What Does 1 Corinthians 2:3 Mean?

(3) **And I was with you.**—To show that the real force of his teaching lay in its subject-matter, and not in any power with which he may have proclaimed the gospel, the Apostle now dwells upon his own physical weakness. The “weakness and fear and trembling” of which St. Paul speaks here had in it probably a large element of that self-distrust which so noble and sensitive a nature would feel in the fulfilment of such an exalted mission as the preaching of the Cross. I cannot think, however, the allusion is only to that. There is, I believe, a reference also to what we may call a physical apprehension of danger. The bravest are not those who do not experience any sensation of fear, but rather those who keenly appreciate danger, who have an instinctive shrinking from it, and yet eventually by their moral might conquer this dread. There are traces of this element in St. Paul’s character to be found in several places, as, for example, in Acts 18:9, when the Lord encourages him when labouring at Corinth with the hopeful words, “Be not afraid;” again in Acts 23:11, when the terrible scene before Ananias had depressed him, the Lord is with him to strengthen him, “Be of good cheer, Paul;” and in Acts 27:24, when the angel of the Lord appears to him amid the storm and shipwreck, “Fear not, Paul.”