2 Corinthians 10:1-12:10

What’s Happening?

Without naming them, Paul has been alluding to the lies, pride, and greed of the false teachers who are luring the Corinthian church away from Jesus. Now, he finally confronts them with an ironic title—“super-apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:5). Paul has already shown that true apostles are unashamed to suffer with Jesus in weakness. Yet, these super-apostles boast in their strength and dismiss suffering and weakness as signs of failure (2 Corinthians 10:1). In claiming superiority, they reveal that they are not servants of Jesus but rather servants of Satan (2 Corinthians 11:13-14). 

One of the ways the super-apostles undermine Paul is by claiming that he is bold in his letters but weak in person (2 Corinthians 10:10). Paul assures the Corinthians that he can be just as bold face to face and tear down the super-apostles’ arguments if needed (2 Corinthians 10:2-6). However, Paul would far prefer not to use his authority to destroy, but to build up (2 Corinthians 10:7-8). He refuses to play the comparison game with the super-apostles (2 Corinthians 10:11-12). Instead, he will boast in the transformed lives of the Corinthian believers (2 Corinthians 10:13-18). They are living proof that Paul is a true apostle of Jesus.

Paul then explains that he is not battling the super-apostles because he is jealous of their authority, but because he is jealous for the Corinthians’ purity. Like a father who guards and protects his engaged daughter, Paul has promised to protect the Corinthians as the bride of Jesus (2 Corinthians 11:2). So Paul pleads with his beloved church not to be lured away by false teachers like Eve was enticed by the serpent in the garden (2 Corinthians 11:3; Genesis 3:1-6). These super-apostles act just like their deceptive master Satan, disguising themselves to lure away Jesus’ precious bride from his side (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). These teachers aren’t mere human rivals, but a spiritual infestation that must be driven out.

In a satirical showdown against the inflated credentials of the super-apostles, Paul stoops to their level. He admits that boasting is foolishness, but since that’s all the Corinthians care about, he obliges them (2 Corinthians 11:1, 16-21). However, he contrasts the super-apostles’ boasts about paychecks, oratory skills, and elite lineage with his boasts about his free ministry and many sufferings (2 Corinthians 11:7-11). Thanks to the generosity of poor Macedonian believers, Paul preached to wealthy Corinthians for free. Paul waxes eloquent on the countless ways he was beaten, starved, imprisoned, and endangered (2 Corinthians 11:22-29). Instead of boasting in heroic feats of ministry, Paul brags that he once fled a city at night through a hole in the wall while hiding in a basket (2 Corinthians 11:30-33). In all of this, Paul shows the foolishness of boasting.

Paul has far more to boast about than the super-apostles (2 Corinthians 12:1). Hesitantly, he admits that, like the true prophets of God’s people, he has experienced God in his heavenly throne room (2 Corinthians 12:2-6). But God gave him a “thorn in his flesh” to keep him humble through these great revelations (2 Corinthians 12:7). In the book of Numbers, this phrase refers to pagan nations who remained in Israel’s land like thorns in their side, seducing them away from God (Numbers 33:55). Paul sees the super-apostles as a thorn in the flesh, messengers of Satan that are seducing God’s people away from their true love (2 Corinthians 12:7). Paul has begged for God to remove the false teachers from Corinth, but they remain to ensure Paul trusts and boasts in God’s strength and not his own (2 Corinthians 12:8-10).

Where’s the Gospel?

Paul is fighting the super-apostles because he is jealous on God’s behalf, like a father guarding his daughter. He has raised this bride, and he won’t abandon her to rival suitors. He will protect her even at the cost of being mocked, beaten, hungry, or sleepless. 

Paul is imitating Jesus. Jesus is not just jealous for us like a husband, he is our jealous husband. In jealous love, God commissioned prophet after prophet, leader after leader, to protect his beloved people from messengers of Satan, false prophets who lured their hearts away from loving God alone (Exodus 20:5; 2 Chronicles 36:15-16). But ultimately, God’s love and jealousy for us led to him sending his own beloved Son. And as Satan and his messengers have always done with his prophets, they mocked, beat, and killed the true Husband of Humanity (Acts 7:52). As the super-apostles boasted in their own strength, Satan and the Grave boasted in their strength to conquer the life of Jesus. 

Yet, this too was a satirical showdown. Jesus stooped to their level. He used their boasting to show his strength even in his weakest moment (Colossians 2:15). He obliged the world’s fascination with power by dying under it in weakness, only to rise in strength (Acts 2:24). In rising from the dead, he showed the weakness of human and Satanic strength. His resurrection empties the boasts of Satan and his messengers.

See for Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see the God who brings strength out of weakness. And may you see Jesus as the jealous husband who entered our weakness to give us his strength.