(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
Paul’s Further Defense
- O, I wish you were bearing with me in a little foolishness; and yet you do bear with me.
- For I’m jealous over you with a godly jealousy. For I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to the Anointed.
- But I fear, lest somehow – as the serpent in his cunning thoroughly deceived Eve – your minds might be ruinously corrupted away from the simplicity and the purity in the Anointed.
- For indeed, if a man coming preaches another Jesus whom we didn’t preach; or you receive a different spirit which you didn’t receive, or a different gospel which you didn’t accept; you bear with it well.
- For I think to have fallen short in nothing compared to these ‘super apostles’.
- But even if I’m unskilled in speech, yet I’m not in knowledge. But we made this clear to you in every way in all things.
- Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so you might be exalted? (Because I preached the gospel of God to you freely.)
- I robbed other churches, having accepted provisions from them for my service to you.
- And while being present with you and being in need I didn’t burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. And in everything I kept – and will keep – myself not burdensome to you.
- The truth of the Anointed is in me, so this boast of mine won’t be stopped in the regions of Achaia.
- Why? Because I don’t ^love you? God *knows I do!
- But what I do – and will do – I do so I might cut off the opportunity of the men desiring an opportunity to be found just as we also are in what they boast about.
- For such men are false apostles; treacherous workers disguising themselves as apostles of the Anointed.
- And no wonder, for Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light.
- Therefore, it’s no great surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.
Paul’s Sarcastic and “Foolish” Boasting
- Again I say: no one should think me to be foolish. But even if I’m otherwise, receive me like a foolish man so I also might boast a little.
- What I say in this confident boasting I don’t say according to the Lord, but like in foolishness.
- Since many boast according to the flesh, I also will boast.
- For being wise, you gladly tolerate foolish men.
- For you tolerate it if someone enslaves you, if someone devours you, if someone takes from you, if someone exalts himself, if someone hits your face.
- I speak in shame because it’s like we have been weak. But in whatever someone might dare (I speak in foolishness) I also dare.
- Are they Hebrews? I am too. Are they Israelites? I am too. Are they Abraham’s seed? I am too.
- Are they servants of the Anointed? I am more so. (I speak like I’m insane) In abundant labors, in abundant imprisonments, in wounds beyond measure, and often in danger of various deaths.
- I received forty lashes minus one from the Jews five times.
- Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I shipwrecked; I have spent a night and a day in the deep sea.
- I’m on frequent journeys, in danger of rivers, in danger of robbers, in danger from my nation, in danger from the gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the wilderness, in danger at sea, in danger among false brothers,
- In hard labor and exhausting work, in frequent sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, in frequent fasts; and in the cold and nakedness.
- Apart from external things, there’s the pressure of my daily concern for all the churches.
- Who’s weak and I’m not weak? Who’s ensnared by sin and I’m not burned?
- If I must boast, I will boast of things showing my weakness.
- The God and Father of the Lord Jesus (the One who is blessed through the ages) *knows that I’m not lying.
- In Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the Damascenes’ city to arrest me.
- And I was lowered in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.
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