4. The Danger of False Apostleship
4
The Danger of False Apostleship
Overturning False Criteria
1I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.” 6I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.
7Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge? 8I robbed other churches by receiving support from them so as to serve you. 9And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. 10As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, nobody in the regions of Achaia will stop this boasting of mine. 11Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! 12And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about.
13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.
2 Corinthians 11:1–15
Paul is still sidling up to the boasts he must make in order to prevent the Corinthian believers from being further seduced by the false apostles. His boasts are concentrated in 2 Corinthians 11:16–12:10; but here in 11:1–15 he is still preparing the ground. This preparation involves three steps. First, he exhorts his readers to put up with his “foolishness” as he shifts ground and contemplates the ugly prospect of putting his claims alongside those of the intruders (vv. 1–6). Then he handles one more specific charge (vv. 7–12) before exposing the troublemakers for what they are (vv. 13–15). Only after he has presented his own perspectives so clearly is Paul prepared, at last, to stoop to the level of his opponents for the sake of maintaining the faith of his converts.
A. Exhortation to Put Up with Paul’s Foolishness (11:1–6)
In the last chapter we discovered that the word “boasting” crops up regularly in this part of 2 Corinthians. Now another word-group joins it: “foolishness” or “fool” or “foolish” (11:1, 16–17, 19, 21; 12:6, 11). Boasting is utterly repugnant to Paul. “As much against the grain as it is with a proud man to acknowledge his infirmities, so much is it against the grain with a humble man to speak in his own praise” (Henry). He has repeatedly insisted to the Corinthians that self-commendation is worthless (3:1; 5:12; 10:12); but the situation before him appears to demand that he stoop to what he condemns if he is going to preserve his converts. He is forced in part to ape his opponents’ methods, even if he distances himself entirely from their motives. As R. V. G. Tasker puts it:
Paul is very conscious that it is no business of an apostle, or indeed of any Christian, to praise himself. Such self-commendation is only justified, in the present instance, because his affection for his converts is so great, that he will go to almost any length to prevent them from becoming dupes of unscrupulous men, and to keep them loyal to Christ.
This extreme to which Paul is prepared to go is what he calls his “foolishness”; and later on, when he actually begins to boast, he insists he is not talking as a Christian would, but as a “fool” (11:17). This is not exactly the same use of “fool” as in 1 Corinthians 4:10, where Paul says, “We apostles are fools for Christ.” In that passage, he means that he and the other apostles are regarded as fools by the world. But here in 2 Corinthians 10–13, he is prepared to be “foolish” in the sense that he is willing for the sake of his converts to engage for a few moments in conduct he regards as fundamentally distasteful, sub-Christian, foolish.
“I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness,” Paul writes, intensely embarrassed by the prospect of his imminent boasting; and then he adds, with delicious irony, “but you are already doing that” (2 Cor. 11:1). What he means is that in one sense the Corinthians, misled by the intruders, have begun to treat him as if he were a second-class clown, a fool, rather than their father through the gospel (1 Cor. 4:15) and the apostle to the Gentiles. If the Corinthians can put up with his foolishness as they measure foolishness, surely they will put up with a little of his foolishness as he measures foolishness! Alternatively, it is just possible he means something a little different, but no less ironical: the Corinthians have already shown they are prepared to put up with the species of conduct Paul calls foolishness, for it is just such conduct that characterizes the intruders. Paul hopes they can put up with a little of his foolishness; but after all, it shouldn’t be too difficult, he suggests, since the believers in Corinth have had a lot of practice in putting up with exactly the same foolishness in others.
The next five verses provide three reasons why Paul expects the Corinthians to put up with the foolish boasting in which he is about to engage.
1. Because Paul is divinely jealous for the Corinthians (11:2–3). “I am jealous for you,” Paul writes, “with a godly jealousy.” Some might hastily (and wrongly) respond that there can never be anything godly about jealousy: “godly jealousy” must be a contradiction in terms. But such an opinion forgets that God himself declares, “You shall not make for yourself an idol. . . . You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (Exod. 20:4–5). The same attitude can be expressed in other terms:
What can I do with you, Ephraim?
What can I do with you, Judah?
Your love is like the morning mist,
Like the early dew that disappears.
Hosea 6:4
Most human jealousy is a vice. It seeks to diminish or consume its object, and it is motivated by resentment, envy, and self-interest. Even the few types of legitimate human jealousy (as when a wife, say, is jealous of her husband as she is forced to reflect on his promiscuous behavior) are often contaminated by sinful strains. Very little human jealousy is really pure.
Divine jealousy, by contrast, is a virtue. It is a form of holy outrage mingled with love: the objects of the jealousy owe their love and allegiance to God, solemnly pledge him their filial devotion and covenantal obedience, receive all they have of strength and health and possessions and reason from his gracious hand—and then proudly strut their self-proclaimed independence before his face. Worse, they sell themselves to false lords, masters, who take everything and give nothing. God is rightly outraged: he would be less than holy were this not his response. Yet at the same time he loves his wayward people, and grieves over their self-inflicted prostitution and hurt. That he is a jealous God reflects the marvelous fact that he cannot be reduced to the impassable Unmoved Mover of Aristotle and of many Deists. Sovereign and transcendent, he is also personal. When his holiness is affronted he is rightly wrathful, for the created order is his, and every sin is nothing less than rebellion against his rightful authority; when his covenant people prostitute themselves, he is rightly jealous, for they have not only broken solemn oaths and sullied their allegiance but they have spurned the God who bought them.
