2 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 11
The True Apostle and the False Teachers. 2 Cor. 11, 1–15.
Paul is not inferior to the “great apostles”: V.5. For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles. V.6. But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been throughly made manifest among you in all things.
The apostle here proceeds to take up the reasons why his apostolic authority was being questioned by the false teachers, namely, that he was not a trained orator, and that he had not claimed support from the congregation at Corinth. With biting sarcasm he writes: I think that in not one whit have I been behind the very superior, these superfine apostles.
The false teachers not only claimed apostolic rank, but attached an extravagant importance to their persons and rights. The longer he considers the matter, Paul declares with another ironical thrust, the more he is convinced that his apostolic authority was fully on a level with that claimed by these false teachers.
Taking up, now, the first charge, that he is rude, bungling, uneducated, uneloquent in speech, that he lacks professional training, he lets that stand; it is true, he speaks in plain, unadorned phrase, he does not strive after polished elegance of expression, which appeals more by the sound than by reason of its content. But he maintains that he is not rude, unlearned, in his knowledge and understanding of divine things, of the sound truths of the Gospel. As a matter of fact, Paul was a forceful speaker, Acts 19, 12; 22, 1; 24, 10; 26, 2; but he purposely avoided the glittering methods of the professional speakers.
And this method of his had been effective, as is proved by the fact that in everything he has made the knowledge of God and spiritual things manifest among all men toward the Corinthians, or, by a slightly different construction: He and his fellow-workers have been everywhere made manifest as such that know the truth of God.