Paul’S Boasting
PAUL’S BOASTING
2 CORINTHIANS 10:12-18
Paul has boasted only to distinguish himself from his opponents.
The apostle now takes the offensive and opens his defense by charging his enemies with a false set of values (10:12). At the same time, he makes it clear that he has not trespassed on the limits which God has set for his missionary service. He is, above all, the apostle to the Gentiles, a vocation spelled out to him at his conversion and call (Acts 9:15; 22:21) and accepted by the pillar apostles as part of the general agreement at Jerusalem (Galatians 2:9). Indeed, the mission to the Gentiles is his special province which God himself gave him (10:13), and Corinth falls in that category as a nonJewish community.
This reference is clearly intended as a side look at the Jewish Christian proselytizers who were annoying a Gentile church and trying to impose the burden of Judaism and certain extraneous beliefs upon them. Paul replies that if any preacher is “off limits” at Corinth, it is not he himself, but the Judaizer who had gone beyond the limit assigned to him.
Paul most carefully justifies his integrity here (10:14), insisting that when he first came to Corinth he did so with clear conscience and intended in no way to “poach” on the missionary territory of other Christians (10:15-16; see Romans 15:20).
At Corinth he may justifiably claim to be the human founder of the church (1 Corinthians 3:6: “I planted”). What right have the Judaizers to encroach on his work (1 Corinthians 9:1; 2 Corinthians 3:2)? Their mandate does not operate at Corinth.
Yet the final arbiter in this matter of evangelistic “division of labor” and territorial association is no human committee, nor does an agreement, made between Christians, mean much unless it is the Lord who directs. True—and here is the relevance for modern missionary service—he expects his servants to honor their arrangements and not to act irresponsibly in defiance of agreements as to mission fields, but it is God’s work and whatever success is given comes from him to whom the credit and glory belong (10:17-18, quoting Jeremiah 9:24).