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This is a very curious and somewhat perplexing passage. It is not quite what we should expect to find in Scripture; yet it is a most suggestive passage.

I. LET US TRY TO UNDERSTAND BOTH ITS, LANGUAGE AND ITS TONE. St. Paul is evidently very much hurt by the treatment which he had received. The Church there was his own creation; and, accordingly, he was deeply attached to it. Now he finds himself the object of unsparing criticism. The taunts of his opponents, however, go a very little way towards producing the tone of wounded feeling which pervades this chapter. What grieved St. Paul was that the Corinthians were being seduced from their allegiance to himself, and the simplicity that is in Christ. It also made him indignant. Who are these men that his Corinthians should transfer their loyalty so readily from him to them? What are their claims, compared with his? Are they "Hebrews," "Israelites," "the seed of Abraham," "ministers of Christ"? He is more. There was something too of scorn and wrong in Paul's feeling. "Ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise." Of course you will cheerfully put up with me and my folly, being so very wise yourselves. It is little or nothing that I ask you to put up with, compared with what you put up with from these new teachers. You let them tyrannise over you to any extent. They may rob you, domineer over you; you put up with it all: so wise are you (ver. 20). This, of course, is irony — half playful, half serious. But the playfulness of the passage bears a very small proportion to the intense seriousness of it. The prevailing tone of the whole is an almost passionate self-assertion, wrung from him almost in spite of himself, and with a kind of scorn of himself in the doing of it ("I speak foolishly") — wrung from him, I say, by grief, and indignation, and anxiety.

II. Is this, or is this not, the tone of the passage? If it is, WHAT ARE WE TO THINK OF IT AND THE WRITER? Is he to be less to us than he has been? I think not. Should we not all feel that its removal would be a real loss?

1. There is the strong human interest of the passage. It is a revelation of character. The writer lays himself bare to us. You hear, as you read, the very pulsations of his heart — pulsations wild and feverish, perhaps, but genuine, honest, manly, true. There are no conventionalities and etiquettes. We have the man himself, and find him one of like feelings with ourselves. He can be wounded, and hurt, and sensitive, as we can be. Without it he would be much less of a real character and person to us. Now this is an immense gain. For one thing, it makes all his letters much more real and forceful to us. They are not mere pages in a book, however sacred. They are the words of a man, a friend. It is through such a passage as this that the Epistles of St. Paul become not merely theological treatises, but an autobiography of the writer. They present us with a photograph of himself. He opens more than his mind; he opens his heart to us.

2. Cold critics, analysing St. Paul's character as it unveils itself to us here, will find plenty of fault with it. They will say that he is too sensitive; that his assertion of himself is undignified and unworthy. It would not be difficult to dispute the ground with such critics, inch by inch, were it worth our while to do so. Instead of doing so, let us freely concede that there is a touch of human infirmity here. Now I say that this very weakness, being of the kind it is, not only increases the attractiveness of Paul's character, but also makes it more powerful for good. The noble metals, gold and silver, require, as we all know, some alloy of baser metal, in order to fit them for the service of men. And it seems as if the noblest characters required some alloy if they are to take hold of other minds, and exercise upon them their full force for good. But then all depends upon the nature of this alloy. In Cranmer's case, what gave such weight to his martyrdom was the natural sinking from such a horrible death. There could hardly be two men more unlike than Cranmer and St. Paul. But in St. Paul, too, there is what I call this dash of human weakness. What is it? We feel it as we read our text, without being able to define it. But whatever it be, there is nothing base in it, — nothing mean, coarse, or vulgar. It just makes us feel that there is a point of contact between us and him. It is a deep descent from the sinless weakness of Christ to the dash of human infirmity which we find in St. Paul. And what a descent again is it from St. Paul to ourselves! With him it is but a dash of alloy, making the noble metal all the more serviceable. With us it seems as if we were all alloy.

(D. J. Vaughan, M. A.)

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KJV: I say again, Let no man think me a fool; if otherwise, yet as a fool receive me, that I may boast myself a little.

WEB: I say again, let no one think me foolish. But if so, yet receive me as foolish, that I also may boast a little.