Paul claims to share something of this godly jealousy, this mixture of love, outrage, and fear: love for the Corinthians manifest in deep concern for their spiritual well-being; outrage at their fickleness, the ease and speed by which they have been seduced; fear for their future if they do not repent and return to the Lord.
Paul fleshes out his jealousy in a more extended metaphor. The metaphor is based on an Old Testament picture: Israel is the bride, and God is the bridegroom (e.g., Isa. 50:1; 54:1–6; Ezek. 16; Hosea 1–3). This picture is slightly altered in the New Testament: the church is the bride, and the Lord Jesus is the heavenly bridegroom (e.g., Eph. 5:22–23; Rev. 19:7; 21:2, 9; 22:17). Paul extends this picture one step further. He presents himself as the father of the bride, thus bringing together in one composite metaphor the image of himself as a spiritual father of the church (1 Cor. 4:15; 2 Cor. 12:14), and the common image of the church as a bride. In this fuller picture, the betrothal took place when Paul led the Corinthians to Christ and founded the church: “I promised you . . . to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him” (11:2b). Betrothals in the ancient world were binding: there were no casual engagements, and a sexual fling by a betrothed woman would be viewed as nothing less than adultery. Paul, acting as the father, has betrothed the Corinthian church to Christ. As an honorable father, he desires to present his daughter as a pure virgin to her prospective husband when he comes for her (at the parousia). Instead, Paul hears reports that she is playing around with other lovers, and he is appalled. More, he is jealous for his daughter (not “of” her, but “for” her): incensed at the seducers, lovingly concerned for her purity and her future, hurt, outraged at her fickleness.
Paul makes a further comparison: “I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3). Much intertestamental Jewish literature interprets the deception of Eve (Gen. 3) as a sexual seduction; but Paul does not go so far. As he spins out the comparison, the apostle draws a parallel in the deception involved in the two cases, and expresses concern for the Corinthians’ mind. They once manifested “sincere and pure devotion to Christ”; but now they are in danger of being deceived—like Eve. When Eve fell, it was not because she was battered into sinful submission to a wicked overlord, but because she was taken in by cunning. She was not sufficiently devoted to the God who made her and whose will sustained her in creaturely dependence, to withstand the blandishments that enticed her away from proper allegiance (“Did God really say . . . ?” Gen. 3:1) and promised to give her a new and exalted position (“and you will be like God,” v. 3:5). Tragically, the new position did not make Eve like God; it was, in fact, characterized by death and corruption. How like the Corinthian situation! This betrothed community was not so devoted to her husband that she could not be taken in by cunning. She is being drawn away from her public allegiance, and is coyly following the same old deceiver, Satan himself, as he leads her into what seems to be a more triumphant, victorious, and self-centered Christianity, but which is in reality no gospel at all (2 Cor. 11:4; 13:5).
Paul sees in these intruders, not casual competition, but the machinations of the archfiend. The reason the Corinthians do not recognize their own danger is because the enemy of their spiritual welfare has used cunning. In fact, he is so cunning that he has persuaded the Corinthians it is Paul who is “crafty” and “tricky” (12:16; in Greek “crafty” is the same word as “cunning” in 11:3)!
From the time of the fall to the present day, men and women have frequently succumbed to the deceptive devices of the devil. Christians are especially open to the kind of cunning deceit that combines the language of faith and religion with the content of self-interest and flattery. We like to be told how special we are, how wise, how blessed, especially if as a consequence others are gently diminished. We like to have our Christianity shaped less by the cross than by triumphalism or rules or charismatic leaders or subjective experience. And if this shaping can be coated with assurances of orthodoxy, complete with cliché, we may not detect the presence of the archdeceiver, nor see that we are being weaned away from “sincere and pure devotion to Christ” to a “different gospel.” The danger of being deceived is so ubiquitous that Paul will shortly address it directly, and in the strongest terms (2 Cor. 11:13–15).
Small wonder, then, that Paul is jealous for the Corinthians. But Paul’s jealousy is a godly jealousy: it has the highest motives and an unselfish object. Most human jealousy is tinged with selfishness (indeed sometimes it is the very embodiment of the most concentrated self-interest), and often its object is unworthy. But Paul’s jealousy reflects the heart of God, so much so that it is difficult to conceive of valid Christian leadership that does not in some measure manifest the same jealousy. How concerned is an elder, e.g, for the spiritual well-being of the believers he serves if he is not jealous for them with a godly jealousy? Christian ministry can never be merely professional. On the truth of the gospel hang eternal consequences. Therefore far from making aloof, analytical detachment the goal of Christian leaders, we will hunger for the clear-sighted and empathetic commitment of an apostle who can ask, “Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?” (2 Cor. 11:29).
What is scarcely less remarkable is the candor by which Paul advances his godly jealousy as a reason why the Corinthians should put up with his foolish boasting. The intensity of his love for them, the solemnity of the betrothal he has arranged between the Corinthian church and Christ, his fear that they will be deceived, should provide them with motive enough to put up with the “foolishness” on which he is about to embark.
But if Paul’s godly jealousy is insufficient reason, he provides them with another. The Corinthians should gladly hear Paul out, foolishness and all.
