on the sole grounds of expediency. The moral significance of legislation is not considered; or worse, the word “moral” is tossed around in a partisan way to justify any party’s convictions without recourse to the constraints of a revealed higher law to which we are all accountable. The result is not greater liberty but (from a biblical perspective) less virtue. Where there is less virtue, there will be more vice; and more vice inevitably leads to the destruction of society and the loss of freedom.
It is always true that the lack of an objective standard is folly. If we as Christians are to stand against the tide of modern relativism, whether in our churches or in the broader society, we shall have to fill our minds with the Word of God, well digested and integrated, and learn to think our way from God’s thoughts to our situation with prayerful humility and a profound desire to assess all things, ourselves included, by criteria less arbitrary and relative than the shifting standards of the surrounding culture.
3. Paul outlines the limitation on boasting established by one’s personal sphere of work (10:13–15a). By contrast with those who have no objective standard (2 Cor. 10:12), Paul will “not boast beyond proper limits” (v. 13), i.e., without the limits of an objective standard, in an unmeasured way. For Paul, the measure or standard to be adopted (as he tells us elsewhere) is Christ Jesus himself (cf. 1 Cor. 11:1; 2 Cor. 4:10; 10:1); but the notion of measurement against an objective standard apparently calls to his mind an extension of this language to a slightly different “standard” or “field” (v. 13 NIV; “territory” in v. 16). Paul will confine his boasting, he says, to the field God has assigned him—i.e., to the geographical limitations of his own apostolic outreach—a field which (he wryly adds) reaches even to Corinth.
Some scholars have thought that Paul is referring primarily to the concordat of Galatians 2:9. Peter and the others agreed that they should evangelize primarily among the Jews, and recognized the grace given to Paul to go to the Gentiles. In the wake of Paul’s conversion, God himself had declared, “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles” (Acts 9:15). What Paul is offended at, therefore, is the invasion of his essentially Gentile outreach by Judaizing intruders. Stated so boldly, this interpretation of these verses is too simple. Paul is glad for the help of others (e.g., Apollos, 1 Cor. 3:5–10); and he was never the sort of person to put down those who were preaching the same gospel as he, even if their motives could not always stand close scrutiny (e.g., Phil. 1:15–18). Yet there is some validity to the interpretation; for it is hard to imagine that, whether or not they came from Jerusalem, the intruding rivals had no knowledge at all of the agreement between Paul and the other apostles. If they knew that the Jerusalem apostles had agreed that Paul should exercise his apostolic ministry primarily among the Gentiles, it was vile of them to spend their energies demeaning his ministry, especially among his own Gentile converts.
The explicit thrust of this passage, however, is less racial than geographical. Paul’s apostolic ministry had extended to Corinth; and by this means the Corinthians themselves had come to know the Savior. Ironically, by questioning Paul’s legitimacy the Corinthians are almost questioning the legitimacy of their own conversion!
Paul sees the “field” or “territory” in which he has done the primary evangelism and church planting as the “measure” God has given him, not only because of his commission to preach to the Gentiles, and not only because of his sense of God’s leading in the geographical decisions and turnings he made, but also because in God’s providence he got to Corinth first. The clause rendered “we did get as far as you” (2 Cor. 10:14) includes a verb that can indeed mean “reach” or “attain” or “get as far as” (cf. also Rom. 9:31; Phil. 3:16); but a slightly fuller sense of the Greek verb is preserved in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, where it means “to precede,” i.e., to go first or to reach first. That admirably suits the context in 2 Corinthians 10:14: “we were the first to reach you” (NEB). After all, the intruders had also reached Corinth: in that sense Paul was no different from any other preacher, false or true, who managed to make the trip to Corinth and exercise a little ministry. But Paul was the first to reach the Corinthians; and that was a claim that could never be successfully challenged or overturned. It was forever fixed, a claim no subsequent event could diminish, and a reflection of Paul’s own profound sense of God’s call to primary evangelism and church planting. Corinth was part of the “field” God had assigned Paul.
The thought is not far removed from the presentation Paul makes of his ministry to the Romans. “I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God,” he writes. “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation” (15:17–20).
By contrast, the intruders were not so scrupulous. They made it a practice to boast of work done by others (2 Cor. 10:15). We have already discovered that Paul has no objection to people who build on the foundation he lays (1 Cor. 3:10); but these intruding apostles appear to have gone well beyond that point. They probably boasted that whatever spiritual vitality the Corinthians displayed was due to their ministry—even though they were latecomers to the scene and occupied themselves by diminishing the authority of the founding apostle. Small wonder they pursued this occupation, of course, if they were trying to introduce new doctrine incompatible with what Paul taught (2 Cor. 11:4); but it was pretty disgusting conduct just the same.
These petty little men could not approach the high standards that characterized Paul’s ministry; yet somehow they gave themselves such airs that they managed to seduce much of the Corinthian church. Little men can be dangerous, especially when they position themselves in such a way as to capture some stolen glory from great men, and forge it into the bangles of self-interested leadership.
The boasting of the false apostles at Corinth was deeply improper. Not only was it steeped in self-commendation and without objective standards, it was hypocritically parasitical on the work of the very apostle they were demeaning. As if that were not enough, Paul adds two further elements to his countercharge and exposes the impropriety of their boasting at deep levels.
