2 Corinthians 11

     Further warning against false apostles.  If it is boasting that appeals to them, Paul can oblige them, and that without lying.

     11:1.  We can all be thankful God allowed the Corinthians to goad Paul into this foolishness which was so distasteful to him.  Were it not so, we would never have had this little glimpse into the suffering involved in his commission to bring salvation to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15-16).

     11:2.  Paul sees himself as the father proudly giving his jealously guarded virgin daughter away at the wedding of the King (cf. Ps.45:13-15).

     11:3.  Satan ever instructs the simple in the complexities of true salvation.  “Surely it is not so simple as you have been told.”  Thus the Bride is beguiled.

     11:4.  Satan’s apostles preach: 1. Another Jesus (cf. Mt.24:24; 1 Cor.3:11); 2. A different spirit (cf. Ro.8:12 ff.); 3. A different gospel  (cf. Gal.1:6).  Since they bear with this so well, perhaps they can bear with Paul and the foolishness of his gospel (cf. 1 Cor. 1:21-25).

     11:5.  These “most eminent apostles” are the false apostles of another Jesus (4, 13), though they wish to be regarded as true apostles of Jesus Christ (12).

     11:6-15.  Unlike these servants of Satan (14-15), Paul has not demanded payment.  Indeed, he has gone to great lengths to bring the gospel to them without charge (7-11), to avoid giving any opportunity for an accusation (12).

     11:16-19.  The Lord would never exalt himself, but since such foolishness appeals to them, Paul aims to please.

     11:20.  Some might see a contradiction here with Jesus’ command in Mt.5:39 to turn the other cheek.  But, as Paul’s further boasting shows, he has suffered his share of abuse in obedience to the Lord.  He did it in strength to be like his Lord, to suffer for righteousness sake and leave any retribution to God.  But the case in v.20 is not the faithful bearing of an unjust cross.  It is the weak and cowardly surrender of faithfulness to Christ after one slapped cheek.

     11:21-31.  Paul goes on in his “foolishness”, boasting of things which he in fact counted as of no value (Php.3:7-8).  Most of the terrible sufferings he mentions here in brief are unknown to us anywhere else.  Only a few are mentioned in Acts.  Several similar things that are mentioned in Acts happened later.  But Jesus had told him from the beginning what kind of service being an apostle to the Gentiles would be (Acts 9:15-16).  It was not the sort of service the false apostles were engaged in.  How much he loved Christ’s elect, to suffer so to save them out of their perishing estate of sin and misery (cf. 2 Tim.2:8-10)!

     11:24-25, note.  The thirty-nine lashes of the Jews shows the weakness of the law to restrain evil.  Deut.25:3 limited the number of lashes to 40, lest “your brother be degraded in your eyes”.  In other words, the law was tempered with mercy.  But as practiced by legalistic Jews, the beating was kept one safe stroke short of the limit, while being applied so viciously that the thirty-nine were often fatal.  The Roman beating with rods, though bad, was much less severe.

     11:32-33.  An ethnarch is the governor of an ethnic group, in this case apparently the Jews of Damascus (Acts 9:23-25).