Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as being beside myself) *I* above measure [so]; in labours exceedingly abundant, in stripes to excess, in prisons exceedingly abundant, in deaths oft.
Rival teachers at Corinth claimed to serve Christ better than Paul. He answers with a record of beatings, prisons and brushes with death, and calls his own words the talk of a madman. Two questions follow. What proves that a person serves Christ? And why does telling it cost Paul so much?
Paul hated this subject. One writer contrasts his pain with the ease of those who enjoy telling their own story.
Boasting was not the way of the Lord. Boasting in the Lord is what suits every believer, and the apostle shrank from boasting in anything else, perhaps more than any other man. But the false apostles were dishonouring the Lord and damaging the saints. They put forward their fleshly advantages: a fine personal presence, power of mind, ready speech, rhetorical tricks, wealth, family connection, social position, and the like. It is humbling yet instructive to set two things side by side. There is the apostle's pain at having to speak this way. And there is the all too obvious pleasure with which many a servant of Christ goes off into personal stories that seem to have no aim but to prove his own cleverness.
The rivals claimed the title too. Paul lets the claim stand for a moment and asks what they can show for it.
He allows, for a moment, the claim he had already firmly refused. He supposes that, if they are ministers of Christ at all, they must have some proof of their calling to produce. Then he sets his own acts and monuments of service above theirs in every respect. He has scars to show, as a good soldier of Christ, and he will show them.
Paul could have pointed to miracles. He pointed to wounds, and one writer says why that proof is stronger.
When it is a question of your credentials, of producing facts that prove beyond all question that you are a genuine servant of Christ, then the record of your sufferings is far more convincing. Signs and wonders may come from a power other than the Spirit of God. Nothing but absolute devotion to the Lord will keep someone serving with patient persistence through years of toil and suffering.
The phrase reads like a competition. Commentators differ. Many read it as a comparison; Kelly does not.
The commentators, ancient and modern, will have it to be a comparison. This is the very thing he seems to take pains to avoid… He does not even mention here the extraordinary power the Lord had given him in the Spirit to deal with disease, death, or demons. He says nothing of the wide reach and success of his work in the gospel. Instead he turns from his very abundant labours to the stripes he suffered beyond measure, his very abundant imprisonments, and his frequent exposures to death.
Behind each item stands a body broken again and again.
Think of the indignity. A man of Paul's position and learning is stripped bare. The horrible lashes fall on his back till it is a mass of torn and bleeding flesh. Five times, not once, the Jews gave him forty lashes less one. Three times he was beaten with rods. What a condition his body must have been in!
The rivals who attacked Paul are the unwitting reason we know any of this.
If these evil teachers had not invaded the Corinthian church, we would never have known these experiences of the great man of God. The historical record, the Book of Acts, does not give us a full account of his devotion and his trials. And most likely even this list is not complete.
One writer names a single occasion behind those words.
Paul refers to the great riot at Ephesus, recorded in Acts 19. This was one of the times he was near death. God came in for his deliverance, but the whole episode brought home "the sentence of death" in his own experience. He realized indeed that he was a dead man, and all trust in himself was gone.
The right response to this catalogue is not analysis.
Explanation is hardly what is needed here. What is needed is thanksgiving for the grace God gave to a man with the same nature as ours, when the eye surveys such a roll of suffering labour for Christ… What we read may well humble us. It puts our lukewarmness to shame.
- Forced. Paul shrank from talking about himself. He speaks only because the rivals' boasting was dishonouring the Lord and damaging the saints.
- Scars. Asked who truly serves Christ, he shows the marks on his body, not his achievements — a good soldier showing his wounds.
- Proof. Another power can copy signs and wonders. It cannot fake years of patient toil and suffering.
- Not a contest. Kelly reads the words as no comparison at all. Paul passes over his miracles and his successes, and points to what he suffered.
- Effect. We have the list only because his enemies attacked him. It calls less for study than for thanksgiving, and it shames our lukewarmness.
From the Jews five times have I received forty [stripes], save one.
Paul is listing what proves he is a servant of Christ, and his first item is a whipping — five of them, all from his own nation. Why point to scars instead of successes, and what does "forty lashes less one" mean?
Paul answers his critics with a list of his own. One writer notes what he leaves out of it:
He does not even mention here the extraordinary power the Lord had given him in the Spirit to deal with disease, death, or demons. He says nothing of the immense range and success of his work in the gospel. Instead he turns from his very abundant labours to the excess of stripes that had fallen to him. He points to his very frequent imprisonments and his repeated exposure to death.
The number is not random. Israel's law set a limit of forty strokes. The missing stroke has an explanation:
In the law courts the judges had to give proper justice, yet not go beyond the limits of justice. If someone was guilty of a serious crime, it was right to have him beaten, lying down. But he was never to receive more than forty strokes. The Jews at least respected this particular law, for they lowered the number to 39 in case they had miscounted. But they treated Paul as they would the worst criminal.