4. Paul lays out certain constraints of vision on boasting (10:15b–16). “Our hope is that, as your faith continues to grow, our area of activity among you will greatly expand, so that we can preach the gospel in the regions beyond you.” The hope of the intruders is to steal Paul’s sheep. Paul’s hope is so to consolidate his ministry among the Corinthians that he will be free to press on to fresh, unevangelized regions. Paul reiterates that he does “not want to boast about work already done in another man’s territory” (2 Cor. 10:16b); but this is not simply a repetition of his rebuke of the intruders, it is a testimony to his own vision, his own chomping at the bit in the light of the need and his own calling. Others are busy forging reputations for themselves on the basis of his work; Paul himself is already fastening his hope on the next stage of his work. The constraints of his ongoing concern and vision limit both his desire and his ability to boast. The little men busily brag about one church to which they have little claim; the apostle himself sees the enormity of the task, feels the call of God on his life, and has no time for or interest in boasting. His desire rather is to stabilize the faith of the Corinthian believers so that he may leave them behind and press on to new territory and new challenges.
There are four lessons to be learned. First, boasting is irretrievably bound up with the past, whereas the truly fruitful servants of God keep looking to the future. Paul has his mind on Rome (Acts 19:21b; Rom. 1:11) and beyond Rome on Spain and the western Mediterranean (15:24, 28). The false apostles have their eyes on taking over what Paul has already done. Second, real expansion of the church comes, not by poaching or by moving van evangelism, but by proclaiming the gospel in areas and among people where the Lord Jesus Christ is not known. Third, the fact that Paul wants to consolidate the gains in Corinth before moving on testifies to the importance of full-orbed discipleship, of building churches and not just winning converts. In a sense, Paul is prepared to mortgage his own vision of the future to the needs of the Corinthian church. If God called him to establish a church in Corinth, he cannot abandon that responsibility just because he detects new opportunities and still greater needs elsewhere. Consolidation is the foundation on which to launch new advance. “How could he prosecute pioneer evangelism in the western Mediterranean when his converts in the western Mediterranean were unsettled and in danger of apostasy (11:3)?” (Harris). Fourth, although many of us may be called by God simply to carry the torch of truth from one generation to another (cf. 2 Tim. 2:2), it is encouraging to learn of believers like Caleb who size up the difficulties and choose in God’s strength to tackle the toughest assignments (Josh. 14:10–12). Not every apostle set his heart on Spain or India; but we may thank God for those who did, and lovingly, prayerfully support the new generation of ambassadors who hunt out the most difficult tasks—Muslim evangelism, working among the most forsaken, the poorest, the most diseased, the most hardened. And some of us, at least, should ask ourselves whether God might not want us to abandon our padded pulpits and expand the horizons of our ministry by planting new churches in hard places.
Even familiarity with such breadth of vision will provide needed restraints on our boasting.
5. Finally, Paul overthrows all self-interested boasting (10:17–18). He accomplishes this by quoting a line from the prophet Jeremiah, one he had earlier used in writing to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:31). Probably therefore they were familiar with the surrounding lines from that prophet.
This is what the LORD says:
“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,
but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these things I delight,”
declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 9:23–24
The intruding false apostles thought they were wise and strong; and probably their fee structures made them wealthy as well. But the Lord (almost certainly a reference to the Lord Jesus) forbids all such boasting. Only one kind of boasting does he permit—indeed, command: and that is boasting in the Lord. Paul is prepared to boast what God has done for him (Gal. 6:14) in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what God has done through him (Rom. 15:18–19; cf. Acts 14:27) by the Spirit in his apostolic ministry; but he is not prepared to boast about talent, wealth, power, wisdom, eloquence, and the like. After all, what do we have but what we have received (1 Cor. 4:7)? If we forget this, we succumb to a form of idolatry; if we remember in what proper boasting consists, we boast in the Lord—which means that we give him the praise rightly his due. He is the God who declares, “I will not yield my glory to another” (Isa. 48:11; cf. 42:8).
Paul understands that what ultimately matters is whether or not we gain the Lord’s approval. The verses cited from Jeremiah are followed by the Lord’s praise of judgment (9:25). Paul brings us up short the same way: what matters most in God’s universe is what God thinks of us, whether we are approved by him (2 Cor. 10:18). The person who commends himself is certainly not impressing the Lord; presumably he must be trying to impress other people and win their approval. But the man who is approved by the Lord must be the one whom the Lord commends. Will he commend those who boast in precisely the way he forbids? Will he not rather commend those who boast in him—who rely on his grace and acknowledge his power, forgiveness, gifts, and sovereign sway, and delight to make them known?
The crux of the division between Paul and his opponents is the question, “Whose approval do we seek?” That brief question, properly considered against the background of the revelation of truth in the Scriptures and in Jesus Christ, cuts through many moral dilemmas and orients us to pleasing God. Paul’s desire was to please the Lord Christ throughout his life and service, and then at the final tribunal to hear Christ’s “Well done!” This is the final constraint Paul puts on boasting, and any boasting that fails this test must be rejected as improper. Not only nations, but the church herself, needs to pray,
God of our fathers, known of old. . . .
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget! . . .
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)
There is a difficult variant here, phēsin or phasin, but probably the singular is correct: lit. “someone says” or “he says” rather than “they say” or “some say.” But this singular may refer either to a specific opponent, a ringleader of the intruders, or may be a device common in the Greek diatribe, in which a writer might say, referring to his opponent in debate, “Someone will say . . .”—in which case the NIV’s plural, though paraphrastic, is a close modern equivalent.
I take palin (“again”) to refer to the reflexive heautō (lit. “If anyone is confident in himself” or “with regard to himself”).