2. Because they accept all kinds of nonsense from the rival apostles easily enough (11:4). “For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.” The introductory “for” probably serves a double function: it grounds the fear expressed and the appeal to put up with Paul. In other words, Paul is afraid that the Corinthians are being deceived (11:3), for they are much too tolerant of those who teach heresy (11:4); and Paul continues to appeal to the Corinthians to put up with his foolishness, for after all they gladly put up with a competing message that is fundamentally false. “Surely they should show their father in the faith the same degree of tolerance showed a newcomer preaching a different faith!” (Harris).
The exact shape of the false message the intruders preached is unclear. The best guess, judging from the emphases in the surrounding chapters, is that it was some form of Judaizing (see above, chap. 1). The false apostles made much of their Jewish heritage (2 Cor. 11:22), and to this added a parade of virtues they felt made them superior Christians; or perhaps they even argued that some of these advantages were necessary requirements for true Christianity. Paul detected in their pretensions exactly the same danger that Judaizers with slightly different emphases introduced into the churches of Galatia. The result of their additions is that another Jesus is being preached (11:4; cf. Gal. 1:8–9).
Of course in one sense they preached the same Jesus: they too doubtless believed he was the promised Messiah, that he performed miracles and preached the kingdom of God, that he died, rose from the grave, and ascended to the Father’s right hand. Yet as soon as Jesus Christ is not the sole basis for our salvation, as soon as our acceptability before God depends on something more than his sacrifice on the cross, we have denied the sufficiency of his person and work. At that point the Jesus being preached is no longer the biblical Jesus but an unreal product of human imagination, a relatively powerless figure who cannot effectively save his people from their sins unless they supplement his work with something of their own merit.
The sort of teaching to which the Corinthians were listening resulted as well in a different spirit. It is not entirely certain whether there is a reference to the Holy Spirit here; but probably not. The point rather is that the message of the true gospel, of sins forgiven, and the dawning of new and eternal life, brings a spirit of peace, freedom, power, love, and self-discipline (cf. Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 3:17; 2 Tim. 1:7). But if believers revert to a legalistic system in which trust in Christ and joyous responsiveness to him are displaced by dependence upon personal merit and virtues, many will fall again into a spirit of slavery and fear that masks the privileges of our sonship (Rom. 8:15). In sum, what is being preached is a different gospel.
When Paul criticizes the Corinthians for bowing to a Jesus “other than the Jesus we preached” or for accepting a gospel “different from the one you accepted,” he is not claiming that the truth depends on him. He is far from saying, “Whatever I preach is right and true, just because I preach it. Just take my word for it and bow to my authority, and all will be well.” It is not his own authority that captivates Paul but the objective veracity of the gospel he preaches. That is why he can say elsewhere, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Gal. 1:8, emphasis added). Paul is so convinced of the truthfulness, the exclusive truthfulness, of the gospel he has been preaching, that if he himself were to change the shape of his preaching, he can only wish damnation on himself. Here is no self-centered autocrat but a man who humbly sets himself under the revealed gospel and who is passionately committed to its proclamation and purity because he understands that alternative gospels are really no gospel (no “good news”) at all. How different from the false apostles who in certain respects were apparently more interested in form and show than content (2 Cor. 10:10; 11:6; cf. 1 Cor. 1:17; 2:1, 4–5), and whose self-centered triumphalism, frequently the handmaid of merit theology, produced a synthesis far removed from the biblical Jesus and the historic gospel.
The Christian church needs a little more both of Paul’s discernment and intolerance. Like the ancient Corinthians, we too are sometimes deceived. Provided there is fluent talk of Jesus, gospel, truth, Christian living, and spiritual experience, combined with effective, self-confident leadership, we seldom ask if it is the same Jesus as the one presented in the Scriptures, or if the gospel being presented squares with the apostolic gospel. Most who read these pages will already have come to recognize that the Jesus preached by, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses is not in every respect like the Jesus of the New Testament. The total synthesis of the Witnesses results in another Jesus. But the same can be true of some presentations of Jesus that are closer to home. Is it a biblical Jesus who promises us nothing but health, prosperity, wisdom, and joy? Is it a biblical Jesus who guarantees heaven and says nothing of hell? Is it a biblical Jesus who promises eternal life but says nothing about entailed righteousness? Is it a biblical Jesus who needs to have his saving work supplemented by our merits, ceremonies, and sacrifices if we are to be redeemed? If the Corinthians could be deceived in the first century into transferring their allegiance to a Jesus who did not really exist, what entitles us to think we shall always be exempt from similar dangers and deceptions? Our only safeguard is a humble return, again and again, to the apostolic gospel, the biblical Jesus, preserved for us in the pages of Scripture.
The propensity of the Corinthians to follow a false gospel that is no gospel at all is the reason Paul is afraid that the Corinthians will be steered away from devotion to Christ; and it is also the reason Paul advances, in ironic tone, for giving him a hearing. He now adds one more.
3. Because Paul is not inferior to the “super-apostles” (11:5–6). These verses are again introduced, in Greek, by a “For.” The Corinthians should put up with the foolish presentation Paul is about to make, for, he says, “I do not think I am in the least inferior to those ‘super-apostles.’”
