Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
2 Corinthians 11:16–21a
“I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little” (v. 16).
Having unmasked the false teachers in Corinth, revealing them to be false apostles and servants of Satan (2 Cor. 11:12–15), Paul moves to further undermine their claims. As we have seen, he will do this in what has been called his Fool’s Speech, which is found chiefly in 2 Corinthians 11:16–12:10, though the themes Paul emphasizes also appear in the surrounding context. Starting off this speech in today’s passage, Paul again implores the Corinthians to pay heed to him.
In making this speech, the Apostle does not claim to be a true fool, for in Scripture the true fool is one who has no fear of God and thus lacks authentic wisdom (see Ps. 14:1; Prov. 1:7). Instead, he is portraying himself as a fool for the sake of argument, as that is how his opponents have been portraying him. Note, however, that in claiming to be a fool in order to make his point, Paul turns the charges of foolishness back on his critics. In 2 Corinthians 11:19, Paul says that they should bear with him as a fool because they have already been suffering fools gladly. He refers to the false apostles, the true fools who do not have the fear of God. If the Corinthians could entertain the foolishness of those men, surely they could endure Paul’s foolishness.
Because the true fool has no fear of God, he is also wicked, and one of the characteristics of the wicked, of fools, is that they boast (Ps. 10:3). Thus, as Paul adopts the persona of a fool, he must likewise boast (2 Cor. 11:16). But of course, Paul is about to engage in foolish boasting not as a wicked fool, but he will boast in weakness to refute the false apostles’ claims of being superior to him. That helps explain his statement in verse 17 that when he boasts, he speaks “not as the Lord would.” The Apostle does not mean that he will violate God’s law in his “foolish” boasting. His point is that he is doing something—boasting—not normally acceptable in order to reveal who the true fools are in Corinth. Charles Hodge comments: “Self-praise in itself considered, is not the work of a Christian; it is not a work to which the Spirit of Christ impels the believer. But, when it is necessary to the vindication of the truth or the honor of religion, it becomes a duty.”
Through boasting in their superiority to Paul, the false apostles have shaken the Corinthians’ confidence in the truth of the gospel and set them on a dark path (see vv. 12–15). They have forced him into boasting as a fool for God to reveal divine wisdom.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Sometimes the best way to answer a critic is to accept the truth of the criticism for the sake of the argument and then use it to turn the criticism on its head. This is what Paul will do in his Fool’s Speech. It takes great wisdom to know when and how to do this, so let us pray that the Lord will give us the wisdom to know how to answer critics who malign us in an attempt to undermine the gospel.
For Further Study
- Proverbs 15:23; 16:1
- Proverbs 26:4–5
- 1 Corinthians 1:25
- Colossians 4:6