AP

2 Corinthians 11:18-21a   Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast.  You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise!  In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs or slaps you in the face.  To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!

When I read words like this I realise how difficult and gut-wrenching it must have been for Paul to write this letter.  Not only was he, a Pharisee, trained by wise Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), and therefore extremely well-versed in the Hebrew Scriptures (OT), but he had received a powerful vision from the Lord God himself, in which he “was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell” (2 Corinthians 12:4), and that equipped him to proclaim the truth of the Gospel so effectively and fruitfully.  Imagine a humble, God-fearing man like Paul having to deal with a band of proud, self-opinionated Corinthians steeped in Greek culture which prided itself in worldly ‘wisdom’ (1 Corinthians 1:22), and vying with each other for prominence and recognition in the Church!

Whenever accepted worldly ‘wisdom’ is confronted by the claims of the Gospel, the ‘foolishness of Christ crucified’, it reacts in the same way that many of the leaders in the Church at Corinth reacted to Paul.  Sadly, our own Western culture, that once generally acknowledged that God the Creator has revealed himself clearly, not only in creation itself, but in his written, inspired, infallibe Word the Bible, and in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, has now rejected this God and, like ancient Corinth, follows the path of worldly wisdom, which it defiantly calls ‘humanism’.  And, even more sadly, many world leaders are fitting Paul’s description of the influencers at Corinth.

So, like the apostle Paul, we might feel ‘weak’ and ‘foolish’ in the face of this advancing self-confident, ‘boastful’ culture.  Nevertheless, let us, like Paul, continue to ‘boast’ in the Cross of Christ in spite of the arrogant, mocking, dismissive reaction we get, because, as he reminded the Church in Rome: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile” (Romans 1:16).

 “When I survey the wondrous Cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count as loss and pour contempt on all my pride.  Forbid it Lord, that I should boast, save in the Cross of Christ, my God; all the vain things that charm me most – I sacrifice them to his blood.  See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down.  Did e’er such love and sorrow meet or thorns compose so rich a crown!  Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an off’ring far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”  (Isaac Watts) 

 – Bruce Christian