9 

9:13 Your avowed subjection - Openly testified by your actions. To all men - Who stand in need of it.

9:15 His unspeakable gift - His outward and inward blessings, the number and excellence of which cannot he uttered.

10 

10:1 Now I Paul myself - - A strongly emphatical expression.Who when present am base among you - So, probably, some of the false teachers affirmed. Copying after the meekness and gentleness of Christ, entreat - Though I might command you.

10:2 Do not constrain me when present to be bold - To exert my apostolical authority. Who think of us as walking after the flesh - As acting in a cowardly or crafty manner.

10:3 Though we walk in the flesh - In mortal bodies, and, consequently, are not free from human weakness. Yet we do not war - Against the world and the devil. After the flesh - By any carnal or worldly methods. Though the apostle here, and in several other parts of this epistle, speaks in the plural number, for the sake of modesty and decency, yet he principally means himself. On him were these reflections thrown, and it is his own authority which he is vindicating.

10:4 For the weapons of our warfare - Those we use in this war. Are not carnal - But spiritual, and therefore mighty to the throwing down of strong holds - Of all the difficulties which men or devils can raise in our way. Though faith and prayer belong also to the Christian armour, Eph 6:15, etc , yet the word of God seems to be here chiefly intended.

10:5 Destroying all vain reasonings, and every high thing which exalteth itself - As a wall or rampart. Against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought - Or, rather, faculty of the mind. Into captivity to the obedience of Christ - Those evil reasonings are destroyed. The mind itself, beingovercome and taken captive, lays down all authority of its own, and entirely gives itself up to perform, for the time to come, to Christ its conqueror the obedience of faith.

10:6 Being in readiness to avenge all disobedience - Not only by spiritual censure, but miraculous punishments. When your obedience is fulfilled - When the sound part of you have given proof of your obedience, so that I am in no danger of punishing the innocent with the guilty.

10:7 Do ye look at the outward appearance of things - Does any of you judge of a minister of Christ by his person, or any outward circumstance? Let him again think this of himself - Let him learn it from his own reflection, before I convince him by a severer method.

3 

3:20 To eat bread - That is, to take any subsistence.

3:21 His relations - His mother and his brethren, Mar 3:31. But it was some time before they could come near him.

3:22 The scribes and Pharisees, Mat 12:22;who had come down from Jerusalem - Purposely on the devil's errand.And not without success. For the common people now began to drink in the poison, from these learned, good, honourable men!He hath Beelzebub - at command, is in league with him: And by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils - How easily may a man of learning elude the strongest proof of a work of God! How readily can he account for every incident without ever taking God into the question. Mat 12:24; Luk 11:15.