The following is my translation of Aegidius Hunnius’s introduction and sermon outline for the Epistle Reading of Sexagesima (2 Corinthians 11:19–12:9) from his Postilla (Vol. I, pgs. 255–256). Square brackets and footnotes are my own notes and additions.
Explanation of the Epistle
Beloved in the Lord, all ambition and fame-seeking was foreign and far from St. Paul; he sought his honor not in himself, but rather in God and in His Lord Christ. As he writes to the Galatians in the sixth chapter: “Far be it from me to boast, except concerning the cross of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14).
But the false teachers who had snuck into the Christian congregations undertook to diminish this precious worthy apostle and make him despised among the Corinthians, which Paul would have suffered and gotten over silently if the contempt were about His person alone. However, the deceitful evil enemy most of all desired to bring the Gospel into contempt and to make wide room and opportunity for the false apostles with their unsound doctrine, so that they could come forward with it into the marketplace and sell their unfit evil truth as good, their false doctrine as pure evangelical truth, thereby falsifying the pure doctrine, leading astray the simple, and murdering souls, indeed, even wrecking the Gospel with eternal harm to many people.
Thus, the holy teacher and apostle Paul was urged by necessity to recount in an extensive record what good he did in regard to the Gospel, how much he suffered and endured over it, also that he had studied and learned his doctrine through a heavenly revelation in the paradise of God. He did all of this not for himself for his own boast, but rather for the praise, honor, and glory of God, for the advancement of the Gospel which he preached, for the edification of the Christian congregation in Corinth as well as in other places, and, on the other hand, for the annoyance the devil together with his scales, and for the detriment, destruction, and demise of his damned kingdom.
We will listen to the beloved apostle and summarize this text into two chief points:
- First, how he does not make himself equal to the false apostles from Judaism only on account of his origin and blood [v. 11:22], but rather also far surpasses them in his labor and tribulation he suffered for the Gospel [v. 11:23–29], and thus boasts of his own weakness [v. 11:30, 12:5, 9].1
- Second, how he also boasts of the power of God, namely, the glorious revelation that happened to him in the third heaven [v. 12:1–5], and boasts of the doctrine which he learned there to properly save its reputation against the diminishment of his enviers.
- “Troubles are not always punishments or signs of wrath. Indeed, terrified consciences should be taught that there are more important purpose for afflictions, so that they do not think God is rejecting them when they see nothing but God’s punishment and anger in troubles. The other more important purposes are to be considered, that is, that God is doing His strange work so that He may be able to do His own work… Therefore, troubles are not always punishments for certain past deeds, but they are God’s works, intended for our benefit, and that God’s power might be made more apparent in our weakness. So Paul says God’s strength “is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).” (Ap XIIb.61, 63) ↩︎
PATTERN OF SOUND WORDS 