2 Corinthians: Strength in Weakness

At a Glance

Who wrote it: Paul, with Timothy named beside him (2 Corinthians 1:1). Nobody doubts that Paul wrote it. Many scholars think it is two or more of his letters joined together.

When: About 55 or 56, from Macedonia, a year or so after 1 Corinthians.

Written for: The church in Corinth again, after a painful visit and a furious letter. Rival preachers had turned some against Paul, and he wrote to win them back and to finish the collection for the poor.

What it remembers of me: Very little of my life. It speaks of the humility and gentleness of Christ (10:1), and says that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor (8:9).

How close it stays to me: Close on the poor and on strength in weakness. Far when Paul turns on his rivals.

If you only read three chapters: 2 Corinthians 4, 2 Corinthians 8 and 2 Corinthians 12.

Words to Know

The letter of tears — a painful letter Paul says he wrote to Corinth between 1 and 2 Corinthians. It may be lost, or it may survive inside this one.

Super-apostles — Paul’s sarcastic name for rival preachers who came to Corinth.

Letters of commendation — letters of introduction that travelers carried, vouching for them.

Thorn in the flesh — an affliction Paul never names.

The Book in Brief

Paul writes with Timothy to the church in Corinth. He begins by blessing God, who comforts people in trouble, and tells of a danger in Asia that brought him close to death. He explains why he did not come to Corinth as planned. He did not want to come again in sorrow, so he wrote them a painful letter instead. He asks them now to forgive and comfort the man who caused the trouble. He tells how anxious he was when he did not find Titus at Troas, so that he went on to Macedonia.

In chapters 2 to 7 Paul describes his work as a servant of a new covenant. He and his companions are like clay jars, pressed on every side and not crushed. Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, and God has given them the work of reconciling. Paul begs the Corinthians to open their hearts to him. Chapter 7 returns to the story. Titus has come with good news, and Paul is full of joy that their sorrow led them to change.

Chapters 8 and 9 are about the collection for the poor believers in Jerusalem. Paul holds up the churches of Macedonia, who gave out of deep poverty, and the example of Christ, who became poor. He sends Titus and two other brothers to finish the collection, and asks the Corinthians to give freely and cheerfully.

Chapters 10 to 13 change tone. Paul defends himself against those who say he is weak in person and bold only in letters. He calls his rivals false apostles, boasts like a fool about his hardships, and tells of an escape from Damascus in a basket, a vision, and a thorn in the flesh that God would not remove. He warns that he is coming a third time, urges them to examine themselves, and closes with greetings and a blessing.

Between his first letter and this one, things in Corinth got worse. Rival preachers had arrived, more impressive than Paul, and the congregation was comparing. Paul made a painful visit. Then he wrote a furious letter.

For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears (2 Corinthians 2:4).

And then he worried that he had gone too far. For though I grieved you with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it (2 Corinthians 7:8).

I do not regret it, though I did regret it. That is not a saint carved in stone. That is a man who sent an angry message and lay awake.

A letter in pieces

Read 2 Corinthians straight through and you will notice something strange.

Chapters 1 to 9 are mostly warm and relieved. The crisis has passed. Paul is glad they responded well. Then chapter 10 begins, and the tone turns on a coin. Suddenly Paul is sarcastic, defensive and furious, boasting and mocking his rivals for four chapters, as if the crisis were at its height.

Many scholars think chapters 10 to 13 are part of a different letter, perhaps the letter of tears itself, or a letter written after this one when things went bad again. Chapters 8 and 9 both make the case for the same collection, as if they were once two separate notes. And a short passage in the middle, from 6:14 to 7:1, interrupts Paul’s plea to open their hearts and uses language Paul uses nowhere else, including the name Belial for the devil (2 Corinthians 6:15), which appears nowhere else in your New Testament.¹

Other scholars argue that it is all one letter, written by a man whose mood changed as he dictated. If the first group is right, what you hold is not a single letter as Paul sent it. Someone gathered Paul’s correspondence with Corinth and stitched what survived together.

Go deeperWhere the seams show

Scholars who divide the letter point to more than a change of mood. They look at how the story runs.

