2 Corinthians 1:9

‘Yes, we ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.'

Indeed they had felt themselves under sentence of death, and had accepted the fact that they were probably going to die, but he recognised that this had happened so that they might not trust in themselves, but in God Who raises the dead. It had forced them to face up to what the Gospel was all about. And so they had faced up to death, looking it in the face, accepting its inevitability, and yet willingly continuing on towards it, and they had done it because they believed in the God ‘Who raises the dead' (compare 2 Corinthians 4:14; Romans 4:17).

What this experience was of which Paul was speaking we do not know. It may have been a severe bout of illness which appeared at first mortal, from which he was raised as one dead, although in that case we would expect his words to be in the singular, or it may be the same situation that made him speak of ‘fighting beasts at Ephesus' (1 Corinthians 15:32), the opposition of violent men, or it may be that they had been caught up in mob violence time and again and had only just escaped with their lives, or it may be that they were under threat from the authorities. Acts, however, gives us no indication of such a situation, and there the authorities appear as reasonable men. Whatever it was it seemed to have passed.