Day Eleven
Movement IV — The Proportion
Springs
Six verses after the arithmetic, Paul tells them what the arithmetic cost.
For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. 2 Corinthians 1:8–9, KJV
Read that again slowly, and notice who is speaking. This is the apostle. The man who wrote Romans. He is telling a congregation that doubted him that there was a stretch in Asia when he did not expect to live, and did not want to.
He puts it in writing. He does not walk it back in the next sentence. He says we would not have you ignorant — meaning, I want you to know this about me.
Today’s morsel
“But in God which raiseth the dead.”
Say the whole clause. The word but is carrying the verse — do not drop it.
Wells
Two phrases here will do more for a person in a hard place than most of what gets said to them.
The Greek is hyper dynamin — beyond capacity, past what could be borne. Paul is saying plainly that he was given more than he could handle.
Which means the sentence people reach for at hospital bedsides — God never gives you more than you can handle — is not in the Bible, and this verse is its flat contradiction. The verse it comes from is 1 Corinthians 10:13, and that verse is about temptation, not affliction. It promises a way of escape from sin, not a ceiling on sorrow.
Paul got more than he could handle. If you have too, you are not failing the standard. You are in the standard company.
And here is the second phrase, which is the reason this day exists. The Greek carries a purpose clause. The trouble in Asia had a stated design, and Paul names it: that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.
Not so he would learn patience. Not so he would appreciate the good days. So that his trust would be relocated. The affliction went past his strength precisely so that his own strength would stop being the thing he was standing on.
And notice which name of God he reaches for at the bottom. Not God who heals, or God who delivers, though he knew both. God which raiseth the dead. When a man has had the sentence of death pronounced inside himself, only a resurrection-sized God is any use, and that is exactly the God who was there.
Aquifer
Check the misquotation yourself. Open 1 Corinthians 10:13 and read the whole verse in context from verse 6. The subject is Israel’s idolatry and the Corinthians’ danger of repeating it. The noun is peirasmos, temptation or trial-as-enticement, and the promised way of escape is escape from sinning. Nothing in the passage concerns grief, illness, or loss. Set it beside hyper dynamin in 2 Corinthians 1:8 and the popular saying collapses on the page.
What happened in Asia? Honestly, nobody knows. The candidates: the riot at Ephesus (Acts 19:23–41), a severe illness, an imprisonment not recorded in Acts, or the fighting with beasts alluded to in 1 Corinthians 15:32. Paul assumed the Corinthians already knew and gave no details. The silence is worth noting — the doctrine does not depend on identifying the trouble, which is part of why the verse travels so well into other people’s troubles.
On apokrima. The noun in “the sentence of death” is a legal term for an official verdict or response, and it appears only here in the New Testament. Paul is not describing a mood. He is describing a ruling that had already been handed down inside him.