1 Corinthians 4:10
We are fools for Christ’s sake: (For it is necessary from this point to resume our discourse:) but you are wise in Christ: we are weak, but you are strong: you have glory, but we have dishonor.
Having filled his speech with much severity which conveys a sharper blow than any direct charge and having said, You have reigned without us; and God has set forth us last, as men doomed to death he shows by what comes next how they are doomed to death; saying, We are fools, and weak, and despised, and hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place, and toil, working with our own hands: which were very signs of genuine teachers and apostles. Whereas the others prided themselves on the things which are contrary to these, on wisdom, glory, wealth, consideration.
Desiring therefore to take down their self-conceit and to point out that in respect of these things, so far from taking credit to themselves, they ought rather to be ashamed; he first of all mocks them, saying, You have reigned without us. As if he had said, My sentence is that the present is not a time of honor nor of glory, which kind of things you enjoy, but of persecution and insult, such as we are suffering. If however it be not so; if this rather be the time of remuneration: then as far as I see, (but this he says in irony,) ye, the disciples, for your part have become no less than kings: but we the teachers and apostles, and before all entitled to receive the reward, not only have fallen very far behind you, but even, as persons doomed to death, that is, condemned convicts, spend our lives entirely in dishonors, and dangers, and hunger: yea insulted as fools, and driven about, and enduring all intolerable things.
Now these things he said that he might hereby cause them also to consider, that they should zealously seek the condition of the Apostles; their dangers and their indignities, not their honors and glories. For these, not the other, are what the Gospel requires. But to this effect he speaks not directly, not to show himself disagreeable to them: rather in a way characteristic of himself he takes in hand this rebuke. For if he had introduced his address in a direct manner, he would have spoken thus; You err, and are beguiled, and have swerved far from the apostolic mode of instruction. For every apostle and minister of Christ ought to be esteemed a fool, ought to live in affliction and dishonor; which indeed is our state: whereas you are in the contrary case.
But thus might his expressions have offended them yet more, as containing but praises of the Apostles; and might have made them fiercer, censured as they were for indolence and vainglory and luxuriousness. Wherefore he conducts not his statement in this way, but in another, more striking but less offensive; and this is why he proceeds with his address as follows, saying ironically, But you are strong and honorable; since, if he had not used irony, he would have spoken to this effect; It is not possible that one man should be esteemed foolish, and another wise; one strong, and another weak; the Gospel requiring both the one and the other. For if it were in the nature of things that one should be this, and another that, perchance there might be some reason in what you say. But now it is not permitted, either to be counted wise, or honorable, or to be free from dangers. If otherwise, it follows of necessity that you are preferred before us in the sight of God; you the disciples before us the teachers, and that after our endless hardships. If this be too bad for anyone to say, it remains for you to make our condition your object.
- And let no one, says he, think that I speak only of the past:
1 Corinthians 4:11
Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst and are naked. Do you see that all the life of Christians must be such as this; and not merely a day or two? For though the wrestler who is victorious in a single contest only, be crowned, he is not crowned again if he suffer a fall.
And hunger; against the luxurious. And are buffeted; against those who are puffed up. And have no certain dwelling-place; for we are driven about. And are naked; against the rich.
1 Corinthians 4:12-13
And labor; now against the false apostles who endure neither toil nor peril, while they themselves receive the fruits. But not so are we, says he: but together with our perils from without, we also strain ourselves to the utmost with perpetual labor. And what is still more, no one can say that we fret at these things, for the contrary is our requital to them that so deal with us: this, I say, is the main point, not our suffering evil, for that is common to all, but our suffering without despondency or vexation. But we so far from desponding are full of exultation. And a sure proof of this is our requiting with the contrary those who do us wrong.
Now as to the fact that so they did, hear what follows.
Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world. This is the meaning of fools for Christ’s sake. For whoever suffers wrong and avenges not himself nor is vexed, is reckoned a fool by the heathen; and dishonored and weak. And in order that he might not render his speech too unpalatable by referring the sufferings he was speaking of to their city, what says he? We are made the filth, not, of your city, but, of the world. And again, the off-scouring of all men; not of you alone, but of all. As then when he is discoursing of the providential care of Christ, letting pass the earth, the heaven, the whole creation, the Cross is what he brings forward; so also when he desires to attract them to himself hurrying by all his miracles, he speaks of his sufferings on their account. So also it is our method when we be injured by any and despised, whatsoever we have endured for them, to bring the same forward.
The offscouring of all men, even until now. This is a vigorous blow which he gave at the end, of all men; not of the persecutors only, says he, but of those also for whom we suffer these things: Oh greatly am I obliged to them. It is the expression of one seriously concerned; not in pain himself, but desiring to make them feel, (πλῆξαι) that he who has innumerable complaints to make should even salute them. And therefore did Christ command us to bear insults meekly that we might both exercise ourselves in a high strain of virtue, and put the other party to the more shame. For that effect one produces not so well by reproach as by silence.