To the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are in nakedness, and buffeted, and wander without a home,
The Corinthians felt full, rich and already reigning. Paul sets his own daily life beside theirs. The list is not a complaint but a measuring rod. If hunger, exposure, blows and homelessness marked the apostles, what does comfort prove about us?
The opening words matter. Paul is not recalling a hard season that had ended. He was living it as he wrote, while the Corinthians sat at ease.
They had despised the apostle. Yes, he says, we have been put to shame, despised, persecuted, in distress; you have been at ease, like kings. That reproach matched their own pretensions and their own reproaches. It cut them to the quick, if they had any feeling left. Paul and his companions had been like the rubbish swept off the earth for Christ's sake. Meanwhile the Corinthians were resting in comfort and ease. Even while writing to them, this was still his position.
Each word names a plain, physical hardship: no food, no drink, poor clothing, blows to the body, no home. Older translations render the third word "naked", where the ESV has "poorly dressed".
As to circumstances, the Corinthians were "full" and "rich" (verse 8), but these devoted apostles had to face "hunger and thirst". At times they were naked and buffeted by the storms of life. They had to "wander without a home", and labour, working with their own hands to meet their needs.
Another writer reads the list as a choice, not just a fate.
To make the precious truth of God known, the apostles were willing to sacrifice every earthly advantage. They went as far as hunger and thirst, lack of clothing, hard knocks, and having no settled place to live.
Paul did not go looking for suffering. It found him on the path of his service, and it made him resemble the One he served.
Hardship and mistreatment came upon him; not because he sought them, but because they met him in the path of his devoted service. The world which had persecuted the Master did not spare His zealous follower. In doing His Father's will, the Son of God knew both thirst and hunger. Poverty was His usual condition in the world which He had made. And Paul resembled Jesus, in the way a vessel of divine grace can copy the Fountain which has filled it.
God's own apostles lived like this. So comfort and wealth prove nothing about anyone's spiritual health, then or now.
They were a spectacle to the world for their sufferings, and to angels as well as men. How false a test, then, of a Christian's condition, is what men would call his prosperity! As to the Church in general also, how false a test this would be! The Church at large has, as we know, followed the Corinthians in this way. It is reigning far more than suffering… Are we in communion with the apostles or not? They remained, as we know, until their end in martyr deaths, for the most part, in exactly the condition the apostle describes here.
Another writer applies it to every generation since.
What a crushing contrast — not for the Corinthians of that day only, but for the still more selfish and empty state of our own time, and in fact ever since!
Reigning is real, but it belongs to a set day. The apostles' own lives show that day had not yet come.
No thrones for the apostles until the day of Christ. In this world they hungered and thirsted. They were naked and buffeted, reviled, persecuted and defamed. They were treated as the scum of the world, the refuse of all things (1 Cor. 4:11-13). So where do the thrones come from that the boasted "successors" of the apostles now sit on?
- Now — "to the present hour" means Paul was hungry, exposed and homeless as he wrote. This was his settled position, not an old story.
- Ordinary — no food, no drink, poor clothing, blows, no home: real losses the apostles accepted to make God's truth known.
- Unsought — Paul never chose these hardships. They met him on the path of service, and they made him like a Master who Himself knew hunger and poverty.
- Test — God's own servants lived this way, so prosperity is a false measure of a Christian's state. The real question is whether we share the apostles' path.
- Later — thrones belong to the day of Christ. Corinth reigned too early, and the church at large has followed them ever since.
and labour, working with our own hands. Railed at, we bless; persecuted, we suffer [it];
Paul has just put himself and the other apostles last of all, on public display as sufferers, while the Corinthians sat in comfort. Verse 12 shows what that low place looked like day by day: hands busy at a trade, and a mouth that answers abuse with blessing.
The words "working with our own hands" point to a trade. Paul earned his own living while he was in Corinth, and one writer sees God's own hand in that.
It pleased God to arrange things so that the great apostle worked at an honest trade to meet his needs, and did so in the wealthiest and most luxurious city of Greece. What a death-blow that is to clericalism on one side and to worldliness on the other! Yet, given the circumstances of both Paul himself and Corinth, this was exactly the course that was worthy of the gospel of the grace that sent it out.
The Corinthians were not impressed. One writer reads their unspoken complaint like this.
They thought it far beneath a Christian minister to work with his hands from time to time — often poor, sometimes in prison, knocked about by crowds, and so on. They put it all down to bad judgment, and thought he could have avoided it. They wanted a servant of Christ to be respectable, in public and in private.
The verse pairs each injury with an answer that reverses it.
As to the treatment they received from the world, they were "reviled", "persecuted" and "insulted". Yet this treatment only drew out of them a witness to Christ. When reviled, they blessed. When persecuted, they submitted patiently. When insulted, they entreated.
One writer sets that answer beside the comfort the Corinthians were enjoying.
Paul and his companions had been treated as the scum of the earth for Christ's sake, while the Corinthians were resting in luxury and ease… Patience and meekness were their only weapons.
"When reviled, we bless" is not about having a mild character. It is a choice made against a strong instinct. The first step is to stop handling your own case.
But if we are to gain the blessing in a time of suffering, we must first give up all thought of taking our case into our own hands and getting revenge on those who wrongly oppose and abuse us. Whatever the suffering, the believer is to hold back from taking vengeance. When reviled, the flesh is always ready to revile back. When it suffers wrongly, it is ready to threaten, and it would love to take vengeance on everyone who opposes and insults us with hard words.
Silence under insult does not mean the Christian has nothing to say.
Other Scriptures make it clear that the Christian may "entreat," "exhort," and even "rebuke," but he is never to revile or threaten.
One writer told believers under attack what to do with the names they were called.
If people call you Beelzebub, you know very well why you should bear it, giving back blessing for cursing. To be like our Master is a privilege we have little of.
The Corinthians wanted the honours now. One writer points to the place God has actually given His people for the present.
Those He put first in the church (1 Cor. 12:28) He put on show last, like the prophets before them, as examples of open suffering. What could be plainer than the place of affliction, apart from the world, that God marks out for the Christian here on earth? On no point is Christendom more at odds with Christ and His word to us.
- Hands — Paul earned his own living in the richest city of Greece. God arranged it, and it strikes a death-blow at both clericalism and worldliness.
- Snobbery — The Corinthians thought work, poverty and prison were beneath a minister. They wanted a respectable servant of Christ.
- Tongue — Insults and persecution did not silence the apostles. They answered with blessing, patience and entreaty.
- Vengeance — Blessing begins where self-defence ends. The flesh wants to revile back; the believer hands the case over instead. He may entreat, exhort and even rebuke, but never revile or threaten.
- Likeness — To be treated as the world's refuse is not bad luck. It is the privilege of being like our Master, in the place of affliction God marks out for us now.