the other churches, except that I was never a burden to you. Forgive me this wrong!
These are not the words of someone who wants to win friends and influence people.
And Paul himself knows that this is his personality type. He freely admits that a
brief visit across the Aegean Sea from Ephesus to Corinth had been an occasion for a lot
of pain (cf. painful visit in 2 Cor. 2:1). He admits too that his follow-up letter after this
heart-wrenching visit had caused many tears in Corinth. Paul apparently did not follow
the pattern of writing a letter and then waiting a week to send it until his anger was back
under control; he wrote a letter out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many
tears and sent it quickly to the Corinthian church
--
and let the chips fall where they may.
O yes, the opponents of Paul in Corinth said this about Paul: His letters are
weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to
nothing (2 Cor. 10:10). But Paul insists, It ain't so. Such people should realize that
what we are in our letters when we are absent, we will be in our actions when we are
present (10:11). In other words, Paul knows he can give both barrels to those who get
under his skin, whether he confronts them in person or does so in a letter. Many have
proposed that 2 Corinthians 10
13 is part of Paul's letter of tears. If this is not the case, as
many evangelical commentators insist, it is perhaps fortunate that we do not have that
letter, for it might not be fitting reading in the church.
And then there is Paul's statement in Galatians 5:12, which I believe takes the
cake. Nothing grated on him more than the Judaizers, who were a constant thorn in his
side in the churches he had started in Galatia. His parting shot at them in his letter to the
Galatians contains these words: As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole
way and emasculate themselves. Or to use the NIrV, I wish they would cut off