2 Corinthians 11:1-15 - Paul Defends His Apostleship

¹ I wish you would put up with a little 'folly' from me. Do put up with me, ² for I feel a divine jealousy on your behalf; I betrothed you as a chaste maiden to present you to your one husband Christ, ³ but I am afraid of your thoughts getting seduced from a single devotion to Christ, just as the serpent beguiled Eve with his cunning. ⁴ You put up with it all right, when some interloper preaches a second Jesus (not the Jesus I preached), or when you are treated to a Spirit different from the Spirit you once received, and to a different gospel from what I gave you! Why not put up with me?

⁵ I hold I am not one whit inferior to these precious 'apostles'! ⁶ I am no speaker, perhaps, but knowledge I do possess; I never failed to make myself intelligible to you. ⁷ But perhaps I did wrong in taking a humble place that you might have a high one ??I mean, in preaching the gospel of God to you for nothing! ⁸ I made a levy on other churches, I took pay from them so as to minister to you; ⁹ even when I ran short, during my stay with you, I was no encumbrance to anybody, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my wants. Thus I kept myself, as I intend to keep myself, from being a burden to you in any way. ¹⁰ By the truth of Christ within me, I am going to make this my pride and boast unchecked throughout the regions of Achaia! ¹¹ Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do.

¹² No, I intend to go on as I am doing, in order to checkmate those who would fain make out that in the apostolate of which they boast they work on the same terms as I do. ¹³ 'Apostles'? They are spurious apostles, false workmen ??they are masquerading as 'apostles of Christ.' ¹⁴ No wonder they do, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. ¹⁵ So it is no surprise if his ministers also masquerade as ministers of righteousness. Their doom will answer to their deeds.