The whip itself gives a second reason for the odd number:
For minor offences there was flogging, which was restricted to forty stripes (Deuteronomy 25:3). A whip with three thongs accounts for the "forty stripes less one" of 2 Corinthians 11:24.
Thirteen strokes of a three-thonged whip make thirty-nine. The count stops just short of the limit.
The local Jewish court gave this punishment, and the synagogue was where it happened. Paul had once dealt out the same treatment in the same rooms.
Paul admitted that when he was persecuting the church, he had imprisoned and beaten those who believed on the Lord. He did it in every synagogue (Acts 22:19). Paul himself doubtless suffered the same punishment in the same buildings (2 Corinthians 11:24). So they made a very undignified use of their places of worship.
These blows came from Paul's own nation. One writer sees his old persecuting zeal now rebounding on him:
As you might expect, his chief troubles came at the hands of his own people. That persecuting zeal was a poison. It had once found its most energetic instrument in Saul of Tarsus, who in tireless hatred of the way of truth breathed out threats and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord. Now it was reacting on himself, and weaving for him (such is the grace of our Lord!) a crown of lasting honour, as an approved martyr of the faith he had once destroyed.
The five floggings come to a total worth pausing over:
Five times from the Jews he received forty stripes less one — 195 stripes given in five doses.
The next verse lists shipwrecks. Commenting on those, another writer draws a wider conclusion about how much of Paul's story we do not have:
Three separate disasters of this kind are mentioned here, and history tells us nothing about them. That may convince us how incomplete our record is — though it is enough — of what this much-enduring man went through as he finished his course. But the day of rewards will reveal it all.
At Paul's conversion the Lord had told Ananias what lay ahead for him. The whippings are that word coming true:
Besides that, the Lord had to fulfil His word to Ananias about the apostle: "For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name" (Acts 9:16). Without suffering here there can be little spiritual power for entering into the glory set before us... So the apostle's work in the gospel was one long series of bitter persecutions, especially from the Jews.
- Credentials. Asked to prove his ministry, Paul points to scars, not miracles or success. The list starts with stripes.
- Counted. Israel's law allowed forty strokes. The Jews stopped at 39 in case they miscounted, and a three-thonged whip reached that number in thirteen strokes.
- Reversed. He had once imprisoned and beaten believers in every synagogue; he took the same punishment in the same buildings.
- Costly. The blows came from his own people, and grace turned that rebound of his old zeal into lasting honour.
- Unrecorded. Five floggings came to 195 strokes, and the written record holds only part of the story. The day of rewards will reveal it all.
Thrice have I been scourged, once I have been stoned, three times I have suffered shipwreck, a night and day I passed in the deep
Rivals at Corinth were boasting about their credentials. Paul answered with a list nobody would envy, and it raises a question: why would a servant of Christ treat his scars as proof of his calling?
Paul knew that comparing himself with his rivals was unwise. He did it anyway, and what he set before them was the cost of his service.
If this point of comparison is raised, then Paul's folly must go beyond itself. If comparing himself with others at all is unwise, he must seem even more senseless in his boasting when he claims victory over all competitors. And he does no less when he offers his judges these memorials of his service. He has scars to show, as a good soldier of Christ, and he will show them. Some of these facts are confirmed by other testimony, and the rest we may accept on his own word, since his bold challenge was never answered.
The rods were a Roman punishment. Roman law protected a citizen like Paul from it, and he once claimed that protection.
This was a punishment inflicted by the Romans. They stripped the person, stretched him out with cords or straps on a frame, and beat him with a whip or a rod. From about 300 B.C. Roman citizens were exempt from scourging. Paul used this privilege when he was about to be "examined" under this punishment (Acts 22:24-29). But he was beaten with rods three times (2 Corinthians 11:25). The Lord Himself suffered the pain and shame of scourging (John 19:1).
Scripture tells one of those three beatings in full. What stands out there is not the pain but the response to it.
"Rods," which were a Gentile punishment, also came to him in full measure. One of the three times mentioned here is told at length in its proper place, and there he did not suffer alone. It stands to the praise of the glory of that grace, which then shone so clearly in both Paul and his companion in trouble. At midnight in the prison, with their feet in chains and their wounds unwashed, they sang God's praises through His Son (Acts 16).
The one stoning happened at Lystra. Paul could not shake the memory, because he had once stood on the other side of that violence, at the death of Stephen.
Once his persecutors arrived in Lystra, they persuaded the people that Paul was not fit to live. So they stoned him. Surely he would remember the day when he helped to stone Stephen. Look at the unconscious body of the apostle as it lay on the ground, blood streaming from many wounds. Paul could not forget that day. "Once I was stoned" (2 Corinthians 11:25) was his comment to the Corinthian church.
