6:9,10
Paul was getting well-known, yet was regarded as a non-entity. He faced death, yet kept on going. He was beaten up, but wasn’t killed. He experienced much sorrow, yet was also always rejoicing. He was poor, yet made many rich. This latter reference would primarily be spiritually rich, but the gospel can bring prosperity. Not in the sense of the “prosperity teachers”, but in putting someone’s life back together, and that may well bring material gain as well. And a nation that turns to God will be better off than one that rebels against God. He owned little, yet possessed everything because everything belongs to God.
6:11-13
Paul is not just issuing instructions to the Corinthians, he is not being merely a guardian. He is being a father. He is opening his heart to them, letting them see the hard part of following Christ, and the reward part. He is letting them see what following Christ really means. In exchange, he asks the Corinthians to open their hearts to him. For Christian ministry to work properly there needs to be openness on both sides. Obviously there also needs to be care, otherwise this can become abuse, but there needs to be honesty. The Corinthians were treating Paul and his co-workers as if they were just teachers, a “product” to be bought or rejected. In the church we go wrong if we treat pastors as hired hands. This most definitely does not mean that we should not treat them and pay them properly, but there needs to be more than an employer-employee relationship.
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