I speak as concerning reproach, as though we had been weak.
Howbeit … I am bold also.
Paul’s avowal of his advantages and his history of his trials
I. His manly avowal of his distinguished advantages.
1. His superior character (2Co_11:21).
2. His superior ancestry (2Co_11:22).
3. His superior apostleship (2Co_11:23).
II. His historic sketch of his extraordinary trials. The trials here sketched indicate several things.
1. The mysteriousness of God’s procedure with His servants. One might have thought that the man inspired with supreme love to Him, and receiving a commission from Him, involving the salvation of souls, would have made his way clear, safe, and even pleasant. The more important the Divine work intrusted to a man, and the more faithful he is in its discharge, the more trials will embarrass and distract him. For an explanation of this we must await the great explaining day.
2. The unconquerableness of Christly love in the soul. What stimulated Paul to embark in, and what bore him up under such an enterprise as this? The answer is, “The love of Christ constraineth me.”
3. The indelibility of the impressions which trials produce. They had long since transpired, but they were fresh in Paul’s memory. It is a law in our nature that our trials make a deeper impression on us than our mercies. Why? Because they are the exceptions, not the rule.
4. The blessedness which the memory of trials rightly endured produces. In Paul’s case--
(1) It generated sympathy with the woes of others (2Co_11:29). No man can sympathise with the trials of others, unless he has passed through trials himself.
(2) It inspired the soul with true rejoicing (2Co_11:30). (D. Thomas, D. D.)
In labours more abundant.--
Service in sorrow
Look at yon miller on the village hill. How does he grind his grist? Does he bargain that he will only grind in the west wind, because its gales are so full of health? No, but the east wind, which searches joints and marrow, makes the millstones revolve, and together with the north and the south it is yoked to his service. Even so should it be with you who are true workers for God; all your ups and your downs, your successes and your defeats, should be turned to the glory of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The trials of busy life
Now, from many causes, “from the temper of the day, and from the temper of our nation, the being busy is most natural to us”; around us on every hand men and women are largely occupied, toiling for the necessaries, for the comforts, or for the luxuries of life. The more men have, the more they seem to need, and so that desire. Still, to be busy is natural, and to be busy is good; slothfulness, in the case of the majority, would mean poverty or misery. Honest industry stands upon the footing of being a service agreeable to God. Herein lies one of the trials of this life.
1. In proportion as a person’s work is great, as the activity of busy life increases, especially if that activity be attended with temporal success, then increases the danger of this God-ward aspect being lost sight of--the work comes to be more and more regarded, as from the first it may have been taken up, only on its earthly side. So much of success seems to be dependent on the individual himself, his knowledge, his energies, his foresight, that at last he comes to say, “My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this,” forgetting “Who it is that gives power to get it.” Then mark what flows from this forgetfulness of God, or this failing to recognise life’s work as given us of Him.
2. Restlessness and disquietude, when success is denied: pride and presumption when it flows in full tide. The present are days of great restlessness; disquietude and much anxiety are too common. Oh! it is sad to see, “a sight which makes a thinking man weep at any time, to look around him anywhere, and see how Satan and the world are befooling souls for which Christ died, and which might find rest in Him.”
3. The third trial to which busy life is exposed, is the trial of procrastination, the putting off until the “convenient season” life’s higher duties. “Business” in these days seems to occupy all people’s time, and nearly all their thoughts. It thins our churches, breeds a painful irregularity in the actions of the truer life of the soul.
4. Another trial which attends busy life is the trial of steadfastness. “Business” is often another name for the world; and what a world is this with which we have to do! What a mixture of good and bad, of vice and virtue, of honesty and corruption! And when the Christian has to face all this, to mix daily with all this, to act under or against all this, how terrible must be the strain on his steadfastness, that is, his walking uprightly before God.
5. The last trial is the trial of integrity: that trial, I mean, which, in some form or other, comes to every one--the conflict between principle and our interest. Oh! in the busy life, does not this conflict rage? Such are a few, a very few, of the many trials of busy life. The one leading thought of them all, is this, their danger--unless we be watchful--to divert the soul from its God. Their snare is to leave no time, or to leave no inclination, or to leave no power for high and holy things. But this, remember, through the abuse of them, not through the right and prayerful use. If God has given us our work, however great, we must do it, and we may do it unto Him. (C. C. Chamberlain, M. A.)
