Catholic Commentary
The Only Worthy Boast: The Lord's Commendation
17But “he who boasts, let him boast in the Lord.”18For it isn’t he who commends himself who is approved, but whom the Lord commends.
Second Corinthians 10:17–18 contrasts legitimate and false grounds for honor and authority, instructing that true boasting belongs only to the Lord and that genuine approval comes from God's commendation rather than self-promotion. Paul rejects the honor-seeking standards of his rivals, establishing that authentic authority is grounded in Christ and validated by divine approval rather than rhetorical skill or self-endorsement.
God's verdict on your life is the only applause that matters—everything else is counterfeit currency.
2 Corinthians 10:17 — "He who boasts, let him boast in the Lord" (cf. Jer 9:24)
Paul has spent the bulk of 2 Corinthians 10 responding to rivals in Corinth who measured apostolic authority by outward impressiveness — rhetorical polish, letters of recommendation, spiritual credentials paraded before an audience. His counter-move is not to simply out-boast them on their own terms; rather, he relocates the entire category of boasting. The quotation — a near-verbatim echo of LXX Jeremiah 9:23–24 — is one Paul also employs in 1 Corinthians 1:31, which reveals it is not a merely tactical citation but a theological axiom for him. In its original Jeremianic context, the Lord warns against boasting in wisdom, might, or riches, and insists that the only worthy boast is knowing the Lord, who practices steadfast love (hesed), justice, and righteousness. Paul inherits this prophetic logic entirely. The Greek kauchaomai ("to boast" or "to glory") carries connotations of public self-presentation and the seeking of honor — the very currency of Greco-Roman social competition. Paul does not abolish boasting; he baptizes it. True kauchēma (the object of boasting) is the Lord himself and what the Lord has done through weakness, not what the apostle has accomplished by strength.
The phrase "in the Lord" (en Kyriō) carries its full Pauline weight here. This is not mere piety; it is an ontological claim. For Paul, to be "in the Lord" is to be incorporated into Christ — the domain of grace, cruciformity, and resurrection. To boast en Kyriō is to point away from oneself toward the source of all genuine fruitfulness. The boast is specifically Christological: Christ crucified is the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), the very thing that looks like weakness and foolishness to Paul's rivals.
2 Corinthians 10:18 — "It is not he who commends himself who is approved, but whom the Lord commends"
This verse delivers the logical ground (gar — "for") of the citation above. Paul introduces the contrast between synistanō heauton (self-commendation) and the dokimos (approved, tested, genuine) person whom the Lord commends. The word dokimos was used in antiquity for metal tested and proven genuine — currency that has passed assay. The false apostles in Corinth were, in Paul's estimation, counterfeit; their commendations were self-issued and therefore worthless. Authentic apostolic approval — indeed, authentic Christian identity — comes from outside the self: it is received from God.
This does not mean passivity. Paul's entire ministry is one of strenuous labor. But even his labor is framed throughout 2 Corinthians as a dying-and-rising pattern: "We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies" (4:10). The approval Paul seeks is eschatological — he longs to hear the Lord's "well done" (cf. Mt 25:21) — not the admiration of a Corinthian faction. There is here a subtle but powerful inversion of the honor-shame dynamic that governed Corinthian social life: the true honor (dokimos) is bestowed by God, not earned by performance or extracted from crowds.
Catholic tradition reads these verses as a concentrated theology of humility, grace, and the radical dependence of the creature upon God. St. Augustine, who knew the temptation of self-display intimately, saw in Jeremiah 9:24 the foundation of all Christian virtue: "Our heart is restless until it rests in You" (Confessions I.1) — glory that terminates in the self is glory misrouted, and ultimately destructive. He insisted that even good works, if performed for human admiration, corrupt the soul (City of God XIV.13).
St. Thomas Aquinas, treating vainglory in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q. 132), classifies it as a capital vice precisely because it usurps the honor due to God alone. Verse 18 maps directly onto his teaching: self-commendation (gloria vana) is hollow because it substitutes human judgment for divine. Only God, as the ultimate standard of truth and goodness, can confer approval that is real.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church echoes this in its treatment of humility and prayer: "Humility is the foundation of prayer" (CCC 2559), and it roots all merit in grace rather than in human achievement: "With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man… The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace" (CCC 2007–2008). Paul's "boast in the Lord" is thus the scriptural heartbeat of the Catholic understanding that grace always precedes and conditions merit. Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium §96, warns against a "tomb psychology" born of self-referential Christianity — a living commentary on the false apostles of Corinth and their self-commending successors in every age.
Contemporary Catholic life is saturated with platforms for self-commendation: social media ministries, Catholic conferences with celebrity speakers, parish communities where influence is negotiated through visibility. Paul's two verses cut through this with surgical precision. The question these verses put to every Catholic leader, catechist, blogger, or missionary is not "How am I perceived?" but "Am I approved by the Lord?" — a question answerable only in prayer, examination of conscience, and submission to the Church's discernment.
Practically, verse 18 invites Catholics to audit their motivations in ministry and public Catholic identity. Do I serve so that others will think well of me — or so that God's work is done? This passage also consoles: the one who feels overlooked, uncelebrated, or passed over in favor of more polished voices can take deep comfort that dokimos — genuine approval — is not a social metric. It is God's own judgment, rendered in secret and confirmed eternally. Boasting in the Lord means learning to find sufficiency in what God says of us, rather than in what the crowd reflects back.
Commentary