"I'm Still That Guy"

Jesus Reminds the Pharisees…I’m That Guy

In John 6:25-58, Jesus has a conversation with the disciples after crossing to the other side of the sea about his claim to be the “Bread of Life.” Jesus’ reality is simply this: I was the bread that your fathers ate in the wilderness, and died. Jesus made this claim met with grumbling and questions because they saw a human, the son of Joseph, claiming his eternal existence. There was need to grumble because Jesus was “that guy” by which men could approach a holy God, yet human enough to feel our pain. His claim as the Bread of Life distinguished him from the manna their fathers ate…they ate manna and died…while he as the living bread provides life eternal…Jesus is that guy and will always be one up on humanity

2 Corinthians 11 in Context

Again, we find Paul defending his apostleship and ministry to those who done a microcosm of what he had done. Paul has repudiated self-commendation and comparison (one-upmanship) as worthless. Scripture attests that God gives the only valid praise. But he now asks the Corinthians to bear with a little foolishness of his own. The circumstances have driven him to this extremity. Boasting is clearly unwise; but if he ignores the slurs of rivals who have maligned him, the church might be persuaded that they were on target. If he stoops to their level by boasting, he is a fool. But if he does not defend himself, he might lose the congregation to even greater fools. Forced into a corner, Paul feels he must opt for this foolishness (12:11) and introduce his own so-called boasts. It is more than a case of trying to fight fire with fire. In the process he turns his foolish boasting into a sly and devastating attack on his opponents. By repeatedly insisting that he is playing the fool by boasting in the same way that his opponents have, he hopes to lead his auditors to recognize how foolish his boastful rivals are and how foolish they have been for being taken in by them.

The difference between Paul and the rivals is that Paul admits that what he does is foolish; they do not. Paul undercuts the rivals’ boasting further by using irony. He does not boast only about his glorious accomplishments, as they had, but recounts a string of humiliating experiences and boldly contends that he is a better servant of Christ because of them (11:23). The battle lines are drawn between Paul, the weak but true apostle authorized by God, and the super but false apostles working under Satan.

David E. Garland, 2 Corinthians, vol. 29, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 458–459.

Settled in his earthly position through his divine purpose

Paul here expresses his jealousy towards the Corinthian Christians as these “super-apostles arose within their ranks, deceiving them like the serpent deceived Eve in Eden. They were only mentioned once in Paul’s defense of his apostleship. The serpent beguiled her in the thought realm, which reflects in Paul instructing them to bring down strongholds and those things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. The super-apostles are some of the modern preachers of today, taking a liberal approach to the interpretation of Scripture that stirs excitement, but leads the thought life away from pure devotion to Christ. Their messages are teeming with errant and inaccurate depictions and interpretations, rhyming and rhetoric that removes accountability and allows room for error…Where your thoughts are, there your devotion will be determined.

He begins by expressing a wish that they would put up with his foolishness and then says they must put up with him. In 11:2–6 he gives three reasons for this proposed foolishness and why they should at least humor him. (1) His zeal for the church whom he betrothed to Christ compels him to try to protect them from being seduced and defiled by double agents of Satan (11:2–3). (2) The community’s readiness to put up with a false gospel from almost anyone who shows up should dispose them to listen again to him, fool that he is (11:4; see 11:19, “they gladly bear with fools”). (3) He is convinced that he is not in the least inferior to his opponents who so enamor them (11:5–6).

Settled in his motivation for ministry

Paul here reminds the church at Corinth that his love for Christ compelled him to preach the gospel without compensatory evidence. He goes so far to say that he “robbed” other church so that he would not burden them. The word robbed here is sylao, meaning a figurative expression of Paul’s preaching directly funded the church at Corinth, the right of seizure. aul says I preached other places only to bring you what was given to me to assist the ministry. Often, pastors invest more into the ministry than those who actually benefit from ministry the most, and yet they receive the most criticism and the silent treatment.

Paul continues the sardonic tone of responding to Corinthian fault finding with his ministry style by asking, “Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge?” He refers to his own code of preaching without cost to his hearers although he is entitled to receiving payment (1 Cor 9:4–18). To characterize this way of operating as “committing sin” (11:7) or as “robbing other churches” (11:8) or as a sign of his lack of love for them (11:11) is rhetorical exaggeration. He is not out to amass a fortune from his churches. His refusal to accept any subsidy from them is not intended to dishonor them in some way but to honor them and, we might add, Christ. It remains hard for the Corinthians to comprehend why he would voluntarily accept humiliation for their sake and how his humiliation leads to their exaltation. This failure to comprehend why he would do this reveals a failure to understand their apostle fully, but, more seriously, a failure to understand the gospel that exchanges self-exaltation for self-sacrifice in service to others. They also fail to understand the paradox that God’s power becomes perfect in humiliation and weakness. Their basic problem is that they have allowed the values of their culture to shape their understanding of the faith and community practice, and they lack the knowledge of God that exposes those values as foolish.