Some scholars strongly argue that the super-apostles to whom Paul refers are not the intruders (whom he castigates as false apostles in 2 Cor. 11:13–15), but apostles of genuine eminence—presumably the Twelve, held up as models, perhaps, by the interlopers. These scholars argue that Paul would not compare himself with these super-apostles if they were in fact the same people he labels deceitful workmen and servants of Satan a few verses later. This interpretation is plausible enough; but it overlooks the fact that Paul does in fact compare himself with the false apostles (e.g., vv. 22–23): that is the very heart of the foolish boasting to which he must resort. After all, Paul is not comparing himself with the false apostles in every way, but only on select fronts, in his attempt to regain the confidence of the Corinthians. And even when he draws such comparisons, two features stand out: first, he no sooner introduces a category in which comparisons are to be made, than he overturns the criteria of the intruders and adopts better ones (see esp. vv. 6, 23–28); and second, his pen drips irony throughout these chapters. “I do not think I am in the least inferior” is not a cold, calculating measurement but sardonic irony designed to shame the Corinthians into reevaluation. Moreover, I have already shown (in chap. 1) that there are structural reasons for linking these super-apostles with the “false apostles” of verses 13–15.
It appears, then, that Paul offers, as a third reason why the Corinthians should put up with his “foolishness,” his own conviction that he is not inferior to intruders who are demeaning him: and he alludes to their despicable conduct in this respect by calling his opponents, with deep irony, super-apostles. The specific point of comparison is the speaking ability of Paul and his opponents. Many sophisticated audiences in the Greek-speaking world favored a certain stylized rhetoric; and not to come up to rhetorical eloquence was considered a mark of inferior training or ability.
Paul concedes he is not a trained speaker (2 Cor. 11:6). At first glance, therefore, Paul seems to be admitting that in this sense he is inferior after all. But this is too hasty a reading of the passage; for elsewhere Paul insists in no uncertain terms that he self-consciously rejected rhetorical flourishes in his own ministry, precisely so that his converts might find their faith resting on God’s power and not on man’s stylized wisdom (1 Cor. 2:4–5). So also here: Paul appears to concede a point, but in reality he changes criteria. “I may not be a trained speaker,” he says, “but I do have knowledge.” And then, lest they fail to catch the point, he stresses it: “We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way” (2 Cor. 11:6; that is probably the best rendering of some very difficult Greek).
It appears, then, from Paul’s concern to maintain the true gospel and the real Jesus (2 Cor. 11:4), and from his insistence that he has knowledge—i.e., knowledge of the true gospel—that the Corinthians were in danger of being seduced by a certain delectable form. Stylized rhetoric mattered more than truth. An infant might be more intrigued by the wrapping paper than the parcel it envelops; but no one else should be. Paul is not inferior as a preacher after all—provided the right criteria are used!
It may well be that even on formal grounds Paul was a better preacher than he here lets on. His concession is with respect to a certain artificial standard of oratory; but he may nevertheless have been a powerful and persuasive natural speaker who refused to adopt the unnatural standards of a particular rhetorical style. Such standards come and go; and while they are “in,” they are dangerous insofar as they detract attention from content. Saying things in the approved, clever way may suddenly become more important than what you say.
This danger has often returned to haunt the church in one form or another. In the fourth century, John Chrysostom (c. 344–407) complained about his fellow Christian preachers who tried to emulate pagan oratory:
There are many preachers who make long sermons: if they are well applauded, they are as glad as if they had obtained a kingdom; if they bring the sermon to an end in silence, their despondency is worse, I may almost say, than hell. It is this that wins churches, that you do not seek to hear sermons that touch the heart, but sermons that will delight your ears with intonation and the structure of their phrases, just as if you were listening to singers and lute-players. And we preachers humor your fancies, instead of trying to crush them.
Hom.30 on Act Apost.3
In the last century, the great British preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon lectured his students in these words:
You may go all round, to church and chapel alike, and you will find that by far the larger majority of our preachers have a holy tone for Sundays. They have one voice for the parlour and the bedroom, and quite another tone for the pulpit; so that, if not double-tongued sinfully and they certainly are so literally. The moment some men shut the pulpit door, they leave their own personal manhood behind them, and become as official as the parish beadle. There they might almost boast with the Pharisee, that they are not as other men are, although it would be blasphemy to thank God for it. No longer are they carnal and speak as men, but a whine, a broken hum-haw, an ore rotundo, or some other graceless mode of noise-making, is adopted, to prevent all suspicion of being natural and speaking out of the abundance of the heart. When that gown is once on, how often does it prove to be the shroud of the man’s true self, and the effeminate emblem of officialism!
Lectures to My Students
In many churches we do not face exactly the same problem today, the problem of profoundly artificial oratory. But we face other influences from our pagan surroundings, influences that have often so affected the form of our worship and ministry that attention has been drawn away from Christ. In many circles, congregations routinely applaud the special music (little of which is very special), and sometimes even the sermon. Thus we set up an atmosphere of interaction between performer and spectators, between entertainer and appreciative audience. This goes far beyond godly encouragement to those who serve well, and approaches the protocol of the theater. I have preached in enough of those circles to learn how to turn the applause on and off—and that of course is part of the insidious danger of it all, as Chrysostom understood. And gradually, congregations become more and more discerning in matters of form, and less and less discerning in matters of truth. We are developing new and powerful traditions that to some extent muzzle the gift of discernment, and expose us to essentially pagan ways of looking at corporate worship. A little thoughtful, self-critical reflection turns up countless numbers of such developments. Their total impact on the church, on truth, on pure devotion to Christ, on the quality of Christian leadership, cannot yet be fully estimated; but their essentially pagan character and deleterious contribution to self-interest as opposed to God’s interest can scarcely be doubted.
