³¹The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. ³²In Damascus the ethnarch under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me, ³³and I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his hands.

Akin to swearing in court to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God,” Paul affirms in the most spiritually assertive way the veracity of his testimony to the Corinthians. The corresponding OT formula goes something like this: “As the Lord lives what I am saying is true” (e.g. Ruth 3:13, 2 Kings 2:2). The irresolute King Saul used that oath superficially (see 1 Sam. 14:39, 19:6), but his NT namesake (Paul’s Hebrew name being Saul) did not invoke God’s witness lightly. For one who was convincingly proven by God to be an apostle (Acts 14:3, 15:12, Rom. 15:9, 2 Cor. 12:12, also Heb. 2:4), he would be foolish to call on God to witness to the truth of his testimony if he were fabricating or embellishing the story. God would then become a hostile witness! No, Paul was telling the truth.

Yet integrity of speech should be a hallmark of Christian behavior, without the need for specifically calling on God. He is always watching and witnessing, and we need to live in this awareness with our every word and behavior. Jesus said simply, “[L]et your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’” (Matt. 5:37). Paul adds emphasis of God’s witness for the Corinthians’ sake.

Now the end of Paul’s hardship list brings up his very first misfortune for preaching Christ, and that experience, being the last mentioned, seems to be the lowest one of his life, namely being let down in a basket to escape persecution in Damascus. He seems to be embarrassed to admit this, but Paul is sharing an authentic moment. The time was right after his conversion in Acts 9 when, after preaching Christ for a few days, the Jewish leaders attempted to kill him. To protect him, the “disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket” (Acts 9:25). Why does Paul include this here at the end of his list of sacrifices, and even precede it with the solemn appeal to God for its truth? Could it be that he was ashamed of the indignity of being treated like a helpless baby, being let down in a basket in order to escape persecution? Later, on his first mission tour, he would be stoned outside of the city of Lystra, left for dead, and then get up and bravely go right back into the city (Acts 14:19–20). Never again would he run scared from persecution. Despite all that, he sees the Damascan basket as a sacrifice he accepted for preaching the gospel, and thus says that God “is blessed forever.”

Lord, help me never to run scared of telling others about Your beloved Jesus.