THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
Editor of "The Expositor"
THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS
BY
JAMES DENNEY, B.D.
London
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCIV
THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS
BY
JAMES DENNEY, B.D.
London
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCIV
Introduction, in the scientific sense, is not
part of the expositor's task; but it is convenient,
especially when introduction and exposition have important
bearings on each other, that the expositor
should indicate his opinion on the questions common
to both departments. This is the purpose of the statement
which follows.
(1) The starting-point for every inquiry into the
relations between St. Paul and the Corinthians, so far
as they concern us here, is to be found in the close
connexion between the two Epistles to the Corinthians
which we possess. This close connexion is not a
hypothesis, of greater or less probability, like so much
that figures in Introductions to the Second Epistle;
it is a large and solid fact, which is worth more for
our guidance than the most ingenious conjectural
combination. Stress has been justly laid on this by
Holtzmann,Einleitung, 2nd ed., p. 255 f.
who illustrates the general fact by details.
Thus 2 Cor. i. 8-10, ii. 12, 13, attach themselves immediately
to the situation described in 1 Cor. xvi. 8, 9.
Similarly in 2 Cor. i. 12 there seems to be a distinct
echo of 1 Cor. ii. 4-14. More important is the unquestionable
reference in 2 Cor. i. 13-17, 23, to 1 Cor.
xvi. 5. From a comparison of these two passages it
is plain that before Paul wrote either he had had an
intention, of which the Corinthians were aware, to visit
Corinth in a certain way. He was to leave Ephesus,
sail straight across the sea to Corinth, go from Corinth
to Macedonia, and then return, viâ Corinth, to Asia
again. In other words, on this tour he was to visit
Corinth twice. In the last chapter of the First Epistle,
he announces a change of plan: he is not going to
Corinth direct, but viâ Macedonia, and the Corinthians
are only to see him once. He does not say, in the
First Epistle, why he has changed his plan, but the
announcement caused great dissatisfaction in Corinth.
Some said he was a fickle creature; some said he was
afraid to show face. This is the situation to which the
Second Epistle directly addresses itself; the very first
thing Paul does in it is to explain and justify the
change of plan announced in the First. It was not
fickleness, he says, nor cowardice, that made him
change his mind, but the desire to spare the Corinthians
and himself the pain which a visit paid at the
moment would certainly inflict. The close connexion
between our two Epistles, which on this point is unquestionable,
may be further illustrated. Thus, not to
point to general resemblances in feeling or temper, the
correspondence is at least suggestive between ἁγνὸς έν
τῷ πράγματι, 2 Cor. vii. 11 (cf. the use of πρᾶγμα in
1 Thess. iv. 6), and τοιαύτη πορνεία in 1 Cor. v. 1;
between ἐν προσώπῳ Χριστοῦ, 2 Cor. ii. 10, and ἐν τῷ
ὀνόματι τοῦ Κ. ἡμῶν Ἰ. Χ., 1 Cor. v. 4; between the
mention of Satan in 2 Cor. ii. 11 and 1 Cor. v. 5;
between πενθεῖν in 2 Cor. xii. 21 and 1 Cor. v. 2;
between τοιοῦτος and τις in 2 Cor. ii. 6 f., 2 Cor. ii. 5,
and the same words in 1 Cor. v. 5 and 1 Cor. v. 1. If
all these are carefully examined and compared, I think
it becomes extremely difficult to believe that in 2 Cor.
ii. 5 ff. and in 2 Cor. vii. 8 ff. the Apostle is dealing with
anything else than the case of the sinner treated in
1 Cor. v. The coincidences in detail would be very
striking under any circumstances; but in combination
with the fact that the two Epistles, as has just been
shown by the explanation of the change of purpose
about the journey, are in the closest connexion with
each other, they seem to me to come as nearly as
possible to demonstration.
(2) If this view is accepted, it is natural and justifiable
to explain the Second Epistle as far as possible out
of the First. Thus the letter to which St. Paul refers
in 2 Cor. ii. 4 and in 2 Cor. vii. 8, 12, will be our First
Epistle to the Corinthians; the persons referred to in
2 Cor. vii. 12 as "he who did the wrong" and "he to
whom the wrong was done" will be the son and the
father in 1 Cor. v. 1. There are, indeed, many who
think that it is absurd to speak of the First Epistle to
the Corinthians as written "out of much affliction and
anguish of heart and with many tears"; and who
cannot imagine that Paul would speak of a great sin
and crime, like that of the incestuous person, in such
language as he employs in 2 Cor. ii. 5 ff. and 2 Cor.
vii. 12. Such language, they argue, suits far better
the case of a personal injury, an insult or outrage of
which Paul—either in person or in one of his deputies—had
been the victim at Corinth. Hence they argue
for an intermediate visit of a very painful character,
and for an intermediate letter, now lost, dealing with
this painful incident. Paul, we are to suppose, visited
Corinth on the business of 1 Cor. v. (among other
things), and there suffered a great humiliation. He
was defied by the guilty man and his friends, and had
to leave the Church without effecting anything. Then
he wrote the extremely severe letter to which ii. 4
refers—a letter which was carried by Titus, and which
produced the change on which he congratulates himself
in ii. 5 ff. and vii. 8 ff. It is obvious that this whole
combination is hypothetical; and hence, though many
have been attracted by it, it appears with an infinite
variety of detail. It is obvious also that the grounds
on which it rests are subjective; it is a question on
which men will differ to the end of time, whether the
language in 2 Cor. ii. 4 is an apt description of the mood
in which Paul wrote (at least certain parts of) the First
Epistle to the Corinthians, or whether the language in
2 Cor. ii. 5 ff., vii. 8 ff. is becoming language in which
to close proceedings like those opened in 1 Cor. v. If
many have believed that it is not, many, on the other
hand, have no difficulty in believing that it is; and
those who take the negative not only fail to explain
the series of verbal correspondences detailed above,
but dissolve the connexion between our two Epistles
altogether. Thus Godet allows more than a year,
crowded with events, to come between them. In view
of the palpable fact with which we started, I cannot
but think this quite incredible: it is far easier to
suppose that the proceedings about the incestuous
person took a complexion which made Paul's language
in the second and seventh chapters natural than to
come to any confident conviction about this hypothetical
visit and letter.
(3) But the visit, it may be said, at all events, is not
hypothetical. It is distinctly alluded to in 2 Cor. ii. 1,
xii. 14, xiii. 1. These passages are discussed in the
exposition. The two last are certainly not decisive;
there are good scholars who hold the same opinion of
the first. Heinrici, for instance, maintains that Paul
had only been once in Corinth when he wrote the
Second Epistle; it was the third time he was starting,
but once his intention had been frustrated or deferred,
so that when he reached Corinth it would only be his
second visit. A case can be stated for this, but in view
of chap. ii. 1 and chap. xiii. 2, I do not see that it can
be easily maintained. These passages practically compel
us to assume that Paul had already visited Corinth
a second time, and had had very painful experiences
there. But the close connexion of our Epistles equally
compels us to assume that this second visit belongs to
an earlier date than our first canonical Epistle. We
know nothing of it except that it was not pleasant, and
that Paul was very willing to save both himself and the
Corinthians the repetition of such an experience. It is
nothing against this view that the visit in question is
not referred to in Acts or in the fist letter. Hardly
anything in chap. xi. 24 ff. is known to us from Acts, and
probably we should never have known of this journey
unless in explaining the change of purpose which the
first letter announced it had occurred to Paul to say:
"I did not wish to come when it could only vex you;
I had enough of that before."
(4) As for the letter, which is supposed to be referred
to in 2 Cor. ii. 4, it also has been relieved of its
hypothetical character by being identified with chaps.
x. 1-xiii. 10 of our present Second Epistle. In the
absence of the faintest external indication that the
Epistle ever existed in any other than its present form,
it is perhaps superfluous to treat this seriously; but
the comment of Godet seems to me sufficiently to
dispose of it. The hypothetical letter in question—in
which Godet himself believes—must have had two
main objects: first, to accredit Titus, who is assumed
to have carried it, as the representative of Paul; and,
second, to insist on reparation for the assumed personal
outrage of which Paul had been the victim on his
recent visit. This second object, at an events, is indisputable.
But chaps. x. 1-xiii. 10 have no reference
whatever to either of these things, and are wholly
taken up with what the Apostle means to do, when he
comes to Corinth the third time; they refer not to
this (imaginary) insolent person, but to the misbelieving
and the immoral in general.
(5) Except in the points specified, the interpretation
of the Epistle is little affected by the questions raised
in Introduction. Even in the points specified it is the
historical reference, not the ethical import, which is
affected. Whichever view we take of them, we get
on the whole substantially the same impression of the
spirit of Christ as it lives and works in the soul of the
Apostle. It is part of the man's greatness, it is the
seal of his inspiration, that in his hands the temporal
becomes eternal, the incidental loses its purely incidental
character, and has significance for all time.
It is the expositor's task to deal with the spiritual
rather than the historical side, and it will be sufficient
here to indicate in outline what I conceive the series of
Paul's relations with the Corinthians to have been.
(6) His first visit to Corinth was that which is
recorded in Acts xviii.; according to the statement of
ver. 11 it extended over a period of eighteen months.
In all probability he had many communications with
the Church, through deputies whom he commissioned,
in the years during which he was absent; the form of
the question in 2 Cor. xii. 17 (μή τινα ὧν ἀπέσταλκα
πρὸς ὑμᾶς κ.τ.λ.) implies as much. But it is only after
his coming to Ephesus, in the course of his third
missionary journey, that personal intercourse with
Corinth can have been resumed. To this period I
should refer the visit which we are bound to assume
on the ground of 2 Cor. ii. 1, xiii. 2. What the occasion
was, or what the circumstances, we cannot tell;
all we know is that it was painful, and perhaps
disappointing. Paul had used grave and threatening
language on this occasion (2 Cor. xiii. 2), but he had
been obliged to tolerate some things which he would
rather have seen otherwise. This visit was probably
made toward the close of the three years' stay in
Ephesus, and the letter referred to in 1 Cor. v. 9—the
one in which he warned the Corinthians not to associate
with fornicators—would most likely be written on his
return from it. In this letter he may very naturally
have announced that purpose of visiting Corinth twice—once
on his way to Macedonia, and again on his
way back—to which reference has already been made.
This letter, plainly, did not serve its purpose, and not
long afterwards Paul received at Ephesus deputies
from the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xvi. 17), who
apparently brought written instructions with them, in
which Paul's judgment was sought more minutely on
a variety of ethical questions (1 Cor. vii. 1). Before
these deputies arrived, or at all events before Paul
wrote the letter (our First Epistle) in which he addressed
himself to the state of affairs in Corinth which their
reports had disclosed, Timothy had left Ephesus on a
journey of some interest. Paul meant Corinth to be
his destination (1 Cor. iv. 17), but he had to go viâ
Macedonia, and the Apostle was not certain that he
would get so far (1 Cor. xvi. 10: "But if Timothy
come," etc.). In point of fact, he does not seem to have
gone farther than Macedonia; and Luke in Acts xix. 22
mentions Macedonia as the place to which he had been
sent. That he got no farther is suggested also by
the fact that Paul joins his name with his own in the
salutation of the Second Epistle, which was written in
Macedonia, but never hints that he owed to him any
information whatever on the state of the Corinthian
Church. All that he knew of this, and of the effect of
his first letter, he learned from Titus (2 Cor. ii. 13,
vii. 13 f.). But how did Titus happen to be in Corinth
representing Paul? By far the happiest suggestion
here is that which makes Titus and the brother of
2 Cor. xii. 18 the same as "the brethren" of 1 Cor.
xvi. 12, whose return from Corinth Paul expected in
company of Timothy. Timothy, as we have seen,
did not get so far. Paul's departure from Ephesus was
apparently hastened by a great peril; his anxiety, too,
to hear the effect produced by that letter which had
cost him so much—our First Epistle—was very great;
he pressed on, past Troas, where a fair field of labour
waited for workers, and finally encountered Titus in
Macedonia, and heard his report.
(7) This is the point at which the Second Epistle to
the Corinthians begins. It falls of itself into three
clearly marked divisions. The first extends over
chaps. i.-vii. In this the Apostle makes his peace, so
to speak, with the Corinthians, and does everything in
his power to remove any feeling of "soreness" which
might linger in their minds over his rigorous treatment
of one particular offender. But embedded in this there
is a magnificent vindication of the spiritual apostolic
ministry, especially in contrast with that of the legalists,
and an appeal for love and confidence such as he had
always bestowed on the Church. Chaps. viii. and ix.
form the second part, and are devoted to the collection
which was being made in the Gentile Churches for
poor Christians in Jerusalem. The third part consists
of chaps. x. to xiii. In this Paul confronts the disorders
which still assert themselves in the Church; the
pretensions of certain Judaists, "superlative apostles"
as he calls them, who were assailing his apostolic
vocation and subverting his gospel; and the immoral
licence of others, presumably once pagans, who used
liberty for a cloak to the flesh. He writes of both
with unsparing severity, yet he does not wish to be
severe. He parts from the Church with words of unaffected
love, and includes them all in his benediction.
SUFFERING AND CONSOLATION
"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and
Timothy our brother, unto the Church of God which is at Corinth,
with all the saints which are in the whole of Achaia: Grace to you
and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of mercies and God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all
our affliction, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any
affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted
of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound unto us, even so our
comfort also aboundeth through Christ. But whether we be afflicted,
it is for your comfort and salvation; or whether we be comforted, it
is for your comfort, which worketh in the patient enduring of the
same sufferings which we also suffer: and our hope for you is
stedfast; knowing that, as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so also
are ye of the comfort."—2 Cor. i. 1-7 (R.V.).
The greeting with which St. Paul introduces his
Epistles is much alike in them all, but it never
becomes a mere formality, and ought not to pass unregarded
as such. It describes, as a rule, the character
in which he writes, and the character in which his
correspondents are addressed. Here he is an apostle
of Jesus Christ, divinely commissioned; and he
addresses a Christian community at Corinth, including
in it, for the purposes of his letter, the scattered
Christians to be found in the other quarters of Achaia.
His letters are occasional, in the sense that some
special incident or situation called them forth; but this
occasional character does not lessen their value. He
addresses himself to the incident or situation in the
consciousness of his apostolic vocation; he writes to
a Church constituted for permanence, or at least for
such duration as this transitory world can have; and
what we have in his Epistles is not a series of obiter
dicta, the casual utterances of an irresponsible person;
it is the mind of Christ authoritatively given upon the
questions raised. When he includes any other person
in the salutation—as in this place "Timothy our
brother"—it is rather as a mark of courtesy, than as
adding to the Epistle another authority besides his own.
Timothy had helped to found the Church at Corinth;
Paul had shown great anxiety about his reception by
the Corinthians, when he started to visit that turbulent
Church alone (1 Cor. xvi. 10 f.); and in this new letter
he honours him in their eyes by uniting his name with
his own in the superscription. The Apostle and his
affectionate fellow-worker wish the Corinthians, as they
wished all the Churches, grace and peace from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not necessary
to expound afresh the meaning and connexion of these
two New Testament ideas: grace is the first and last
word of the Gospel; and peace—perfect spiritual
soundness—is the finished work of grace in the soul.
The Apostle's greeting is usually followed by a
thanksgiving, in which he recalls the conversion of
those to whom he is writing, or surveys their progress
in the new life, and the improvement of their gifts,
gratefully acknowledging God as the author of all.
Thus in the First Epistle to the Corinthians he thanks
God for the grace given to them in Christ Jesus, and
especially for their Christian enrichment in all utterance
and in all knowledge. So, too, but with deeper gratitude,
he dwells on the virtues of the Thessalonians,
remembering their work of faith, and labour of love,
and patience of hope. Here also there is a thanksgiving,
but at the first glance of a totally different
character. The Apostle blesses God, not for what He
has done for the Corinthians, but for what He has done
for himself. "Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of
all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation."
This departure from the Apostle's usual custom is
probably not so selfish as it looks. When his mind
travelled down from Philippi to Corinth, it rested on the
spiritual aspects of the Church there with anything but
unrelieved satisfaction. There was much for which he
could not possibly be thankful; and just as the momentary
apostasy of the Galatians led to his omitting the
thanksgiving altogether, so the unsettled mood in which
he wrote to the Corinthians gave it this peculiar turn.
Nevertheless, when he thanked God for comforting
him in all his afflictions, he thanked Him on their
behalf. It was they who were eventually to have the
profit both of his sorrows and his consolations. Probably,
too, there is something here which is meant
to appeal, even to those who disliked him in Corinth.
There had been a good deal of friction between the
Apostle and some who had once owned him as their
father in Christ; they were blaming him, at this very
moment, for not coming to visit them; and in this
thanksgiving, which dilates on the afflictions he has
endured, and on the divine consolation he has experienced
in them, there is a tacit appeal to the sympathy
even of hostile spirits. Do not, he seems to say, deal
ungenerously with one who has passed through such
terrible experiences, and lays the fruit of them at your
feet. Chrysostom presses this view, as if St. Paul had
written his thanksgiving in the character of a subtle
diplomatist: to judge by one's feeling, it is true enough
to deserve mention.The same view is strongly held by Schmiedel. He infers from
chap. vi. 9 that Paul's sufferings had been interpreted at Corinth as
a divine chastisement; in opposition to this the Apostle shows that
they are divinely intended to profit the Corinthians. Hence the
opening of the letter is not a simple outpouring of his heart, but is
delicately calculated to set aside a reproach without naming it. The
same purpose rules in the assumption that the Corinthians will
intercede and give thanks on his behalf; it takes for granted their
reconciliation to him.
The subject of the thanksgiving is the Apostle's
sufferings, and his experience of God's mercies under
them. He expressly calls them the sufferings of Christ.
These sufferings, he says, abound toward us. Christ
was the greatest of sufferers: the flood of pain and
sorrow went over His head; all its waves and billows
broke upon Him. The Apostle was caught and overwhelmed
by the same stream; the waters came into
his soul. That is the meaning of τὰ παθήματα τοῦ
Χριστοῦ περισσεύει εἰς ἡμᾶς. In abundant measure the
disciple was initiated into his Master's stern experience;
he learned, what he prayed to learn, the fellowship of
His sufferings. The boldness of the language in which
a mortal man calls his own afflictions the sufferings of
Christ is far from unexampled in the New Testament.
It is repeated by St. Paul in Col. i. 24: "I now rejoice
in my sufferings on your behalf, and fill up that which
is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for
His body's sake, which is the Church." It is varied
in Heb. xiii. 13, where the sacred writer exhorts us
to go out to Jesus, without the camp, bearing His
reproach. It is anticipated and justified by the words
of the Lord Himself: "Ye shall indeed drink of My
cup; and with the baptism with which I am baptised
shall ye be baptised withal." One lot, and that a
cross, awaits all the children of God in this world, from
the Only-begotten who came from the bosom of the
Father, to the latest-born among His brethren. But
let us beware of the hasty assertion that, because the
Christian's sufferings can thus be described as of a
piece with Christ's, the key to the mystery of Gethsemane
and Calvary is to be found in the self-consciousness
of martyrs and confessors. The very man
who speaks of filling up that which is lacking of the
afflictions of Christ for the Church's sake, and who
says that the sufferings of Christ came on him in their
fulness, would have been the first to protest against
such an idea. "Was Paul crucified for you?" Christ
suffered alone; there is, in spite of our fellowship with
His sufferings, a solitary, incommunicable greatness in
His Cross, which the Apostle will expound in another
place (chap. v.). Even when Christ's sufferings come
upon us there is a difference. At the very lowest, as
Vinet has it, we do from gratitude what he did from
pure love. We suffer in His company, sustained by
His comfort; He suffered uncomforted and unsustained.
We are afflicted, when it so happens, "under the
auspices of the divine mercy"; He was afflicted that
there might be mercy for us.
Few parts of Bible teaching are more recklessly
applied than those about suffering and consolation. If
all that men endured was of the character here
described, if all their sufferings were sufferings of
Christ, which came on them because they were walking
in His steps and assailed by the forces which buffeted
Him, consolation would be an easy task. The presence
of God with the soul would make it almost unnecessary.
The answer of a good conscience would take all the
bitterness out of pain; and then, however it tortured, it
could not poison the soul. The mere sense that our
sufferings are the sufferings of Christ—that we are
drinking of His cup—is itself a comfort and an inspiration
beyond words. But much of our suffering, we
know very well, is of a different character. It does not
come on us because we are united to Christ, but because
we are estranged from Him; it is the proof and the
fruit, not of our righteousness, but of our guilt. It is
our sin finding us out, and avenging itself upon us, and
in no sense the suffering of Christ. Such suffering,
no doubt, has its use and its purpose. It is meant to
drive the soul in upon itself, to compel it to reflection,
to give it no rest till it awakes to penitence, to urge it
through despair to God. Those who suffer thus will
have cause to thank God afterwards if His discipline
leads to their amendment, but they have no title to take
to themselves the consolation prepared for those who
are partners in the sufferings of Christ. Nor is the
minister of Christ at liberty to apply a passage like this
to any case of affliction which he encounters in his
work. There are sufferings and sufferings; there is
a divine intention in them all, if we could only discover
it; but the divine intention and the divinely wrought
result are only explained here for one particular kind—those
sufferings, namely, which come upon men in
virtue of their following Jesus Christ. What, then
does the Apostle's experience enable him to say on this
hard question?
