Context No. 4171 of 4322 · 2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 11:28-33: in context

28Besides those things that are outside, there is that which presses on me daily: anxiety for all the assemblies. 29Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is caused to stumble, and I don’t burn with indignation? 30If I must boast, I will boast of the things that concern my weakness. 31The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, he who is blessed forever more, knows that I don’t lie. 32In Damascus the governor under King Aretas guarded the Damascenes’ city, desiring to arrest me. 33I was let down in a basket through a window by the wall, and escaped his hands.

After listing all his sufferings for Christ, beatings, imprisonments, shipwrecks, dangers, Paul names one more burden, and it is not physical: apart from all these external things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. His heaviest burden was not the physical hardships but the weight of caring for the people God had entrusted to him.

Who is weak, he says, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant? He felt the struggles of his people as his own. There is something moving and instructive in this. Paul carried a daily weight of concern for others, not out of anxiety for himself, but out of genuine love for the churches he served. This was the burden of a shepherd's heart, feeling deeply for those in his care. Love carries a weight; to care genuinely for others is to feel their burdens, to be pressed by concern for their welfare. This is not the anxiety that has no trust in God, but the loving concern that carries others on the heart before God.

Do I love others deeply enough to carry a genuine, daily concern for their welfare, feeling their struggles as Paul felt his churches' burdens, and bringing that loving concern to God rather than letting it become mere anxiety?

Sources

2 Corinthians 11:28: "Besides those things that are outside, there is that which presses on me daily: anxiety for all the assemblies."
2 Corinthians 11:29: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is caused to stumble, and I don't burn with indignation?"
2 Corinthians 11:30: "If I must boast, I will boast of the things that concern my weakness."