The Greeks had a certain standard of eloquence that came from a tradition of oratory going way back to the Greek golden age. Then along had come the public lecturers and the politicians who won their way by having the right word and the dramatic flair. Paul's critics were assessing him by those high Greek standards. They said Paul was a weak figure, and that even though he came across strong in his letters, in person he was not of leadership caliber. It was in the face of all this that Paul goes on to demonstrate how to handle criticism.

Paul’s critics were apparently people who had come in from outside, the same way Paul had come originally. These were the people who were stirring up trouble. Paul writes about them in quite a different way than he writes about the Corinthian church itself. He has very hard words for these people who were disrupting the church. Secondly, they came with great boasts of authority, presenting themselves as "super apostles" and claiming to have greater revelation and far more authority than even Paul.

It is a difficult thing to be a leader, I suppose, or to be prominent in any way because the more prominent you are, the more criticism you get of one sort or another. That is certainly true of politicians. They are criticized by their opponents. Then if they are elected to the office they are seeking, they are the butt of constant criticism until eventually somebody displaces them, and they return to a normal way of life.

The final aspect of this matter of motivation for giving comes at the very end of chapter 9, verse 15, where Paul says, "Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift." What Paul is doing here in this very last statement about this offering is to lift the eyes of those to whom he is writing up to God and his great gift of salvation to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the indescribable gift.