Paul sets forth his apostleship
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📚✭Now I myself, Paul, plead with you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ✭, I who in person am lowly among you, but being absent am bold✭ toward you. 2 📚✭But I plead with you that when I am present I may not have to be bold with that confidence with which I intend to be bold against some people, who regard us as if we live according to the flesh✭.Spiritual warfare
3 📚✭For though we live in the body, we do not fight according to the body. 4 📚For the weapons of our warfare are not of the body, but mighty through God to the destruction of strongholds, 5 📚demolishing reasonings and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and leading away captive every thought to be obedient to Christ; 6 📚 ✭and we are ready to punish all disobedience, when your obedience is complete.
Paul’s “boasting”
7 📚✭Do you look on things according to their outward appearance? If anyone has persuaded himself that he belongs to Christ, let him again take into account that, just as he belongs to Christ, even so we belong to Christ. 8 📚For even if I were to boast✭ somewhat more about our authority, which the Lord has given us for building you up, rather than pulling you down, I should not be ashamed of it. 9 📚I do not want to seem as if I would frighten you by letters. 10 📚✭“For his letters”, they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech is of no account”. 11 📚Let such a person realize that just as we are in word by letters when we are absent, so we will be in deed also when we are present.
12 📚✭For we dare not count ourselves among those who commend themselves, or compare ourselves with them. But they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves with themselves, are not wise. 13 📚But we will not boast✭ beyond measure, but according to the boundaries of the sphere which God has appointed to us, a sphere✭ which reaches even to you. 14 📚For we are not extending ourselves beyond our boundaries, as though they did not reach to you. For in preaching the gospel of Christ we came as far as you also. 15 📚✭We will not boast of things beyond our boundaries, that is, of other men’s labours, but have hope, as your faith increases, that the boundaries of our sphere will be enlarged by you, 16 📚✭so we can preach the gospel in the regions beyond you, and not to boast in another man’s area of accomplishment. 17 📚But he who boasts, let him boast in the Lord. 18 📚✭For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.