1 Corinthians 4:11 Commentary and Bible Study

Deprivation of food and comfort and respect, and accommodation: the apostles suffered it all. When the apostles or the evangelists went to pioneer in a new place they could not even be certain they had anywhere to live. Paul and his fellow workers received help from the churches to advance the gospel, but sometimes that did not come straight away, and he lists here and in other places what he had to bear for the sake of the gospel (2 Corinthians 11:27). This might have seemed like evidence that the Lord was not with them, that he would allow them to suffer so, but that was not what Paul concluded. When he saw the blessing that came from his work, the lives changed, the churches planted, and the breaking of new ground where the gospel had not gone before, he counted these sufferings rather as a necessary price to pay for the privilege of being an instrument of the Lord. He understood that God had a reason for treating the apostles in this way, and that his hardships were no accident. The apostles were to be the premier example to the church of being engaged in the battle for the Lord. The church in the centuries that followed would also learn that not real gains could be made for the kingdom of heaven unless it was prepared to pay a price.‘And labour, working with our own hands.’ I think the Corinthians rather despised that. That was a very noble city. People who worked with their hands were lesser people. People who were anything worked with their minds and with their heads; they were scholars and so on. ‘But we, apostles, so that nobody will suspect us of being after your goods, we work with our hands and support ourselves. ‘Being reviled, we bless [people]; being persecuted, we suffer it.’ Paul tells us their response to these things. He did not return evil for evil; he absorbed ill-treatment for Christ’s sake. This is a message for all of us. If he had seen himself as an independent person having to suffer these things for his own sake be may well have reacted. If he had focused on the unreasonableness of the way he was being treated, he may have been filled with self-pity or anger. That did not change the fact that his treatment was unreasonable, but there was a deeper reason why God allowed it, and Paul’s sufferings for Christ were working for the advance of Christ’s kingdom. He would put up with all this because the Lord would compensate him for all these things when that glory was revealed within him at the coming of Christ. He would therefore made it his aim to bless when he was reviled, and to obey his Lord in loving his enemies.