12:11 I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: {5} for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing.
(5) Again he makes the Corinthians witnesses of those things by which God had sealed his apostleship among them, and again he declares by certain arguments how far he is from all covetousness, and also how he is affectionate towards them.
12:11 I am become a fool in glorying. As he looks back on what he has written he finds that he has done what he condemned as a folly, commended himself.
Ye have compelled me. Compelled to; a thing that ought not to have been necessary, for the Corinthians ought to have commended him.
Behind the very chiefest apostles. The false teachers who had claimed at Corinth to be leading apostles.
12:11 Though I am nothing - Of myself.
12:11-21 We owe it to good men, to stand up in the defence of their reputation; and we are under special obligations to those from whom we have received benefit, especially spiritual benefit, to own them as instruments in God's hand of good to us. Here is an account of the apostle's behaviour and kind intentions; in which see the character of a faithful minister of the gospel. This was his great aim and design, to do good. Here are noticed several sins commonly found among professors of religion. Falls and misdeeds are humbling to a minister; and God sometimes takes this way to humble those who might be tempted to be lifted up. These vast verses show to what excesses the false teachers had drawn aside their deluded followers. How grievous it is that such evils should be found among professors of the gospel! Yet thus it is, and has been too often, and it was so even in the days of the apostles.