The list was not complete when Paul wrote it. The famous shipwreck of Acts 27 was still ahead.
He had been shipwrecked three times. One of those times involved a night and a day in the deep. We suppose that means he was washed about in the waters of the Mediterranean. But the shipwreck recorded in Acts 27 had not yet taken place. That must therefore have been number four, at least.
Paul does not say how he stayed alive in the water.
Whether swimming or held up by boards, the shock of such an experience would not easily be forgotten. Practically all of his journeys were far more dangerous than travel today.
Set beside the other great figures of Scripture, Paul's record of suffering is in a category of its own.
As far as the record given to us in Scripture is concerned, he stands alone among the people of God in his sufferings. An Abraham, a Moses, a David, a Daniel — each had their own special marks that showed they pleased God. But not one of them approached Paul in this. Hard labour, beatings, prisons, brushes with death, constant travel, dangers of every kind, weariness, pain, sleepless nights, hunger, thirst, going without food, cold, no clothing, care — what a list! It covers pretty well the whole range of human suffering, whether of body or mind.
The list carries two lessons.
Paul stood firm through all these things. His endurance should have made a deep impression on the Corinthians, and it should impress us no less. … Notice that he is not boasting of what people would call great achievements. He boasts instead in the things that humble him. All of this shows him to be helplessly dependent on the Living God, who proves Himself completely faithful in caring for His servant.
- Scars, not credentials. Asked to prove he was a minister of Christ, Paul pointed to his wounds, not his successes. He had scars to show, and he showed them.
- Rods. Roman law should have spared a citizen this. One of the three beatings ended with Paul singing in prison at midnight, his wounds still unwashed.
- Stones. The single stoning at Lystra left him for dead, and it echoed the day he had helped stone Stephen.
- The deep. Three shipwrecks and a night and a day in the sea. The shipwreck of Acts 27 was still ahead when he wrote.
- The measure. Paul stands alone among the people of God in Scripture for what he suffered. Yet his boast is in what humbled him, and it leaves him leaning wholly on God.
in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from [my own] race, in perils from [the] nations, in perils in [the] city, in perils in [the] desert, in perils on [the] sea, in perils among false brethren;
Paul's rivals at Corinth boasted about their standing, so he answers them with a list of dangers instead of a list of successes. He names danger after danger — rivers, robbers, his own people, foreigners, the city, the wilderness, the sea — and ends with the one danger no road could avoid: false brothers.
The stripes and beatings of the previous verses were single events. This verse describes a way of life: going out again and again, whatever it cost. One writer marks the difference.
It is not only enduring cruel treatment now and then from open enemies that tests the heart. The heart is shown even more by the tireless, constant going out from country to country, whatever the labour and the danger. He went among strangers whom the Jews could easily stir up, once the Jews themselves were inflamed at the gospel. Add to that the many trials of the road.
The verse opens with travel, not with danger. Paul did not pick these roads for comfort, and he carried no protection of his own.
His journeys were not for his own pleasure. On his Master's service he never gave up time for the sake of comfort, and he never shrank from the path in front of him out of any fear for himself. He was glad to follow the Spirit's leading, even when it brought him to his goal by dangerous and rarely used roads. From the floods and the robbers alike the Lord was his sole but effective defence.
Paul lists his own countrymen and the Gentiles, then the city and the wilderness. He was equally unsafe among crowds and alone.
His walk as one who confessed Christ's name was so clear and definite that he lived in constant danger from his own race and from the Gentiles, and almost equally from each. That was true quite apart from the particular cases of ill-treatment noticed above. In the city, men watched him on every side. They dreaded and hated his work, and they thirsted for his blood without stopping. In the desert, the natural dangers and hardships were worse for a man who could no longer count on people being friendly.
The term is not a petty thief but a violent bandit — and it is the same word used of men the Gospels put beside Christ.
The word means "robber, bandit." In the parable of the Good Samaritan the traveller fell among robbers (Luke 10:30, 36). When the Lord was arrested He asked if they had come out as against a robber (Matthew 26:55; Mark 14:48; Luke 22:52). The two criminals crucified with the Lord were also men of this character.
The list ends where no traveller can escape by changing route. The same phrase appears in only one other place in the New Testament. Writing on that passage, one commentator describes what these men are.
First, he says they were false. They were traitors. They were not true believers in Christ at all. On the outside they had accepted Christianity. But they knew nothing of the power of the precious blood of Christ to cleanse their sins... They were, in Paul's words, "false brothers." This word is used only twice in the New Testament — there and in 2 Corinthians 11:26. Someone had brought these false brothers in secretly, without the other believers knowing.
Another writer sorts the dangers by where they came from, and traces the last one to Satan himself.
