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Author
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Topic: Man could that Paul boast
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epouraniois
unregistered
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posted
Paul is talking about people in the church because they thought they had things therein with which they could boast.
Now it is true that at the churches, in those days, there were fleshly distinctions. Now that’s not so in God’s invisible “church which is His body”, which is “far above all”, but it was true where Paul was teaching. As long as there was that visible church, there were those fleshly distinctions. And there was a very special distinction between the Jew and the Gentile. Paul is speaking to those who might have things to boast, and he says:
2Co 11:23
Are they ministers of Christ?
I (speak as a fool)
I am more;
in labors more abundant,
in stripes above measure,
in prisons more frequent,
in deaths oft.
Did you catch that? Paul has died more that once, even “oft”.
2Co 11:24
Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. [39 stripes]
2Co 11:25
Thrice was I beaten with rods,
once was I stoned,
thrice I suffered shipwreck,
a night and a day I have been in the deep;
2Co 11:26
In journeyings often,
in perils of waters,
in perils of robbers,
in perils by mine own countrymen,
in perils by the heathen,
in perils in the city,
in perils in the wilderness,
in perils in the sea,
in perils among false brethren;
2Co 11:27
In weariness and painfulness,
in watchings often,
in hunger and thirst,
in fastings often,
in cold and nakedness.
2Co 11:28
Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.
Paul is not boasting here, he states he is simply speaking as a fool. Paul was saying that if there were men here that would boast, he could boast. And so he just mentions some of the things he’d been through. He doesn’t ask for any sympathy, he doesn’t ask for help, he wasn’t taking up a collection or anything.
He was just defending his apostleship to the Jews, and showing that he has lived as he had preached.
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