(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
Paul Defends His Ministry
- And I, Paul, myself urge you through the gentle strength and kindness of the Anointed, whose face is indeed humble when I’m among you, but while being absent I’m bold to you.
- And while not being present, I implore you to be bold in the confidence that I consider to be daring, to some of the men considering us like men walking according to the flesh.
- For though walking in the flesh, we don’t wage war according to the flesh.
- For the weapons1“weapons” this Greek word refers to the various tools, implements, and especially weapons used to wage war. The Greek word is “ὅπλον” (hoplon), which was one name for the large wooden shield from which the “Hoplites” in the ancient Grecian military got their name. of our warfare aren’t carnal, but powerful through God for tearing down strongholds,
- tearing down arguments and every battlement rising up against the knowledge of God, and taking every thought captive to the obedience of the Anointed,
- and in being ready to avenge all disobedience when your obedience might be completed.
- You see things according to outward appearance. If someone has persuaded himself to be of the Anointed, let him consider this about himself again; that just as he’s in the Anointed, so also are we.
- For even if I boast somewhat more abundantly about our authority – which the Lord gave for building up and not for tearing you down – I won’t be ashamed,
- so I wouldn’t seem like I desire to frighten you through the letters.
- For indeed they declare, “The letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his word is *worthless.”2“worthless” The Greek word here literally means to treat something as having no value, and thus to despise it or treat it with contempt.
- Let such a man consider this: That just as we are in word through letters while being absent, so also we are in action while being present.
- For we don’t dare to classify or to compare ourselves with some who are commending themselves. But they – measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves to themselves – they don’t understand.
- But we won’t boast about things beyond our measure, but only according to the measure of the region that God allotted to us; a measure which reaches even as far as you.
- For we don’t overextend ourselves like we aren’t reaching to you. For also, as far as you came, we came before you in the gospel of the Anointed.
- We aren’t boasting in things beyond our measure (in labors which belong to another), but having hope to be abundantly enlarged among you in your growing faith according to our region,
- to proclaim the gospel in the regions beyond you; not to boast in the readiness of another’s region.
- Yet “The man boasting, let him boast in the Lord.“3quotation/allusion to Jeremiah 9:24
- For it’s not the man commending himself who is proved genuine,4“proved genuine” this Greek word is an adjective. It was used of coins that had been tested to prove they were genuine coins, and not counterfeit or mixed with lesser metals (corrupted) but that man whom the Lord commends.
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