“I Seek not Yours, but You”
“The long burst of passionate self-vindication has now at last expended itself,” says Dean Stanley, and Paul returns to the point whence he diverged at 2 Corinthians 10:7, where he was avowing his intention to repress the disobedience of those who still resisted his authority at Corinth. “Now,” he says, “my folly is over. That I should have indulged in it is your fault, not mine.” What a comfort it is that he lays such repeated stress on his weakness! Instead of complaining of it, he used it as an argument with Christ that He should put forth more grace, and as an argument with his converts, that the results of his work had been granted as the divine endorsement of his apostolate.
Paul felt that his paternal relation to this church gave him the right to rebuke them, as a father rebukes his children. But he realized that they did not reciprocate his love, probably because they permitted the evil things enumerated in the closing verses. Often moral obliquity accounts for the decline and failure of love. Among other things, they had even accused him of getting money, if not directly, yet through Titus. But there were worse things still that needed to be dealt with, 2 Corinthians 12:20-21. Would that we were more often humbled to the dust by the sins of our brethren!