D. By His Compelled Boasting
1. Of His Status, Labor, and Afflictions
1. Of His Status, Labor, and Afflictions
- Again I say, Let no one think me to be foolish; but if otherwise, accept me even as if I were foolish, that I also may boast a little.
- What I speak, I speak not according to the Lord but as if in foolishness, in this confidence of boasting.
- Since many boast according to the flesh, I also will boast.
- For you bear gladly with fools because you yourselves are wise.
- For you bear it if anyone enslaves you, if anyone devours you, if anyone takes you, if anyone lifts himself up, if anyone beats you in the face.
- By way of self-disparagement I say this, Supposedly we ourselves were weak. But in whatever anyone else is daring, I speak in foolishness, I also am daring.
- Hebrews are they? I also. Israelites are they? I also. The seed of Abraham are they? I also.
- Ministers of Christ are they? I speak as being beside myself, I more so! In labors more abundantly, in imprisonments more abundantly, in stripes excessively, in deaths often.
- Under the hands of the Jews five times I received forty stripes less one;
- Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep;
- In journeys often, in dangers of rivers, in dangers of robbers, in dangers from my race, in dangers from the Gentiles, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers in the sea, in dangers among false brothers;
- In labor and hardship; in watchings often; in hunger and thirst; in fastings often; in cold and nakedness
- Apart from the things which have not been mentioned, there is this: the crowd of cares pressing upon me daily, the anxious concern for all the churches.
- Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is stumbled, and I myself do not burn?
- If I must boast, I will boast of the things of my weakness.
- The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying.
- In Damascus, the governor under Aretas the king guarded the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me;
- And in a basket I was lowered through a window, through the wall, and escaped his hands.
