2 Corinthians — Chapter 10

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Macedonia in about AD 55–56. Chapters 1–9 end on a warm note: the church has largely repented, Titus has brought good news, and Paul has made his appeal for the Jerusalem collection. Then at 10:1 the tone changes sharply. The joy and relief give way to sarcasm, warnings, self-defense and some of the most heated lines Paul ever wrote. Faithful scholars explain the shift in different ways. Some think chapters 10–13 were once a separate letter, perhaps the "severe letter" written "with many tears" (2:4), later copied together with chapters 1–9. Others think they are a later letter, sent after fresh trouble broke out. Many hold that the whole of 2 Corinthians is one letter, and that Paul turns here from the repentant majority to a stubborn minority and the outsiders leading them, or that new reports reached him before he finished writing. No manuscript of 2 Corinthians lacks these chapters or places them elsewhere. Whatever the history, the target is clear. Rival teachers had come to Corinth, Jewish Christians (11:22) with letters of recommendation (3:1), polished speech and a commanding style. They questioned whether Paul was a real apostle at all. Paul will call them, with bite, the "super-apostles" (11:5; 12:11), and later "false apostles" (11:13). Chapters 10–13 are his answer, and chapter 10 lays out the ground rules: how real spiritual authority works and how it should be measured.

Paul Defends His Ministry (vv1–18)

