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

1 I wish you would now listen to a little folly of mine. Please do listen to me! 2 For I feel a divine jealousy for you, as I betrothed you to Christ, to present you as a pure bride to her one husband. 3 But I am apprehensive that, somehow or other, as the serpent by his cunning deceived Eve, your thoughts may be turned aside from single-hearted devotion to Christ. 4 For if anybody comes along and preaches another Jesus than the one I preached, or you receive another spirit different from the one you did receive or a glad message different from the one you did accept, you listen to it all right!

5 For I consider myself not a single bit inferior to those surpassingly superior apostles of yours! 6 Although I am untrained as an orator, yet I am not so in the field of knowledge. Surely, I have always made that perfectly clear to you. 7 Did I do wrong in taking a lowly place to let you have an exalted one, in that I preached the good news about God to you without accepting any pay? 8 I sponged on other churches by taking pay from them to render service to you, 9 and when I was with you and needed money, I never burdened a single one of you for a cent, for the brothers came from Macedonia and supplied what I needed. And so I kept myself, as I shall always do, from being a burden to you in any way. 10 But the truth of Christ in me, this boasting of mine shall never be stopped in the boundaries of Greece. 11 Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do.

12 And I shall keep on doing as I am, in order to cut the ground from under the feet of those who want an opportunity to show themselves on a level with me in the matters of which they boast. 13 For such men are sham apostles, dishonest workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for even Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15 So it is no surprise if his servants also masquerade as ministers for doing right, whose doom shall be in accordance with what they do.