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witnesses", he cries, "and God also, how holily, and justly and unblameably we behaved
ourselves among you that believe" (2: 7-12).
"Without were fightings, within were fears."
(Conclusions) pp. 189-191
The epistles written to the next church are even more the outbursts of a heart sore with
misrepresentation, shameful in gratitude, and shattered hopes.
However strongly the apostle may have abominated sectarian and party movements,
he had the mortification of hearing that a party saying, "but I am of Paul", formed one of
the divisions at Corinth (I Cor. 1: 12). He is obliged to defend his determination to know
nothing among them save Jesus Christ and Him crucified (chapter 2:), while he declared
it was to him "a very small thing" that he should be judged of them, yet to be judged
unjustly is no light trial (chapter 4:). That the apostle had already sounded deep waters is
soon evident, for in verses 9-13 he uses words that seem to freeze the mind as one
prayerfully faces their true import. In verse 9 he likens his condition to the criminals who
were exposed in the arena last, and who were devoted to certain death:--
"a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake,
we are weak, we are disgraced. Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst."
One would at least have expected the apostle to have been relieved of anxiety
concerning his daily bread, but no, at the time of writing his epistle hunger and thirst
were known by him, while the Corinthians were "full", "rich", and "reigned as kings"
(verse 8). Not only so, but he continues, "we are naked, and are buffeted, and are
homeless". Ill clad, hounded from city to city by the Jews who sought his life, a
homeless, weary fugitive--such is the Bible picture of the chiefest of the apostles. The
care of all the churches, and the authority he had as an apostle, would seem to demand
that he should be free to discharge his difficult office, but no, "we labour", he says,
"working with our own hands". In Acts 20: 34 indeed he tells us, "these hands have
ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me"; he, the great apostle,
worked for others beside himself. "Yea, ye yourselves know". Again, in II Thess. 3: 8,
he reminds the church:--
"Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail
night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any one of you".
Continuing the awful list in I Cor. 4:, the apostle says, "being reviled, we bless;
being persecuted, we suffer it; being blasphemed, we entreat", then comes, as it were
from the depth of his tortured spirit, the last word of shame.
"We are made as the FILTH OF THE WORLD, and are the OFFSCOURING OF
ALL THINGS unto this day".