(1) His sufferings have brought him a new revelation
of God, which is expressed in the new name, "The
Father of mercies and God of all comfort." The name
is wonderful in its tenderness; we feel as we pronounce
it that a new conception of what love can be has been
imparted to the Apostle's soul. It is in the sufferings
and sorrows of life that we discover what we possess
in our human friends. Perhaps one abandons us in our
extremity, and another betrays us; but most of us find
ourselves unexpectedly and astonishingly rich. People
of whom we have hardly ever had a kind thought show
us kindness; the unsuspected, unmerited goodness which
comes to our relief makes us ashamed. This is the rule
which is illustrated here by the example of God Himself.
It is as if the Apostle said: "I never knew, till the sufferings
of Christ abounded in me, how near God could
come to man; I never knew how rich His mercies could
be, how intimate His sympathy, how inspiriting His
comfort." This is an utterance well worth considering.
The sufferings of men, and especially the sufferings
of the innocent and the good, are often made the
ground of hasty charges against God; nay, they are
often turned into arguments for Atheism. But who
are they who make such charges? Not the righteous
sufferers, at least in New Testament times. The Apostle
here is their representative and spokesman, and he
assures us that God never was so much to him as when
he was in the sorest straits. The divine love was
so far from being doubtful to him that it shone out
then in unanticipated brightness; the very heart of the
Father was revealed—all mercy, all encouragement and
comfort. If the martyrs have no doubts of their own,
is it not very gratuitous for the spectators to become
sceptics on their account? "The sufferings of Christ"
in His people may be an insoluble problem to the
disinterested onlooker, but they are no problem to
the sufferers. What is a mystery, when viewed from
without, a mystery in which God seems to be conspicuous
by His absence, is, when viewed from within,
a new and priceless revelation of God Himself. "The
Father of mercies and God of all comfort" is making
Himself known now as for want of opportunity He
could not be known before.
Notice especially that the consolation is said to
abound "through Christ." He is the mediator through
whom it comes. To partake in His sufferings is to be
united to Him; and to be united to Him is to partake
in His life. The Apostle anticipates here a thought
on which he enlarges in the fourth chapter: "Always
bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the
life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body."
In our eagerness to emphasise the nearness and the
sympathy of Jesus, it is to be feared that we do less
than justice to the New Testament revelation of His
glory. He does not suffer now. He is enthroned on
high, far above all principality and power and might
and dominion. The Spirit which brings His presence
to our hearts is the Spirit of the Prince of Life; its
function is not to be weak with our weakness, but to
help our infirmity, and to strengthen us with all might
in the inner man. The Christ who dwells in us through
His Spirit is not the Man of Sorrows, wearing the crown
of thorns; it is the King of kings and Lord of lords,
making us partakers of His triumph. There is a weak
tone in much of the religious literature which deals
with suffering, utterly unlike that of the New Testament.
It is a degradation of Christ to our level which it
teaches, instead of an exaltation of man toward Christ's.
But the last is the apostolic ideal: "More than conquerors
through Him that loved us." The comfort of
which St. Paul makes so much here is not necessarily
deliverance from suffering for Christ's sake, still less
exemption from it; it is the strength and courage and
immortal hope which rise up, even in the midst of
suffering, in the heart in which the Lord of glory dwells.
Through Him such comfort abounds; it wells up to
match and more than match the rising tide of suffering.
(2) But Paul's sufferings have done more than give
him a new knowledge of God; they have given him at
the same time a new power to comfort others. He is
bold enough to make this ministry of consolation the
key to his recent experiences. "He comforteth us in
all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort them
that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith
we ourselves are comforted of God." His sufferings
and his consolation together had a purpose that went
beyond himself. How significant that is for some
perplexing aspects of man's life! We are selfish, and
instinctively regard ourselves as the centre of all
providences; we naturally seek to explain everything
by its bearing on ourselves alone. But God has not
made us for selfishness and isolation, and some
mysteries would be cleared up if we had love enough
to see the ties by which our life is indissolubly linked
to others. This, however, is less definite than the
Apostle's thought; what he tells us is that he has
gained a new power at a great price. It is a power
which almost every Christian man will covet; but how
many are willing to pass through the fire to obtain
it? We must ourselves have needed and have found
comfort, before we know what it is; we must ourselves
have learned the art of consoling in the school of
suffering, before we can practise it for the benefit of
others. The most painfully tried, the most proved in
suffering, the souls that are best acquainted with grief,
provided their consolation has abounded through Christ,
are specially called to this ministry. Their experience
is their preparation for it. Nature is something, and
age is something; but far more than nature and age is
that discipline of God to which they have been submitted,
that initiation into the sufferings of Christ which
has made them acquainted with His consolations also,
and has taught them to know the Father of mercies and
the God of all comfort. Are they not among His best
gifts to the Church, those whom He has qualified to
console, by consoling them in the fire?
In the sixth verse the Apostle dwells on the interest
of the Corinthians in his sufferings and his consolation.
It is a practical illustration of the communion of the
saints in Christ. "All that befalls me," says St. Paul,
"has your interest in view. If I am afflicted, it is in
the interest of your comfort: when you look at me, and
see how I bear myself in the sufferings of Christ, you
will be encouraged to become imitators of me, even as
I am of Him. If, again, I am comforted, this also is in
the interest of your comfort; God enables me to impart
to you what He has imparted to me; and the comfort
in question is no impotent thing; it proves its power
in this—that when you have received it, you endure with
brave patience the same sufferings which we also suffer."
This last is a favourite thought with the Apostle, and
connects itself readily with the idea, which may or may
not have a right to be expressed in the text, that all this
is in furtherance of the salvation of the Corinthians.The text is incurably perplexed. The variations can be seen in
any critical edition. The MS. authority does not justify any confident
decision, and the happiest suggestion yet made seems to be
that of Professor Warfield, who would omit altogether the words καὶ σωτηρίας (and salvation). The MSS. vary most in regard to these
words, inserting, omitting, and transposing them. Hence they are
very probably an old gloss, and their omission simplifies both the
grammar and the sense.
For if there is one note of the saved more certain than
another, it is the brave patience with which they take
upon them the sufferings of Christ. ὁ δὲ ὑπομείνας εἰς
τέλος, οὗτος σωθήσεται (Matt. x. 22). All that helps
men to endure to the end, helps them to salvation.
All that tends to break the spirit and to sink men
despondency, or hurry them into impatience or fear,
leads in the opposite direction. The great service that
a true comforter does is to put the strength and courage
into us which enable us to take up our cross, however
sharp and heavy, and to bear it to the last step and the
last breath. No comfort is worth the name—none is
taught of God—which has another efficacy than this.
The saved are those whose souls rise to this description,
and who recognise their spiritual kindred in such brave
and patient sufferers as Paul.
The thanksgiving ends appropriately with a cheerful
word about the Corinthians. "Our hope for you is
stedfast; knowing that, as ye are partakers of the
sufferings, so are ye also of the comfort." These two
things go together; it is the appointed lot of the
children of God to become acquainted with both. If
the sufferings could come alone, if they could be
assigned as the portion of the Church apart from the
consolation, Paul could have no hope that the Corinthians
would endure to the end; but as it is, he is
not afraid. The force of his words is perhaps best
felt by us, if instead of saying that the sufferings
and the consolation are inseparable, we say that the
consolation depends upon the sufferings. And what
is the consolation? It is the presence of the exalted
Saviour in the heart through His Spirit. It is a clear
perception, and a firm hold, of the things which are
unseen and eternal. It is a conviction of the divine
love which cannot be shaken, and of its sovereignty and
omnipotence in the Risen Christ. This infinite comfort
is contingent upon our partaking of the sufferings of
Christ. There is a point, the Apostle seems to say,
at which the invisible world and its glories intersect
this world in which we live, and become visible, real,
and inspiring to men. It is the point at which we suffer
with Christ's sufferings. At any other point the vision
of this glory is unneeded, and therefore withheld. The
worldly, the selfish, the cowardly; those who shrink
from self-denial; those who evade pain; those who
root themselves in the world that lies around us, and
when they move at all move in the line of least resistance;
those who have never carried Christ's Cross,—none
of these can ever have the triumphant conviction
of things unseen and eternal which throbs in every
page of the New Testament. None of these can have
what the Apostle elsewhere calls "eternal consolation."
It is easy for unbelievers, and for Christians lapsing
into unbelief, to mock this faith as faith in "the transcendent";
but would a single line of the New Testament
have been written without it? When we weigh what
is here asserted about its connexion with the sufferings
of Christ, could a graver charge be brought against
any Church than that its faith in this "transcendent"
languished or was extinct? Do not let us hearken
to the sceptical insinuations which would rob us of all
that has been revealed in Christ's resurrection; and do
not let us imagine, on the other hand, that we can
retain a living faith in this revelation if we decline to
take up our cross. It was only when the sufferings
of Christ abounded in him that Paul's consolation was
abundant through Christ; it was only when he laid
down his life for His sake that Stephen saw the
heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the
right hand of God.
FAITH BORN OF DESPAIR
"For we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our
affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly,
beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life:
yea, we ourselves have had the answer of death within ourselves,
that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the
dead: who delivered us out of so great a death, and will deliver: on
whom we have set our hope that He will also still deliver us; ye
also helping together on our behalf by your supplication; that, for
the gift bestowed upon us by means of many, thanks may be given
by many persons on our behalf.
"For our glorying is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in
holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace
of God, we behaved ourselves in the world, and more abundantly to
you-ward. For we write none other things unto you, than what ye
read or even acknowledge, and I hope ye will acknowledge unto the
end: as also ye did acknowledge us in part, that we are your glorying,
even as ye also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus."—2 Cor.
i. 8-14 (R.V.).
Paul seems to have felt that the thanksgiving with
which he opens this letter to the Corinthians was
so peculiar as to require explanation. It was not his
way to burst upon his readers thus with his private
experiences either of joy or sorrow; and though he
had good reason for what he did—in that abundance
of the heart out of which the mouth speaks, in his
desire to conciliate the good-will of the Corinthians for
a much-tried man, and in his faith in the real communion
of the saints—he instinctively stops here a
moment to vindicate what he has done. He does not
wish them to be ignorant of an experience which has
been so much to him, and ought to have the liveliest
interest for them.
Evidently they knew that he had been in trouble,
but they had no sufficient idea of the extremity to
which he had been reduced. We were weighed down,
he writes, in excess, beyond our power; the trial that
came upon us was one not measured to man's strength.
We despaired even of life. Nay, we have hadNotice the perfect ἐσχήκαμεν. We had this experience, and in
its fruit—a newer and deeper faith in God—we have it still. It is
a permanent possession in this happy form. The same idea is
expressed in the pft. ἠλπίκαμεν, ver. 10.
the
answer of death in ourselves. When we looked about
us, when we faced our circumstances, and asked ourselves
whether death or life was to be the end of this,
we could only answer, Death. We were like men
under sentence; it was only a question of a little
sooner or a little later, when the fatal stroke should
fall.
The Apostle, who has a divine gift for interpreting
experience and reading its lessons, tells us why he and
his friends had to pass such a terrible time. It was
that they might trust, not in themselves, but in God
who raises the dead. It is natural, he implies, for us to
trust in ourselves. It is so natural, and so confirmed
by the habits of a lifetime, that no ordinary difficulties
or perplexities avail to break us of it. It takes all God
can do to root up our self-confidence. He must reduce
us to despair; He must bring us to such an extremity
that the one voice we have in our hearts, the one voice
that cries to us wherever we look round for help, is
Death, death, death. It is out of this despair that the
superhuman hope is born. It is out of this abject
helplessness that the soul learns to look up with new
trust to God.
It is a melancholy reflection upon human nature that
we have, as the Apostle expresses it elsewhere, to be
"shut up" to all the mercies of God. If we could
evade them, notwithstanding their freeness and their
worth, we would. How do most of us attain to any
faith in Providence? Is it not by proving, through
numberless experiments, that it is not in man that
walketh to direct his steps? Is it not by coming, again
and again, to the limit of our resources, and being
compelled to feel that unless there is a wisdom and a
love at work on our behalf, immeasurably wiser and
more benignant than our own, life is a moral chaos?
How, above all, do we come to any faith in redemption?
to any abiding trust in Jesus Christ as the
Saviour of our souls? Is it not by this same way of
despair? Is it not by the profound consciousness that
in ourselves there is no answer to the question, How
shall man be just with God? and that the answer must
be sought in Him? Is it not by failure, by defeat, by
deep disappointments, by ominous forebodings hardening
into the awful certainty that we cannot with our
own resources make ourselves good men—is it not by
experiences like these that we are led to the Cross?
This principle has many other illustrations in human
life, and every one of them is something to our discredit.
They all mean that only desperation opens our
eyes to God's love. We do not heartily own Him as
the author of life and health, unless He has raised us
from sickness after the doctor had given us up. We
do not acknowledge His paternal guidance of our life,
unless in some sudden peril, or some impending
disaster, He provides an unexpected deliverance. We
do not confess that salvation is of the Lord, till our
very soul has been convinced that in it there dwells no
good thing. Happy are those who are taught, even by
despair, to set their hope in God; and who, when they
learn this lesson once, learn it, like St. Paul, once for
all (see note on ἐσχήκαμεν above). Faith and hope
like those which burn through this Epistle were well
worth purchasing, even at such a price; they were
blessings so valuable that the love of God did not
shrink from reducing Paul to despair that he might be
compelled to grasp them. Let us believe when such
trials come into our lives—when we are weighed down
exceedingly, beyond our strength, and are in darkness
without light, in a valley of the shadow of death with
no outlet—that God is not dealing with us cruelly or
at random, but shutting us up to an experience of His
love which we have hitherto declined. "After two
days will He revive us; on the third day He will raise
us up, and we shall live before Him."
The Apostle describes the God on whom he learned
to hope as "God who raises the dead." He himself
had been as good as dead, and his deliverance was as
good as a resurrection. The phrase, however, seems
to be the Apostle's equivalent for omnipotence: when
he thinks of the utmost that God can do, he expresses
it thus. Sometimes the application of it is merely
physical (e.g., Rom. iv. 17); sometimes it is spiritual
as well. Thus in Eph. i. 19 ff. the possibilities of the
Christian life are measured by this—that that power is
at work in believers with which God wrought in Christ
when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at
His own right hand in the heavenly places. Is not
that power sufficient to do for the weakest and most
desperate of men far more than all he needs? Yet it
is his need, somehow, when brought home to him in
despair, that opens his eyes to this omnipotent saving
power.
The text of the words in which Paul tells of his
deliverance can hardly be said to be quite certain, but
the general meaning is plain. God delivered him from
the awful death which was impending over him; he
had his hope now firmly set on Him; he was sure that
He would deliver him in the future also.The doubtful words here are καὶ ῥύεται in ver. 10 of the Received
Text, from DC, E, F, G, K, etc. ("and doth deliver," in the Authorised
Version). They are not found in A, D, Syr., Chrys., while the most
authoritative MSS., א, B, C, P, have καὶ ῥύσεται ("and will deliver,"
of the Revised Version). Most editors take the last reading, as best
attested; but on internal grounds two of the most recent and acute interpreters,
Schmiedel and Heinrici, prefer the Received Text. The present
tense ("doth deliver") presupposes that the danger to which Paul had
been exposed in some form or in some sense continued. If this were
the case, of course it could not have been, as Hofmann supposes, the
shipwreck in which the Apostle spent a night and a day in the deep.
Otherwise this would be a plausible and tempting supposition.
What the
danger had been, which had made so powerful an
impression on this hardy soul, we cannot now tell. It
must have been something which happened after the
First Epistle was written, and therefore was not the
fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus, whatever that may
have been (1 Cor. xv. 32). It may have been a serious
bodily illness, which had brought him to death's door,
and left him so weak, that still, at every step, he felt it
was God's mercy that was holding him up. It may
have been a plot to make away with him on the part
of the many adversaries mentioned in the First Epistle
(xvi. 9)—a plot which had failed, as it were, by a
miracle, but the malignity of which still dogged his steps,
and was only warded off by the constant presence of
God. Both these suggestions require, and would satisfy,
the reading, "who delivered us from so great a death,
and doth deliver." If, however, we take the reading of
the R.V.—"who delivered us from so great a death, and
will deliver; on whom we have set our hope that He
will also still deliver us"—the existence of the danger,
at the moment at which Paul writes, is not necessarily
involved; and the danger itself may have been more
of what we might call an accidental character. The
imminent peril of drowning referred to in chap. xi. 25
would meet the case; and the confidence expressed by
Paul with such emphatic reference to the future will not
seem without motive when we consider that he had
several sea voyages in prospect—as those from Corinth
to Syria, from Syria to Rome, and probably from
Rome to Spain. So Hofmann interprets the whole
passage: but whether the interpretation be good or
bad, it is elsewhere than in its accidental circumstances
that the interest of the transaction lies for the writer
and for us. To Paul it was not merely a historical
but a spiritual experience; not an incident without
meaning, but a divinely ordered discipline; and it is
thus that we must learn to read our own lives if the
purpose of God is to be wrought out in them.
Notice in this connexion, in the eleventh verse, how
simply Paul assumes the spiritual participation of the
Corinthians in his fortunes. It is God indeed who
delivers him, but the deliverance is wrought while
they, as well as other Churches, co-operate in supplication
on his behalf. In the strained relations existing
between himself and the Corinthians, the assumption
here made so graciously probably did them more than
justice; if there were unsympathetic souls among them,
they must have felt in it a delicate rebuke. What
follows—"that, for the gift bestowed upon us by the
means of many, thanks may be given by many persons
on our behalf" (R.V.)—simple and intelligible as it
looks in English, is one of the passages which justify
M. Sabatier's remark that Paul is difficult to understand
and impossible to translate. The Revisers seem
to have construed τὸ εἰς ἡμᾶς χάρισμα διὰ πολλῶν
together, as if it had been τὸ διὰ π. ε. ἡ. χάρισμα, the
meaning being that the favour bestowed on Paul in his
deliverance from this peril had been bestowed at the
intercession of many. Others get virtually the same
meaning by construing τὸ εἰς ἡμᾶς χάρισμα with ἐκ
πολλῶν προσώπων: the inversion is supposed to emphasise
these last words; and as it was, on this view,
prayer on the part of many persons that procured his
deliverance, Paul is anxious that the deliverance itself
should be acknowledged by the thanksgiving of many.
It cannot be denied that both these renderings are
grammatically violent, and it seems to me preferable
to keep τὸ εἰς ἡμᾶς χάρισμα by itself, even though
ἐκ πολλῶν προσώπων and διὰ πολλῶν should then
reduplicate the same idea with only a slight variation.
We should then render: "in order that, on the part of
many persons, the favour shown to us may be gratefully
acknowledged by many on our behalf." The
pleonasm thus resulting strikes one rather as characteristic
of St. Paul's mood in such passages, than as
a thing open to objection.To render διὰ πολλῶν prolixe, copiously, is at least precarious;
and to take πρόσωπα as "faces" ("that from many faces upturned
in prayer to God"), though lexically admissible, seems on all other
grounds out of place.
But grammar apart, what
really has to be emphasised here is again the communion
of the saints. All the Churches pray for St.
Paul—at least he takes it for granted that they do; and
when he is rescued from danger, his own thanksgiving
is multiplied a thousandfold by the thanksgivings of
others on his behalf. This is the ideal of an evangelist's
life; in all its incidents and emergencies, in all
its perils and salvations, it ought to float in an atmosphere
of prayer. Every interposition of God on the
missionary's behalf is then recognised by him as a gift
of grace (χάρισμα)—not, be it understood, a private
favour, but a blessing and a power capacitating him
for further service to the Church. Those who have
lived through his straits and his triumphs with him in
their prayers know how true that is.
At this point (ver. 12) the key in which Paul writes
begins to change. We are conscious of a slight discord
the instant he speaks about the testimony of his
conscience. Yet the transition is as unforced as any
such transition can be. I may well take for granted,
seems to be the thought in his mind, that you pray for
me; I may well ask you to unite with me in thanks
to God for my deliverance; for if there is one thing
I am sure of, and proud of, it is that I have been a
loyal minister of God in the world, and especially to
you. Fleshly wisdom has not been my guide. I have
used no worldly policy; I have sought no selfish ends.
In a holiness and sincerity which God bestows, in an
element of crystal transparency, I have led my apostolic
life. The world has never convicted me of anything
dark or underhand; and in all the world none know
better than you, among whom I lived longer than
elsewhere, working with my hands, and preaching the
Gospel as freely as God offers it, that I have walked
in the light as He is in the light.
