For we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure, as though we reached not unto you: for we are come as far as to you also in preaching the gospel of Christ:
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul did not go too far in what he was doing but stayed within the limits set for his task by God. He makes this explicit here so that the Corinthians will know that God has sent him to them and so they ought to obey his warnings. Otherwise they might appear to be resisting God, by whom Paul was sent. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
For we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure. This is his third scornful charge against the false apostles. They stretch out themselves and more than that by their boastful words, but let us see what good as a matter of fact they do. Whom have they converted? What cities or countries have they visited? They have never left their own home. Did they bring you into the Church? Ye are not their work, but mine in the Lord. It is I who have taken you and subdued you: you are my lot, the possession assigned me by the Lord. I can triumph over you and other provinces reaching to Judæa that I have subdued. And just as P. Scipio was called Africanus, and L. Scipio, Asiaticus, from the provinces they conquered, so might S. Paul have the agnomen of Corinthiacus, Achaicus, Macedonicus, Thracicus, Asiaticus, &c.
Not simply 'we came,' but, 'we announced, we preached, we persuaded, we succeeded.' For it is probable that they having merely come to the disciples of the Apostles, ascribed the whole to themselves, from their bare presence among them. 'But not so we: nor can any one say that we were not able to come as far as to you, and that we stretched our boasting as far as to you in words only; for we also preached the word to you.'