Paul did enjoy hospitality from the Corinthians (Rom 16:23), but his refusal to accept financial remuneration galled the Corinthians in many ways. Many have argued that Paul’s refusal to accept support cast doubt on the legitimacy of his apostleship. Barrett, for example, states:

The Corinthians, it seems, thought less of him because he refused to be a burden. Greek teachers in general would not work with their hands, and the Corinthians may well have thought of Paul as Antiphon did of Socrates: If you set any value on your society, you would insist on getting the proper price for that too. It may be that you are a just man because you do not cheat people through avarice (pleonexia); but wise you cannot be, since your knowledge is not worth anything (Xenophon, Memorabilia I vi. 12).

The rivals accepted financial support from the Corinthians; and, so the hypothesis goes, they argued that because Paul made no claims for himself, he must have been an inferior apostle, if an apostle at all. As Martin frames the issue, they took Paul to task on this score by insinuating that “he did not claim his (rightful) due because he knew in his heart that he had no apostolic standing and so professed no entitlement to it.” Besides reading too much into the text, the problem with this view is that the Corinthians know that Paul does receive support from other churches, namely the Macedonians (11:9). The verb propempein (“to send on the way”) is a technical term for providing goods (1 Cor 16:6; 2 Cor 1:16; see also Acts 15:3; Rom 15:24; Titus 3:13; 3 John 6), and Paul does accept provisions from the Corinthians to help him with his missionary journeys to other areas. There is no link in this text between the amount of financial support and the legitimacy of apostleship, and we have argued that the validity of Paul’s apostleship is not at stake anyway.223 It is no less plausible that the competitors contended that Paul has other congregations to whom he is more closely attached because he accepts their support. They promise the Corinthians, “We will commit ourselves only to you out of our special love for you.” All such hypotheses about what the rivals argued, however, go beyond the evidence in the text and should be treated skeptically.

Understanding the social expectations that guided relations in the Greco-Roman world is more fruitful for getting at the Corinthians’ concerns. These social expectations exerted a strong influence on the Corinthians. The verb tapeinoō, “to lower oneself,” expresses their concern (see 10:2; 1 Cor 4:11–12). They considered it demeaning for him to work, the very thing that enabled him to preach the gospel without charge (see 1 Thess 2:9). Craftsmen were held in low regard by the leisured class in the ancient world.225 Cicero remarked, “Also vulgar and unsuitable for gentlemen are the occupations of all hired workmen whom we pay for their labor, not for their artistic skills; for these men, their pay is itself a recompense for slavery.… All craftsmen, too are engaged in vulgar occupations, for a workshop or factory can have nothing genteel about it.” Lucian shares the negative estimate of workmen: A laborer is “personally inconspicuous getting meagre and illiberal returns, humble-witted, an insignificant figure in public, neither sought by your friends nor feared by your enemies nor envied by your fellow citizens—nothing but just a labourer, one of the swarming rabble, ever cringing to the man above … a man who has naught but his hands, a man who lives by his hands.”227 Hock cites four ways a philosopher could find support in the ancient world: (1) He could charge fees for his teaching. (2) He could enter into the household of a wealthy patron (teaching the sons). (3) He could beg. (4) He could work. He concludes, “Among the philosophers and itinerant teachers of Paul’s day, continuing to work at a craft was regarded as the least acceptable way of providing for life’s necessities.” Working in some trade or hiring out to another would prevent one from having the leisure to live a civilized life.

The contempt of the leisured class toward paid work was not universally held. Otherwise, workers would not have proudly depicted their occupations on their tombstones. The problem for the Corinthians was the incongruous combination they saw in Paul—apostle of the glorious risen Lord and toil weary laborer with dirt under his nails. As a common artisan hiring his skill out to others, Paul lacked status and authority, power and prestige. His situation was compounded because, “His labor was a bitter necessity, and perhaps the earnings were not sufficient.”230 He was not financially secure. Paul says, “If I ran short I sponged on no one” (11:9, REB); but this statement implies that he did run short and was in need (see Phil 4:12). They would not have understood his voluntary acceptance of poverty as a means by which spiritually he made many rich (6:10; cp. 8:9) but would have considered it debasing and reflecting negatively on them. Affluence was a sign of personal worth in the ancient world as it is today. Leaders came from the ranks of those who were “financially sound and fit,” never from the “unfit and poor.” Savage concludes that “an impoverished leader was a contradiction in terms.” This issue was particularly important in an affluent city like Corinth, whose citizens took pride in its wealth and aspired to upward mobility. “Here more than elsewhere, wealth was a prerequisite for honour and poverty a badge of disgrace.” Since wealth was a sign of status, Paul’s insistence on remaining poor would have rankled since it also would make them bear the shame of “being associated with an impoverished apostle.” His poverty is not simply his private business; it reflects on them. Their attitude, however, reflects both the class tensions of the ancient world and their snobbery. Many modern churches feel no differently in desiring their pastor to be somebody to whom they can point with pride—“That’s our successful pastor.”To receive aid from the relatively poverty stricken Macedonians (8:2) and to turn it down from the relatively well off Corinthians also would have insulted them. They gladly would share what is theirs with him (12:13–14), but he refuses to accept. Marshall shows that in the ancient world, “The refusal of gifts and services was a refusal of friendship and dishonoured the donor.” They interpreted his refusal to accept their support as a sign that he did not love them (11:11) but desired instead to shame them. He judged them less worthy than others, and they were therefore less favored (12:13) since they were excluded from the charmed circle of Paul’s partners in the gospel (see Phil 4:15).

