In this chapter the apostle sees it needful to allude to the way some had been speaking of him and slighting his apostleship, a serious thing, for as he says further on, If he was not an apostle, their Christianity was also false. With a heart full of love to them, and with the ardent desire to see them going on with the Lord, he begins thus:
“Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, who in presence am base among you, but being absent am bold toward you.”
They had been speaking like that about him, but he with true meekness and humility, turns it all to an occasion for their profit, by speaking and acting in the Spirit of Christ, so he besought them that he might not be bold toward them as he would to some who thought of him as walking after the flesh. “For though we walk in flesh we do not war according to flesh.” The war he carried on was not fought with carnal weapons, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.
It was “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
In days when man is letting his reason exalt itself against the knowledge of God, how refreshing and edifying to be put in remembrance that every imagination of our minds only interferes with what God has said. The Word of God endureth forever, and needs no human additions. Obedience to it is what is required on our part. “Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15). We need to bring every thought into the obedience of Christ, and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled. All that exalted self had to be put down.
He expected that all who hearkened to God, would also hearken to him as one sent of God, and the disobedient would need to be dealt with. If they judged by his appearance they would go wrong. They were Christ’s and so was he, and he was able to carry out the authority vested in him, but it was for edification and not for destruction. He would only carry it out for the Lord’s honor and their building up, and so he speaks with much patience and grace, but it was necessary to remind them of some who had said, “His letters are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.” And he replies, “Let such an one think this, that, such as we are in word by letters when we are absent, such will we be also in deed when we are present,” for he was an apostle sent of God to complete the Word of God.
He would not class himself with the boasters who compared themselves with others of their kind, thus showing their folly, but would speak only according to the measure of what God had given him to do, and that measure had come to them, for he had ministered the gospel unto them.
Happy servant! He could fill out his ministry in a way acceptable to His Lord and Master. Not only did he look for their acknowledgment of his service to themselves, but he hoped by their faith increasing, to be so enlarged amongst them to be able to go beyond them to others, where the gospel had not yet been preached, not boasting in what another man had done. We know that he rejoiced wherever Christ was preached. Our only safe boasting is boasting or glorying in the Lord. In Him alone can we all glory and have done with ourselves. “For not he that, commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth.”
May the Lord teach us this humility and patience in the service of Christ increasingly, till we see His blessed face, that He may be able to say of us, “Good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things;... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
We are all stewards of His grace, however small our service is. May we be found faithful.