This general defence, which is not without its note
of defiance, becomes defined in ver. 13. Plainly charges
of insincerity had been made against Paul, particularly
affecting his correspondence, and it is to these he
addresses himself. It is not easy to be outspoken and
conciliatory in the same sentence, to show your indignation
to the man who charges you with double-dealing,
and at the same time take him to your heart;
and the Apostle's effort to do all these things at once
has proved embarrassing to himself, and more than
embarrassing to his interpreters. He begins, indeed,
lucidly enough. "We write nothing else to you than
what you read." He does not mean that he had no
correspondence with members of the Church except in
his public epistles; but that in these public epistles
his meaning was obvious and on the surface. His
style was not, as some had hinted, obscure, tortuous,
elaborately ambiguous, full of loop-holes; he wrote
like a plain man to plain men; he said what he meant,
and meant what he said. Then he qualifies this
slightly. "We write nothing to you but what you
read—or in point of fact acknowledge," even apart from
our writing. This seems to me the simplest interpretation
of the words ἢ καὶ ἐπιγινώσκετε; and the simplest
construction is then that of Hofmann, who puts a colon
at ἐπιγινώσκετε, and with ἐλπίζω δὲ begins what is
virtually a separate sentence. "And I hope that to the
end ye will acknowledge, as in fact you acknowledged
us in part, that we are your boast, as you also are
ours, in the day of the Lord Jesus." Other possibilities
of punctuation and construction are so numerous
that it would be endless to exhibit them; and in the
long-run they do not much affect the sense. What
the reader has to seize is that Paul has been accused
of insincerity, especially in his correspondence, and
that he indignantly denies the charge; that, in spite
of such accusations, he can point to at least a partial
recognition among the Corinthians of what he and his
fellow-workers really are; and that he hopes their
confidence in him will increase and continue to the
end. Should this bright hope be gratified, then in
the day of the Lord Jesus it will be the boast of the
Corinthians that they had the great Apostle Paul as
their spiritual father, and the boast of the Apostle that
the Corinthians were his spiritual children.
A passage like this—and there are many like it in
St. Paul—has something in it humiliating. Is it not
a disgrace to human nature that a man so open, so
truthful, so brave, should be put to his defence on a
charge of underhand dealing? Ought not somebody
to have been deeply ashamed, for bringing this shame
on the Apostle? Let us be very careful how we lend
motives, especially to men whom we know to be better
than ourselves. There is that in all our hearts which
is hostile to them, and would not be grieved to see
them degraded a little; and it is that, and nothing
else, which supplies bad motives for their good actions,
and puts an ambiguous face on their simplest behaviour.
"Deceit," says Solomon, "is in the heart of them that
imagine evil"; it is our own selves that we condemn
most surely when we pass our bad sentence upon
others.
The immediate result of imputing motives, and
putting a sinister interpretation on actions, is that
mutual confidence is destroyed; and mutual confidence
is the very element and atmosphere in which any
spiritual good can be done. Unless a minister and
his congregation recognise each other as in the main
what they profess to be, their relation is destitute of
spiritual reality; it may be an infinite weariness, or
an infinite torment; it can never be a comfort or a
delight on one side or the other. What would a family
be, without the mutual confidence of husband and wife,
of parents and children? What is a state worth, for
any of the ideal ends for which a state exists, if those
who represent it to the world have no instinctive
sympathy with the general life, and if the collective
conscience regards the leaders from a distance with
dislike or distrust? And what is the pastoral relation
worth, if, instead of mutual cordiality, openness, readiness
to believe and to hope the best, instead of mutual
intercession and thanksgiving, of mutual rejoicing in
each other, there is suspicion, reserve, insinuation,
coldness, a grudging recognition of what it is impossible
to deny, a willingness to shake the head and to
make mischief? What an experience of life we see,
what a final appreciation of the best thing, in that
utterance of St. John in extreme age: "Beloved, let us
love one another." All that is good for us, all glory
and joy, is summarily comprehended in that.
The last words of the text—"the day of the Lord
Jesus"—recall a very similar passage in 1 Thess.
ii. 19: "What is our hope, or joy, or crown of
rejoicing—is it not even ye—before our Lord Jesus at
His coming?" In both cases our minds are lifted to
that great presence in which St. Paul habitually lived;
and as we stand there our disagreements sink into
their true proportions; our judgments of each other
are seen in their true colours. No one will rejoice
then that he has made evil out of good, that he has
cunningly perverted simple actions, that he has discovered
the infirmities of preachers, or set the saints
at variance; the joy will be for those who have loved
and trusted each other, who have borne each other's
faults and laboured for their healing, who have believed
all things, hoped all things, endured all things, rather
than be parted from each other by any failure of love.
The mutual confidence of Christian ministers and
Christian people will then, after all its trials, have its
exceeding great reward.
THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION
"And in this confidence I was minded to come before unto you,
that ye might have a second benefit; and by you to pass into
Macedonia, and again from Macedonia to come unto you, and of you
to be set forward on my journey unto Judæa. When I therefore
was thus minded, did I show fickleness? or the things that I purpose,
do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be the
yea yea and the nay nay? But as God is faithful, our word toward
you is not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was
preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timothy,
was not yea and nay, but in Him is yea. For how many soever be
the promises of God, in Him is the yea: wherefore also through Him
is the Amen, unto the glory of God through us."—2 Cor. i. 15-20
(R.V.).
The emphatic words in the first sentence are "in
this confidence." All the Apostle's plans for
visiting Corinth, both in general and in their details,
depended upon the maintenance of a good understanding
between himself and the Church; and the
very prominence here given to this condition is a tacit
accusation of those whose conduct had destroyed his
confidence. When he intimated his intention of visiting
them, according to the programme of vv. 15 and 16,
he had felt sure of a friendly welcome, and of the
cordial recognition of his apostolic authority; it was
only when that assurance was taken away from him
by news of what was being said and done at Corinth,
that he had changed his plan. He had originally
intended to go from Ephesus to Corinth, then from
Corinth north into Macedonia, then back to Corinth
again, and thence, with the assistance of the Corinthians,
or their convoy for part of the way, to Jerusalem. Had
this purpose been carried out, he would of course have
been twice in Corinth, and it is to this that most
scholars refer the words "a second benefit,"For χάριν, (benefit) אC, B, L, P, have χαράν (joy.) Though
Westcott and Hort put this in the text, and χάριν in the margin, most
scholars are agreed that χάριν is the Apostle's word, and χαράν a
slip or a correction.
or rather
"grace." This reference, indeed, is not quite certain;
and it cannot be proved, though it is made more probable,
by using πρότερον and δευτέραν to interpret each
other. It remains possible that when Paul said, "I
was minded to come before unto you, that ye might
have a second benefit," he was thinking of his original
visit as the first, and of this purposed one as the
second, "grace." This reading of his words has commended
itself to scholars like Calvin, Bengel, and
Heinrici. Whichever of these interpretations be
correct, the Apostle had abandoned his purpose of
going from Ephesus to Macedonia viâ Corinth, and
had intimated in the First Epistle (chap. xvi. 5) his
intention of reaching Corinth viâ Macedonia. This
change of purpose is not sufficient to explain what
follows. Unless there had been at Corinth a great
deal of bad feeling, it would have passed without
remark, as a thing which had no doubt good reasons,
though the Corinthians were ignorant of them; at the
very most, it would have called forth expressions of
disappointment and regret. They would have been
sorry that the benefit (χάρις), the token of Divine
favour which was always bestowed when the Apostle
came "in the fulness of the blessing of Christ," and
"longing to impart some spiritual gift," had been
delayed; but they would have acquiesced as in any
other natural disappointment. But this was not what
took place. They used the Apostle's change of purpose
to assail his character. They charged him with "lightness,"
with worthless levity. They called him a
weathercock, a Yes and No man, who said now one
thing and now the opposite, who said both at once and
with equal emphasis, who had his own interests in
view in his fickleness, and whose word, to speak plainly,
could never be depended upon.
The responsibility for the change of plan has already,
in the emphatic ταύτῃ τῇ πεποιθήσει, been indirectly
transferred to his accusers; but the Apostle stoops to
answer them quite straightforwardly. His answer is
indeed a challenge: "When I cherished that first
wish to visit you, was I—dare you say I was—guilty
of the levity with which you charge me? Or—to
enlarge the question, and, seeing that my whole character
is attacked, to bring my character as a whole
into the discussion—the things that I purpose, do I
purpose according to the flesh, that with me there
should be the yea yea and the nay nay?" Am I,
he seems to say, in my character and conduct, like
a shifty, unprincipled politician—a man who has no
convictions, or no conscience about his convictions—a
man who is guided, not by any higher spirit dwelling
in him, but solely by considerations of selfish interest?
Do I say things out of mere compliment, not meaning
them? When I make promises, or announce intentions,
is it always with the tacit reservation that they
may be cancelled if they turn out inconvenient? Do
you suppose that I purposely represent myself
(ἵνα ᾖ παρ' ἐμοί) as a man who affirms and denies, makes
promises and breaks them, has Yes yes and No no
dwelling side by side in his soul?Mention may be made here of another interpretation of ver. 17,
modifications of which recur from Chrysostom to Hofmann. In
substance it is this: "The things that I purpose, do I purpose
according to the flesh (i.e., with the stubborn consistency of a proud
man, who disposes as well as proposes), that with me (ἐμοί emphatic:
me, as if I were God, always to do what I would like to do) the Yes
should be yes, and the No, no—i.e., every promise inviolably kept?"
This is grammatically quite good, but contextually impossible.
You know me far
better than to suppose any such thing. All my communications
with you have been inconsistent with such
a view of my character. As God is faithful, our word
to you is not Yes and No. It is not incoherent, or
equivocal, or self-contradictory. It is entirely truthful
and self-consistent.
In this eighteenth verse the Apostle's mind is reaching
out already to what he is going to make his real defence,
and ὁ λόγος ἡμῶν ("our word") therefore carries a double
weight. It covers at once whatever he had said to them
about the proposed journey, and whatever he had said
in his evangelistic ministry at Corinth. It is this latter
sense of it that is continued in ver. 19: "For the Son
of God, Christ Jesus, who was preached among you by
us, by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not Yes
and No, but in him Yes has found place. For how
many soever are the promises of God, in Him is the
Yes." Let us notice first the argumentative force of
this. Paul is engaged in vindicating his character,
and especially in maintaining his truthfulness and
sincerity. How does he do so here? His unspoken
assumption is, that character is determined by the
main interest of life; that the work to which a man
gives his soul will react upon the soul, changing it
into its own likeness. As the dyer's hand is subdued
to the element it works in, so was the whole being of
Paul—such is the argument—subdued to the element
in which he wrought, conformed to it, impregnated by
it. And what was that element? It was the Gospel
concerning God's Son, Jesus Christ. Was there any
dubiety about what that was? any equivocal mixture
of Yes and No there? Far from it. Paul was so
certain of what it was that he repeatedly and solemnly
anathematised man or angel who should venture to
qualify, let alone deny it. There is no mixture of Yes
and No in Christ. As the Apostle says elsewhere
(Rom. xv. 8), Jesus Christ was a minister of the
circumcision "in the interest of the truth of God, with
a view to the confirmation of the promises." However
many the promises might be, in Him a mighty affirmation,
a mighty fulfilment, was given of every one. The
ministry of the Gospel has this, then, as its very subject,
its constant preoccupation, its highest glory—the
absolute faithfulness of God. Who would venture to
assert that Paul, or that anybody,According to Schmiedel, in the words δι' ἡμῶν ... δι' ἐμοῦ καὶ
Σιλουανοῦ καὶ Τιμοθέου we ought to discover an emphatic reference,
by way of contrast, to Judaising opponents of Paul in Corinth.
These are said to have brought another Jesus (xi. 4), who was notì
God's ἴδιος υἱὸς in Paul's sense (Rom. viii. 32), and in whom there
was Yea and Nay—namely, the confirmation of the promises to the
Jews or those who became Jews to receive them, and the refusal of
the promises to the Gentiles as such. It needs a keen scent to
discover this, and as the Corinthians read without a commentator it
would probably be thrown away upon them.
could catch the
trick of equivocation in such a service? Who does
not see that such a service must needs create true
men?
To this argument there is, for the natural man, a
ready answer. It by no means follows, he will say,
that because the Gospel is devoid of ambiguity or
inconsistency, equivocation and insincerity must be
unknown to its preachers. A man may proclaim the
true Gospel and in his other dealings be far from a true
man. Experience justifies this reply; and yet it does
not invalidate Paul's argument. That argument is
good for the case in which it is applied. It might be
repeated by a hypocrite, but no hypocrite could ever
have invented it. It bears, indeed, a striking because
an unintentional testimony to the height at which Paul
habitually lived, and to his unqualified identification of
himself with his apostolic calling. If a man has ten
interests in life, more or less divergent, he may have
as many inconsistencies in his behaviour; but if he has
said with St. Paul, "This one thing I do," and if the
one thing which absorbs his very soul is an unceasing
testimony to the truth and faithfulness of God, then it
is utterly incredible that he should be a false and faithless
man. The work which claims him for its own
with this absolute authority will seal him with its own
greatness, its own simplicity and truth. He will not
use levity. The things which he purposes, he will not
purpose according to the flesh. He will not be guided
by considerations perpetually varying, except in the
point of being all alike selfish. He will not be a
Yes and No man, whom nobody can trust.
The argumentative force of the passage being admitted,
its doctrinal import deserves attention. The Gospel—which
is identified with God's Son, Jesus Christ—is
here described as a mighty affirmation. It is not Yes
and No, a message full of inconsistencies, or ambiguities,
a proclamation the sense of which no one can ever
be sure he has grasped. In it (ἐν αὐτῷ means "in
Christ") the everlasting Yea has found place. The
perfect tense (γέγονεν) means that this grand affirmation
has come to us, and is with us, for good and all. What
it was and continued to be in Paul's time, it is to this
day. It is in this positive, definite, unmistakable
character that the strength of the Gospel lies. What
a man cannot know, cannot seize, cannot tell, he cannot
preach. The refutation of popular errors, even in
theology, is not gospel; the criticism of traditional
theories, even about Scripture, is not gospel; the intellectual
"economy," with which a clever man in a
dubious position uses language about the Bible or its
doctrines which to the simple means Yes, and to the
subtle qualifies the Yes enormously, is not gospel.
There is no strength in any of these things. Dealing
in them does not make character simple, sincere,
massive, Christian. When they stamp themselves on
the soul, the result is not one to which we could make
the appeal which Paul makes here. If we have any
gospel at all, it is because there are things which stand
for us above all doubts, truths so sure that we cannot
question them, so absolute that we cannot qualify them,
so much our life that to tamper with them is to touch
our very heart. Nobody has any right to preach who
has not mighty affirmations to make concerning God's
Son, Jesus Christ—affirmations in which there is no
ambiguity, and which no questioning can reach.
In the Apostle's mind a particular turn is given to
this thought by its connexion with the Old Testament.
In Christ, he says, the Yes has been realised; for how
many soever are the promises of God, in Him is the
Yes. The mode of expression is rather peculiar, but
the meaning is quite plain. Is there a single word of
good, Paul asks, that God has ever spoken concerning
man? Then that word is reaffirmed, it is confirmed,
it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It is no longer a word,
but an actual gift to men, which they may take hold
of and possess. Of course when Paul says "how
many soever are the promises," he is thinking of the
Old Testament. It was there the promises stood in
God's name; and hence he tells us in this passage that
Christ is the fulfilment of the Old Testament; in Him
God has kept His word given to the fathers. All that
the holy men of old were bidden to hope for, as the
Spirit spoke through them in many parts and in many
ways, is given to the world at last: he who has God's
Son, Jesus Christ, has all God has promised, and all
He can give.
There are two opposite ways of looking at the Old
Testament with which this apostolic teaching is inconsistent,
and which, by anticipation, it condemns.
There is the opinion of those who say that God's
promises to His people in the Old Testament have not
been fulfilled, and never will be. That is the opinion
held by many among the modern Jews, who have
renounced all that was most characteristic in the religion
of their fathers, and attenuated it into the merest
deistical film of a creed. It is the opinion also of many
who study the Bible as a piece of literary antiquity,
but get to no perception of the life which is in it, or of
the organic connexion between the Old Testament and
the New. What the Apostle says of his countrymen
in his own time is true of both these classes—when
they read the Scriptures, there is a veil upon their
hearts. The Old Testament promises have been fulfilled,
every one of them. Let a man be taught what
they mean, not as dead letters in an ancient scroll, but
as present words of the living God; and then let him
look to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and see whether
there is not in Him the mighty, the perpetual confirmation
of them all. We smile sometimes at what
seems the whimsical way in which the early Christians,
who had not yet a New Testament, found Christ everywhere
in the Old; but though it may be possible to
err in detail in this pursuit, it is not possible to err on
the whole. The Old Testament is gathered up, every
living word of it, in Him; we are misunderstanding it
if we take it otherwise.
The opinion just described is a species of rationalism.
There is another opinion, which, while agreeing with
the rationalistic one that many of God's promises in
the Old Testament have not yet been fulfilled, believes
that their fulfilment is still to be awaited. If one might
do so without offence, I should call this a species of
fanaticism. It is the error of those who take the Jewish
nation as such to be the subject of prophecy, and hope
for its restoration to Palestine, for a revived Jerusalem,
a new Davidic monarchy, even a reign of Christ over
such an earthly kingdom. All this, if we may take the
Apostle's word for it, is beside the mark. Equally with
rationalism it loses the spirit of God's word in the
letter. The promises have been fulfilled already, and
we are not to look for another fulfilment. Those who
have seen Christ have seen all that God is going to
do—and it is quite adequate—to make His word good.
He who has welcomed Christ knows that not one good
word of all that God has spoken has failed. God has
never, by the promises of the Old Testament, or by the
instincts of human nature, put a hope or a prayer into
man's heart that is not answered and satisfied abundantly
in His Son.
But leaving the reference to the Old Testament on
one side, it is well worth while for us to consider the
practical meaning of the truth, that all God's promises
are Yea in Christ. God's promises are His declarations
of what He is willing to do for men; and in the very
nature of the case they are at once the inspiration and
the limit of our prayers. We are encouraged to ask
all that God promises, and we must stop there. Christ
Himself then is the measure of prayer to man; we can
ask all that is in Him; we dare not ask anything that
lies outside of Him. How the consideration of this
should expand our prayers in some directions, and
contract them in others! We can ask God to give us
Christ's purity, Christ's simplicity, Christ's meekness
and gentleness, Christ's faithfulness and obedience,
Christ's victory over the world. Have we ever
measured these things? Have we ever put them into
our prayers with any glimmering consciousness of
their dimensions, any sense of the vastness of our
request? Nay, we can ask Christ's glory, His Resurrection
Life of splendour and incorruption—the image
of the heavenly. God has promised us all these things,
and far more: but has He always promised what we
ask? Can we fix our eyes on His Son, as He lived
our life in this world, and remembering that this, so far
as this world is concerned, is the measure of promise,
ask without any qualification that our course here may
be free from every trouble? Had Christ no sorrow?
Did He never meet with ingratitude? Was He never
misunderstood? Was He never hungry, thirsty,
weary? If all God's promises are summed up in Him—if
He is everything that God has to give—can we
go boldly to the throne of grace, and pray to be
exempted from what He had to bear, or to be richly
provided with indulgences which He never knew?
What if all unanswered prayers might be defined as
prayers for things not included in the promises—prayers
that we might get what Christ did not get, or be spared
what He was not spared? The spirit of this passage,
however, does not urge so much the definiteness as
the compass and the certainty of the promises of God.
They are so many that Paul could never enumerate
them, and all of them are sure in Christ. And when
our eyes are once opened on Him, does not He Himself
become as it were inevitably the substance of our
prayers? Is not our whole heart's desire, Oh that
I might win Him! Oh that He might live in me, and
make me what He is! Oh that that Man might arise
in me, that the man I am may cease to be! Do we
not feel that if God would give us His Son, all would
be ours that we could take or He could give?
It is in this mood—with the consciousness, I mean,
that in Jesus Christ the sure promises of God are
inconceivably rich and good—that the Apostle adds:
"wherefore also through Him is the Amen." It is not
easy to put a prayer into words, whether of petition or
thanksgiving, for men are not much in the habit of
speaking to God; but it is easy to say Amen. That is
the part of the Church when God's Son, Jesus Christ,
is proclaimed, clothed in His Gospel. Apart from the
Gospel, we do not know God, or what He will do, or
will not do, for sinful men; but as we listen to the
proclamation of His mercy and His faithfulness, as our
eyes are opened to see in His Son all He has promised
to do for us, nay, in a sense, all He has already done,
our grateful hearts break forth in one grand responsive
Amen! So let it be! we cry. Unless God had first
prompted us by sending His Son, we could never have
found it in our hearts to present such requests to Him;
but through Christ we are enabled to present them,
though it should be at first with only a look at Him,
and an appropriating Amen. It is the very nature of
prayer, indeed, to be the answer to promise. Amen is
all, at bottom, that God leaves for us to say.
