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Once more, let me advise you not to look upon me as a fool. Yet if you do, then listen to what this “fool” has to boast about.

I am not now speaking as the Lord commands me but as a fool who must be “in on” this business of boasting. Since all the others are so proud of themselves, let me do a little boasting as well. From your heights of superior wisdom I am sure you can smile tolerantly on a fool. Oh, you’re tolerant all right! You don’t mind, do you, if a man takes away your liberty, spends your money, makes a fool of you or even smacks your face? I am almost ashamed to say that I never did brave strong things like that to you. Yet in whatever particular they enjoy such confidence I (speaking as a fool, remember) have just as much confidence.

The last four chapters of 2 Corinthians have a different feel to the rest of the letter, and they are not always easy to understand. But it’s important to remember that one of Satan’s chief tactics is to attack and oppose the message of the gospel by slandering the messengers. In this letter Paul feels that he has to defend himself against his critics, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the gospel. This is not about self-interest. But where his ministry and motives are impugned, he feels he must give an answer. As we’ve already seen, Paul’s boasting, unlike that of the windbag false apostles, is counter-cultural. It’s a boasting about what the Lord has done through him, and through his weakness – and everything he says is true. He certainly never exploited them as the false teachers did, but it seems the Corinthians didn’t see it that way.

And I’m not changing my position on this. I’d die before taking your money. I’m giving nobody grounds for lumping me in with those money-grubbing “preachers,” vaunting themselves as something special. They’re a sorry bunch—pseudo-apostles, lying preachers, crooked workers—posing as Christ’s agents but sham to the core. And no wonder! Satan does it all the time, dressing up as a beautiful angel of light. So it shouldn’t surprise us when his servants masquerade as servants of God. But they’re not getting by with anything. They’ll pay for it in the end. The Message

When you lay a trap to catch a rodent, you will probably put something tasty in there alongside the poison: something that will appeal to them like chocolate spread (or peanut butter).

We would not be deceived if there were not something attractive, appealing – in some way or other and for some reason or other – in the deception. We are drawn to what we perceive to be beauty. We like the taste of ‘chocolate spread’. We do need God-given eyes to be able to see through ‘charismatic’, maybe also good-looking preachers, who are exciting in their presentational styles, but who are peddling lies. As David Pawson observed, it is not about the manner of their preaching, but its matter. What are they actually saying? Is it Biblical? Is it true? We cannot over-emphasise the need to test all things by Scripture. Let’s be Bereans!

”Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Acts 17:11

Watch out for that chocolate spread.

 You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus…NLT

Here is a glaring reason why we ”happily” put up with false teaching – if indeed we do. It appeals to the sinful nature. Time and again it tells us that wrong is right, and darkness is light (see Isaiah 5:20), and that’s okay with us, because we prefer our sin to repentance.

But although it may make us happy in the short term, we are deluded. It is the pathway to long term ruin.

So check everything with Scripture. If we are being told something different to what the Bible clearly says, why do we tolerate it? Why put up with it?

Why swallow spiritual poison?

I hope you will put up with a little more of my foolishness. Please bear with me. ² For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride to one husband—Christ. ³ But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. ⁴ You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed. NLT

Some people are charmed by novelty and are forever seeking it out. But ”different” is not always better – or true! A sure way to have your heart stolen away is by opening your mind to ”different” teaching that does not tally with what the Bible actually says. God’s Word must always be the touchstone whereby we test all things. The difference may be subtle. On occasions we may simply ‘smell’ that something is awry, without being able to put our finger on what is wrong – at least not initially.

‘The problem is that they are talking glibly about Jesus; they are claiming the power of the spirit; they are enthusiastic about the gospel – but there is a subtle and all important difference between their Jesus, their gospel, and the true one. The true Jesus was the one who suffered unspeakably. The true spirit is the one who groans within the suffering of the world (Romans 8.18-27). The true gospel is the message of the crucified Lord. And the teachers who have come to Corinth after Paul left have been quietly toning down this hard, rough edge of the gospel. It doesn’t fit with their social and cultural aspirations. It doesn’t sound so good in terms of rhetorical style. In particular, it doesn’t give them the reputation and status they are hoping for. If you really believe in the suffering Messiah, and pattern your life accordingly, they think, you might end up looking like…yes. Like Paul. And that’s what they don’t want.’ Tom Wright.

 I hope you will put up with a little more of my foolishness. Please bear with me. ² For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride to one husband—Christ. ³ But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. NLT

The old ‘’serpent’’, the devil, who deceived Eve in the garden of Eden, still slithers in and out of churches today, endeavouring to capture the minds and hearts of believers. The way to get to the heart is via the mind, and the frequency of the warnings about deception in the New Testament, should alert us to its ever-present possibility. We must guard our minds.

Jewish marriages tended to be arranged. Paul pictures himself as the father of the bride. He has promised her (the Corinthians) to Christ, but fears she (they) might now be seduced by another. The wider context suggests that, although he has feared this, he doesn’t now think it will happen. Nevertheless, he issues the warning.

The serpent is subtle. He has been employing the tactics he used in ‘the garden’ for centuries – with great success. So there is no room for complacency. We must be wary and alert lest our minds should also be captivated, and captured, by the lure of false teaching.

‘’ He wrote in the previous chapter that his weapons were not of the flesh, but carried divine power to destroy the strongholds of a spiritual enemy doing battle for the thoughts and minds of believers (2 Corinthians 10:4–6).’’ (From ‘Bible Ref’ website).

 Nor do we boast and claim credit for the work someone else has done. Instead, we hope that your faith will grow so that the boundaries of our work among you will be extended. ¹⁶ Then we will be able to go and preach the Good News in other places far beyond you, where no one else is working. Then there will be no question of our boasting about work done in someone else’s territory. ¹⁷ As the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.”

