Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Corinthians · About this commentary
A Different Jesus
2 Corinthians 11:1-6
1 I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness, but indeed you do bear with me. · WEB
Paul casts himself as the friend who arranged a betrothal, and the danger he names is deception of the mind rather than force.
I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness, but indeed you do bear with me.
The foolishness is announced in advance, and it runs for two chapters. He is about to do the thing he has just called senseless — boast by comparison — and he flags it so that nobody mistakes it for a change of principle.
The reason is stated as an emotion he does not apologize for: I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy.
And the image explains it: I promised you in marriage to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ. Paul is not the bridegroom. He is the friend who arranged the match and whose one remaining duty is to deliver the bride intact on the day. That role has no authority over her and total responsibility for her — which is exactly the position the letter has been describing 2 Corinthians 1:24.
Verse 3 names the risk, and the precedent chosen is the oldest one available: as the serpent deceived Eve in his craftiness, so your minds might be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
The comparison is careful. Eve was not overpowered; she was persuaded, by a craftiness that made a worse option look better. So the threat to Corinth is not persecution but plausibility, and its target is your minds — which is why the campaign of the previous chapter was against arguments 2 Corinthians 10:5.
What could arrive is then listed in three parts: another Jesus whom we didn't preach, a different spirit, a different "good news". And the sting is in the verdict on their hospitality: you put up with that well enough. They had tolerance available; it was simply pointed the wrong way.
Verse 5 states his claim at its minimum: I am not at all behind the very best apostles. Not ahead. Level.
And verse 6 concedes the charge from the previous chapter without a fight: though I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not unskilled in knowledge. He grants that his delivery is poor. What he refuses to grant is that delivery is the thing being tested, and the alternative he offers is not eloquence but disclosure — in every way we have been revealed to you in all things.
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