Although Paul has used these verses to provide a third reason why the Corinthians should hear him out, foolishness and all—viz., because he is not inferior to the super-apostles—he has done so by challenging their fundamental criteria. There will be many more reversals of criteria before he is through (see esp. 2 Cor. 11:21b–33; 12:1–10).
B. Answer to a Specific Charge: Paul’s Independence from the Corinthians (11:7–12)
Before embarking, at last, on his “foolish boasting” (2 Cor. 11:16–12:10), Paul pinpoints one more specific area where his apostolicity has been called into question, and where the criteria used by his opponents are fundamentally evil.
Traveling teachers in the first century, professional sophists and rhetoricians, did not normally work with their hands. The best of them avoided begging, even if some manual work was required; but the ideal was to make a good living from teaching itself. The more famous the teacher, the more he could charge, and the more students would attach themselves to him and count it a privilege to pay his fee. Thus in many ways a teacher’s status could be assessed by the price he could command, much as a figure on modern college or political lecture circuit can be ranked by the size of his fee.
Unlike his sophist contemporaries, and unlike his intruding opponents, Paul has refused to accept any support at all from the Corinthian believers. It is not absolutely clear why he has taken this decision. Certainly Paul recognizes the principle that those who preach the gospel have the right of support from the people to whom they minister (see esp. 1 Cor. 9; cf. 3 John 5–8), a principle that goes back to Jesus himself (Luke 9:3–4; 10:4, 7). Moreover, Paul on occasion received financial help from the churches he founded: in particular, he received support from the churches of Macedonia, such as the church in Philippi (2 Cor. 11:8–9; Phil. 4:10–15), and he could also on occasion actively solicit assistance for his travels and ministry (Rom. 15:24). True, Paul sometimes refused to take any money just so the gospel could be preached free of charge (1 Cor. 9:16–18); but since that was not his universal practice, why does he refuse money from the Corinthians, especially when the issue has become such a sensitive one? Why not accept the money and thereby defuse the explosive situation? The Corinthians, after all, were aware that Paul had received help from other churches (and if they didn’t know before 2 Corinthians was written, he candidly informs them of the fact in this letter, 11:8–9). Why should he treat them any differently?
Carefully tutored by the false apostles, already prejudiced by the surrounding pagan society to assess teachers by the size of their take, the Corinthians came to believe that Paul could not be much of an apostle after all. Perhaps they began to think of him the way Antiphon thought of Socrates:
If you set any value on your own society, you would insist on getting the price for that too. It may well be that you are a just man because you do not cheat people through avarice; but wise you cannot be since your knowledge is not worth anything.
Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.6.12)
Faced with such a deep bias, one that erects a condition of apostolicity, or at least a form of ranking, Paul attacks the problem head-on. Once again he calls in question the evil criteria used by his opponents and naively adopted by the Corinthian church. He does this by presenting his own perceptions of the matter, and by raising some questions about the judgments of his readers. His answer to their charge betrays a little of his understanding of the place of self-abasement in the life of a Christian leader, something of his sense of strategy in financial decisions, and more of his love and irony.
1. The apostle’s willing self-abasement (11:7). “Was it a sin,” Paul asks, “for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge?” Of course Paul has the right to charge for his work, to be supported by his converts (cf. 1 Cor. 9:7–12a); but is it a sin if he waives his rights (cf. 12b–18)? Can it be that self-denial, the refusal to stand on agreed rights, is an offense? Is it possible that acceptance of remuneration is a realistic criterion for apostolicity?
God forbid! At least Paul’s approach to money made it impossible for anyone in Corinth to think he was peddling the word of God for profit (2 Cor. 2:17). Moreover, the provocative question Paul is asking displays two further elements of his self-understanding in this matter. First, at least part of his purpose in lowering himself by turning to manual labor while ministering to the Corinthians (cf. Acts 18:3) was to elevate them above their idolatry and immorality. When Paul first arrived in Corinth, there was no church there to support him. Not until financial help came from the already established churches in Macedonia could Paul devote his full energy to evangelism and church planting (Acts 18:5). But the lack did not force him to suspend operations until he was properly supported. His burning desire was to elevate the Corinthians by preaching the gospel; and if that meant lowering himself by manual labor for a time, Paul was up to the challenge. Far from being too proud, the apostle’s love for lost men, his eagerness to raise them in Christ Jesus, the solemn imperative he felt to preach the gospel, left him with little choice but the self-abasement implicit in a teacher’s turning to manual labor. The inevitable conclusion is that if the Corinthians fail to grasp Paul’s purpose and follow the artificial pagan criteria of what makes a teacher great, they are simultaneously depreciating their own salvation and rejecting the love of an apostle who was willing to lower himself in order to elevate them.
