PHP separate paragraph

I am writing a code for wordpress to separate paragraph using PHP. The objective is to split the content of the post into an array and echo them accordingly.

Here are my code

<?php
    $content = "<p>123</p> <p>456</p> <p>789</p>"
    $p = explode("</p>", $content);

    $i=0;
    //echo first 2 elements
    foreach ($p as $para) {
        echo $para;
        array_shift($p); //remove the first element
        $i++; //increase the element count by 1
        if ($i == 2){ break;} //if element has reach 2 meaning second paragraph, stop loop.
    }
    echo "<br>Break here<br>";
    //echo the rest of the element
    foreach ($p as $para) {
        echo $para;
    }
?>

Replace this

$content = "<p>123</p> <p>456</p> <p>789</p>"

With the following

$content = apply_filters( 'the_content', get_the_content() );
$content = str_replace( ']]>', ']]>', $content );

to retrieve the content of the post with paragraph tag.

I am able to achieve my result but I am just worry of the consequences such as system overload.