The solemn acceptance of a mercy so great—an
acceptance as joyful as it is solemn, since the Amen
is one rising out of thankful hearts—redounds to the
glory of God. This is the final cause of redemption,
and however it may be lost sight of in theologies which
make man their centre, it is always magnified in the New
Testament. The Apostle rejoices that his ministry and
that of his friends (δι' ἡμῶν) contributes to this glory;
and the whole connexion of thought in the passage
throws a light on a great Bible word. God's glory is
identified here with the recognition and appropriation
by men of His goodness and faithfulness in Jesus
Christ. He is glorified when it dawns on human souls
that He has spoken good concerning them beyond
their utmost imaginings, and when that good is seen to
be indubitably safe and sure in His Son. The Amen
in which such souls welcome His mercy is the
equivalent of the Old Testament word, "Salvation is
of the Lord." It is expanded in an apostolic doxology:
"Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things:
to Him be glory for ever."
CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES
"Now He that stablisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us,
is God; who also sealed us, and gave us the earnest of the Spirit in
our hearts."—2 Cor. i. 21, 22 (R.V.).
It is not easy to show the precise connexion
between these words and those which immediately
precede. Possibly it is emotional, rather than logical.
The Apostle's heart swells as he contemplates in the
Gospel the goodness and faithfulness of God; and
though his argument is complete when he has exhibited
the Gospel in that light, his mind dwells upon it involuntarily,
past the mere point of proof; he lingers
over the wonderful experience which Christians have
of the rich and sure mercies. Those who try to make
out a more precise sequence of thought than this are
not very successful. Of course it is apparent that the
keynote of the passage is in harmony with that of
the previous verses. The ideas of "stablishing," of
"sealing," and of an "earnest," are all of one family;
they are all, as it were, variations of the one mighty
affirmation which has been made of God's promises in
Christ. From this point of view they have an argumentative
value. They suggest that God, in all sorts
of ways, makes believers as sure of the Gospel, and
as constant to it, as He has made it sure and certain
to them; and thus they exclude more decisively than
ever the idea that the minister of the Gospel can be a
man of Yes and No. But though this is true, it fails
to do justice to the word on which the emphasis falls—namely,
God. This, according to some interpreters, is
done, if we suppose the whole passage to be, in the
first instance, a disclaimer of any false inference which
might be drawn from the words, "to the glory of God
by us." "By us," Paul writes; for it was through the
apostolic preaching that men were led to receive the
Gospel, to look at God's promises, confirmed in Christ,
with an appropriating Amen to His glory; but he
hastens to add that it was God himself whose grace
in its various workings was the beginning, middle, and
end both of their faith and of their preaching. This
seems to me rather artificial, and I do not think more
than a connexion in sentiment, rather than in argument,
can be insisted upon.
But setting this question aside, the interpretation of
the two verses is of much interest. They contain
some of the most peculiar and characteristic words of
the New Testament—words to which, it is to be feared,
many readers attach no very distinct idea. The
simplest plan is to take the assertions one by one, as
if God were the subject. Grammatically this is incorrect,
for Θεός is certainly the predicate; but for the
elucidation of the meaning this may be disregarded.
(1) First of all, then, God confirms us into Christ.
"Us," of course, means St. Paul and the preachers
whom he associates with himself,—Silas and Timothy.
But when he adds "with you," he includes the
Corinthians also, and all believers. He does not claim
for himself any stedfastness in Christ, or any trustworthiness
as dependent upon it, which he would on
principle refuse to others. God, who makes His promises
sure to those who receive them, gives those who
receive them a firm grasp of the promises. Christ is
here, with all the wealth of grace in Him, indubitable,
unmistakable; and what God has done on that side,
He does on the other also. He confirms believers into
Christ. He makes their attachment to Christ, their
possession of Him, a thing indubitable and irreversible.
Salvation, to use the words of St. John, is true in Him
and in them; in them, so far as God's purpose and
work go, as much as in Him. He who is confirmed
into Christ is in principle as trustworthy, as absolutely
to be depended upon, as Christ Himself. The
same character of pure truth is common to them both.
Christ's existence as the Saviour, in whom all God's
promises are guaranteed, and Paul's existence as a
saved man with a sure grasp on all these promises, are
alike proofs that God is faithful; the truth of God
stands behind them both. It is to this that the appeal
of vv. 15-20 is virtually made; it is this in the long-run
which is called in question when the trustworthiness
of Paul is impeached.
All this, it may be said, is ideal; but in what sense
is it so? Not in the sense that it is fanciful or unreal;
but in the sense that the divine law of our life, and the
divine action upon our life, are represented in it. It
is our calling as Christian people to be stedfast in
Christ. Such stedfastness God is ever seeking to
impart, and in striving to attain to it we can always
appeal to Him for help. It is the opposite of instability;
in a special sense it is the opposite of untrustworthiness.
If we are letting God have His way with us in this
respect, we are persons who can always be depended
upon, and depended upon for conduct in keeping with
the goodness and faithfulness of God, into which we
have been confirmed by Him.
(2) From this general truth, with its application to all
believers, the Apostle passes to another of more limited
range. By including the Corinthians with himself in
the first clause, he virtually excludes them in the
second—"God anointed us." It is true that the New
Testament speaks of an anointing which is common to
all believers—"Ye have an anointing from the Holy
One; ye all know" (1 John ii. 20): but here, on the
contrary, something special is meant. This can only
be the consecration of Paul, and of those for whom he
speaks, to the apostolic or evangelistic ministry. It
is worth noticing that in the New Testament the act
of anointing is never ascribed to any one but God.
The only unction which qualifies for service in the
Christian dispensation, or which confers dignity in the
Christian community, is the unction from on high.
"God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy
Ghost and with power," and it is the participation in
this great anointing which capacitates any one to work
in the Gospel.Observe the play on the words in βεβαιῶν εἰς Χ ρ ι σ τ ό ν and
Χ ρ ί σ α ς.
Paul undoubtedly claimed, in virtue
of his divine call to apostleship, a peculiar authority
in the Church; but we cannot define any peculiarity in
his possession of the Spirit. The great gift which
must be held in some sense by all Christians—"for if
any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
His"—was in him intensified, or specialised, for the
work he had to do. But it is one Spirit in him and
in us, and that is why we do not find the exercise of
his authority alien or galling. It is authority divorced
from "unction"—authority without this divine qualification—against
which the Christian spirit rebels. And
though "unction" cannot be defined; though no
material guarantee can be given or taken for the
possession of the Spirit; though a merely historical
succession is, so far as this spiritual competence and
dignity are concerned, a mere irrelevance; though, as
Vinet said, we think of unction rather when it is
absent than when it is present,—still, the thing itself
is recognisable enough. It bears witness to itself, as
light does; it carries its own authority, its own dignity,
with it; it is the ultima ratio, the last court of appeal,
in the Christian community. It may be that Paul is
preparing already, by this reference to his commission,
for the bolder assertion of his authority at a later stage.
(3) These two actions of God, however—the establishing
of believers in Christ, which goes on continually
(βεβαιῶν), and the consecration of Paul to the apostleship,
which was accomplished once for all (χρίσας)—go
back to prior actions, in which, again, all believers
have an interest. They have a common basis in the
great deeds of grace in which the Christian life began.
God, he says, is He who also sealed us, and gave the
earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
"He also sealed us." It seems strange that so
figurative a word should be used without a hint of explanation,
and we must assume that it was so familiar
in the Church that the right application could be taken
for granted. The middle voice (σφραγισάμενος) makes
it certain that the main idea is, "He marked us as
His own." This is the sense in which the word is
frequently used in the Book of Revelation: the servants
of God are sealed on their foreheads, that they may
be recognised as His. But what is the seal? Under
the Old Testament, the mark which God set upon His
people—the covenant sign by which they were identified
as His—was circumcision. Under the New Testament,
where everything carnal has passed away, and religious
materialism is abolished, the sign is no longer in the
body; we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise
(Eph. i. 13 f.). But the past tense ("He sealed us"),
and its recurrence in Eph. i. 13 ("ye were sealed"),
suggest a very definite reference of this word, and
beyond doubt it alludes to baptism. In the New Testament,
baptism and the giving of the Holy Spirit are
regularly connected with each other. Christians are
born of water and of the Spirit. "Repent," is the
earliest preaching of the Gospel (Acts ii. 38), "and be
baptised every one of you, ... and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Ghost." In early Christian writers
the use of the word "seal" (σφραγίς) as a technical
term for baptism is practically universal; and when we
combine this practice with the New Testament usage
in question, the inference is inevitable. God puts His
seal upon us, He marks us as His own, when we are
baptised.When we consider the New Testament use of this idea (cf. Rom.
iv. 11; Rev. vii. 2 ff.; Eph. i. 13 f., and this passage), and remember
that Paul and John can have had nothing to do with the Greek
mysteries, it will be apparent that to adduce the ecclesiastical use of
σφραγίς as a proof that the conceptions current in these mysteries
had a powerful influence from the earliest times on the Christian
conception of baptism is beside the mark. One of the earliest
examples outside the New Testament is in the Shepherd of Hermas,
Simil., viii. 6: ὁι πιστεύσαντες καὶ εἰληφότες τὴν σφραγῖδα καὶ τεθλακότες
αὐτὴν καὶ μὴ τηρήσαντες ὑγιῆ. This figure of breaking the seal, by
falling into sin and losing what baptism confers, is common. Sometimes
it is varied: "Keep the flesh pure, καὶ τὴν σφραγῖδα ἄσπιλον,"
in 2 Clem. viii. 6. This may be made to carry superstition, but there
is nothing superstitious or unscriptural in it to begin with.
But the seal is not baptism as a ceremonial act. It
is neither immersion nor sprinkling nor any other mode
of lustration which marks us out as God's. The seal
by which "the Lord knoweth them that are His"
is His Spirit; it is the impress of His Spirit upon
them. When that impress can be traced upon our
souls, by Him, or by us, or by others, then we have
the witness in ourselves; the Spirit bears witness with
our spirits that we are children of God.
But of all words "spirit" is the vaguest; and if we
had nothing but the word itself to guide us, we should
either lapse into superstitious ideas about the virtue
of the sacrament, or into fanatical ideas about incommunicable
inward experiences in which God marked
us for His own. The New Testament provides us with
a more excellent way than either; it gives the word
"spirit" a rich but definite moral content; it compels
us, if we say we have been sealed with the Spirit, and
claimed by God as His, to exhibit the distinguishing
features of those who are His. "The Lord is the
Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 17). To be sealed with the Spirit
is to bear, in however imperfect a degree, in however
inconspicuous a style, the image of the heavenly man,
the likeness of Jesus Christ. There are many passages
in his Epistles in which St. Paul enlarges on the work
of the Spirit in the soul; all the various dispositions
which it creates, all the fruits of the Spirit, may be
conceived as different parts of the impression made
by the seal. We must think of these in detail, if we
wish to give the word its meaning; we must think of
them in contrast with the unspiritual nature, if we wish
to give it any edge. Once, say, we walked in the lusts
of the flesh: has Christ redeemed us, and set on our
souls and our bodies the seal of His purity? Once
we were hot and passionate, given to angry words and
hasty, intemperate deeds: are we sealed now with the
meekness and gentleness of Jesus? Once we were
grasping and covetous, even to the verge of dishonesty;
we could not let money pass us, and we could not
part with it: have we been sealed with the liberality of
Him who says, "It is more blessed to give than to
receive"? Once a wrong rankled in our hearts; the
sun went down upon our wrath, not once or twice, but
a thousand times, and found it as implacable as ever:
is that deep brand of vindictiveness effaced now, and
in its stead imprinted deep the Cross of Christ, where
He loved us, and gave Himself for us, and prayed,
"Father, forgive them"? Once our conversation was
corrupt; it had a taint in it; it startled and betrayed
the innocent; it was vile and foolish and unseemly:
are these things of the past now? and has Christ
set upon our lips the seal of His own grace and truth,
of His own purity and love, so that every word we
speak is good, and brings blessing to those who hear
us? These things, and such as these, are the seal
of the Spirit. They are Christ in us. They are the
stamp which God sets upon men when He exhibits
them as His own.
The seal, however, has another use than that of
marking and identifying property. It is a symbol of
assurance. It is the answer to a challenge. It is
in this sense that it is easiest to apply the figure to
baptism. Baptism does not, indeed, carry with it the
actual possession of all these spiritual features; it is
not even, as an opus operatum, the implanting of them
in the soul; but it is a divine pledge that they are
within our reach; we can appeal to it as an assurance
that God has come to us in His grace, has claimed us
as His own, and is willing to conform us to the image
of His Son. In this sense, it is legitimate and natural
to call it God's seal upon His people.
(4) Side by side with "He sealed us," the Apostle
writes, "He gave the earnest of the Spirit in our
hearts." After what has been said, it is obvious that
this is another aspect of the same thing. We are
sealed with the Spirit, and we get the earnest of the
Spirit. In other words, the Spirit is viewed in two
characters: first, as a seal; and then as an earnest.
This last word has a very ancient history. It is found
in the Book of Genesis (xxxviii. 18: עֵרָבוׄן), and was
carried, no doubt, by Phœnician traders, who had much
occasion to use it, both to Greece and Italy. From
the classical peoples it has come more or less directly
to us. It means properly a small sum of money paid
to clench a bargain, or to ratify an engagement.
Where there is an earnest, there is more to follow,
and more of essentially the same kind—that is what it
signifies. Let us apply this now to the expression of
St. Paul, "the earnest of the Spirit." It means, we
must see, that in the gift of this Spirit, in that measure
in which we now possess it, God has not given all He
has to give. On the contrary, He has come under an
obligation to give more: what we have now is but
"the firstfruits of the Spirit" (Rom. viii. 23). It is
an indication and a pledge of what is yet to be, but
bears no proportion to it. All we can say on the
basis of this text is, that between the present and the
future gift—between the earnest and that which it
guarantees—there must be some kind of congruity,
some affinity which makes the one a natural and not
an arbitrary reason for believing in the other.
But the Corinthians were not limited to this text.
They had St. Paul's general teaching in their minds to
interpret it by; and if we wish to know what it meant
even for them, we must fill out this vague idea with
what the Apostle tells us elsewhere. Thus in the
great text in Ephesians (i. 13 f.), so often referred to,
he speaks of the Holy Spirit with which we were
sealed as the earnest of our inheritance. God has an
"inheritance" in store for us. His Spirit makes us
sons; and if sons, then heirs; heirs of God, joint-heirs
with Christ. This connexion of the Spirit, sonship,
and inheritance, is constant in St. Paul; it is one of
his most characteristic combinations. What then is the
inheritance of which the Spirit is the earnest? That
no one can tell. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things
that God hath prepared for them that love Him." But
though we cannot tell more precisely, we can say that
if the Spirit is the earnest of it, it must be in some
sense a development of the Spirit; life in an order of
being which matches the Spirit, and for which the
Spirit qualifies. If we say it is "glory," then we must
remember that only Christ in us (the seal of the Spirit)
can be the hope of glory.
The application of this can be made very plain.
Our whole life in this world looks to some future,
however near or bounded it may be; and every power
we perfect, every capacity we acquire, every disposition
and spirit we foster, is an earnest of something in that
future. Here is a man who gives himself to the mastery
of a trade. He acquires all its skill, all its methods,
all its resources. There is nothing any tradesman can
do that he cannot do as well or better. What is that
the earnest of? What does it ensure, and as it were
put into his hand by anticipation? It is the earnest
of constant employment, of good wages, of respect from
fellow-workmen, perhaps of wealth. Here, again, is a
man with the scientific spirit. He is keenly inquisitive
about the facts and laws of the world in which we live.
Everything is interesting to him—astronomy, physics,
chemistry, biology, history. What is this the earnest
of? It is the earnest, probably, of scientific achievements
of some kind, of intellectual toils and intellectual
victories. This man will enter into the inheritance of
science; he will walk through the kingdoms of knowledge
in the length of them and the breadth of them,
and will claim them as his own. And so it is wherever
we choose to take our illustrations. Every spirit that
dwells in us, and is cultivated and cherished by us, is
an earnest, because it fits and furnishes us for some
particular thing. God's Spirit also is an earnest of an
inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled, imperishable:
can we assure ourselves that we have anything
in our souls which promises, because it matches with,
an inheritance like this? When we come to die, this
will be a serious question. The faculties of accumulation,
of mechanical skill, of scientific research, of trade
on a great or a small scale, of agreeable social intercourse,
of comfortable domestic life, may have been
brought to perfection in us; but can we console
ourselves with the thought that these have the earnest
of immortality? Do they qualify us for, and by
qualifying assure us of, the incorruptible kingdom?
Or do we not see at once that a totally different equipment
is needed to make men at home there, and that
nothing can be the earnest of an eternal life of blessedness
with God except that Holy Spirit with which He
seals His own, and through which He makes them,
even here, partakers of the divine nature?
We cannot study these words without becoming
conscious of the immense enlargement which the
Christian religion has brought to the human mind,
of the vast expansion of hope which is due to the
Gospel, and at the same time of the moral soundness
and sobriety with which that hope is conceived. The
promises of God were first really apprehended in Jesus
Christ; in Him as He lived and died and rose again
from the dead, in Him especially as He lives in
immortal glory, men first saw what God was able and
willing to do for them, and they saw this in its true
relations. They saw it under its moral and spiritual
conditions. It was not a future unconnected with the
present, or connected with it in an arbitrary or incalculable
way. It was a future which had its earnest in
the present, a guarantee not alien to it, but akin—the
Spirit of Christ implanted in the heart, the likeness of
Christ sealed upon the nature. The glorious inheritance
was the inheritance, not of strangers, but of sons; and
it still becomes sure as the Spirit of sonship is received,
and fades into incredibility when that Spirit is extinguished
or depressed. If we could live in the Spirit
with the completeness of Christ, or even of St. Paul,
we should feel that we really had an earnest of immortality;
the glory of heaven would be as certain to us
as the faithfulness of God to His promise.
A PASTOR'S HEART
"But I call God for a witness upon my soul, that to spare you I
forbare to come unto Corinth. Not that we have lordship over your
faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand. But I
determined this for myself, that I would not come again to you with
sorrow. For if I make you sorry, who then is he that maketh me
glad, but he that is made sorry by me? And I wrote this very thing,
lest, when I came, I should have sorrow from them of whom I ought
to rejoice; having confidence in you all, that my joy is the joy of you
all. For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto
you with many tears; not that ye should be made sorry, but that
ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you."—2
Cor. i. 23-ii. 4 (R.V.).
When Paul came to the end of the paragraph in
which he defends himself from the charge of
levity and untrustworthiness by appealing to the nature
of the Gospel which he preached, he seems to have felt
that it was hardly sufficient for his purpose. It might
be perfectly true that the Gospel was one mighty
affirmation, with no dubiety or inconsistency about it;
it might be as true that it was a supreme testimony
to the faithfulness of God; but bad men, or suspicious
men, would not admit that its character covered his.
Their own insincerities would keep them from understanding
its power to change its loyal ministers into
its own likeness, and to stamp them with its own
simplicity and truth. The mere invention of the argument
in vv. 18-20 is of itself the highest possible
testimony to the ideal height at which the Apostle
lived; no man conscious of duplicity could ever have
had it occur to him. But it had the defect of being
too good for his purpose; the foolish and the false
could see a triumphant reply to it; and he leaves it
for a solemn asseveration of the reason which actually
kept him from carrying out his first intention. "I call
God to witness against my soul, that sparing you I
forbore to comeThe R.V. "forbare to come" has the same vagueness as οὐκέτι
ἦλθον, which may mean (1) "I came not as yet"—so A.V.; or (2) "I
came not again"; or (3) "I came no more."
to Corinth." The soul is the seat of
life; he stakes his life, as it were, in God's sight, upon
the truth of his words. It was not consideration for
himself, in any selfish spirit, but consideration for them,
which explained his change of purpose. If he had
carried out his intention, and gone to Corinth, he would
have had to do so, as he says in 1 Cor. iv. 21, with
a rod, and this would not have been pleasant either for
him or for them.
This is very plain—plain even to the dullest; the
Apostle has no sooner set it down than he feels it is
too plain. "To spare us," he hears the Corinthians
say to themselves as they read: "who is he that he
should take this tone in speaking to us?" And so
he hastens to anticipate and deprecate their touchy
criticism: "Not that we lord it over your faith, but
we are helpers of your joy; as far as faith is concerned,
your position, of course, is secure."
This is a very interesting aside; the digressions in
St. Paul, as in Plato, are sometimes more attractive
than the arguments. It shows us, for one thing, the
freedom of the Christian faith. Those who have
received the Gospel have all the responsibilities of
mature men; they have come to their majority as
spiritual beings; they are not, in their character and
standing as Christians, subject to arbitrary and irresponsible
interference on the part of others. Paul
himself was the great preacher of this spiritual emancipation:
he gloried in the liberty with which Christ
made men free. For him the days of bondage were
over; there was no subjection for the Christian to any
custom or tradition of men, no enslavement of his
conscience to the judgment or the will of others, no
coercion of the spirit except by itself. He had great
confidence in this Gospel and in its power to produce
generous and beautiful characters. That it was capable
of perversion also he knew very well. It was open
to the infusion of self-will; in the intoxication of
freedom from arbitrary and unspiritual restraint, men
might forget that the believer was bound to be a law
to himself, that he was free, not in lawless self-will,
but only in the Lord. Nevertheless, the principle of
freedom was too sacred to be tampered with; it was
necessary both for the education of the conscience and
for the enrichment of spiritual life with the most various
and independent types of goodness; and the Apostle
took all the risks, and all the inconveniences even,
rather than limit it in the least.
