OUTLINE OF THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS
The Glory of the Ministry of the Gospel
THE APOSTLE’S FINAL VINDICATION
His Labors, Sufferings and Spiritual Experience
21. Through what dangers and sufferings had Paul passed as a Christian missionary? How did they further qualify him?
PAUL’S SUFFERINGS AS AN APOSTLE
Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.
Are they [self-proclaimed] servants of Christ?–I am speaking as if I were out of my mind–I am more so [for I exceed them]; with far more labors, with far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, and often in danger of death.
Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. [Deu_25:3]
Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent adrift on the sea;
many times on journeys, [exposed to] danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own countrymen, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger on the sea, danger among those posing as believers;
in labor and hardship, often unable to sleep, in hunger and thirst, often [driven to] fasting [for lack of food], in cold and exposure [without adequate clothing].
Besides those external things, there is the daily [inescapable] pressure of my concern for all the churches.
Who is weak, and I do not feel [his] weakness? Who is made to sin, and I am not on fire [with sorrow and concern]?
If I must boast, I will boast of the things that reveal my weakness [the things by which I am made weak in the eyes of my opponents].
The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed and to be praised forevermore, knows that I am not lying.
In Damascus the governor (ethnarch) under King Aretas guarded the city of Damascus in order to arrest me,
and I was [actually] let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and slipped through his fingers.
Comments by
F.B.Meyer
On
2 Corinthians 11:22-33
PRE-EMINENT IN LABOR AND SUFFERING
It has been truly said that this enumeration represents a life which up to that hour had been without precedent in the history of the world. Self-devotion at particular moments or for some special cause had been often witnessed before; but a self-devotion involving such sacrifices and extending over at least fourteen years, in the interests of mankind at large, was up to that time a thing unknown. The lives of missionaries and philanthropists in later times may have paralleled his experiences; but Paul did all this, and was the first to do it.
The biography of the Apostle, as told by Luke, comes greatly short of this marvelous epitome. Of the facts alluded to only two-the stoning and one of the Roman scourgings-are mentioned in the book of the Acts; from which we gather that the book is, after all, but a fragmentary record, and that the splendid deeds of the disciples and apostles of that first age will be known only when the Lamb Himself recites them from His Book. But even this enumeration omits all that the Apostle suffered after the writing of this Epistle, including, of course, the sufferings between his arrest and his appearance before Nero.
By Pastor Jeff Arthur
Enduring Hardship
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