Besides the dangers common to everyone who travelled — water travel, robbers and so on — there were dangers that came from his witness for Christ. Some came from Jewish opposition and hatred. Some came from Gentile resentment, as at Ephesus. And Satan added his own subtle attacks through false brothers. Paul's steadfast endurance through all of this should have deeply impressed the Corinthians, and it should impress us no less.
Much of what this verse summarises never appears in the narrative of Paul's travels.
The record that follows goes far beyond the history we have in Acts, which was only a sample of much more. He had met dangers of every kind: from enemies, from false brothers, from his own countrymen, from strangers, in crowds of people, in desolate wilderness places, and dangers from what men call accidents.
The dangers came because the work was real. Where there is little cost, one writer suggests, the reason may lie closer to home.
If we in our day were more energetic and more faithful in our service for the Lord Jesus, we should doubtless know more of all three things.
- Danger by obedience — the roads were dangerous because Paul went where his Master sent him, not where it was safe.
- Danger from strangers — bandits, floods and the sea; the Lord alone was his defence.
- Danger from both sides — his own people and the Gentiles hated the same work, so city and desert were both unsafe.
- Danger from inside — "false brothers" are men who took the Christian name without the reality, and no change of route could avoid them.
- Danger unrecorded — the list runs far beyond what Acts reports, and its length shows how much his service cost.
in labour and toil, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
Rivals at Corinth were measuring themselves against Paul. He answers with a list none of them would want: not honours, but the daily wear on his body in Christ's service. Why would a man prove his ministry by naming his hunger, his sleepless nights and his missing coat?
Paul hated talking about himself. But silence would have left the Corinthians to men who traded on outward advantages.
Boasting was not the way of the Lord. Boasting in the Lord is what suits every believer, and the apostle shrank from boasting in anything else, perhaps more than any other man. But the false apostles were dishonouring the Lord and damaging the saints. They pushed forward their human advantages: a fine appearance, power of mind, a lively imagination, ready speech, tricks of rhetoric, money of their own, family connections, social position, and the like.
Behind "toil and hardship" stand two Greek words. One of them carries the sweat of ordinary human labour, and Paul used it of his own night work.
μόχθος (mochthos, from μογέω, "to labour, be in distress") occurs three times in the New Testament. Some have judged that it means the toil that is the lot of man in this world of sin. It answers to "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread." Paul's own use seems to confirm this. Twice he uses it of his labours, when he had to work night and day on top of his apostolic work (1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8). In 2 Cor. 11:27 it is joined with κόπος (kopos), where Paul describes his life of labour and toil — "weariness and painfulness" in older versions.
The verse lists hunger and thirst, then lists going without food separately — "fastings often" in older versions. That is not repetition. The difference shows where the empty stomach came from.
In 2 Corinthians "fasting" is set apart from "hunger and thirst" — suffering he chose, as against suffering he could not avoid. No. The apostle's "labours, watchings, fastings" had to do with the gospel and the church, and with individual souls. They stood far above the circumstances of his trade, good or bad.
Both kinds ran together in his life, and the lack of clothing was as literal as the hunger.
On top of danger came hardships, both chosen and unchosen. He disciplined himself as a matter of habit, while serving Christ as a true soldier laid constant hardship on his body. For Christ's sake he spent many nights awake. Often, while less eager but genuine fellow-workers were at ease, he was hungry and burning with thirst. Robbers may have taken his few clothes; or he may have been too poor — while making many rich — to buy himself a coat. Either way he came very near his Master (Matt. 8:20) in knowing what it is to have nothing.
Read as a résumé, the list is a strange one. It proves nothing about Paul's ability — which is exactly its point.
Added to all the dangers the apostle met were many and frequent discomforts… Who would welcome such a life? But he endured it willingly for Christ… Notice, though, that he is not boasting of what people would call great achievements. He boasts in the things that humble the vessel… All of this shows him to be helplessly dependent on the living God, who proves Himself completely faithful in caring for His servant.
Paul's endurance was real. But one writer sets it beside the service of Christ, and Paul comes second.
Paul spoke truly of his own ministry in the gospel, carried on in toil and hardship, sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, times without food, cold and exposure (2 Cor. 11:27). But in all these respects he was only an imperfect imitator of the self-denying service of Christ. Like his Master, though, he was kept going in his devotion by that secret food which the world knows nothing of (John 4:31-34).
- Forced. Paul lists his hardships only because rivals were pushing their own looks, speech, money and social standing — and damaging the saints.
- Costly. "Toil and hardship" renders two words for grinding labour. Paul carried it night and day, on top of his apostolic work.
- Chosen. Going without food is listed apart from hunger and thirst. Some of his emptiness he chose for the gospel; some came with the road.
- Humbling. The list records no achievements. It shows a vessel emptied, and a man wholly dependent on a God who proved faithful.
- Derived. Every line brought him near his Master. Yet he was only an imperfect copy of the Servant fed by food the world knows nothing of.