We are fools for Christ"s sake, but ye are wise in Christ. This is a continuation of the irony of ver8. We are reckoned fools because of Christ crucified, whom we preach, and for whose sake we seem to expose ourselves rashly to so many dangers. For the Cross is to the Greeks foolishness. But you in your own eyes are wise in the Gospel of Christ, because of the eloquence and philosophy which you mingle with it, and because you take care to so preach Christ that you run no risk for His sake.
We are weak, as bearing without resistance many grievous adversities, such as hunger, thirst, nakedness, toils, injuries, cursings, persecutions, as is said in ver11.
But ye are strong. For you easily by your worldly eloquence, Wisdom of Solomon , and friendship turn the edge of all evils that attack you.
Ye are honourable, but we are despised. You are honoured, we are held in no honour. He teaches modestly, but yet sternly by his own example as a teacher, that the Christian"s boast must not be in...
Paul said these things in order to provoke the Corinthians to consider that they should zealously seek to emulate the apostles in their dangers and their indignities, not in their honors and glories. For it is the former, not the latter, that the gospel requires.
Again, this also he spoke in a way to abash them; implying that it is impossible for these contraries to agree, neither can things so distant from one another concur. For how can it be, says he, that you should be wise, but we fools in the things relating to Christ? That is: the one sort beaten and despised and dishonored and esteemed as nothing; the others enjoying honor and looked up to by many as a wise and prudent kind of people; it gives him occasion to speak thus: as if he had said, How can it be that they who preach such things should be looked upon as practically engaged in their contraries?
We are weak, but you are strong. That is, we are driven about and persecuted; but you enjoy security and are much waited upon; howbeit the nature of the Gospel endures it not.
We are despised, but you are honorable. Here he sets himself against the noble and those who plumed themselves upon external advantages.
Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, ...
Having filled his speech with much severity which conveys a sharper blow than any direct charge and having said, You have reigned without us; and God has set forth us last, as men doomed to death he shows by what comes next how they are doomed to death; saying, We are fools, and weak, and despised, and hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place, and toil, working with our own hands: which were very signs of genuine teachers and apostles. Whereas the others prided themselves on the things which are contrary to these, on wisdom, glory, wealth, consideration.
Desiring therefore to take down their self-conceit and to point out that in respect of these things, so far from taking credit to themselves, they ought rather to be ashamed; he first of all mocks them, saying, You have reigned without us. As if he had said, My sentence is that the present is not a time of honor nor of glory, which kind of things you enjoy, but of persecution and insult...
