New Testament · Paul's Letters
Strength in weakness, treasure in jars of clay, a thorn that stayed, grace that is enough.
The most personal and least composed of Paul's letters, written after a painful visit and a severe letter that has not survived. His authority is being undermined by rivals with better rhetoric and better credentials, and his response is to boast, at length, about everything that makes him look weak: floggings, shipwrecks, sleepless nights, a night escape over a wall in a basket, and a thorn in the flesh he asked three times to have removed. The theology grows directly out of the wound, treasure in clay jars, power made perfect in weakness. It also contains the most sustained teaching on money in the New Testament, two whole chapters on a collection for the poor in Jerusalem, handled with elaborate care about accountability.
If you remember one thing
Paul's most personal and most bruised letter. He boasts, as he says, only in the things that show how weak he is.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
2 Corinthians 12:2-4
A man caught up to the third heaven, spoken of in the third person, and what he heard which he may not tell.
2 Corinthians 12:7
The thorn in the flesh, deliberately unspecified, which has not stopped centuries of confident identification.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
A Greek believer Paul deliberately did not have circumcised, making him a test case for the whole Gentile question. He later handled the difficult mission to Corinth and was left to organize the churches of Crete.
A Pharisee trained under Gamaliel who persecuted the church until he was stopped on the road to Damascus. He then spent thirty years planting churches across the Roman world and writing the letters that make up roughly a third of the New Testament. He was a Roman citizen by birth, which is why he could appeal to Caesar.
A quiz for 2 Corinthians is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