In chapter 2, Paul tells how he left Troas anxious because he had not found Titus, and went on to Macedonia (2 Corinthians 2:12–13). The very next verse begins a long passage about his work, which runs until 7:4. Then in chapter 7 the story picks up again: even when we had come into Macedonia, our flesh had no relief, and God comforted us by the coming of Titus (2 Corinthians 7:5–6).

Read the two parts side by side and the second follows the first. The long section between them looks as if it was dropped into the middle. Some scholars think an editor put it there. Others answer that a man dictating under strain can turn aside, and then come back to his story.

The manuscripts do not settle it. Every copy we have gives 2 Corinthians as one letter, including the earliest large collection of Paul’s letters, a papyrus from about the year 200. If the pieces were joined by an editor, he did it before any copy that survives.²

The rivals

Who were the rivals? Paul never names them. He calls them, with acid, the very best apostles (2 Corinthians 11:5; 12:11). The Greek means something like super-apostles.³

From his complaints, you can sketch them. They carried letters of commendation (2 Corinthians 3:1) from somewhere important. They were polished speakers. They accepted pay from the Corinthians. And they had told the Corinthians what they thought of Paul, because he quotes it: His letters, they say, are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech is despised (2 Corinthians 10:10).

That is the only description of Paul’s appearance in any letter. He wrote well and spoke badly, and they told him so.

Paul had refused to take money from Corinth. He worked with his hands and let other churches support him. I robbed other assemblies, taking wages from them that I might serve you (2 Corinthians 11:8). The rivals seem to have used that against him: a real apostle gets paid. Paul turned it around. He took nothing so that nobody could say he preached for money.

He was not gentle with the rivals. He called them false apostles, deceitful workers, and said that even Satan masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:13–14). The man who praised weakness was hard on the people who opposed him.

The fool’s boast

Then, in chapter 11, Paul does something remarkable. He agrees to boast, the way his rivals did, but he calls it foolishness, and he boasts about all the wrong things.

Five times I received forty stripes minus one from the Jews. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I suffered shipwreck. I have been a night and a day in the deep (2 Corinthians 11:24–25). Then a long list of perils, from rivers, robbers, his own people, Gentiles, cities and wilderness, in hunger and thirst … in cold and nakedness (2 Corinthians 11:26–27). And at the end, the thing that weighed on him most: anxiety for all the assemblies (2 Corinthians 11:28).

The forty stripes minus one was a punishment from the synagogue courts. The Law limited a flogging to forty lashes, and they stopped at thirty-nine to be sure of not going over (Deuteronomy 25:3). Paul took it five times. He was still going to synagogues, as a Jew among Jews, and still being punished as one.⁴

And then the climax of his boasting. Not a victory. An escape. In Damascus the governor under King Aretas guarded the Damascenes’ city, desiring to arrest me. I was let down in a basket through a window by the wall, and escaped his hands (2 Corinthians 11:32–33).

In Rome, one of the highest honors for a soldier was a crown given to the first man up the wall of an enemy city. Paul’s great boast is being the first man down a wall, in a basket, running away.⁵ He was mocking the whole idea of a résumé.

Go deeperHow people boasted in Paul’s day

Boasting was a public sport in Paul’s world. Roman leaders advertised what they had done. The emperor Augustus left a long account of his achievements, set up at his tomb in Rome and copied onto walls in cities of the provinces.⁶

Educated Greeks, though, thought open self-praise was bad manners. Plutarch, a Greek writer who wrote a generation or two after Paul, composed a whole essay on how to praise yourself without giving offense. His advice was that it is allowed when you are defending yourself against slander or setting right a false picture, and that you should hand the credit to God or to luck rather than to yourself.⁶

Paul’s fool’s speech follows that rule, and then turns it upside down. He says he is boasting only because the Corinthians forced him (2 Corinthians 12:11), and he calls himself a fool. But what he boasts about is beatings, shipwrecks and a flight in a basket.

There is another model behind his list. Stoic and Cynic teachers, the wandering philosophers of the day, listed their hardships to prove that nothing could break them. Paul’s list looks like theirs. His point is the opposite. His hardships do not show that he is strong. They show that the power at work in him is not his own.⁷

The thorn

Paul then tells of a man in Christ, fourteen years earlier, caught up into the third heaven, who heard unspeakable words (2 Corinthians 12:2–4). He is talking about himself, but he will not say so. He will not boast of it.

