2 Corinthians 10:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Our rendering is a little complex but it means this: ‘But I beseech you to consider the truth – that is, of God’s Word – and not to be persuaded by these false teachers, so that when I visit I do not have to be as bold and outspoken in presence as I am when I write to you. I want to come to you in fellowship not having the task of correcting the church about its attitude to the false teachers.’‘Some’, he says, ‘think of us as if we walked according to the flesh.’ They judge us by themselves. The Judaisers lived pretty rich lives, and they took up big offerings, and the greatest proportion of those offerings evidently went into their own pockets. They were on the make. They knew how to speak, how to spin yarns, tell fables. They were good with their oratory, and some of them, it seems, had quite dazzling personalities also. So they went among the people and they pulled people towards themselves.Now, the apostle says, they judge us according to themselves. They think we are the same. They think we apostles are just doing this for money and for gain. Now to make sure people did not think that, the apostle went to great lengths. He never took a stipend. Churches that were formed said, let us pay your way to the next port of call. No, he said, I will cover my own costs – he would earn money by making tents. The Jewish people, even the intellectuals of those days always had a fall-back profession, and for the apostle Paul it was tent making. He would work with his hands to pay his passage, just so that none of his hearers could say he took up personal collections. And yet they still made the accusations against him. They think of us ‘as if we walked according to the flesh’, as if we planned our campaigns according to what we thought would work, as if we were cunning salesmen and manipulators.