Here is one of Paul’s most tender passages. Yet, there is in it a harshness to it. Paul is firm in his confrontation, and calls a spade a spade. Listen to him again in verse 16:

“Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?”

But despite that tough confrontation, Paul pulls back the curtain of his own inner soul, revealing his anguish and pain, his personal limitations, his feelings of failure, his overwhelming sense of appreciation. Can’t you just feel the deep emotion and tenderness in verse 14?

“And my trial which was in my flesh you did not despise or reject, but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.”

Short through this passage is Paul’s overarching commitment to those he considered his spiritual children. He is pulling out all the sops in the…