Even in our culture, refusing to accept a gift from others can easily be construed as an insult. The narrow social conventions of Paul’s time made his refusal to accept their gifts a major factor behind their hostility toward him. Their anger may have fed unjustified suspicions that Paul was using the collection as a sly means of getting support from them without having to acknowledge and thereby to incur any social obligations to them. It was “a subterfuge, a way of gaining support from the Corinthians without obligating himself to them as their client (see 12:16).” Paul needs to set the record straight.

Settled in God’s strength

Here Paul in essence says that he checks all the boxes on the Christian resume. Paul returns to the thought of foolish boasting expressed in 11:1 as he prepares them again for his fool’s speech. He does not want them to be fooled by his fool’s disguise and mistake it for true apostolic speech. This boasting is all a fool’s jest, so repeats his second justification for his own boasting (see 11:4–6). The Corinthians have put up with the foolish boasting of his rivals without demurring. They can probably endure a little boasting from their own apostle. “Many have boasted the way the world does” (“according to the flesh”), that is, their boasting accords with the world’s corrupt standards (11:18). If that is what it takes to get the Corinthians to listen, then that is what Paul will do. He joins in the game reluctantly, however, because he has been driven to it (12:11). But he makes clear in 11:17 that this is not the stuff of apostolic discourse. It is that of a “worldly man” trying to outshine his rivals, “itself a ‘foolish’ ambition.” He is not normally self-congratulatory, does not normally act according to worldly standards (10:2), and does not normally evaluate himself or others according to these standards (5:16). But he adopts his rivals’ ways to show how ultimately foolish they are. Wanting to be better than others in terms of status is foolish; wanting to show oneself better than others is even more foolish. Best comments:

Most of those who boast do not realize they are doing it. It is a sign of grace on Paul’s part that he did realize and that he saw its foolishness. Since a comparison with others is inherent in boasting, it may involve belittling them. Since it is never far way from exaggeration, there is the continual danger of untruth.

Paul speaks as a fool because it will allow him to boast about himself, which is foolish, and not something that the Lord would approve. It is not boasting in the Lord (10:17) and not boastworthy. By explicitly saying that this is what he is doing, he undermines the boasting of his rivals. It shows it to be foolish and contrary to what the Lord would have them do. They are fools who engage in worldly discourse that has nothing to do with “speaking according to the Lord.”273

The phrase kata sarka (“in the way the world does”) in 11:18 may refer to the object of the boasting, their Jewish heritage. But it more likely refers to the attitude behind the boasting—a brash confidence. It is this brash self-confidence that has captivated the Corinthians (11:20) because it was culturally accepted and something they engaged in themselves (see 1 Cor 1:12; 3:21; 4:6–7). The Corinthians have no trouble with those who glory in themselves because that is exactly what they expect them to do. By contrast, they have been put off by Paul’s abject humility.

If they will not put up with him when he is wise and speaks according to the Lord, then, Paul gibes, perhaps they will put up with him when he acts the fool and boasts in the same manner as the rivals they so esteem. He ironically appeals to their extraordinary tolerance of fools, “You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise!” (11:19). This statement is similar to 1 Cor 4:10, “We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ!” Things have not changed much in Corinth since Paul wrote those words. But neither has God’s response to the wisdom of the world. God will destroy the wisdom of the wise and make the wisdom of the world look foolish (1 Cor 1:19–20). In this section Paul destroys the so-called wisdom of the wise by embracing it himself and in the process showing it to be the folly of the fool.

Even when he descends to the level of his rivals in boasting, he transcends them. Paul will boast about the visible things. What is visible, however, points to his weaknesses—part of the problem as far as the Corinthians were concerned. His boasting in his weakness allows him to expound on God’s grace.

David E. Garland, 2 Corinthians, vol. 29, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 487–488.