This passage shows us one of the inconveniences.
The newly enfranchised are mightily sensible of their
freedom, and it is extremely difficult to tell them of
their faults. At the very mention of authority all that
is bad in them, as well as all that is good, is on the
alert; and spiritual independence and the liberty of
the Christian people have been represented and defended
again and again, not only by an awful sense of responsibility
to Christ, which lifts the lowliest lives into
supreme greatness, but by pride, bigotry, moral insolence,
and every bad passion. What is to be done in
such cases as these, where liberty has forgotten the
law of Christ? It is certainly not to be denied in
principle: Paul, even with the peculiar position of an
apostle, and of the spiritual father of those to whom he
writes (1 Cor. iv. 15), does not claim such an authority
over their faith—that is, over the people themselves in
their character of believers—as a master has over his
slaves. Their position as Christians is secure; it is
taken for granted by him as by them; and this being so,
no arbitrary ipse dixit can settle anything in dispute
between them; he can issue no orders to the Church
such as the Roman Emperor could issue to his soldiers.
He may appeal to them on spiritual grounds; he may
enlighten their consciences by interpreting to them the
law of Christ; he may try to reach them by praise or
blame; but simple compulsion is not one of his resources.
If St. Paul says this, occupying as he does a position
which contains in itself a natural authority which most
ministers can never have, ought not all official persons
and classes in the Church to beware of the claims they
make for themselves? A clerical hierarchy, such as
has been developed and perfected in the Church of
Rome, does lord it over faith; it legislates for the laity,
both in faith and practice, without their co-operation,
or even their consent; it keeps the cœtus fidelium, the
mass of believing men, which is the Church, in a
perpetual minority. All this, in a so-called apostolic
succession, is not only anti-apostolic, but anti-Christian.
It is the confiscation of Christian freedom; the keeping
of believers in leading-strings all their days, lest in
their liberty they should go astray. In the Protestant
Churches, on the other hand, the danger on the whole
is of the opposite kind. We are too jealous of
authority. We are too proud of our own competence.
We are too unwilling, individually, to be taught and
corrected. We resent, I will not say criticism, but the
most serious and loving voice which speaks to us to
disapprove. Now liberty, when it does not deepen the
sense of responsibility to God and to the brotherhood—and
it does not always do so—is an anarchic and
disintegrating force. In all the Churches it exists, to
some extent, in this degraded form; and it is this which
makes Christian education difficult, and Church discipline
often impossible. These are serious evils, and
we can only overcome them if we cultivate the sense
of responsibility at the same time that we maintain the
principle of liberty, remembering that it is those only
of whom he says, "Ye were bought with a price" (and
are therefore Christ's slaves), to whom St. Paul also
gives the charge: "Be not ye slaves of men."
This passage not only illustrates the freedom of
Christian faith, it presents us with an ideal of the
Christian ministry. "We are not lords over your faith,"
says St. Paul, "but we are helpers of your joy." It is
implied in this that joy is the very end and element
of the Christian life, and that it is the minister's duty
to be at war with all that restrains it, and to co-operate
in all that leads to it. Here, one would say, is something
in which all can agree: all human souls long for
joy, however much they may differ about the spheres
of law and liberty. But have not most Christian
people, and most Christian congregations, something
here to accuse themselves of? Do not many of us
bear false witness against the Gospel on this very
point? Who that came into most churches, and looked
at the uninterested faces, and hearkened to the listless
singing, would feel that the soul of the religion, so
languidly honoured, was mere joy—joy unspeakable,
if we trust the Apostles, and full of glory? It is
ingratitude which makes us forget this. We begin to
grow blind to the great things which lie at the basis
of our faith; the love of God in Jesus Christ—that love
in which He died for us upon the tree—begins to lose
its newness and its wonder; we speak of it without
apprehension and without feeling; it does not make
our hearts burn within us any more; we have no joy
in it. Yet we may be sure of this—that we can have
no joy without it. And he is our best friend, the truest
minister of God to us, who helps us to the place where
the love of God is poured out in our hearts in its
omnipotence, and we renew our joy in it. In doing so,
it may be necessary for the minister to cause pain by
the way. There is no joy, nor any possibility of it,
where evil is tolerated. There is no joy where sin has
been taken under the patronage of those who call themselves
by Christ's name. There is no joy where pride
is in arms in the soul, and is reinforced by suspicion,
by obstinacy, even by jealousy and hate, all waiting to
dispute the authority of the preacher of repentance.
When these evil spirits are overcome, and cast out,
which may only be after a painful conflict, joy will have
its opportunity again,—joy, whose right it is to reign
in the Christian soul and the Christian community.
Of all evangelistic forces, this joy is the most potent;
and for that, above all other reasons, it should be
cherished wherever Christian people wish to work the
work of their Lord.
After this little digression on the freedom of the
faith, and on joy as the element of the Christian life,
Paul returns to his defence. "To spare you I forbore
to come; for I made up my own mind on this, not
to come to you a second time in sorrow." Why was
he so determined about this? He explains in the
second verse. It is because all his joy is bound up
in the Corinthians, so that if he grieves them he has
no one left to gladden him except those whom he has
grieved—in other words, he has no joy at all. And
he not only made up his mind definitely on this; he
wrote also in exactly this sense: he did not wish,
when he came, to have sorrow from those from whom
he ought to have joy. In that desire to spare himself,
as well as them, he counted on their sympathy; he
was sure that his own joy was the joy of every one
of them, and that they would appreciate his motives
in not fulfilling a promise, the fulfilment of which in
the circumstances would only have brought grief both
to them and him. The delay has given them time to
put right what was amiss in their Church, and has
ensured a joyful time to them all when his visit is
actually accomplished.
There are some grammatical and historical difficulties
here which claim attention. The most discussed is
that of the first verse: what is the precise meaning of
τὸ μὴ πάλιν ἐν λύπῃ πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἐλθεῖν? There is no
doubt that this is the correct order of the words, and
just as little, I think, that the natural meaning is that
Paul had once visited Corinth in grief, and was
resolved not to repeat such a visit. So the words
are taken by Meyer, Hofmann, Schmiedel, and others.
The visit in question cannot have been that on occasion
of which the Church was founded; and as the connexion
between this passage and the last chapter of
the First Epistle is as close as can be conceived (see
the Introduction), it cannot have fallen between the
two: the only other supposition is, that it took place
before the First Epistle was written. This is the
opinion of Lightfoot, Meyer, and Weiss; and it is not
fatal to it that no such visit is mentioned elsewhere—e.g.,
in the book of Acts. Still, the interpretation is
not essential; and if we can get over chap. xiii. 2, it
is quite possible to agree with Heinrici that Paul had
only been in Corinth once, and that what he means
in ver. 1 here is: "I determined not to carry out my
purpose of revisiting you, in sorrow."
There is a difficulty of another sort in ver. 2. One's
first thought is to read καὶ τίς ὁ εὐφραίνων με κ.τ.λ.,
as a real singular, with a reference, intelligible though
indefinite, to the notorious but penitent sinner of
Corinth. "I vex you, I grant it; but where does my
joy come from—the joy without which I am resolved
not to visit you—except from one who is vexed by
me?" The bad man's repentance had made Paul
glad, and there is a worthy considerateness in this
indefinite way of designating him. This interpretation
has commended itself to so sound a judge as Bengel,
and though more recent scholars reject it with practical
unanimity, it is difficult to be sure that it is wrong.
The alternative is to generalise the τίς, and make the
question mean: "If I vex you, where can I find joy?
All my joy is in you, and to see you grieved leaves me
absolutely joyless."
A third difficulty is the reference of ἔγραψα τοῦτο
αὐτὸ in ver. 3. Language very similar is found in
ver. 9 (εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ ἔγραψα), and again in chap.
vii. 8-12 (ἐλύπησα ὑμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ). It is very
natural to think here of our First Epistle. It served
the purpose contemplated by the letter here described;
it told of Paul's change of purpose; it warned the
Corinthians to rectify what was amiss, and so to order
their affairs that he might come, not with a rod, but
in love and in the spirit of meekness; or, as he says
here, not to have sorrow, but, what he was entitled
to, joy from his visit. All that is alleged against this
is that our First Epistle does not suit the description
given of the writing in ver. 4: "out of much affliction
and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many
tears." But when those parts of the First Epistle are
read, in which St. Paul is not answering questions
submitted to him by the Church, but writing out of
his heart upon its spiritual condition, this will appear
a dubious assertion. What a pain must have been
at his heart, when such passionate words broke from
him as these: "Is Christ divided? Was Paul
crucified for you?—What is Apollos, and what is
Paul?—With me it is a very little thing to be judged
by you.—Though ye have ten thousand instructors in
Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ
Jesus I begot you through the Gospel.—I will know,
not the speech of them that are puffed up, but the
power." Not to speak of the fifth and sixth chapters,
words like these justify us in supposing that the First
Epistle may be, and in all probability is, meant.To suppose the reference to be to an epistle carried by Titus
and now lost, is to suppose what is incapable of proof or disproof.
To take ἔγραψα as "epistolary" aorist, and translate "I write," is
grammatically, but only grammatically, possible. The supposed
reference to chaps, x. i-xiii. 10 as a separate epistle is noticed in
the Introduction.
Putting these details aside, as of mainly historical
interest, let us look rather at the spirit of this passage.
It reveals, more clearly perhaps than any passage in
the New Testament, the essential qualification of the
Christian minister—a heart pledged to his brethren in
the love of Christ. That is the only possible basis of
an authority which can plead its own and its Master's
cause against the aberrations of spiritual liberty, and
there is always both room and need for it in the Church.
Certainly it is the hardest of all authorities to win, and
the costliest to maintain, and therefore substitutes for
it are innumerable. The poorest are those that are
merely official, where a minister appeals to his standing
as a member of a separate order, and expects men to
reverence that. If this was once possible in Christendom,
if it is still possible where men secretly wish
to shunt their spiritual responsibilities upon others, it
is not possible where emancipation has been grasped
either in an anarchic or in a Christian spirit. Let the
great idea of liberty, and of all that is cognate with
liberty, once dawn upon their souls, and men will
never sink again to the recognition of anything as an
authority that does not attest itself in a purely spiritual
way. "Orders" will mean nothing to them but an
arrogant unreality, which in the name of all that is
free and Christian they are bound to contemn. It will
be the same, too, with any authority which has merely
an intellectual basis. A professional education, even
in theology, gives no man authority to meddle with
another in his character as a Christian. The University
and the Divinity Schools can confer no competence
here. Nothing that distinguishes a man from
his fellows, nothing in virtue of which he takes a place
of superiority apart: on the contrary, that love only
which makes him entirely one with them in Jesus
Christ, can ever entitle him to interpose. If their joy
is his joy; if to grieve them, even for their good, is his
grief; if the cloud and sunshine of their lives cast their
darkness and their light immediately upon him; if he
shrinks from the faintest approach to self-assertion, yet
would sacrifice anything to perfect their joy in the
Lord,—then he is in the true apostolical succession; and
whatever authority may rightly be exercised, where
the freedom of the spirit is the law, may rightly be
exercised by him. What is required of Christian
workers in every degree—of ministers and teachers,
of parents and friends, of all Christian people with the
cause of Christ at heart—is a greater expenditure of
soul on their work. Here is a whole paragraph of
St. Paul, made up almost entirely of "grief" and
"joy"; what depth of feeling lies behind it! If this
is alien to us in our work for Christ, we need not
wonder that our work does not tell.
And if this is true generally, it is especially true
when the work we have to do is that of rebuking sin.
There are few things which try men, and show what
spirit they are of, more searchingly than this. We like
to be on God's side, and to show our zeal for Him,
and we are far too ready to put all our bad passions
at His service. But these are a gift which He declines.
Our wrath does not work His righteousness—a lesson
that even good men, of a kind, are very slow to learn.
To denounce sin, and to declaim about it, is the easiest
and cheapest thing in the world: one could not do less
where sin is concerned, unless he did nothing at all.
Yet how common denunciation is. It seems almost to
be taken for granted as the natural and praiseworthy
mode of dealing with evil. People assail the faults of
the community, or even of their brethren in the Church,
with violence, with temper, with the tone, often, of
injured innocence. They think that when they do so
they are doing God service; but surely we should
have learned by this time that nothing could be so
unlike God, so unfaithful and preposterous as a testimony
for Him. God Himself overcomes evil with
good; Christ vanquishes the sin of the world by taking
the burden of it on Himself; and if we wish to have
part in the same work, there is only the same method
open to us. Depend upon it, we shall not make others
weep for that for which we have not wept; we shall
not make that touch the hearts of others which has
not first touched our own. That is the law which God
has established in the world; He submitted to it Himself
in the person of His Son, and He requires us to
submit to it. Paul was certainly a very fiery man; he
could explode, or flame up, with far more effect than
most people; yet it was not there that his great strength
lay. It was in the passionate tenderness that checked
that vehement temper, and made the once haughty
spirit say what he says here: "Out of much affliction
and anguish of heart, I wrote unto you with many
tears, not that you might be grieved, but that you
might know the love which I have more abundantly
toward you." In words like these the very spirit
speaks which is God's power to subdue and save the
sinful.
It is worth dwelling upon this, because it is so
fundamental, and yet so slowly learned. Even Christian
ministers, who ought to know the mind of Christ,
almost universally, at least in the beginning of their
work, when they preach about evil, lapse into the
scolding tone. It is of no use whatever in the pulpit,
and of just as little in the Sunday-school class, in the
home, or in any relation in which we seek to exercise
moral authority. The one basis for that authority is
love; and the characteristic of love in the presence of
evil is not that it becomes angry, or insolent, or disdainful,
but that it takes the burden and the shame of
the evil to itself. The hard, proud heart is impotent;
the mere official is impotent, whether he call himself
priest or pastor; all hope and help lie in those who
have learned of the Lamb of God who bore the sin of
the world. It is soul-travail like His, attesting love
like His; that wins all the victories in which He can
rejoice.
CHURCH DISCIPLINE
"But if any hath caused sorrow, he hath caused sorrow, not to me,
but in part (that I press not too heavily) to you all. Sufficient to
such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the many; so
that contrariwise ye should rather forgive him and comfort him, lest
by any means such a one should be swallowed up with his overmuch
sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you to confirm your love toward him.
For to this end also did I write, that I might know the proof of you,
whether ye are obedient in all things. But to whom ye forgive
anything, I forgive also: for what I also have forgiven, if I have
forgiven anything, for your sakes have I forgiven it in the person
of Christ; that no advantage may be gained over us by Satan: for
we are not ignorant of his devices."—2 Cor. ii. 5-11 (R.V.).
The foregoing paragraph of the Epistle has said
a great deal about sorrow, the sorrow felt by
St. Paul on the one hand, and the sorrow he was
reluctant to cause the Corinthians on the other. In
the passage before us reference is evidently made to
the person who was ultimately responsible for all this
trouble. If much in it is indefinite to us, and only
leaves a doubtful impression, it was clear enough for
those to whom it was originally addressed; and that
very indefiniteness has its lesson. There are some
things to which it is sufficient, and more than sufficient,
to allude; least said is best said. And even when
plain-speaking has been indispensable, a stage arrives
at which there is no more to be gained by it; if the
subject must be referred to, the utmost generality of
reference is best. Here the Apostle discusses the case
of a person who had done something extremely bad;
but with the sinner's repentance assured, it is both
characteristic and worthy of him that neither here
nor in chap. vii. does he mention the name either of
offender or offence. It is perhaps too much to expect
students of his writings, who wish to trace out in detail
all the events of his life, and to give the utmost possible
definiteness to all its situations, to be content with this
obscurity; but students of his spirit—Christian people
reading the Bible for practical profit—do not need to
perplex themselves as to this penitent man's identity.
He may have been the person mentioned in 1 Cor. v.
who had married his stepmother; he may have been
some one who had been guilty of a personal insult to
the Apostle: the main point is that he was a sinner
whom the discipline of the Church had saved.On the identity of the person referred to, see Introduction, p. 2 f.
The Apostle had been expressing himself about his
sorrow with great vehemence, and he is careful in his
very first words to make it plain that the offence which
had caused such sorrow was no personal matter. It
concerned the Church as well as him. "If any one
hath caused sorrow, he hath not caused sorrow to me,
but in part to you all." To say more than this would
be to exaggerate (ἐπιβαρεῖν).This meaning of ἐπιβαρεῖν, taken as intransitive, is rather vague,
but I believe substantially correct. If the word is to be taken as
virtually transitive, the object must be the partisans of the offender.
It would "bear hardly" on them, to assume that they had been
grieved by what Paul considered an offence. They had not been
grieved. That is why he excludes them from πάντας ὑμᾶς by ἀπὸ
μέρους.
The Church, in point
of fact, had not been moved either as universally or as
profoundly as it should have been by the offence of this
wicked man. The penalty imposed upon him, whatever
it may have been, had not been imposed by a unanimous
vote, but only by a majority; there were some who
sympathised with him, and would have been less
severe.This suits with either idea as to the identity of the man. (1) If
he were the incestuous person of 1 Cor. v., the minority would
consist of those who abused the Christian idea of liberty, and were
"puffed up" (1 Cor. v. 2) over this sin as an illustration of it. (2) If
he were one who had personally insulted Paul, the minority would
probably consist of the Judaistic opponents of the Apostle.
Still, it had brought conviction of his sin
to the offender; he could not brazen it out against
such consenting condemnation as there was; he was
overwhelmed with penitential grief. This is why the
Apostle says, "Sufficient to such a one is this punishment
which was inflicted by the majority." It has
served the purpose of all disciplinary treatment; and
having done so, must now be superseded by an opposite
line of action. "Contrariwise ye should rather forgive
him and comfort him, lest by any means such a one
should be swallowed up with his overmuch sorrow."
In St. Paul's sentence "such a one" comes last, with the
emphasis of compassion upon it. He had been "such
a one," to begin with, as it was a pain and a shame
even to think about; he is "such a one," now, as the
angels in heaven are rejoicing over; "such a one"
as the Apostle, having the spirit of Him who received
sinners, regards with profoundest pity and yearning;
"such a one" as the Church ought to meet with
pardoning and restoring love, lest grief sink into
despair, and the sinner cut himself off from hope.
To prevent such a deplorable result, the Corinthians
are by some formal action (κυρῶσαι: cf. Gal. iii. 15)
to forgive him, and receive him again as a brother;
and in their forgiveness and welcome he is to find the
pledge of the great love of God.
This whole passage is of interest from the light which
it throws upon the discipline of the Church; or, to use
less technical and more correct language, the Christian
treatment of the erring.
It shows us, for one thing, the aim of all discipline:
it is, in the last resort, the restoration of the fallen.
The Church has, of course, an interest of its own to
guard; it is bound to protest against all that is inconsistent
with its character; it is bound to expel scandals.
But the Church's protest, its condemnation, its excommunication
even, are not ends in themselves; they
are means to that which is really an end in itself, a
priceless good which justifies every extreme of moral
severity, the winning again of the sinner through
repentance. The judgment of the Church is the instrument
of God's love, and the moment it is accepted in
the sinful soul it begins to work as a redemptive force.
The humiliation it inflicts is that which God exalts;
the sorrow, that which He comforts. But when a
scandal comes to light in a Christian congregation—when
one of its members is discovered in a fault gross,
palpable, and offensive—what is the significance of that
movement of feeling which inevitably takes place?
In how many has it the character of goodness and of
severity, of condemnation and of compassion, of love
and fear, of pity and shame, the only character that
has any virtue in it to tell for the sinner's recovery?
If you ask nine people out of ten what a scandal is, they
will tell you it is something which makes talk; and
the talk in nine cases out of ten will be malignant,
affected, more interesting to the talkers than any story
of virtue or piety—scandal itself, in short, far more
truly than its theme. Does anybody imagine that
gossip is one of the forces that waken conscience, and
work for the redemption of our fallen brethren? If
this is all we can do, in the name of all that is Christian
let us keep silence. Every word spoken about a
brother's sin, that is not prompted by a Christian
conscience, that does not vibrate with the love of a
Christian heart, is itself a sin against the mercy and
the judgment of Christ.
