What Is 2 Corinthians About? Paul's Most Personal Letter

If 1 Corinthians solves problems, 2 Corinthians repairs a relationship. It is the most personal and the most emotionally uneven of Paul's letters.

Why it was hard to write

A group had arrived in Corinth calling themselves "the very chiefest apostles" (11:5) and questioning Paul's credentials: his speech was contemptible (10:10), he refused support (11:7), and he had suffered too much to look like a man with God behind him.

Paul is forced into something he says outright he does not want to do — defend himself. 11:1: "Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly."

The hardship list

11:23-28 is the frankest self-account anywhere in scripture: in prisons more frequent, in stripes above measure, in deaths oft; five times beaten with forty stripes save one, three times beaten with rods, once stoned, three times shipwrecked, a night and a day in the deep.

Then the heaviest line: "beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches" (11:28).

He lists it not to boast but to argue that his credentials are exactly here — the list runs in reverse.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.2 Corinthians 4:7 (KJV)

Treasure in earthen vessels

4:7 is the central image of the letter. Earthenware was the cheapest, plainest container available — used for oil and water, no loss if it broke.

Paul says the treasure is kept in such a container for a reason: "that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us."

The next four verses unfold it: "troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed" (4:8-9). Every line pivots on a "yet" — the vessel is cracked but not shattered.

The thorn passage is here too

12:7-10 — the thorn and God's famous answer — belongs to this letter. It is the same argument as 4:7 in a different form: weakness is not an obstacle to God working but the way the work shows.

Two chapters on giving

Chapters 8-9 are the longest passage on giving in the New Testament. Note his method: he sets no figure. He describes the Macedonian churches, whose "deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality" (8:2), then Christ, who "though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor" (8:9).

9:7 is the conclusion: "God loveth a cheerful giver."

How to read it

Thirteen chapters, about fifty minutes. Read chapters 4 and 12 first — they carry the emotional and argumentative core, and the defensive sections make sense once you know what he is defending.

Read 2 Corinthians 4 in the BiblePro app. And do look for a local church to read alongside others.