But there is a second element. It is difficult not to see behind Paul’s question a profound understanding of Christianity’s central Christology: the eternal Son of God was willing to humble himself for the sake of fallen humankind, become a man himself, assume the role of a servant, and die the shameful, painful death of a convicted criminal. Paul’s apostolic ministry is in some measure modeled after Christ: he writes elsewhere, “So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (2 Cor. 4:12). If Christ died, it is that “those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (5:15; see esp. 6:3–10). If self-abasement is wrong in Paul, what shall be said about Jesus Christ himself? “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (8:9).
Here is the heart of the issue. If Paul is so wrong, presumably Christ himself was wrong. If the path of self-humiliation for the sake of others was right for Christ, and indeed central to the very nature of the gospel, why was it wrong for Paul to preach this gospel of God in a way characterized by willing self-abasement? The triumphalism being espoused by the Corinthians, Paul perceives, is not only dangerous as far as their relationship to him is concerned, but is fundamentally antithetical to the gospel itself.
There is the great dilemma and intrinsic weakness of all triumphalism: it removes itself progressively from the gospel and from Christ Jesus himself, and is more at home in an atmosphere of showmanship, one-upmanship, superstars, conquests, victories, and heroes than it is with self-sacrifice lived under the shadow of the cross. Again and again the church must ask itself how much of contemporary pagan triumphalism has been unwittingly absorbed into its life, seriously affecting the way we look at finances, service, leadership, goals, sacrifice, expectations, and even theology itself. Throughout these chapters Paul constantly sets these two structures of thought—triumphalism and biblical Christianity—over against one another in sharply etched contrasts. “Christ’s pure Gospel without price and the corrupted doctrine of the Judaizers at a cost (11:20); his self-abasement and their self-glorification; his emancipation and their enslaving of the community, are pointed contrasts” (Waite).
2. The apostle’s strategy (11:8–9). Paul outlines his strategy in two parts. First, he says “I robbed other churches by receiving support from them so as to serve you.” More explicitly, when he was in need while serving in Corinth, he did not become a burden to any Corinthians, “for the brothers who came from Macedonia” supplied what he needed (2 Cor. 11:9a; Acts 18:5; Phil. 4:15). It appears from this and other passages in Paul, that on occasion Paul would not only refuse all support (1 Cor. 9:15–18), but that when he did receive support, it was never from the church in which he was then ministering. He not only received but could actually solicit help from churches when it was for the purpose of financing his further missionary enterprises (Acts 15:3; Rom. 15:24; the expression “to send on their way” or “to help on their way” signifies financial assistance). Indeed, at one point he was prepared to receive such help from the Corinthians themselves (1 Cor. 16:6, 11; 2 Cor. 1:16). To use Paul’s expression, he “robbed” other churches to support his current ministry—which, of course, does not mean that he took their money without their consent, but that when he received it he was not rendering them a service; and in some cases, at least, the congregation could ill afford to be so generous.
Why Paul followed this pattern is nowhere clearly stated. It may have been part of his plan to preach the gospel free of charge (1 Cor. 9:15–18), to proclaim, both by his message and his actions, the wonderful grace of God. People have a hard time grasping the freeness of grace: perhaps a little modeling would help. Meanwhile, the donor church, in which Paul was no longer ministering, would be learning a slightly different lesson, viz., the debt to all men under which grace places us and the privilege of sharing, by fiscal means, in the evangelization and church planting that are the responsibilities of all Christians. In neither case is Paul being remunerated for services rendered.
As far as the Corinthians are concerned, however, Paul’s strategy now has a second part: “I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so” (2 Cor. 11:9b). It appears, then, that however willing he was in principle, at least in the past, to receive help from them toward his apostolic ministry, he is no longer willing to receive any help whatsoever from them. Of course, he will still happily collect money from them for others, e.g., for the relief of the poor in Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8–9); but not one penny will he accept from them for himself.
Part of the reason for this step soon becomes explicit (2 Cor. 11:12; see below). In addition, this shaping of an individual policy for the Corinthians may have been prompted by their peculiarly pagan view of remuneration. As long as they were going to weigh him by the size of his take, as long as they were utilizing the standards of the world to evaluate message and messenger alike, so long was Paul unwilling to reinforce their pagan approach by receiving anything from their hand.
3. The apostle’s love (11:10–11). “As surely as the truth of Christ is in me,” Paul writes—an oath taken to convince the Corinthians of the truth of what he is about to say—“nobody in the regions of Achaia [the southern half of modern Greece, where Corinth is located] will stop this boasting of mine.” This boasting of mine? Yes, “boasting” is the word Paul wants; for what the Corinthians see as solid evidence for Paul’s insignificance, he himself understands as the crowning feature of life lived under the sign of the cross. He has no intention of reversing the policy set out in 2 Corinthians 11:7 (and 1 Cor. 9:18); and far from apologizing for it or slanting away from it, he boasts in the principle of self-sacrifice that is at stake, just as later in this letter he will boast in his weakness (12:7–10).
But this boasting is not prompted by stubborn arrogance or by a haughty refusal to consider the feelings of others, still less by a kind of inverted pride in the quantity of self-sacrifice he can squeeze out of his life. As Christ’s self-humiliation was prompted by the most profound love for those he came to serve, so also is Paul’s. “Why,” he asks his readers in effect, “do I adamantly refuse to change this policy?” Then he provides his own answer: “Because I do not love you? God knows I do!”
