2 Corinthians 11:19-31

19 For you put up with fools gladly, since you yourselves are wise! 20 For you put up with it if
one brings you into bondage, if one devours you, if one takes from you, if one exalts himself, if
one strikes you on the face. 21 To our shame I say that we were too weak for that! But in
whatever anyone is boldI speak foolishlyI am bold also.

Suffering for Christ

22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So
am I. 23 Are they ministers of Christ?I speak as a foolI am more: in labors more abundant,
in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. 24 From the Jews five
times I received forty stripes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was
stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; 26 in
journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils
of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils
among false brethren; 27 in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings often, in cold and nakedness 28 besides the other things, what comes upon me daily:
my deep concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to
stumble, and I do not burn with indignation?

30 If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmity. 31 The God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying.

Our epistle lesson this morning comes from Pauls correspondence with the Corinthians. This
was a church that he had planted, but which had now come under the sway of false teachers
who claimed to be, not merely on the same level as Paul the apostle, but actually to be super-
apostles, whose message supplanted Pauls so that you should listen to them and not to him.

The apostle Paul entered the service of Jesus in a rather dramatic way. A recent internet meme
shows Caravaggios painting of him sprawled on the ground below his horse on the road to
Damascus, his hands stretched out to grope in the air before his blind eyes. And the caption
reads, So there I was on my way to kill Christianswhen I used my free will to become one.
Whether there is such a thing as free will or not, I will not say this morning. But from this point
on, Paul refers to himself as the prisoner of Jesus Christ and a slave of Christ Jesus. And his
ministry is marked by this ominous exchange in Acts 9 between the risen Lord Jesus and
another of His servants, Ananias. Jesus in a vision told Ananias to go to Paul and restore his
sight. Ananias replied:

Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in
Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.

But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before
Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer
for My names sake.

We ought to remember what Pauls qualifications were. He tells us that he was a Pharisee, and
that "I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more
exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
He was a pupil of Gamaliel, one of the most famous rabbis of the day, yes, the same Gamaliel
who stands up and settles a debate in the Sanhedrin in Acts 5. And Paul had learned well under
him; he shows in his letters the most profound and powerful skill in Israels Scriptures, an ability
to reason and write eloquently.

He had also done miracles: healed by mere touching; prophetically preserved the crew and
passengers of a shipwreck; struck the false prophet Elymas blind in front of the entire court of a
Roman governor; drove out a demon from a slave girl in Ephesus; raised from the dead a man
who had broken his neck falling out of an upper-story window; was bitten by a deadly snake and
suffered no harm; even handerchiefs and napkins that had touched him were able to heal the
sick. Yet Paul mentions none of these things.

This is a deliberate choice: His rhetoric is calculated to completely undercut the Super-Apostles.
They are slick speakers, skilled rhetoricians, impressive stage presences who have wowed the
Corinthians and hold them in thrall. Paul knows that if he pulled out his credentials, they could
pull out theirs. He is not the only well-trained rabbi in the world. And if he boasted of miracles,
well, remember that even Pharaohs magicians were able to run with Moses and Aaron and
duplicate the first three plagues. So he boasts of something that they will certainly not be able to
match: he boasts about his suffering. As John Chrysostom says:

Seest thou that he no where glorieth of miracles, but of his persecutions and his trials? For this
is meant by "weaknesses." ... on every side he found trouble and disturbance, from friends and
from strangers. This is the especial mark of an Apostle, by these things is the Gospel woven.

What Paul speaks of in his boasting to the Corinthians would have been utterly bewildering to
the ancient pagan world, especially for a church full of Greeks. The prevailing pagan view of the
good life was very nearly the opposite of what Paul had. Herodotus puts it in the mouth of the
ancient Athenian sage Solon:

[If a man be] sound of limb, free from disease, untouched by suffering, the father of fair children
and himself of comely form; and if in addition to this he shall end his life well, he is worthy to be
called that which thou seekest, namely a happy man

Notice that: a man "untouched by suffering" can be called "happy" eudaimn, blessed, a
possessor of the good life. Paul was none of these things. Sound of limb? Not a chance. Free
from disease? He probably had an eye problem that wouldn't go away, left over from when
Jesus struck him blind on the road to Damascus this was most likely his "thorn in the flesh"
that the Lord refused to take away from him. Untouched by suffering? With that many lashes,
and stoning, and near-drowning? Father of fair children? Paul had none, it seems, at least no
biological ones. He calls Timothy his true son but Timothy was not his offspring. "Himself of
comely form"? When he and Barnabas were mistaken for Greek gods at Lystra in Acts 14, it
was Barnabas whom people thought was Zeus; Paul must be the messenger god Hermes,
presumably because he did all the talking.