We see here not only the end of Church discipline,
but the force of which it disposes for the attainment of
its end. That force is neither more nor less than the
conscience of the Christian people who constitute the
Church: discipline is, in principle, the reaction of that
force against all immorality. In special cases, forms
may be necessary for its exercise, and in the forms in
which it is exercised variations may be found expedient,
according to time, place, or degree of moral progress;
the congregation as a body, or a representative committee
of it, or its ordained ministers, may be its most
suitable executors; but that on which all alike have
to depend for making their proceedings effective to
any Christian intent is the vigour of Christian conscience,
and the intensity of Christian love, in the
community as a whole. Where these are wanting,
or exist only in an insignificant degree, disciplinary
proceedings are reduced to a mere form; they are
legal, not evangelical; and to be legal in such matters
is not only hypocritical, but insolent. Instead of
rendering a real Christian service to offenders, which
by awakening conscience will lead to penitence and
restoration, discipline under such conditions is equally
cruel and unjust.
It is plain also, from the nature of the force which
it employs, that discipline is a function of the Church
which is in incessant exercise, and is not called into
action only on special occasions. To limit it to what
are technically known as cases of discipline—the formal
treatment of offenders by a Church court, or by any
person or persons acting in an official character—is to
ignore its real nature, and to give its exercise in these
cases a significance to which it has no claim. The
offences against the Christian standard which can be
legally impeached even in Church courts are not one
in ten thousand of those against which the Christian
conscience ought energetically to protest; and it is the
vigour with which the ceaseless reaction against evil in
every shape is instinctively maintained which measures
the effectiveness of all formal proceedings, and makes
them means of grace to the guilty. The officials of a
Church may deal in their official place with offences
against soberness, purity, or honesty; they are bound
to deal with them, whether they like it or not; but
their success will depend upon the completeness with
which they, and those whom they represent, have
renounced not only the vices which they are judging,
but all that is out of keeping with the mind and spirit
of Christ. The drunkard, the sensualist, the thief,
know perfectly well that drunkenness, sensuality, and
theft are not the only sins which mar the soul. They
know that there are other vices, just as real if not so
glaring, which are equally fatal to the life of Christ in
man, and as completely disqualify men for acting in
Christ's name. They are conscious that it is not a
bona fide transaction when their sins are impeached by
men whose consciences endure with equanimity the
reign of meanness, duplicity, pride, hypocrisy, self-complacency.
They are aware that God is not present
where these are dominant, and that God's power to
judge and save can never come through such channels.
Hence the exercise of discipline in these legal forms
is often resented, and often ineffective; and instead
of complaining about what is obviously inevitable, the
one thing at which all should aim who wish to protect
the Church from scandals is to cultivate the common
conscience, and bring it to such a degree of purity and
vigour, that its spontaneous resentment of evil will
enable the Church practically to dispense with legal
forms. This Christian community at Corinth had a
thousand faults; in many points we are tempted to
find in it rather a warning than an example; but I
think we may take this as a signal proof that it was
really sound at heart: its condemnation of this guilty
man fell upon his conscience as the sentence of God,
and brought him in tears to the feet of Christ. No
legal proceedings could have done that: nothing could
have done it but a real and passionate sympathy with
the holiness and the love of Christ. Such sympathy
is the one subduing, reconciling, redeeming power in
our hands; and Paul might well rejoice, after all his
affliction and anguish of heart, when he found it so
unmistakably at work in Corinth. Not so much formal
as instinctive, though not shrinking on occasion from
formal proceedings; not malignant, yet closing itself
inexorably against evil; not indulgent to badness, but
with goodness like Christ's, waiting to be gracious,—this
Christian virtue really holds the keys of the kingdom
of heaven, and opens and shuts with the authority of
Christ Himself. We need it in all our Churches to-day,
as much as it was needed in Corinth; we need it that
special acts of discipline may be effective; we need it
still more that they may be unnecessary. Pray for it
as for a gift that comprehends every other—the power
to represent Christ, and work His work, in the recovery
and restoration of the fallen.
In vv. 9-11, the same subject is continued, but with
a slightly different aspect exposed. Paul had obviously
taken the initiative in this matter, though the bulk of
the Church, at his prompting, had acted in a right
spirit. Their conduct was in harmony with his motive
in writing to them,This is the force of the καὶ before ἔγραψα in ver. 9.
which had really been to make
proof of their obedience in all points. But he has
already disclaimed either the right or the wish to lord
it over them in their liberty as believers; and here,
again, he represents himself rather as following them
in their treatment of the offender, than as pointing out
the way. "Now to whom ye forgive anything, I also
forgive"—so great is my confidence in you: "for
what I also have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything,
for your sakes have I forgiven it in the presence
of Christ." When he says "if I have forgiven anything,"
he does not mean that his forgiveness is
dubious, or in suspense; what he does is to deprecate
the thought that his forgiveness is the main thing,
or that he had been the person principally offended.
When he says "for your sakes have I forgiven it,"
the words are explained by what follows: to have
refused his forgiveness in the circumstances would
have been to perpetuate a state of matters which could
only have injured the Church. When he adds that
his forgiveness is bestowed "in the presence of
Christ," he gives the assurance that it is no complaisance
or formality, but a real acceptance of the
offender to peace and friendship again.In spite of the Vulgate, which has in persona Christi; of Luther,
who gives an Christi Statt; and of the English versions, Authorised
and Revised, which both give "in the person of Christ" (though the
R.V. puts presence in the margin), there seems no room to doubt that
"in the presence of Christ" is the true meaning. The same words in
chap. iv, 6 are admittedly different in import; and in the only passages
where ἐν προσώπῳ occurs with a genitive, it means "in presence of."
These are Prov. viii. 30, where ἐν προσώπῳ αὐτοῦ is = לפניו; and Sir.
xxxii. 6, where "Thou shalt not appear before the Lord empty" is ἐν π.
Κυρίου.
And we
should not overlook the fact that in this association of
Christ, of the Corinthians, and of himself, in the work
of forgiveness and restoration, Paul is really encompassing
a desponding soul with all the grace of earth
and heaven. Surely he will not let his grief become
despair, when all around him and above him there is
a present and convincing witness that, though God is
intolerant of sin, He is the refuge of the penitent.
The gracious and conciliatory tone of these verses
seems to me worthy of special admiration; and I can
only express my astonishment that to some they have
appeared insincere, a vain attempt to cover a defeat
with the semblance of victory, a surrender to the
opposition at Corinth, the painfulness of which is ill-disguised
by the pretence of agreement with them.
The exposition just given renders the refutation of
such a view unnecessary. We ought rather to regard
with reverence and affection the man who knew how
to combine, so strikingly, unflinching principle and
the deepest tenderness and consideration for others;
we ought to propose his modesty, his sensitiveness to
the feelings even of opponents, his sympathy with those
who had no sympathy with him, as examples for our
imitation. Paul had been deeply moved by what had
taken place at Corinth, possibly he had been deeply
injured; but even so his personal interest is kept in
the background; for the obedient loyalty which he
wishes to prove is not so much his interest as theirs
to whom he writes. He cares only for others. He
cares for the poor soul who has forfeited his place
in the community; he cares for the good name of the
Church; he cares for the honour of Jesus Christ; and
he exerts all his power with these interests in view.
If it needs rigour, he can be rigorous; if it needs
passion, he can be passionate; if it needs consideration,
graciousness, a conciliatory temper, a willingness to
keep out of sight, he can be depended upon for all
these virtues. If they were only affected, Paul would
deserve the praise of a great diplomatist; but it is far
easier to believe them real, and see in them the signs
of a great minister of Christ.
The last verse puts the aim of his proceedings in
another light: all this, he says, I do, "that no advantage
may be gained over us by Satan: for we are not
ignorant of his devices." The important words in the
last clause are of the same root; it is as if Paul had
said: "Satan is very knowing, and is always on the alert
to get the better of us; but we are not without knowledge
of his knowing ways." It was the Apostle's
acquaintance with the wiles of the devil which made
him eager to see the restoration of the penitent sinner
duly carried through. This implies one or two
practical truths, with which, by way of application, this
exposition may close.
(1) A scandal in the Church gives the devil an
opportunity. When one who has named the name of
Jesus, and vowed loyal obedience to Him, falls into
open sin, it is a chance offered to the enemy which he
is not slow to improve. He uses it to discredit the
very name of Christ: to turn that which ought to be
to the world the symbol of the purest goodness into
a synonym of hypocrisy. Christ has committed His
honour, if not His character, to our keeping; and every
lapse into vice gives Satan an advantage over Him.
(2) The devil finds his gain in the incompetence of
the Church to deal with evil in the Spirit of Christ.
It is a fine thing for him if he can drive the convicted
sinner to despair, and persuade him that there is no
more forgiveness with God. It is a fine thing if he
can prompt those who love little, because they know
little of God's love, to show themselves rigid, implacable,
irreconcilable, even to the penitent. If he can deform
the likeness of Christ into a morose Pharisaism, what
an incalculable gain it is! If the disciples of Him
who received sinners look askance on those who have
lapsed, and chill the hope of restoration with cold
suspicion and reserve, there will be joy over it, not in
heaven, but in hell. And not only this, but the opposite
is a device of the devil, of which we ought not to be
ignorant. There is hardly a sin that some one has
not an interest in extenuating. Even the incestuous
person in Corinth had his defenders: there were some
who were puffed up, and gloried in what he had done
as an assertion of Christian liberty. The devil takes
advantage of the scandals that occur in the Church to
bribe and debauch men's consciences; indulgent words
are spoken, which are not the voice of Christ's awful
mercy, but of a miserable self-pity; the strongest and
holiest thing in the world, the redeeming love of God,
is adulterated and even confounded with the weakest
and basest thing, the bad man's immoral forgiveness
of himself. And not to mention anything else under
this head, could any one imagine what would please
and suit the devil better than the absolutely unfeeling
but extremely interesting gossip which resounds over
every exposure of sin?
(3) But, lastly, the devil finds his advantage in the
dissensions of Christians. What an opportunity he
would have had in Corinth, had strained relations
continued between the Apostle and the Church! What
opportunities he has everywhere, when tempers are on
edge, and every movement means friction, and every
proposal rouses suspicion! The last prayer Christ
prayed for His Church was that they might all be one:
to be one in Him is the final security against the
devices of Satan. What a frightful commentary the
history of the Church is on this prayer! What frightful
illustrations it furnishes of the devil's gain out of
the saints' quarrels! There are plenty of subjects, of
course, even in Church life, on which we may naturally
and legitimately differ; but we ought to know better
than to let the differences enter into our souls. At
bottom, we should be all one; it is giving ourselves
away to the enemy, if we do not, at all costs, "keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
VII
CHRIST'S CAPTIVE
"Now when I came to Troas for the Gospel of Christ, and when
a door was opened unto me in the Lord, I had no relief for my spirit,
because I found not Titus my brother: but taking my leave of them,
I went forth into Macedonia. But thanks be unto God, which always
leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the
savour of His knowledge in every place. For we are a sweet savour
of Christ unto God, in them that are being saved, and in them that
are perishing; to the one a savour from death unto death; to the
other a savour from life unto life. And who is sufficient for these
things? For we are not as the many, corrupting the Word of God:
but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in
Christ."—2 Cor. ii. 12-17 (R.V.).
In this passage the Apostle returns from what is
virtually, if not formally, a digression, to the narrative
which begins in chap. i. 8 f., and is continued in
i. 15 f. At the same time he makes a transition to a
new subject, really though not very explicitly connected
with what goes before—namely, his independent and
divinely granted authority as an apostle. In the last
verses of chap, ii., and in chap. iii. 1-4, this is treated
generally, but with reference in particular to the success
of his ministry. He then goes on to contrast the older
and the Christian dispensation, and the character of
their respective ministries, and terminates the section
with a noble statement of the spirit and principles with
which he fulfilled his apostolic calling (chap. iv. 1-6).
Before leaving Ephesus, Paul had apparently made
an appointment to meet Titus, on his return from
Corinth, at Troas. He went thither himself to preach
the Gospel, and found an excellent opportunity for
doing so; but the non-arrival of his brother kept him
in such a state of unrestThe perfect ἔσχηκα seems at first sight out of place, but it is more
expressive than the aorist. It suggests the continuous expectation of
relief which was always anew disappointed.
that he was unable to make
that use of it which he would otherwise have done.
This seems a singular confession, but there is no
reason to suppose that it was made with a bad conscience.
Paul was probably grieved that he had not
the heart to go in at the door which had been opened
to him in the Lord, but he did not feel guilty. It was
not selfishness which made him turn away, but the
anxiety of a true pastor about other souls which God
had committed to his care. "I had no relief for my
spirit," he says; and the spirit, in his language, even
though it be a constituent of man's nature, is that in
him which is akin to the divine, and receptive of it.
That very element in the Apostle, in virtue of which
he could act for God at all, was already preoccupied,
and though the people were there, ready to be evangelised,
it was beyond his power to evangelise them.
His spirit was absorbed and possessed by hopes and
fears and prayers for the Corinthians; and as the
human spirit, even when in contact with the divine,
is finite, and only capable of so much and no more,
he was obliged to let slip an occasion which he would
otherwise have gladly seized. He probably felt with
all missionaries that it is as important to secure as to
win converts; and if the Corinthians were capable of
reflection, they might reflect with shame on the loss
which their sin had entailed on the people of Troas.
The disorders of their wilful community had engrossed
the Apostle's spirit, and robbed their fellow-men across
the sea of an apostolic ministry. They could not but
feel how genuine was the Apostle's love, when he had
made such a sacrifice to it; but such a sacrifice ought
never to have been required.
When Paul could bear the suspense no longer, he
said good-bye to the people of Troas, crossed the
Thracian Sea, and advanced into Macedonia to meet
Titus. He did meet him, and heard from him a full
report of the state of matters at Corinth (chap. vii. 5 ff.);
but here he does not take time to say so. He breaks
out into a jubilant thanksgiving, occasioned primarily
no doubt by the joyful tidings he had just received,
but widening characteristically, and instantaneously, to
cover all his apostolic work. It is as though he felt
God's goodness to him to be all of a piece, and could
not be sensitive to it in any particular instance without
having the consciousness rise within him that he lived
and moved and had his being in it. "Now to God be
thanks, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ."
The peculiar and difficult word in this thanksgiving
is θριαμβεύοντι. The sense which first strikes one
as suitable is that which is given in the Authorised
Version: "God which always causeth us to triumph."
Practically Paul had been engaged in a conflict with
the Corinthians, and for a time it had seemed not
improbable that he might be beaten; but God had
caused him to triumph in Christ—that is, acting in
Christ's interests, in matters in which Christ's name
and honour were at stake, the victory (as always) had
remained with him; and for this he thanks God.
This interpretation is still maintained by so excellent
a scholar as Schmiedel, and the use of θριαμβεύειν in
this transitive sense is defended by the analogy of
μαθητεύειν in Matt. xxviii. 19.
But appropriate as this interpretation is, there is
one apparently fatal objection to it. There is no
doubt that θριαμβεύειν is here used transitively, but
we have not to guess, by analogy, what it must mean
when so used; there are other examples which fix
this unambiguously. One is found elsewhere in St.
Paul himself (Col. ii. 15), where θριαμβεύσας αὐτοὺς
indubitably means "having triumphed over them." In
accordance with this, which is only one out of many
instances,See Grimm's Lexicon s.v., or Lightfoot on Col. ii. 15.
the Revisers have displaced the old rendering
here, and substituted for it, "Thanks be to God, which
always leadeth us in triumph." The triumph here is
God's, not the Apostle's; Paul is not the soldier who
wins the battle, and shouts for victory, as he marches
in the triumphal procession; he is the captive who is
led in the Conqueror's train, and in whom men see
the trophy of the Conqueror's power. When he says
that God always leads him in triumph in Christ, the
meaning is not perfectly obvious. He may intend to
define, as it were, the area over which God's victory
extends. In everything which is covered by the name
and authority of Christ, God triumphantly asserts His
power over the Apostle. Or, again, the words may
signify that it is through Christ that God's victorious
power is put forth. These two meanings, of course,
are not inconsistent; and practically they coincide.
It cannot be denied, I think, if this is taken quite
rigorously, that there is a certain air of irrelevance
about it. It does not seem to be to the purpose of
the passage to say that God always triumphs over
Paul and those for whom He speaks, or even that He
always leads them in triumph. It is this feeling,
indeed, which mainly influences those who keep to
the rendering of the Authorised Version, and regard
Paul as the victor. But the meaning of θριαμβεύοντι
is not really open to doubt, and the semblance of
irrelevance disappears if we remember that we are
dealing with a figure, and a figure which the Apostle
himself does not press. Of course in an ordinary
triumph, such as the triumph of Claudius over Caractacus,
of which St. Paul may easily have heard, the
captives had no share in the victory; it was not only
a victory over them, but a victory against them. But
when God wins a victory over man, and leads his
captive in triumph, the captive too has an interest in
what happens; it is the beginning of all triumphs, in
any true sense, for him. If we apply this to the case
before us, we shall see that the true meaning is not
irrelevant. Paul had once been the enemy of God
in Christ; he had fought against Him in his own
soul, and in the Church which he persecuted and
wasted. The battle had been long and strong; but
not far from Damascus it had terminated in a decisive
victory for God. There the mighty man fell, and the
weapons of his warfare perished. His pride, his self-righteousness,
his sense of superiority to others and
of competence to attain to the righteousness of God,
collapsed for ever, and he rose from the earth to be
the slave of Jesus Christ. That was the beginning
of God's triumph over him; from that hour God led
him in triumph in Christ. But it was the beginning
also of all that made the Apostle's life itself a triumph,
not a career of hopeless internal strife, such as it had
been, but of unbroken Christian victory. This, indeed,
is not involved in the mere word θριαμβεύοντι, but it
is the real thing which was present to the Apostle's
mind when he used the word. When we recognise
this, we see that the charge of irrelevance does not
really apply; while nothing could be more characteristic
of the Apostle than to hide himself and his success
in this way behind God's triumph over him and through
him.
Further, the true meaning of the word, and the
true connexion of ideas just explained, remind us that
the only triumphs we can ever have, deserving the
name, must begin with God's triumph over us. This
is the one possible source of joy untroubled. We
may be as selfish as we please, and as successful in
our selfishness; we may distance all our rivals in the
race for the world's prizes; we may appropriate and
engross pleasure, wealth, knowledge, influence; and
after all there will be one thing we must do without—the
power and the happiness of thanking God. No
one will ever be able to thank God because he has
succeeded in pleasing himself, be the mode of his
self-pleasing as respectable as you will; and he who
has not thanked God with a whole heart, without
misgiving and without reserve, does not know what
joy is. Such thanksgiving and its joy have one
condition: they rise up spontaneously in the soul
when it allows God to triumph over it. When God
appears to us in Jesus Christ, when in the omnipotence
of His love and purity and truth He makes war upon
our pride and falsehood and lusts, and prevails against
them, and brings us low, then we are admitted to the
secret of this apparently perplexing passage; we know
how natural it is to cry, "Thanks be unto God who in
His victory over us giveth us the victory! Thanks
be to Him who always leadeth us in triumph!" It
is out of an experience like this that Paul speaks; it
is the key to his whole life, and it has been illustrated
anew by what has just happened at Corinth.
But to return to the Epistle. God is described by the
Apostle not only as triumphing over them (i.e., himself
and his colleagues) in Christ, but as making manifest
through them the savour of His knowledge in every
place. It has been questioned whether "His" knowledge
is the knowledge of God or of Christ. Grammatically,
the question can hardly be answered; but, as we see
from chap. iv. 6, the two things which it proposes to
distinguish are really one; what is manifested in the
apostolic ministry is the knowledge of God as He is
revealed in Christ. But why does Paul use the expression
"the savour of His knowledge"? It was suggested
probably by the figure of the triumph, which was
present to his mind in all the detail of its circumstances.
Incense smoked on every altar as the victor passed
through the streets of Rome; the fragrant steam floated
over the procession, a silent proclamation of victory
and joy. But Paul would not have appropriated this
feature of the triumph, and applied it to his ministry,
unless he had felt that there was a real point of comparison,
that the knowledge of Christ which he diffused
among men, wherever he went, was in very truth a
fragrant thing.In τὴν ὀσμὴν τῆς γνώσεως, γνώσεως is gen. of apposition: the ὀσμὴ
and the γνῶσις are one.
True, he was not a free man; he had
been subdued by God, and made the slave of Jesus
Christ; as the Lord of glory went forth conquering and
to conquer, over Syria and Asia and Macedonia and
Greece, He led him as a captive in the triumphal march
of His grace; he was the trophy of Christ's victory;
every one who saw him saw that necessity was laid
upon Him; but what a gracious necessity it was!
"The love of Christ constraineth us." The captives
who were dragged in chains behind a Roman chariot
also made manifest the knowledge of their conqueror;
they declared to all the spectators his power and his
pitilessness; there was nothing in that knowledge to
suggest the idea of a fragrance like incense. But as
Paul moved through the world, all who had eyes to
see saw in him not only the power but the sweetness
of God's redeeming love. The mighty Victor
made manifest through Him, not only His might, but
His charm, not only His greatness, but His grace. It
was a good thing, men felt, to be subdued and led in
triumph like Paul; it was to move in an atmosphere
perfumed by the love of Christ, as the air around
the Roman triumph was perfumed with incense. The
Apostle is so sensible of this that he weaves it into his
sentence as an indispensable part of his thought; it
is not merely the knowledge of God which is made
manifest through him as he is led in triumph, but that
knowledge as a fragrant, gracious thing, speaking to
every one of victory and goodness and joy.