How deeply warped had the thinking of the Corinthians become! They have to be persuaded, under a second solemn oath (“God knows”), that the man who has readily sacrificed so much for them really loves them. Their blindness is the more surprising when we remember that Paul is simply mirroring the self-abnegation of Christ who by his poverty made others rich. Small wonder Paul begins to wonder a little whether the Corinthians are Christians at all (2 Cor. 13:5). But perhaps in one sense it is not too surprising if Paul’s motives and actions on this point are misunderstood; “humility and self-sacrifice often are, especially by those who do not frequently practise them” (Barrett).
4. The apostle’s insightful irony (11:12). Paul understands human nature well enough to know that if the false apostles are constantly putting him down, it is in part because they are envious of him and his effective ministry. If they constantly parade their alleged superiority, chances are very good they are aware of their pathetic inferiority and are trying to mask it. Paul therefore throws down the gauntlet: he will maintain his present financial policies, he says, “in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about.”
Strictly speaking, this is not (as Barrett rightly points out) a logically effective argument. The intruders are envious of Paul’s stature and effectiveness; but they quite specifically disavow his financial principles, and even lampoon them. Why should they therefore try to copy Paul in this regard?
Nevertheless, Paul’s argument is psychologically effective; for it exposes the intruders as money-grubbers, not humble and self-sacrificing leaders intent on the Corinthians’ well-being. Moreover, even if the argument is not logically effective on the premises of Paul’s opponents, it is on Paul’s own premises; and that is just the point. If the intruders cannot follow Paul’s example in these matters, it is precisely because their grasp of the gospel is pathetically defective; and therefore their boasts are worse than worthless. If they were to follow Paul’s practice, then of course they would have to abandon their worldly policy of remuneration, and something of the pagan triumphalism behind it. Either way, Paul’s skillful use of irony brings the central issues to the surface and forces the Corinthians to choose.
C. The Troublemakers Exposed (11:13–15)
Throughout these verses, Paul has been overturning the false and deceptive criteria of the interlopers. Before turning to his own long-awaited boasting, he bluntly shows the conclusion to which his argument inevitably leads: the purveyors of endlessly false criteria are false to the core.
1. False apostles: the masquerade of piety (11:13). In some of the strongest language he ever uses, Paul writes: “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ.” The intruders present themselves as apostles of Christ; but as Paul has already shown that their Christ is not the real one (2 Cor. 11:4), their self-proclaimed status as apostles of Christ must therefore be false, a mere disguise. They were never commissioned by Christ; nor do they truly preach him, still less imitate him. They are deceitful workmen who go about in full disguises as if the church were a masquerade party.
The damage such people can do is immense. The Corinthian church had earlier proved careless in moral matters (1 Cor. 5); now it is careless in matters of doctrine, attitude, and leadership. The result is an entire network of leaders, nicely installed in the church, who actively work against the gospel in the name of Jesus, and in the name of greater Christian maturity instill a deadly triumphalism that renders impossible “sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3–4).
In light of the appalling directions the church is taking because of these false apostles, it is not surprising that the apostle’s language is so strong. Two and a half centuries ago, Bengel remarked that “the Indifferentism, which is so pleasant to many in the present day, was not cultivated by Paul. He was no pleasant teacher of toleration.” In fact, this problem has often endangered the church. Tasker detects the same danger in the first half of the twentieth century, when he writes, “It is a mark of the shallowness of much of the religious thinking of the modern world that Menzies, writing in 1912, should find it necessary to describe verses 13–15 as ‘One of the hastiest utterances in Paul’s writings,’ and add that ‘many of the best friends of the apostle do not defend his controversial style in this passage.’ ”
The appeal to limitless toleration—not just toleration of the other chap’s right to be wrong, but toleration pushed so far one can never say that anything or anyone is wrong—presupposes the greatest evil is to hold a strong conviction that certain things are true and their contraries are false. Worse, this presupposition operates because of an antecedent presupposition: confident knowledge in religious matters is impossible. But if we hold that God has revealed himself to men, supremely in the person of his Son, but also in the words and propositions of Scripture, then however many interpretative difficulties may still afflict us, we have no right to treat as optional anything God has said. Indeed, never to say any opinion is wrong presupposes one opinion is right—viz., the one saying no opinion is wrong. Either this is illogical, or the proponent of this view really means the one certainly correct opinion is that no other opinion should ever be dismissed as wrong. But how has he or she attained such certain knowledge? Few opinions are less liberal and tolerant than the form of liberalism fiercely intolerant of everything but itself.
Most people are persuaded that certain opinions are wrong; and to some extent the positions we hold, self-consciously or otherwise, define themselves against the opinions we reject. The Germans have a wise saying: “Sage mir, mit wem du streitest, und ich sage dir, wer du bist—Tell me with whom you are fighting, and I’ll tell you who you are.” Fifty years ago, J. Gresham Machen used to tell his students that the most important issues are not those on which men are agreed but those over which they fight. His insight can of course be abused to defend cheap contentiousness; but sympathetic reflection on what he is saying discovers that for many debates his analysis is exactly right.
