September 8, 2024 – 2 Corinthians 10:1-11

“I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!— I ask that when I am present I need not show boldness by daring to oppose those who think we are acting according to human standards. Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. We are ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.

Look at what is before your eyes. If you are confident that you belong to Christ, remind yourself of this, that just as you belong to Christ, so also do we. Now, even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for tearing you down, I will not be ashamed of it. I do not want to seem as though I am trying to frighten you with my letters. For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.” Let such people understand that what we say by letter when absent, we will also do when present.” 2 Cor. 10:1-11

It would seem that the Corinthians had actually sunk to taunting Paul about his personal appearance — they jeered that he was weak, and they scoffed that he was a lousy speaker. It is possible that they were right. A description of Paul’s personal appearance has come down to us from a very early book called “The Acts of Paul and Thecla”, which dates to about A.D. 200. It is so unflattering of Paul’s appearance describing him as “a man of little stature, thin-haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of body, with eyebrows meeting, and with nose somewhat hooked, full of grace, for sometimes he appeared like a man and sometimes he had the face of an angel.” So let’s review — Paul was a little, balding, bandy-legged man, with a hooked nose and shaggy eyebrows—no, this is not a very impressive picture, and it may well be that the Corinthians made fun of him, but we know that while the outside appearance may seem slight, frail, or even “ugly”, what is inside is what really matters.

William Wilberforce was a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement in the United Kingdom to abolish the slave trade. A native of Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming an independent Member of Parliament. One description of him went like this: He was so small and so frail that it seemed that even a strong wind might knock him down. But once people heard him speak in public and afterwards they said, “I saw what seemed to me a shrimp mount upon the table, but, as I listened, he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale.”

Paul may have looked like an ugly shrimp, but dare I say he was a whale of an Apostle.

Pastor Dave

September 9, 2024 – suggested reading: 2 Corinthians 11:1-15

“…if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough. I think that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. I may be untrained in speech, but not in knowledge; certainly in every way and in all things we have made this evident to you. Did I commit a sin by humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I proclaimed God’s good news to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for my needs were supplied by the friends who came from Macedonia. So I refrained and will continue to refrain from burdening you in any way. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boast of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do!” 2 Cor 11:4-11

“Super-Apostles” — “The very chiefest Apostles”. The word used by St. Paul for “very chiefest” is one which, in its strangeness, marks the vehemence of his emotion. So he invokes an indignant response and sense that he had been most disparagingly compared with other apostles, as though he were hardly a genuine apostle at all. As such he must state or reckon himself to have done as much as the “extra-super,” or “super-apostolic,” apostles.

Paul is not comparing himself to the twelve Apostles; he merely means that, even if any with whom he was unfavorably compared were “apostles ten times over,” he can claim to be the chiefest of them all. He is not showing some sense of superiority — as if he is pretentious. There is no self-inflation here. Indeed, against whatever evil has been done against him by his detractors, St. Paul, with an utter sense of distaste, is forced to say the simple truth — his life, his teachings, his work is for his apostleship — as an Apostle for Jesus. This is how he believes he should be judged in his life.

Pastor Dave