Instead, he tells them about something he could not get rid of. A thorn in the flesh was given to me: a messenger of Satan to torment me … Concerning this thing, I begged the Lord three times that it might depart from me (2 Corinthians 12:7–8).

Nobody knows what it was. People have guessed at an eye disease, epilepsy, migraines, a speech problem, malaria, depression, or a persistent opponent.⁸ Paul does not say. What he says is the answer he got: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). And his conclusion, which sums up this whole letter: For when I am weak, then am I strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Treasure in clay jars

The warmer chapters hold some of Paul’s most beautiful lines.

But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, yet not to despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; struck down, yet not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:7–9).

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses (2 Corinthians 5:19).

And a line every preacher and lawyer should keep on the wall: the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6).

So that there may be equality

Chapters 8 and 9 are about money, and they say more than most sermons on money ever repeat.

Paul was still collecting for the poor among my followers in Jerusalem. He tells the Corinthians how the churches of Macedonia, who were poor themselves, had given: their deep poverty abounded to the riches of their generosity (2 Corinthians 8:2).

Then he reminds them of me: though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

And then he says what the collection is for. For this is not that others may be eased and you distressed, but for equality. Your abundance at this present time supplies their lack, that their abundance also may become a supply for your lack; that there may be equality (2 Corinthians 8:13–14).

Equality. Paul says it twice. And he backs it with the story of the manna in the wilderness, where everyone gathered and, when it was measured, He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack (2 Corinthians 8:15; Exodus 16:18).

The next chapter gives you a verse you have probably heard at an offering: God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). It is often used to raise money for church buildings and salaries. In its place, it is about sending relief to the poor in another country, so that nobody has too much and nobody has too little.

Go deeperWhy Jerusalem needed help

Why did the believers in Jerusalem need money? Acts tells of a great famine in the days of Claudius, and says that the believers in Antioch sent relief to the brothers in Judea (Acts 11:28–30). Josephus, a Jewish historian, tells of the same hard years. He says that Queen Helena of Adiabene, a convert to Judaism, bought grain in Egypt and dried figs in Cyprus and had them handed out to the hungry in Jerusalem.⁹

The collection was also a promise. When the leaders in Jerusalem shook hands with Paul, they asked only that he remember the poor (Galatians 2:10).

Who were the poor? In Romans, Paul calls the money a contribution for the poor among the saints who are at Jerusalem (Romans 15:26). In 1921 a German scholar named Karl Holl argued that “the poor” was a title the Jerusalem church gave itself, and not a statement about money. Many scholars now doubt that. Paul’s words pick the poor out from the rest of the saints, which does not sound like a name for all of them.¹⁰

Acts says almost nothing about the collection. The only hint comes in Paul’s defense before the governor Felix, where he says he came to bring gifts for the needy to my nation (Acts 24:17). Acts never says how the money was received.

New covenant, old covenant

One more thing to notice in this letter. In chapter 3, Paul contrasts the new covenant he serves with the Law given to Moses, and speaks of the reading of the old covenant (2 Corinthians 3:14). This is the first time anyone in your Bible calls the scriptures of my people the old covenant.

Paul meant something specific: the old covenant was glorious, but its glory was fading, the way the shine faded from Moses’ face. Later Christians took his phrase and made it the name of the first part of their Bible. They called it the Old Testament, and too often treated it as old in the sense of finished, outgrown and replaced. Paul was a Jew who still took thirty-nine lashes in the synagogue. He was not finished with it.

Check It Yourself

Look up: 2 Corinthians 9:15 and then 2 Corinthians 10:1–2.

You will find: a warm close of thanks, and then, in the very next line, a sudden turn into anger.

Then read 2 Corinthians 8:13–15. Count how often Paul says equality.

The Short Version

• 2 Corinthians comes after a painful visit and a letter written with tears, and Paul is not sure he was right to send it.
• It may be several letters stitched together. The tone changes sharply at chapter 10.
• Paul’s rivals, the “super-apostles,” were impressive speakers who took pay. Paul boasts of his weaknesses instead, down to escaping in a basket.
• His thorn in the flesh is never named, and the answer he got was “my power is made perfect in weakness.”
• He says the collection for the poor was “for equality,” and quotes the manna: nobody had too much, nobody too little.