In the Corinthian situation, Paul and his opponents agree on many central things: monotheism, the truth of the Scriptures given to that point, the messiahship of Jesus, and much more. But the things on which they disagree are, for the issue at hand, far more important; and the manner in which each side has labeled its chief opponents serves to identify the side and reveal quite a lot about it. For the intruders, the opponent is Paul; as we learn something of him, their opposition tells us quite a bit about them: what they respect and cherish, what they reject, their values and much more. For Paul, the intruders are the opponents; as we learn something about them, his opposition tells us quite a bit about him: how strongly he is persuaded of the truth of the gospel, how deeply he is concerned for the spiritual well-being of his converts, how sharply he reprobates false teaching in the church, how much he despises self-promotion and insincere devotion to Christ.
So it is also in the modern world. Endless toleration may reflect an indifference to truth; but when we oppose something, we equally expose ourselves for what we are and cherish. There is little value in opposing things for no other reason than the love of fighting; but on the other hand to oppose nothing suggests we are blind, foolish, or careless. Christians concerned to spread the gospel effectively and stabilize the church need to follow Paul’s example: identify the opponent precisely, and operate from a base of passionate devotion to the truth of biblically revealed religion and concern for the lives of men and women. If we are embarrassed by the force of his denunciation, our embarrassment may only be testimony to the degree by which we have departed from the apostolic gospel.
2. False apostles: the example of Satan (11:14–15a). Paul is not surprised that the false apostles are masquerading as apostles of Christ, “for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.” Here Paul not only insists that the false apostles are followers of Satan (Jesus said something similar of some who opposed him, John 8:42–47), but that their work is characterized by deception. Their work is satanic in origin (also hinted at by the parallel drawn in 11:3), fundamentally opposed to the gospel of God; but the focus of these lines is not so much on their spiritual pedigree per se as on the deceptiveness of their attack.
No specific passage attests Satan’s self-transformation into an angel of light. The thought doubtless rests on the Bible’s general teaching about the great adversary: he is a deceiver through and through, and his most effective work is achieved by cunning, disguise, and false representation. “Satan does not come to us as Satan; neither does sin present itself to us as sin, but in the guise of virtue; and the teachers of error set themselves forth as the special advocates of truth” (Hodge). The Lord Jesus himself insisted that there is no truth in Satan: “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Paul recognizes that Satan operates deceitful schemes that may outwit us.
The implications ought to trouble us if our habit is to think little about the nature of sin and temptation. Most believers are not enticed into sin by the prospect of committing great evil. Far from it; they rationalize their way into committing evil by seeing in it some kind of good, or at the very least by blocking out the evil dimensions. They cheat on their income tax, not because stealing and lying are gross sins, but because (they tell themselves) there is so much government waste, because government takes more than its share, because everybody is doing it, and because no one will ever know. They gossip about neighbors and friends, not out of conscious disobedience to God, but because they feel they are passing on truth, the result of mature discernment. They nurture bitterness and hate against a spouse or a fellow believer, not because they hunger to ignore the unambiguous warnings in Scripture against bitterness and hate, but because they are persuaded their emotions are not evil after all, but simply justifiable instances of righteous indignation.
Exactly the same warped motives often prevail in their doctrinal judgments. Christians will be seduced into thinking there is no hell, not because they choose to be selective about what teachings of Jesus they will accept, but because they have heard some extrapolations on the theme of God’s love that not only go beyond the biblical text but also deny some other part of Scripture. They will offer generous support of heretical teachers who appear on television, not because they love heresy, but because the scoundrels on the screen talk fluently of joy, peace, triumph, experience, and of some sort of Jesus—and who can be against such things?
The point is that the archenemy is an archdeceiver. Unless we understand this, we will be pathetically gullible, sucked into various sins and blown this way and that in our doctrine. The only certain antidote is the kind of humble walk with God that is characterized by a growing and mature knowledge of the Scriptures—“growing” in that more and more biblical truth is being digested, and “mature” in that every effort is made to put into practice whatever truth is learned from the Word of God. That kind of humble listening to the mind of God will gradually transform our own minds and largely protect us from the deceit of Satan and his servants.
The sad truth about the Christians in Corinth is that they thought themselves sophisticated believers, while in reality they were so immature they became easy dupes. Paul’s assessment of the Corinthians’ spiritual maturity remains unchanged from what he wrote in his first canonical epistle to them: “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly” (1 Cor. 3:2–3a).
3. False apostles: the reward of deceit (11:15b). Paul’s final sentence of dismissal is stunning in its stark simplicity: “Their end will be what their actions deserve.”
This sentence not only looks to the final judgment and pronounces doom, but also reflects Paul’s understanding of the seriousness of the false apostles’ offense. Like the Galatian Judaizers who fall under the apostolic anathema (Gal. 1:8–9), Paul judges the intruders at Corinth not to be Christians at all. There is no point entering into lengthy, theological discussions with them. If Paul is right, they are not only wrong but diabolically wrong—and correspondingly doomed. Servants of Satan do not become servants of righteousness by donning a disguise. However enticing their blandishments, evil does not become good by labeling it good. The God who calls all to account has decreed,
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
and clever in their own sight.
Isaiah 5:20–21
In particular, the Lord promises special wrath on those who do damage to his church (1 Cor. 3:17; cf. 2 Tim. 4:1–4).
In these verses before us, Paul has overturned the false criteria of the intruders; and in a final sally, he has exposed his opponents as the false apostles they are. If the Corinthians are paying any attention to the development of his argument, they are now much less likely to misunderstand what Paul means to accomplish by the foolish boasting to which he now turns.
The three reasons are structurally clearer in Greek than in English: each one is introduced by a gar.