The very word "savour," in connexion with the
"knowledge" of God in Christ, is full of meaning. It
has its most direct application, of course, to preaching.
When we proclaim the Gospel, do we always succeed
in manifesting it as a savour? Or is not the savour—the
sweetness, the winsomeness, the charm and attractiveness
of it—the very thing that is most easily left
out? Do we not catch it sometimes in the words of
others, and wonder that it eludes our own? We miss
what is most characteristic in the knowledge of God if
we miss this. We leave out that very element in the
Evangel which makes it evangelic, and gives it its
power to subdue and enchain the souls of men. But
it is not to preachers only that the word "savour"
speaks; it is of the widest possible application. Whereever
Christ is leading a single soul in triumph, the
fragrance of the Gospel should go forth; rather, it does
go forth, in proportion as His triumph is complete.
There is sure to be that in the life which will reveal
the graciousness as well as the omnipotence of the
Saviour. And it is this virtue which God uses as His
main witness, as His chief instrument, to evangelise the
world. In every relation of life it should tell. Nothing
is so insuppressible, nothing so pervasive, as a
fragrance. The lowliest life which Christ is really
leading in triumph will speak infallibly and persuasively
for Him. In a Christian brother or sister, brothers
and sisters will find a new strength and tenderness,
something that goes deeper than natural affection, and
can stand severer shocks; they will catch the fragrance
which declares that the Lord in His triumphant grace
is there. And so in all situations, or, as the Apostle
has it, "in every place." And if we are conscious that
we fall in this matter, and that the fragrance of the
knowledge of Christ is something to which our life
gives no testimony, let us be sure that the explanation
of it is to be found in self-will. There is something in
us which has not yet made complete surrender to Him,
and not till He leads us unresistingly in triumph will
the sweet savour go forth.
At this point the Apostle's thought is arrested by
the issues of his ministry, though he carries the figure
of the fragrance, with a little pressure, through to the
end. In God's sight, he says, or so far as God is
concerned, we are a sweet savour of Christ, a perfume
redolent of Christ, in which He cannot but take
pleasure. In other words, Christ proclaimed in the
Gospel, and the ministries and lives which proclaim
Him, are always a joy to God. They are a joy to Him,
whatever men may think of them, alike in them that
are being saved and in them that are perishing. To
those who are being saved, they are a savour "from
life to life"; to those who are perishing, a savour
"from death to death." Here, as everywhere, St. Paul
contemplates these exclusive opposites as the sole
issues of man's life, and of the Gospel ministry. He
makes no attempt to subordinate one to the other, no
suggestion that the way of death may ultimately lead
to life, much less that it must do so. The whole
solemnity of the situation, which is faced in the cry
"And who is sufficient for these things?" depends on
the finality of the contrast between life and death.
These are the goals set before men, and those who are
being saved and those who are perishing are respectively
on their way to one or the other. Who is sufficient
for the calling of the Gospel ministry, when such are
the alternatives involved in it? Who is sufficient, in
love, in wisdom, in humility, in awful earnestness, for
the duties of a calling the issues of which are life or
death for ever?
There is considerable difficulty in the sixteenth verse,
partly dogmatic, partly textual. Commentators so
opposite in their bias as Chrysostom and Calvin have
pondered and remarked upon the opposite effects here
ascribed to the Gospel. It is easy to find analogies to
these in nature. The same heat which hardens clay
melts iron. The same sunlight which gladdens the
healthy eye tortures that which is diseased. The
same honey which is sweet to the sound palate is
nauseous to the sick; and so on. But such analogies
do not explain anything, and one can hardly see what
is meant by calling them illustrations. It remains
finally inexplicable that the Gospel, which appeals to
some with winning irresistible power, subduing and
leading them in triumph, should excite in others a
passion of antipathy which nothing else could provoke.
This remains inexplicable, because it is irrational.
Nothing that can be pointed to in the universe is the
least like a bad heart closing itself against the love of
Christ, like a bad man's will stiffening into absolute
rigidity against the will of God. The preaching of the
Gospel may be the occasion of such awful results, but
it is not their cause. The God whom it proclaims is
the God of grace; it is never His will that any should
perish—always that all should be saved. But He can
save only by subduing; His grace must exercise a
sovereign power in us, which through righteousness
will lead to life everlasting (Rom. v. 21). And when
this exercise of power is resisted, when we match our
self-will against the gracious saving will of God, our
pride, our passions, our mere sloth, against the soul-constraining
love of Christ; when we prevail in the
war which God's mercy wages with our wickedness,—then
the Gospel itself may be said to have ministered
to our ruin; it was ordained to life, and we have made
it a sentence of death. Yet even so, it is the joy and
glory of God; it is a sweet savour to Him, fragrant of
Christ and His love.
The textual difficulty is in the words ἐκ θανάτου εἰς
θάνατον, and ἐκ ζωῆς εἰς ζωήν. These words are
rendered in the Revised Version "from death to death,"
and "from life to life." The Authorised Version, following
the Textus Receptus, which omits ἐκ in both clauses,
renders "a savour of death unto death," and "of life
unto life." In spite of the inferior MS. support, the
Textus Receptus is preferred by many modern scholars—e.g.,
Heinrici, Schmiedel, and Hofmann. They find it
impossible to give any precise interpretation to the
better attested reading, and an examination of any
exposition which accepts it goes far to justify them.
Thus Professor Beet comments: "From death for death
(comp. Rom. i. 17): a scent proceeding from, and
thus revealing the presence of, death; and, like malaria
from a putrefying corpse, causing death. Paul's labours
among some men revealed the eternal death which day
by day cast an ever-deepening shadow upon them
[this answers to ὀσμὴ ἐκ θανάτου]; and by arousing
in them increased opposition to God, promoted the
spiritual mortification which had already begun" [this
answers to εἰς θάνατον]. Surely it is safe to say that
nobody in Corinth could ever have guessed this from the
words. Yet this is a favourable specimen of the interpretations
given. If it were possible to take ἐκ θανάτου
εἰς θάνατον, and ἐκ ζωῆς εἰς ζωήν, as Baur took ἐκ
πίστεως εἰς πίστιν in Rom. i. 17, that would be the
simplest way out of the difficulty, and quite satisfactory.
What the Apostle said would then be this: that the
Gospel which he preached, ever good as it was to God,
had the most opposite characters and effects among men,—in
some it was death from beginning to end, absolutely
and unmitigatedly deadly in its nature and workings;
in others, again, it was life from beginning to end—life
was the uniform sign of its presence, and its invariable
issue. This also is the meaning which we get by
omitting ἐκ: the genitives ζωῆς and θανάτου are then
adjectival,—a vital fragrance, with life as its element
and end; a fatal fragrance, the end of which is
death. This has the advantage of being the meaning
which occurs to an ordinary reader; and if the critically
approved text, with the repeated ἐκ, cannot bear this
interpretation, I think there is a fair case for defending
the received text on exegetical grounds. Certainly
nothing but the broad impression of the received text
will ever enter the general mind.
The question that rises to the Apostle's lips as he
confronts the solemn situation created by the Gospel
is not directly answered. "Who is sufficient for these
things? Who? I say. For we are not as the many,"The many" (ὁι πολλοί) seems to be the true reading. "The
rest" (ὁι λοιποί) would be stronger still in its condemnation. But
probably Paul is not thinking of the Church in general, but of the
teachers as a body who crossed and thwarted him in his chosen field.
The transition which is immediately made to the case of his opponents
(τινὲς, iii. 1), and to the comparison of the old and new covenants,
suggests that his Judaistic adversaries in Corinth (see chap. xi.) are
in view.
who corrupt the Word of God: but as of sincerity, but
as of God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ."
Paul is conscious as he writes that his awful sense of
responsibility as a preacher of the Gospel is not shared
by all who exercise the same vocation. To be the
bearer and the representative of a power with issues
so tremendous ought surely to annihilate every thought
of self; to let personal interest intrude is to declare
oneself faithless and unworthy. We are startled to
hear from Paul's lips what at first sight seems to be a
charge of just such base self-seeking laid against the
majority of preachers. "We are not as the many,
corrupting the Word of God." The expressive word
rendered here "corrupting" has the idea of self-interest,
and especially of petty gain, at its basis. It means
literally to sell in small quantities, to retail for profit.
But it was specially applied to tavern-keeping, and
extended to cover all the devices by which the wine-sellers
in ancient times deceived their customers.
Then it was used figuratively, as here; and Lucian,
e.g., speaks of philosophers as selling the sciences, and
in most cases (οἱ πολλοί: a curious parallel to St.
Paul), like tavern keepers, "blending, adulterating, and
giving bad measure." It is plain that there are two
separable ideas here. One is that of men qualifying
the Gospel, infiltrating their own ideas into the Word
of God, tempering its severity, or perhaps its goodness,
veiling its inexorableness, dealing in compromise.
The other is that all such proceedings are faithless
and dishonest, because some private interest underlies
them. It need not be avarice, though it is as likely
to be this as anything else. A man corrupts the Word
of God, makes it the stock-in-trade of a paltry business
of his own, in many other ways than by subordinating
it to the need of a livelihood. When he exercises his
calling as a minister for the gratification of his vanity,
he does so. When he preaches not that awful message
in which life and death are bound up, but himself, his
cleverness, his learning, his humour, his fine voice even
or fine gestures, he does so. He makes the Word
minister to him, instead of being a minister of the
Word; and that is the essence of the sin. It is the
same if ambition be his motive, if he preaches to win
disciples to himself, to gain an ascendency over souls,
to become the head of a party which will bear the
impress of his mind. There was something of this
at Corinth; and not only there, but wherever it is
found, such a spirit and such interests will change the
character of the Gospel. It will not be preserved in
that integrity, in that simple, uncompromising, absolute
character which it has as revealed in Christ. Have
another interest in it than that of God, and that interest
will inevitably colour it. You will make it what it was
not, and the virtue will depart from it.
In contrast with all such dishonest ministers, the
Apostle represents himself and his friends speaking
"as of sincerity." They have no mixture of motives
in their work as evangelists; they have indeed no
independent motives at all: God is leading them in
triumph, and proclaiming His grace through them. It
is He who prompts every word (ὡς ἐκ Θεοῦ). Yet their
responsibility and their freedom are intact. They feel
themselves in His presence as they speak, and in that
presence they speak "in Christ." "In Christ" is the
Apostle's mark. Not in himself apart from Christ,
where any mixture of motives, any process of adulteration,
would have been possible, but only in that union
with Christ which was the very life of his life, did he
carry on his evangelistic work. This was his final
security, and it is still the only security, that the
Gospel can have fair play in the world.
LIVING EPISTLES
"Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? or need we, as
do some, epistles of commendation to you or from you? Ye are our
epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men; being made
manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not
with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone,
but in tables that are hearts of flesh."—2 Cor. iii. 1-3 (R.V.).
"Are we beginning again to commend ourselves?"
Paul does not mean by these words to admit that
he had been commending himself before: he means
that he has been accused already of doing so, and that
there are those at Corinth who, when they hear such
passages of this letter as that which has just preceded,
will be ready to repeat the accusation. In the First
Epistle he had found it necessary to vindicate his
apostolic authority, and especially his interest in the
Corinthian Church as its spiritual father (1 Cor. ix. 1-27,
iv. 6-21), and obviously his enemies at Corinth had
tried to turn these personal passages against him. They
did so on the principle Qui s'excuse s'accuse. "He is
commending himself," they said, "and self-commendation
is an argument which discredits, instead of supporting,
a cause." The Apostle had heard of these
malicious speeches, and in this Epistle makes repeated
reference to them (see chaps, v. 12, x. 18, xiii. 6). He
entirely agreed with his opponents that self-praise was
no honour. "Not he who commendeth himself is
approved, but he whom the Lord commendeth." But
he denied point-blank that he was commending himself.
In distinguishing as he had done in chap. ii. 14-17
between himself and his colleagues, who spoke the
Word "as of sincerity, as of God, in the sight of God,"
and "the many" who corrupted it, nothing was further
from his mind than to plead his cause, as a suspected
person, with the Corinthians. Only malignity could
suppose any such thing, and the indignant question with
which the chapter opens tacitly accuses his adversaries
of this hateful vice. It is pitiful to see a great and
generous spirit like Paul compelled thus to stand upon
guard, and watch against the possible misconstruction
of every lightest word. What needless pain it inflicts
upon him, what needless humiliation! How it checks
all effusion of feeling, and robs what should be brotherly
intercourse of everything that can make it free and
glad! Further on in the Epistle there will be abundant
opportunity of speaking on this subject at greater
length; but it is proper to remark here that a minister's
character is the whole capital he has for carrying on
his business, and that nothing can be more cruel and
wicked than to cast suspicion on it without cause. In
most other callings a man may go on, no matter what
his character, provided his balance at the bank is on
the right side; but an evangelist or a pastor who has
lost his character has lost everything. It is humiliating
to be subject to suspicion, painful to be silent under
it, degrading to speak. At a later stage Paul was
compelled to go further than he goes here; but let the
indignant emotion of this abrupt question remind us
that candour is to be met with candour, and that the
suspicious temper which would fain malign the good
eats like a canker the very heart of those who
cherish it.
From the serious tone the Apostle passes suddenly
to the ironical. "Or need we, as do some, epistles of
commendation to you or from you?" The "some" of
this verse are probably the same as "the many" of chap.
ii. 17. Persons had come to Corinth in the character
of Christian teachers, bringing with them recommendatory
letters which secured their standing when they
arrived. An example of what is meant can be seen
in Acts xvii. 27. There we are told that when Apollos,
who had been working in Ephesus, was minded to pass
over into Achaia, the Ephesian brethren encouraged
him, and wrote to the disciples to receive him—that
is, they gave him an epistle of commendation, which
secured him recognition and welcome in Corinth. A
similar case is found in Rom. xvi. 1, where the Apostle
uses the very word which we have here: "I commend
unto you Phœbe our sister, who is a servant of the
Church that is at Cenchreæ: that ye receive her in the
Lord, worthily of the saints, and that ye assist her in
whatsoever matter she may have need of you: for she
herself also hath been a succourer of many, and of mine
own self." This was Phœbe's introduction, or epistle
of commendation, to the Church of Rome. The Corinthians
were evidently in the habit both of receiving
such letters from other Churches, and of granting them
on their own account; and Paul asks them ironically if
they think he ought to bring one, or when he leaves
them to apply for one. Is that the relation which ought
to obtain between him and them? The "some," to
whom he refers, had no doubt come from Jerusalem: it
is they who are referred to in chap. xi. 22 ff. But it does
not follow that their recommendatory letters had been
signed by Peter, James, and John; and just as little
that those letters justified them in their hostility to
Paul. No doubt there were many—many myriads, the
Book of Acts says—at Jerusalem, whose conception of
the Gospel was very different from his, and who were
glad to counteract him whenever they could; but there
were many also, including the three who seemed to be
pillars, who had a thoroughly good understanding with
him, and who had no responsibility for the "some"
and their doings. The epistles which the "some"
brought were plainly such as the Corinthians themselves
could grant, and it is a complete misinterpretation
to suppose that they were a commission granted
by the Twelve for the persecution of Paul.
The giving of recommendatory letters is a subject
of considerable practical interest. When they are
merely formal, as in our certificates of Church membership,
they come to mean very little. It is an unhappy
state of affairs perhaps, but no one would take a
certificate of Church membership by itself as a satisfactory
recommendation. And when we go past the
merely formal, difficult questions arise. Many people
have an estimate of their own character and competence,
in which it is impossible for others to share, and yet
they apply without misgiving to their friends, and
especially to their minister or their employer, to grant
them "epistles of commendation." We are bound to
be generous in these things, but we are bound also
to be honest. The rule which ought to guide us,
especially in all that belongs to the Church and its
work, is the interest of the cause, and not of the
worker. To flatter is to do a wrong, not only to the
person flattered, but to the cause in which you are
trying to employ him. There is no more ludicrous
reading in the world than a bundle of certificates,
or testimonials, as they are called. As a rule, they
certify nothing but the total absence of judgment and
conscience in the people who have granted them. If
you do not know whether a person is qualified for any
given situation or not, you do not need to say anything
about it. If you know he is not, and he asks you to
say that he is, no personal consideration must keep
you from kindly but firmly declining. I am not preaching
suspicion, or reserve, or anything ungenerous, but
justice and truth. It is wicked to betray a great
interest by bespeaking it for incompetent hands; it is
cruel to put any one into a place for which he is unfit.
Where you are confident that the man and the work
will be well matched, be as generous as you please;
but never forget that the work is to be considered in
the first place, and the man only in the second.
Paul has been serious, and ironical, in the first
verse; in ver. 2 he becomes serious again, and remains
so. "You," he says, answering his ironical question,
"you are our epistle." Epistle, of course, is to be
taken in the sense of the preceding verse. "You are the
commendatory letter which I show, when I am asked
for my credentials." But to whom does he show it?
In the first instance, to the captious Corinthians themselves.
The tone of chap. ix. in the First Epistle is
struck here again: "Wherever I may need recommendations,
it is certainly not at Corinth." "If I be not an
apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you: the seal
of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord." Had they
been a Christian community when he first visited them,
they might have asked who he was; but they owed
their Christianity to him; he was their father in
Christ; to put him to the question in this superior,
suspicious style was unnatural, unfilial ingratitude.
They themselves were the living evidence of the very
thing which they threw doubt upon—the apostleship
of Paul.
This bold utterance may well excite misgivings in
those who preach constantly, yet see no result of their
work. It is common to disparage success, the success
of visible acknowledged conversions, of bad men openly
renouncing badness, bearing witness against themselves,
and embracing a new life. It is common to
glorify the ministry which works on, patient and uncomplaining,
in one monotonous round, ever sowing,
but never reaping, ever casting the net, but never
drawing in the fish, ever marking time, but never
advancing. Paul frankly and repeatedly appeals to his
success in evangelistic work as the final and sufficient
proof that God had called him, and had given him
authority as an apostle; and search as we will, we
shall not find any test so good and unequivocal as this
success. Paul had seen the Lord; he was qualified
to be a witness of the Resurrection; but these, at the
very most, were his own affair, till the witness he bore
had proved its power in the hearts and consciences of
others. How to provide, to train, and to test the men
who are to be the ministers of the Christian Church
is a matter of the very utmost consequence, to which
sufficient attention has not yet been given. Congregations
which choose their own pastor are often compelled
to take a man quite untried, and to judge him more or
less on superficial grounds. They can easily find out
whether he is a competent scholar; they can see for
themselves what are his gifts of speech, his virtues or
defects of manner; they can get such an impression
as sensible people always get, by seeing and hearing a
man, of the general earnestness or lack of earnestness
in his character. But often they feel that more is
wanted. It is not exactly more in the way of character;
the members of a Church have no right to expect that
their minister will be a truer Christian than they themselves
are. A special inquisition into his conversion,
or his religious experience, is mere hypocrisy; if the
Church is not sufficiently in earnest to guard herself
against insincere members, she must take the risk of
insincere ministers. What is wanted is what the
Apostle indicates here—that intimation of God's concurrence
which is given through success in evangelistic
work. No other intimation of God's concurrence is
infallible—no call by a congregation, no ordination by
a presbytery or by a bishop. Theological education is
easily provided, and easily tested; but it will not be
so easy to introduce the reforms which are needed in
this direction. Great masses of Christian people, however,
are becoming alive to the necessity for them;
and when the pressure is more strongly felt, the way
for action will be discovered. Only those who can
appeal to what they have done in the Gospel can be
known to have the qualifications of Gospel ministers;
and in due time the fact will be frankly recognised.
The conversion and new life of the Corinthians were
Paul's certificate as an apostle. They were a certificate
known, he says, and read by all men. Often
there is a certain awkwardness in the presenting of
credentials. It embarrasses a man when he has to
put his hand into his breast pocket, and take out his
character, and submit it for inspection. Paul was
saved this embarrassment. There was a fine unsought
publicity about his testimonials. Everybody knew
what the Corinthians had been, everybody knew what
they were; and the man to whom the change was
due needed no other recommendation to a Christian
society. Whoever looked at them saw plainly that
they were an epistle of Christ; the mind of Christ
could be read upon them, and it had been written by
the intervention of Paul's hand. This is an interesting
though a well-worn conception of the Christian
character. Every life has a meaning, we say; every
face is a record; but the text goes further. The life
of the Christian is an epistle; it has not only a meaning,
but an address; it is a message from Christ to
the world. Is Christ's message to men legible on
our lives? When those who are without look at us,
do they see the hand of Christ quite unmistakably?
Does it ever occur to anybody that there is something
in our life which is not of the world, but which is a
message to the world from Christ? Did you ever,
startled by the unusual brightness of a true Christian's
life, ask as it were involuntarily, "Whose image
and superscription is this?" and feel as you asked it
that these features, these characters, could only have
been traced by one hand, and that they proclaimed
to all the grace and power of Jesus Christ? Christ
wishes so to write upon us that men may see what
He does for man. He wishes to engrave His image
on our nature, that all spectators may feel that it has
a message for them, and may crave the same favour.