When people commend themselves, it doesn’t count for much. The important thing is for the Lord to commend them. NLT

We’re not barging in on the rightful work of others, interfering with their ministries, demanding a place in the sun with them. What we’re hoping for is that as your lives grow in faith, you’ll play a part within our expanding work. And we’ll all still be within the limits God sets as we proclaim the Message in countries beyond Corinth. But we have no intention of moving in on what others have done and taking credit for it. “If you want to claim credit, claim it for God.” What you say about yourself means nothing in God’s work. It’s what God says about you that makes the difference. The Message

When Paul wanted to be acknowledged as the founder of the church in Corinth, it was for sound pastoral and practical reasons. His God-given calling meant that he still had apostolic authority among them (even though this was being questioned, and undermined by certain others).

Note that he also cherished a vision that he and the Corinthians might ‘team up’ on a missionary project, and use Corinth as a launch pad to go to unreached regions beyond. But all the time, Paul would still be working within his remit, and not straying into the ministry territories given to others.

However it’s important to grasp that in none of this was Paul ‘boasting’ in a conventional sense. Whatever God had used him to do, it was God who had done it through Him. So his ‘’boast’’ was in the Lord.

‘What it all comes down to is the true nature of the Christian ‘boast’: anyone who boasts should boast in the Lord! He’s already quoted this (it comes from Jeremiah 9.23) in the first letter to Corinth (1.31), where it stood as a sign that all the different things the church might want to boast of, not least its social and cultural advancement through teachers with more rhetoric than substance, had to be subjected to the humiliation of the cross. Now he quotes it again with a similar though slightly different aim. He wants to warn the church against those who ‘commend’ themselves, but are not commended by the Lord; and he wants to prepare the way for one of his own most powerful pieces of writing, the ‘boasting’ in chapter 11 which will show them, once and for all, what it means to have one’s whole life reshaped around the Messiah and his cross. Is it boasting you want? he asks. Then boasting you shall have; but don’t expect it to look like what you imagined. ‘In the Lord’, after all, everything has been turned upside down and inside out. That’s what must happen to boasting as well.’ Tom Wright

We will not boast about things done outside our area of authority. We will boast only about what has happened within the boundaries of the work God has given us, which includes our working with you. ¹⁴ We are not reaching beyond these boundaries when we claim authority over you, as if we had never visited you. For we were the first to travel all the way to Corinth with the Good News of Christ.

Nor do we boast and claim credit for the work someone else has done. NLT

In Christian work it is important, I believe, to have a sense of the sphere (or spheres) to which God has called you. No-one can be everywhere and do everything. Paul was aware that Corinth was a part of his calling, and although there were teachers who were seeking to wean the Corinthians off their loyalty to Paul, he asserted that he still had apostolic authority in the church by virtue of the territory God had given him. He was not over-stepping God-appointed boundaries.

‘Founding the church in Corinth was part of the job God gave Paul to do…If there’s any measuring to be done, any assessment of who’s who in the story of the Corinthian church, you simply can’t take it away from Paul: he was the one who went there and announced the good news of the Messiah. Whatever else has happened since, that’s what he did; it was his commission that he should do so; and (he implies) the fact that there’s a church there to this day is testimony to the fact that the Lord has commended him for doing it…What he is most concerned about…is that he shouldn’t be thought to be poaching on someone else’s patch, and that other people shouldn’t claim to have the status of ‘founding apostle’ on territory that God had given to him.’ Tom Wright.

It is important to say that, in all of this, Paul isn’t boasting, as we will see next time. But there is a legitimate desire for people to recognise his God-given role in the founding of the church at Corinth – and its ongoing implications.

We aren’t making outrageous claims here. We’re sticking to the limits of what God has set for us. But there can be no question that those limits reach to and include you. We’re not moving into someone else’s “territory.” We were already there with you, weren’t we? We were the first ones to get there with the Message of Christ, right? So how can there be any question of overstepping our bounds by writing or visiting you?

We’re not barging in on the rightful work of others, interfering with their ministries, demanding a place in the sun with them. The Message

Oh, don’t worry; we wouldn’t dare say that we are as wonderful as these other men who tell you how important they are! But they are only comparing themselves with each other, using themselves as the standard of measurement. How ignorant! NLT

In Romans 12:3 Paul writes:

”For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment…”

However, In Corinth, he was being undermined by some self-important critics. They felt vastly superior to Paul. At least, they gave that impression.

Comparisons can be odious. When we compare ourselves with others we face at least two dangers:

a.) That of feeling inferior. They are so much more better than us, we imagine: more gifted, more able more…everything really!! (This can also feed poisonous weeds of jealousy in the soil of our hearts, causing them to grow and gain a stranglehold);

b.) That of feeling superior. Inwardly, we look down on others from a great height. We may successfully hide these attitudes from them, but we can never hide from God.

‘…if three small people stand side by side, they can convince themselves that they are all really quite tall – until a really tall person comes into the room. Or, again, I might imagine to myself that I am really seven feet tall; but if there’s a rule on the wall that I can measure myself by, an objective standard, marked out in feet and inches (or metres and centimetres), I will soon learn my mistake.’ Tom Wright

Similarly, I may think that I am very good at a particular sport – say badminton, for example. But then I get to play a true pro, and that puts me firmly in my place. The benchmark shows how low my level actually is.

‘There is only one measurement, one standard, by which we should measure ourselves; and that is the standard of Jesus Christ. Only when we compare ourselves with Christ will we be able to measure ourselves accurately. And when we compare ourselves with Christ, how unworthy we appear!’ Tom Hale

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