2 Corinthians 10 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~AD 55-56, during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, roughly a year after Paul's first letter to Corinth
Location
Written from Macedonia in northern Greece, sent to the church in Corinth, a wealthy Roman colony and port city on the narrow strip of land joining southern Greece to the mainland
Audience
The mixed Gentile and Jewish believers of the church Paul founded in Corinth, a congregation he had planted about five years earlier and had been quarrelling with ever since
Situation
Paul turns from thanksgiving and appeals for generosity to a sharp defense of his own authority, answering critics who said he was bold in his letters but weak and unimpressive when standing in front of people. He insists that his authority is real, that it is measured by the territory God assigned him, and that the only boasting worth doing is boasting in the Lord.
Key Background
In Greek and Roman cities, public speaking was a competitive profession, and a teacher's physical presence, voice, and polished delivery were judged as carefully as his ideas, so a plain-spoken speaker could be dismissed no matter how true his message. Paul borrows the vocabulary of siege warfare, picturing arguments as fortresses to be pulled down, an image his readers would recognize from Rome's well-known campaigns. He also uses the language of surveyors and provincial administrators who marked out assigned regions, arguing that he is working inside the field God measured out to him rather than taking credit for someone else's completed work.
Now I, Paul, am making a personal appeal to you through the and of The — I who am supposedly "timid" when I'm with you face to face, but "bold" when I'm far away.
I'm asking you: please don't force me to be as bold in person as I'm fully prepared to be against certain people who think we operate by purely
Yes, we live in but we don't using tactics.
The we use are not the kind the world uses. Instead, they carry God's power to
We tear down and every that sets itself up against and we every to make it submit to The One.
And we're ready to every act of — once your own is fully in order.
Look at what's right in front of you! If anyone is convinced they to The they need to think again and realize that we to The just as much as they do.
Even if I were to take my a bit further about the the Lord gave us — authority for you up, not tearing you down — I wouldn't be embarrassed by it.
I don't want to seem like I'm trying to scare you with my letters.
Because some people are saying, "His letters are and powerful, but in person he's and his is terrible."
People like that should understand this: what we say through letters when we're away is exactly what we'll do when we're there in person.
We wouldn't dare put ourselves in the same category or even compare ourselves with certain people who are busy When they measure by their own standards and compare to each other, they show a complete lack of understanding.
We, on the other hand, won't boast beyond proper limits. Instead, we'll stay within the of the God measured out for us — an that brought us all the way to you.
We aren't overstepping our limits by reaching out to you — after all, we were the first ones to come all the way to you with the about The One.
We don't boast about work done beyond our limits — work that other people did. Instead, our hope is that as your grows, our influence among you will expand greatly within our proper boundaries.
Then we can bring the good news to the regions beyond you, rather than boasting about work already done in someone else's territory.
But "if anyone is going to let them in the
Because it's not the person who themselves who is — it's the person the Lord