• "I, Paul, myself entreat you" (v1). The emphatic opening is unusual. Timothy is named as co-sender of the letter (1:1), and much of chapters 1–9 says "we." Here Paul steps forward alone, because it is his own apostleship under attack.
• "By the meekness and gentleness of Christ" (v1). He does not appeal by his rank but by Jesus' character. "Meekness" (praütēs) is strength under control, the opposite of harshness. "Gentleness" (epieikeia) means fairness and moderation, not insisting on one's full rights. The Victorian poet Matthew Arnold rendered it "sweet reasonableness." Jesus called himself "gentle and lowly in heart" (Matt 11:29). Paul is about to speak very firmly, and he wants it heard in that spirit.
• "Humble when face to face with you, but bold… when I am away" (v1). Paul is quoting his critics. "Humble" is tapeinos, "lowly." In ordinary Greek it was usually an insult, meaning servile or cringing, and that is how his opponents meant it: a man who writes tough letters but caves in person. In the New Testament the same word is a virtue, the word Jesus used of himself (Matt 11:29). Paul takes their sneer and lets it stand, because lowliness is exactly what he learned from Christ.
• "Some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh" (v2). "The flesh" here means mere human motives and methods. The charge seems to have been that Paul was driven by self-interest: changing plans when it suited him (1:17), avoiding confrontation, playing to his audience. He begs them to put things right before he arrives, so that he does not have to show the boldness they doubt he has.
• "Though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh" (v3). A play on the word. Paul admits he lives an ordinary, weak human life ("in the flesh"). He denies that he fights with human tools ("according to the flesh").
• "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh" (v4). The weapons of the flesh were the very things the rivals prized: impressive presence, clever rhetoric, self-promotion, pressure. Paul's weapons are the ones listed in 6:7: "the word of truth, the power of God… the weapons of righteousness." Compare the armor of God in Ephesians 6:10–18, where the only offensive weapon is "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."
• "Divine power to destroy strongholds" (v4). "Stronghold" is ochyrōma, a fortress. The Greek Old Testament uses the same word in Proverbs 21:22: "A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the stronghold in which they trust." Paul came from Cilicia, where about a century earlier Rome had fought a long campaign against pirates who held out in fortified hilltop strongholds. The picture is a siege: walls torn down, defenders led away.
• "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion" (v5). The strongholds are defined right away, and they are ideas. "Arguments" is logismos, reasonings or calculations. "Lofty opinion" is literally anything raised high, like a tower, "against the knowledge of God." In Corinth this meant above all the worldly wisdom Paul had already confronted (1 Cor 1:18–25): a way of thinking that judged by status, eloquence and power, and so found a crucified Messiah and a weak apostle foolish.
• "Take every thought captive to obey Christ" (v5). "Take captive" (aichmalōtizō) is a war word, to lead away a prisoner. "Thought" (noēma) can mean a thought, a plan or a scheme. Paul uses the same word for Satan's "designs" (2:11) and for minds the god of this world has blinded (4:4). In context Paul is speaking first of his own ministry: he dismantles false ideas in the church and brings the thinking behind them under Christ's rule. The principle reaches every believer's inner life too, as Romans 12:2 says: "be transformed by the renewal of your mind."
• "Ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete" (v6). Paul will deal with the troublemakers, but only after the church as a whole has fully come back to obedience. He does not want to swing a hammer while the loyal and the rebellious are still mixed together. Discipline waits for the church to be on the right side first.
• "Look at what is before your eyes" (v7). The Greek can be read three ways: as a command ("look at the facts"), a statement ("you are looking at the surface of things," as the KJV takes it), or a question ("are you looking only at appearances?"). All three make the same point. The Corinthians were judging by what impressed the eye.
• "If anyone is confident that he is Christ's" (v7). The rivals seem to have claimed a special connection to Christ, perhaps through Jerusalem or the original apostles, and there was already a party in Corinth calling itself "of Christ" (1 Cor 1:12). Paul does not deny their claim here. He simply insists that whatever they claim, he can claim too.
• "Our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you" (v8). This is the key to the chapter. Paul does have real authority, and he is not embarrassed by it. But its purpose is construction, not demolition. He tears down false ideas (vv4–5) so that people can be built up, and never tears down people to build himself up. He repeats the line almost word for word at the end of the letter (13:10), and the language echoes God's call to Jeremiah "to build and to plant" (Jer 1:10).
• "His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak" (v10). The critics' slogan. "Letters" is plural, so they had more than one to point to, likely 1 Corinthians and the severe letter (2:4). "Bodily presence weak" may refer to his appearance, his health, or simply his manner. A second-century work, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, describes him as short and balding, bow-legged, with eyebrows that met and a hooked nose, and yet at times with the face of an angel. It is not Scripture, and no one can say how accurate it is, but it may preserve an early memory. Paul himself says he first came to Corinth "in weakness and in fear and much trembling" (1 Cor 2:3) and calls himself "unskilled in speaking" (11:6). In a city that loved polished orators, that counted against him.
• "What we say by letter when absent, we do when present" (v11). Paul is not two people. The man on paper and the man in the room are the same, and if they need firmness, they will see it.
• "Classify or compare ourselves" (v12). Paul's irony is sharp here. The two verbs, enkrinō ("class among") and synkrinō ("compare with"), sound alike, a wordplay that is hard to carry into English. Paul says, in effect, "I wouldn't dare put myself in the same league as these impressive people." He means the opposite.
• "They measure themselves by one another" (v12). The rivals had made themselves the yardstick. They praised one another, judged by their own standard, and naturally came out well. Paul calls that "without understanding." A ruler that measures itself always comes out exactly right. A small number of early manuscripts, mostly from the Western tradition, lack the words "they are without understanding. But we," which changes the sense slightly, so that Paul seems to say he measures himself by himself. Nearly all modern translations keep the longer reading, which has much stronger support.
• "The area of influence God assigned to us" (v13). The word is kanōn, from a word for a reed or measuring rod. It came to mean a rule or standard (Gal 6:16), and here a measured-out area or sphere. Later the church used the same word for the "canon" of Scripture, the books measured as authoritative. Paul's point is that God had marked out his field of work, and Corinth was inside it. Jerusalem had agreed that Paul would go to the Gentiles (Gal 2:7–9).
• "We were the first to come all the way to you" (v14). Paul founded the church at Corinth, staying eighteen months (Acts 18:1–11). The rivals arrived later and were now claiming credit and control in a church they did not plant. Paul's settled practice was the reverse: "I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation" (Rom 15:20).
• "That we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you" (vv15–16). Paul's plan is not to stay and dominate Corinth. Once their faith is steady, he wants them to be a base for going farther west. A year or so later he writes to Rome that he hopes to go on to Spain (Rom 15:24, 28). A settled church frees its planter to move on.
• "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord" (v17). A summary of Jeremiah 9:23–24, which Paul also used in 1 Corinthians 1:31. In Jeremiah the wise man, the mighty man and the rich man are told not to boast in wisdom, strength or riches, but in knowing the LORD. Those were exactly the things the Corinthians admired in the rivals.
• "Not the one who commends himself… but the one whom the Lord commends" (v18). "Approved" is dokimos, used of metal that has been tested and found genuine. Self-praise proves nothing. What counts is the Lord's verdict, which Paul has already said will be given at "the judgment seat of Christ" (5:10). This sets up the strange boasting of chapters 11–12, where Paul boasts only of weakness.
• Commentators: On the change of tone, Guzik thinks the theory that chapters 10–13 were a separate letter is unlikely, and simply reads Paul as moving from the collection to the challenge he had held back. JFB reads "base among you" (KJV for v1) as an "ironical concession," meaning "am reputed to be," and divides v5 into three steps: the gospel "demolishes what is opposed to Christ," "leads captive," and "brings into obedience to Christ." It rightly says "imaginations" (KJV) should be "reasonings," which the lexicon supports for logismos. Guzik applies "every thought captive" broadly, to lust, anger, fear and greed. He reasons that a believer's thoughts belong to Christ as much as the rest of life does. Henry stresses that the gospel's weapons do not coerce: "Outward force is not the method of the gospel." On v7 he adds that "there is room in Christ for many," and on v8 that building up is "the end of all authority," in church and state alike. On v12, JFB has the memorable line "The one-eyed is easily king among the blind," while Henry observes that people who measure themselves only by one another never meet anyone who surpasses them, and so grow proud. Guzik explains kanōn with the picture of lanes marked out on a track, fitting for a city that hosted the Isthmian Games. JFB sees the Lord's commendation in v18 in Paul's converts themselves, his living letter of recommendation (3:2–3).

Pointing to Christ

Paul's whole defense rests on the "meekness and gentleness of Christ" (v1). Jesus held all authority and used it to build, not to crush. He looked weak to the world, came without outward majesty (Isa 53:2), and won his victory not with the weapons of the flesh but through a cross. The rivals in Corinth wanted an apostle who looked strong. Paul points them to a Lord whose power was made known in apparent weakness, and whose approval is the only one that finally counts.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines spiritual warfare, the weapons of the mind, Paul's defense against critics, and the danger of self-comparison.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 2 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Weapons That Aren't Human (v.4) — Paul says his weapons for spiritual battle are not human ones but are made powerful through God to tear down strongholds. Are you trying to fight spiritual battles with merely human strategies instead of prayer and truth?
• Taking Every Thought Captive (v.5) — Paul describes demolishing arguments and taking every thought captive to obey Christ. What thoughts are you letting run unchallenged that need to be brought under Christ's authority?
• The Trap of Self-Comparison (v.12) — Paul says those who measure themselves only against themselves lack understanding. Where are you comparing yourself to others in a way that breeds pride or discouragement instead of looking to Christ as the standard?
• Seeking the Lord's Approval, Not Your Own (v.18) — Paul says it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one the Lord commends. Whose approval are you actually chasing day to day?