고린도후서 11

Paul and the false apostles

¹I wish you would put up with a little foolishness from me. Yes, do bear with me.^{a 2}My jealousy for you is the jealousy of God himself. I have pledged you in marriage to one husband: I mean to bring you to Christ as a pure virgin bride. ³Yet I fear that, in the way the serpent’s cunning tricked Eve, your minds may somehow be spoiled and turned away from simple, pure loyalty to Christ.^{b 4}When anyone turns up and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or you take in a spirit unlike the one you received, or a gospel unlike the one you welcomed, you tolerate it splendidly!^{c 5}I count myself not one bit behind the super-apostles.^{d 6}Even if I am untrained in speaking, I am not so in knowledge. We have shown you that plainly, in every way and in all things.

⁷Or was it a sin on my part to lower myself so that you could be lifted up, by proclaiming God’s gospel to you without charging you anything? ⁸I plundered other churches, accepting pay from them so that I could serve you. ⁹And while I was there with you and ran short, I was a weight on no one, for the brothers who came from Macedonia made up what I lacked. In every way I have made sure I cost you nothing, and I will keep it that way. ¹⁰I declare by the truth of Christ that is in me: this boast of mine will not be silenced anywhere in the districts of Achaia. ¹¹Why so? Because I do not love you? God knows I do!

¹²And I will go on doing what I am doing, to deny an opening to those who look for one: an opening to boast that they are on the same footing as we are.^{e 13}People like that are false apostles and dishonest workers, passing themselves off as apostles of Christ. ¹⁴No surprise there: Satan himself passes himself off as an angel of light. ¹⁵So it is no great thing if his servants also pass themselves off as servants of righteousness. Their end will match what they have done.

Paul boasts like a fool

¹⁶Once more I say it: nobody should think I am a fool. Otherwise, welcome me even as a fool, so that I can boast a little too. ¹⁷What I say with this confidence in boasting is not said in the Lord’s way, but as it were in foolishness. ¹⁸Since many are boasting by merely human standards, I will boast too. ¹⁹You are wise people, after all, and so you happily bear with fools! ²⁰Indeed you put up with it if someone holds you in bondage, if someone eats you up, if someone takes you in, if someone lords it over you, if someone hits you in the face. ²¹I must say, to our shame, that we have been far too weak to act like that! But whatever anyone else dares to boast of (I am talking in foolishness), I dare to boast of it too. ²²Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. ²³Are they servants of Christ? I am talking as if I had lost my mind, but I am a better one: with far more labors, far more imprisonments, beatings past counting, and brushes with death again and again. ²⁴Five times the Jewish authorities gave me the forty lashes less one. ²⁵Three times I was flogged with rods; once I was stoned; three times my ship was wrecked; a night and a day I have spent out on the deep. ²⁶Again and again I have been on the road, facing dangers from rivers, dangers from bandits, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the open country, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers and sisters; ²⁷in labor and weariness, many nights without sleep, in hunger and thirst, many days going without food, in cold and with too little to wear.^{f 28}And apart from all these other things, there is what presses on me day after day: my anxious care for all the churches.^{g 29}Is anyone weak without my feeling weak as well? Is anyone made to fall without my burning inside?^{h 30}If boast I must, my boasting will be about the things that belong to my weakness. ³¹The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, the one who is blessed for all ages, knows that what I say is no lie. ³²In Damascus, the ruler appointed by King Aretas set a watch on the city of the Damascenes to catch me. ³³But I was let down through an opening in the wall in a rope basket, and I escaped from his grasp.