Are they ministers of Christ? — It is obvious that this title was claimed by the rival teachers in some special sense. They were “ministers of Christ” in a nearer and a higher sense than others. This again falls in with all that has been said as to the nature and pretensions of those who said, “I am of Christ.” (See Notes on 2 Corinthians 10:7; 1 Corinthians 1:12.)
I speak as a fool. — The form of the Greek verb is slightly varied, and means, more emphatically than before, I speak as one who is insane; I speak deliriously. In this instance, as before, we must believe that the Apostle is using, in a tone of indignant irony, the very words of insult which had been recklessly flung at him.
In labours... — All that follows up to 2 Corinthians 11:28, inclusive, is a proof of his claim to call himself a minister of Christ. The word “labours” is, of course, too vague to admit of more than a general comparison with the picture of his life presented in the Acts of the Apostles. The more specific statements show us that the writer of that book tends to understate rather than exaggerate the labours and sufferings of the Apostle. It tells us, up to this time, only of one imprisonment, at Philippi (Acts 16:23), and leaves us to conjecture where and under what circumstances we are to look for the others. In the “deaths oft,” we trace an echo of the “sentence of death,” the “dying daily” (see Notes on 2 Corinthians 1:9; 2 Corinthians 4:10); but the words probably include dangers to life of other kinds as well as those arising from bodily disease.