<p>11:21 <em>To my shame, I can say, we were too weak to do that- </em>Such leadership as discussed on :20 was seen as &quot;strong&quot;. Paul sarcastically says that he was too weak to have treated his flock like that.</p><p><em>Yet wherein any is bold (I speak in foolishness), I am bold </em>also- What follows is some sort of encomium, a list of a person's biographical achievements. But it is presented as a sarcasm about Paul&rsquo;s encomium see on Gal. 1:10. Here in 2 Cor. 11:21-12:10, all the classic elements of the encomium are to be found- his origin and birth, training, accomplishments, comparison with others etc. But he has written that those who compare themselves with others (<em>synkrinontes</em>) are fools (2 Cor. 10:12), and that he himself has been speaking as a fool, a raving madman. That was what he thought of an encomium after the flesh. This is all a needful lesson for our generation, surrounded as we are by pressure to trust in education, achievements, being humanly cool and impressive. Paul goes on to say that actually, he prefers as a Christian to &quot;boast of things that show my weakness&quot; (2 Cor. 11:30). Instead of speaking of glorious &quot;deeds of the body&quot;, he speaks of his labours, imprisonments, beatings etc. And thus he draws out the paradox, incredible for the first century mind- his real strength and power is in his weakness, for it was this that made him trust in God and in the grace of the Lord Jesus (2 Cor. 12:10). Instead of impressing those around him, Paul sought to impress the Father and Son above. His strength was not, as society then thought, in what he had inherited and developed from the communities into which he was born- it was rather in the grace of God transforming his character. His patron, his teacher and elder, was the Lord Jesus, and the God who raised Jesus from the dead (Gal. 1:1; Rom. 8:11), rather than any visible 'elder' of his natural communities.</p>