No, Paul does not meet the criteria for a happy life according to the Greeks. For the fact is, Paul
no longer values the things he used to value; rather, he boasts in his sufferings: he sees his
sufferings as precious and valuable because of what they mean for his future. We see him do
this again in Philippians 3:
though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence
in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin,
a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the
church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain
to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the
excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my
own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the
righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His
resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any
means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:4-11)

He counts his credentials rubbish and he suffers the loss of all things so that he may know
Christ and the fellowship of His sufferings, koinonia in the sufferings of Jesus. Sharing in
Jesus' sufferings is Paul's ultimate credential: it is what makes him most fully like Jesus, and is
a promise of our future glorification with Him. When Paul is in prison waiting for death, he writes
to Timothy that he is "being poured out as a drink offering" and "the time of my departure is at
hand." He exhorts Timothy to "endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist". He exhorts his
readers imitate me as I imitate Christ, and that involves suffering, for Hebrews 5 tells us that
Jesus learned obedience through suffering.

The second century bishop Melito of Sardis recognized this in one of his sermons on Jesus as
the passover lamb:

"When this one came from heaven to earth (, ) for

the sake of [Man] who suffers, and had clothed himself with that very one through the womb of a
virgin, and having come forth as man, he accepted the sufferings of the sufferer through his
body which was capable of suffering. This is the one who came to you (
), the one who healed your suffering ones and who resurrected your dead."

Melitos insight has been expanded by Richard Bauckham:

Not only the pre-existent and the exalted Jesus, but also the earthly, suffering, humiliated and
crucified Jesus belongs to the unique identity of God, then it had to be said that Jesus reveals
the divine identity - who God truly is - in humiliation as well as exaltation, and in the connection
of the two. God's own identity is revealed in Jesus, his life and his cross, just as truly as in his
exaltation, in a way that is fully continuous and consistent with the Old Testament and Jewish
understanding of God, but is also novel and surprising.

One evening this week, one of my children, who likes to ask the big questions before she goes
to bed, asked me what it means that God seeks His own glory, and whether that was really a
good thing:

I answered that if we want to know how God is glorified, we need to understand two things: first
is how the three persons of the Trinity seek each others glory, not each seeking his own, but the
Father seeking to glorify the Son, and the Son seeking to glorify the Father, and the Spirit
seeking the glory of the other two. So it is the farthest thing from selfishness.
Second, we must understand the connection between suffering and glory: Paul makes this most
plain in Philippians 2:

5Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, being in the form of God, did
not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7but poured himself out, taking the form of a
bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
9Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every
name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on
earth, and of those under the earth, 11and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Do not miss the point here: Philippians is quoting from Isaiah 53, the passage about the
suffering servant of YHWH. There the servant of YHWH is said to have poured out his soul
unto death and to have been brought low and oppressed and afflicted. But Paul then makes
the astonishing move: it is because of this suffering, therefore God has exalted him an
echo of Isaiah 52:13, part of the same passage about the suffering servant. And He has given
Him the name which is above every name and no Jew could hear those words without
knowing which name was meant: the tetragrammaton, the name of YHWH himself. Thus, for
Paul, the suffering of Jesus is proof of His inclusion in the identity of Israels God; and the
suffering of Paul is proof that he, and not the super-apostles, is truly an apostle, a
representative of this suffering Christ who represents Israels God.

Thus, Christianity alone has an answer to the problem of evil in the world: People ask, Why is
there evil in the world? The answer is not to limit God and explain that he doesnt have the
power to deal with evil, or to blaspheme his character and say that He doesnt care that there is
evil. For He does care. The Father cared enough to send His son and any earthly father who
has seen his own child suffering suffering physical harm or emotional anguish or sickness or
rejection or sin knows in some measure how the Father of Jesus was involved in His suffering.
And Jesus cares, enough to seek to glorify the Father by glorifying His church, and to do so by
suffering, as the author of Hebrews says:

For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many
sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

Thus, Jesus entered into our suffering our mental depression, our infirmities, the pains that
wrack our mortal bodies, the sins that others have committed against us and He bore it all, so
that He might glorify the Father by being faithful to His plan to save the world. And He passed
through death and out the other side. If He had not truly suffered as we suffer, He could not
have saved us and saved the world. And now we are called to manifest the same sort of life to
let this mind be in us which was also in Christ Jesus.

It is Pauls greatest achievement that he grasped this deep connection between sufferings and
glory. It is what sets him apart from the super-apostles as a true follower of Jesus Christ. May
the Lord give us His grace that we, in our several callings and sufferings, may take up our
crosses and follow Him.