A congregation which is not in its very existence and
in all its works and ways a legible epistle, an unmistakable
message from Christ to man, does not
answer to this New Testament ideal.
Paul claims no part here but that of Christ's instrument.
The Lord, so to speak, dictated the letter, and
he wrote it. The contents of it were prescribed by
Christ, and through the Apostle's ministry became
visible and legible in the Corinthians. More important
is it to notice with what the writing was done:
"not with ink," says St. Paul, "but with the Spirit of the
living God." At first sight this contrast seems formal
and fantastic; nobody, we think, could ever dream of
making either of these things do the work of the other,
so that it seems perfectly gratuitous in Paul to say,
"not with ink, but with the Spirit." Yet ink is sometimes
made to bear a great deal of responsibility. The
characters of the τινὲς ("some") in ver. i, were only
written in ink; they had nothing, Paul implies, to
recommend them but these documents in black and
white. That was hardly sufficient to guarantee their
authority, or their competence as ministers in the Christian
dispensation. But do not Churches yet accept
their ministers with the same inadequate testimonials?
A distinguished career at the University, or in the
Divinity Schools, proves that a man can write with
ink, under favourable circumstances; it does not prove
more than that; it does not prove that he will be
spiritually effective, and everything else is irrelevant.
I do not say this to disparage the professional training
of ministers; on the contrary, the standard of training
ought to be higher than it is in all the Churches: I
only wish to insist that nothing which can be represented
in ink, no learning, no literary gifts, no critical
acquaintance with the Scriptures even, can write upon
human nature the Epistle of Christ. To do that needs
"the Spirit of the living God." We feel, the moment
we come upon those words, that the Apostle is anticipating;
he has in view already the contrast he is going to
develop between the old dispensation and the new,
and the irresistible inward power by which the new
is characterised. Others might boast of qualifications
to preach which could be certified in due documentary
form, but he carried in him wherever he went a power
which was its own witness, and which overruled and
dispensed with every other. Let all of us who teach
or preach concentrate our interest here. It is in "the
Spirit of the living God," not in any acquirements of
our own, still less in any recommendations of others,
that our serviceableness as ministers of Christ lies.
We cannot write His epistle without it. We cannot
see, let us be as diligent and indefatigable in our
work as we please, the image of Christ gradually come
out in those to whom we minister. Parents, teachers,
preachers, this is the one thing needful for us all.
"Tarry," said Jesus to the first evangelists, "tarry in
the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power
from on high"; it is of no use to begin without that.
This idea of the "epistle" has taken such a hold
of the Apostle's mind, and he finds it so suggestive
whichever way he turns it, that he really tries to say
too much about it in one sentence. The crowding of
his ideas is confusing. One learned critic enumerates
three points in which the figure becomes inconsistent
with itself, and another can only defend the Apostle
by saying that this figurative letter might well have
qualities which would be self-contradictory in a real
one. This kind of criticism smells a little of ink, and
the only real difficulty in the sentence has never misled
any one who read it with sympathy. It is this—that
St. Paul speaks of the letter as written in two different
places. "Ye are our epistle," he says at the beginning,
"written in our hearts"; but at the end he says,
"written not on tables of stone, but on tables that
are hearts of flesh"—meaning evidently on the hearts
of the Corinthians. Of course this last is the sense
which coheres with the figure. Paul's ministry wrote
the Epistle of Christ upon the Corinthians, or, if we
prefer it, wrought such a change in their hearts that
they became an epistle of Christ, an epistle to which
he appealed in proof of his apostolic calling. In expressing
himself as he does about this, he is again
anticipating the coming contrast of Law and Gospel.
Nobody would think of writing a letter on tables of
stone, and he only says "not on stone tables" because
he has in his mind the difference between the Mosaic
and the Christian dispensation. It is quite out of
place to refer to Ezek. xi. 19, xxxvi. 26, and to drag
in the contrast between hard and tender hearts. What
Paul means is that the Epistle of Christ is not written
on dead matter, but on human nature, and that too at
its finest and deepest. When we remember the sense
of depth and inwardness which attaches to the heart
in Scripture, it is not forcing the words to find in them
the suggestion that the Gospel works no merely outward
change. It is not written on the surface, but in the
soul. The Spirit of the living God finds access for
itself to the secret places of the human spirit; the most
hidden recesses of our nature are open to it, and the
very heart is made new. To be able to write there for
Christ, to point not to anything dead, but to living men
and women, not to anything superficial, but to a change
that has reached the very core of man's being, and
works its way out from thence, is the testimonial which
guarantees the evangelist; it is the divine attestation
that he is in the true apostolical succession.The true reading of the last words in ver. 3 is doubtful. The
Received Text has ἐν πλαξὶ καρδίας σαρκίναις. This is as old as
Irenæus and Origen, and is found in many versions. Almost all MSS. give the reading which is translated in the Revised Version:
ἐν πλαξὶ καρδίαις σαρκίναις(א, A, B, C, D, etc.); and this is adopted
by most of the purely critical editors. Some, however, and many
exegetes, suspect a primitive error, affecting all MSS. and versions.
Schmiedel would omit καρδίαις or καρδίας, as a marginal note, suggested
by Prov. vii. 3, Jer. xvii. 1; Westcott and Hort, on the other
hand, think that πλαξὶ may be a primitive interpolation. No certainty
is possible; but considering Old Testament usage, one would
expect Paul to write ἐν πλαξὶ καρδίας almost unconsciously.
What, then, does Paul mean by the other clause,
"ye are our epistle, written on our hearts?" I do not
think we can get much more than an emotional certainty
about this expression. When a man has been
an intensely interested spectator, still more an intensely
interested actor, in any great affair, he might say afterwards
that the whole thing and all its circumstances
were engraved upon his heart. I imagine that is what
St. Paul means here. The conversion of the Corinthians
made them an epistle of Christ; in making
them believers through St. Paul's ministry, Christ wrote
on their hearts what was really an epistle to the world;
and the whole transaction, in which Paul's feelings had
been deeply engaged, stood written on his heart for
ever. Interpretations that go beyond this do not seem
to me to be justified by the words. Thus Heinrici and
Meyer say, "We have in our own consciousness the
certainty of being recommended to you by yourselves
and to others by you"; and they elucidate this by
saying, "The Apostle's own good consciousness was, as
it were, the tablet on which this living epistle of the
Corinthians stood, and that had to be left unassailed
even by the most malevolent." A sense so pragmatical
and pedantic, even if one can grasp it at all, is surely
out of place, and many readers will fail to discover it
in the text. What the words do convey is the warm
love of the Apostle, who had exercised his ministry
among the Corinthians with all the passion of his
nature, and who still bore on his ardent heart the
fresh impression of his work and its results.
Amid all these details let us take care not to lose the
one great lesson of the passage. Christian people owe
a testimony to Christ. His name has been pronounced
over them, and all who look at them ought to see His
nature. We should discern in the heart and in the
behaviour of Christians the handwriting, let us say the
characters, not of avarice, of suspicion, of envy, of lust,
of falsehood, of pride, but of Christ. It is to us He
has committed Himself; we are the certification to men
of what He does for man; His character is in our care.
The true epistles of Christ to the world are not those
which are expounded in pulpits; they are not even
the gospels in which Christ Himself lives and moves
before us; they are living men and women, on the
tables of whose hearts the Spirit of the living God,
ministered by a true evangelist, has engraved the
likeness of Christ Himself. It is not the written Word
on which Christianity ultimately depends; it is not
the sacraments, nor so-called necessary institutions: it
is this inward, spiritual, Divine writing which is the
guarantee of all else.
THE TWO COVENANTS
"And such confidence have we through Christ to God-ward: not
that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from
ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; who also made us
sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of
the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if
the ministration of death, written, and engraven on stones, came
with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look stedfastly
upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face; which glory was
passing away: how shall not rather the ministration of the spirit
be with glory? For if the ministration of condemnation is glory,
much rather doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
For verily that which hath been made glorious hath not been made
glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasseth. For
if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which
remaineth is in glory."—2 Cor. iii. 4-11 (R.V.).
The confidence referred to in the opening of this
passage is that which underlies the triumphant
sentences at the end of the second chapter. The tone
of those sentences was open to misinterpretation, and
Paul guards himself against this on two sides. To
begin with, his motive in so expressing himself was
quite pure: he had no thought of commending himself
to the Corinthians. And, again, the ground of his
confidence was not in himself. The courage which he
had to speak as he did he had through Jesus Christ,
and that, too, in relation to God. It was virtually
confidence in God, and therefore inspired by God.
It is this last aspect of his confidence which is
expanded in the fifth verse: "not that we are sufficient
of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves;
but our sufficiency is from God." This vehement disclaimer
of any self-sufficiency has naturally been taken
in the widest sense, and theologians from Augustine
downward have found in it one of the most decisive
proofs of the inability of man for any spiritual good
accompanying salvation. No one, we may be sure,
would have ascribed salvation, and all spiritual good
accompanying it, entirely to God with more hearty
sincerity than the Apostle; but it does seem better
here to give his words a narrower and more relevant
interpretation. The "sufficiency to account anything,"
of which he speaks, must have a definite meaning for
the context; and this meaning is suggested by the
words of chap. ii. 14-17. Paul would never have
dared, he tells us—indeed, he would never have been
able—on his own motion, and out of his own resources,
either to form conclusions, or to express them, on
the subjects there in view. It is not for any man
at random to say what the true Gospel is, what are
its issues, what the responsibilities of its hearers or
preachers, what is the spirit requisite in the evangelist,
or what are the methods legitimate for him. The
Gospel is God's concern, and only those who have
been capacitated by Him are entitled to speak as Paul
has spoken. If this is a narrower sense than that
which is expounded so vigorously by Calvin, it is
more pertinent, and some will find it quite as pungent.
Of all things that are done hastily and inconsiderately,
by people calling themselves Christian, the criticism of
evangelists is one of the most conspicuous. At his
own prompting, out of his own wise head, any man
almost will both make up his mind and speak his
mind about any preacher with no sense of responsibility
whatever. Paul certainly did form opinions about
preachers, opinions which were anything but flattering;
but he did it through Jesus Christ and in relation to
God; he did it because, as he writes, God had made
him sufficient, i.e. had given him capacity to be, and
the capacity of, a true evangelist, so that he knew
both what the Gospel was, and how it ought to be
proclaimed. It would silence much incompetent, because
self-sufficient, criticism, if no one "thought anything"
who had not this qualification.
The qualification having been mentioned, the Apostle
proceeds, as usual, to enlarge upon it. "Our sufficiency
is of God; who also made us sufficient as ministers of
a new covenant; not of letter, but of spirit: for the
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." At the first
glance, we see no reason why his thought should take
this direction, and it can only be because those whom
he is opposing, and with whom he has contrasted
himself in chap. ii. 17, are in some sense representatives
of the old covenant, ministers of the letter in spite of
their claim to be evangelists, and appealing not to a
competency which came from God, but to one which
rested on "the flesh." They based their title to preach
on certain advantages of birth, or on having known
Jesus when He lived in the world, or perhaps on
certification by others who had known Him; at all
events, not on that spiritual competence which Paul's
ministry at Corinth had shown him to possess. That
this was really the case will be seen more fully at a
later stage (especially in chaps. x. ff.).
With the words "ministers of a new covenant" we
enter upon one of the great passages in St. Paul's
writings, and are allowed to see one of the inspiring
and governing ideas in his mind. "Covenant," even
to people familiar with the Bible, is beginning to be a
remote and technical term; it needs to be translated
or explained. If no more than another word is to be
used, perhaps "dispensation" or "constitution" would
suggest something. God's covenant with Israel was the
whole constitution under which God was the God of
Israel, and Israel the people of God. The new covenant
of which Paul speaks necessarily implies an old one;
and the old one is this covenant with Israel. It was a
national covenant, and for that, among other reasons,
it was represented and embodied in legal forms. There
was a legal constitution under which the nation lived,
and according to which all God's dealings with it, and
all its dealings with God, were regulated. Without
entering more deeply, in the meantime, into the nature
of this constitution, or the religious experiences which
were possible to those who lived under it, it is sufficient
to notice that the best spirits in the nation became
conscious of its inadequacy, and eventually of its failure.
Jeremiah, who lived through the long agony of his
country's dissolution, and saw the final collapse of
the ancient order, felt this failure most deeply, and
was consoled by the vision of a brighter future. That
future rested for him on a more intimate relation of
God to His people, on a constitution, as we may fairly
paraphrase his words, less legal and more spiritual.
"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and
with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant
that I made with their fathers in the day that I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of
Egypt; which My covenant they brake, although I was
an husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after
those days, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their
inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I
will be their God, and they shall be My people: and
they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and
every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for
they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the
greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive
their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more."
This wonderful passage, so profound, so spiritual, so
evangelical, is the utmost reach of prophecy; it is a
sort of stepping-stone between the Old Testament and
the New. Jeremiah has cried to God out of the depths,
and God has heard his cry, and raised him to a spiritual
height from which his eye ranges over the land of
promise, and rests with yearning on all its grandest
features. We do not know whether many of his
contemporaries or successors were able to climb the
mount which offered this glorious prospect; but we
know that the promise remained a promise—a rainbow
light across the dark cloud of national disaster—till
Christ claimed its fulfilment as His work. It was His
to make good all that the prophets had spoken; and
when in the last hours of His life He said to His
disciples, "This is My blood of the covenant,The true reading in Matt. xxvi. 28 omits "new," but the reference
is unmistakable.
which is
shed for many, for the remission of sins," it was
exactly as if He had laid His hand on that passage
of Jeremiah, and said, "This day is this scripture fulfilled
before your eyes." By the death of Jesus a new
spiritual order was established; it rested on the forgiveness
of sins, it made God accessible to all, it made
obedience an instinct and a joy; all the intercourse of
God and man was carried on upon a new footing,
under a new constitution; to use the words of the
prophet and the apostle, God made a new covenant
with His people.
Among the Christians of the first age, no one so
thoroughly appreciated the newness of Christianity,
or was so immensely impressed by it, as St. Paul.
The difference between the earlier dispensation and
the later, between the religion of Moses' disciples and
the religion of believers in Jesus Christ, was one that
could hardly be exaggerated; he himself had been a
zealot of the old, he was now a zealot of the new; and
the gulf between his former and his present self was one
that no geometry could measure. He had lived, after
the straitest sect of the old religion, a Pharisee; touching
the righteousness which is in the law he could call
himself blameless; he had tasted the whole bitterness
of the legalism, the formality, the bondage, in which
the old covenant entangled those who were devoted to
it in his days. It is with this in his memory that he
here sets the old and the new in unrelieved opposition
to each other. His feeling is like that of a man who
has just been liberated from prison, and whose whole
mind is possessed and filled up with the single sensation
that it is one thing to be chained, and another
thing to be free. In the passage before us, this is all
the Apostle has in view. He speaks as if the old
covenant and the new had nothing in common, as if
the new, to borrow Baur's expression, had merely a
negative relation to the old, as if it could only be contrasted
with it, and not compared to it, or illustrated by
it. And with this restricted view he characterises the
old dispensation as one of letter, and the new as one
of spirit.Grammatically, it is probable that γράμματος and πνεύματος in ver. 6
depend, not on διαθήκης, but on διακόνους; but the sense is all one.
Speaking out of his own experience, which
was not solitary, but typical, he could truly speak thus.
The essence of the old, to a Pharisee born and bred,
was its documentary, statutory character: the law,
written in letters, on stone tablets or parchment sheets,
simply confronted men with its uninspiring imperative;
it had never yet given any one a good conscience or
enabled him to attain to the righteousness of God.
The essence of the new, on the other hand, was spirit;
the Christian was one in whom, through Christ, the
Holy Spirit of God dwelt, putting the righteousness
of God within his reach, enabling him to perfect holiness
in God's fear. The contrast is made absolute, pro tem.
There is no "spirit" in the old at all; there is no
"letter" in the new. This last assertion was more
natural then than now; for at the time when Paul
wrote this Epistle, there was no "New Testament of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" consigned in
documents and collected for the use of the Church.
The Gospel existed in the world, not at all in books,
but only in men; all the epistles were living epistles;
there was literally no letter, but only spirit.
This, doubtless, is the explanation of the blank
antithesis of the old covenant and the new in the
passage before us. But it is obvious, when we think
of it, that this antithesis does not exhaust the relations
of the two. It is not the whole truth about the earlier
dispensation to say that, while the new is spiritual, it
is not. The religion of the Old Testament was not
mere legalism; if it had been, the Old Testament would
be for us an unprofitable and almost an unintelligible
book. That religion had its spiritual side, as all but
utterly corrupt religions always have; God administered
His grace to His people through it, and in psalms and
prophecies we have records of their experiences, which
are not legal, but spiritual, and priceless even to
Christian men. Nor would Paul, under other circumstances,
have refused to admit this; on the contrary,
it is a prominent element in his teaching. He knows
that the old bears in its bosom the promise of the new,
a sum of promises that has been confirmed and made
good in Jesus Christ (chap. i. 20). He knows that the
righteousness of God, which is proclaimed in the Gospel,
is witnessed to by the law and the prophets (Rom.
iii. 21). He knows that "the law," even, is "spiritual"
(Rom. vii. 14). He knows that the righteousness of
faith was a secret revealed to David (Rom. iv. 6 f.). He
would probably have agreed with Stephen that the
oracles received and delivered by Moses in the wilderness
were "living" oracles; and his profound mind
would have thrilled to hear that great word of Jesus,
"I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Had he lived
to a time like ours, when the Gospel also has been
embodied in a book, instead of using "letter" and
"spirit" as mutually exclusive, he would have admitted,
as we do, that both ideas apply, in some sense, to both
dispensations, and that it is possible to take the old
and the new alike either in the letter or in the spirit.
Nevertheless, he would have been entitled to say that,
if they were to be characterised in their differences,
they must be characterised as he has done it: the
mark of the old, as opposed to the new, is literalism,
or legalism; the mark of the new, as opposed to the
old, is spirituality, or freedom. They differ as law
differs from life, as compulsion from inspiration. Taken
thus, no one can have any difficulty in agreeing
with him.
But the Apostle does not rest in generalities: he
goes on to a more particular comparison of the old and
the new dispensations, and especially to a demonstration
that the new is the more glorious. He starts with
a statement of their working, as dependent on their
nature just described. One is letter; the other, spirit.
Well, the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. A
sentence so pregnant as this, and so capable of various
applications, must have been very perplexing to the
Corinthians, had they not been fairly acquainted beforehand
with the Apostle's "form of doctrine" (Rom. vi.
17). It condenses in itself a whole cycle of his
characteristic thoughts. All that he says in the Epistles
to the Romans and the Galatians about the working of
the law, in its relation to the flesh, is represented in
"the letter killeth." The power of the law to create
the consciousness of sin and to intensify it; to stimulate
transgression, and so make sin exceeding sinful, and
shut men up in despair; to pass sentence upon the
guilty, the hopeless sentence of death,—all this is
involved in the words. The fulness of meaning is as
ample in "the spirit giveth life." The Spirit of Christ,
given to those who receive Christ in the Gospel, is an
infinite power and an infinite promise. It includes the
reversal of all that the letter has wrought. The sentence
of death is reversed; the impotence to good is
counteracted and overcome; the soul looks out to, and
anticipates, not the blackness of darkness for ever, but
the everlasting glory of Christ.The contrast of "letter" and "spirit" has, as is well known,
been taken in various ways. That which is given above undoubtedly
represents St. Paul's mind, and may be called the historical interpretation. An interpretation so common in early times that it might
fairly be called the patristic, would explain the words as meaning
that the literal sense of the Scriptures, especially of the Old Testament,
is fatally misleading, and that we must find what that literal sense
represents to the laws of allegory, if we would make it a word of
life (cf. in Rev. xi. 8, "the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom
and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified"). There is another
interpretation still, which may be called the literary or practical one.
According to this, the Apostle means that the spiritual life, whether
of intelligence or conscience, is strangled by literalism; we must
regard not words as such, but the spirit and purpose of their author,
if we are to have life and progress. This is perfectly true, but
perfectly irrelevant, and is a good example of the free-and-easy way
in which the Bible is quoted by those who do not study it.
When the Apostle has
written these two little sentences—when he has supplied
"letter" and "spirit" with the predicates "kill"
and "make alive," in the sense which they bear in the
Christian revelation—he has gone as far as the mind of
man can go in stating an effective contrast. But he
works it out with reference to some special points in
which the superiority of the new to the old is to be
observed.
(1) In the first place, the ministry of the old was a
ministry of death. Even as such it had a glory, or
splendour, of its own. The face of Moses, its great
minister, shone after he had been in the presence of
God; and though that brightness was passing away
even as men caught sight of it (τὴν καταργουμένην is
partic. impf.), it was so resplendent as to dazzle the
beholders. But the ministry of the new is a ministry
of spirit: and who would not argue a fortiori that it
should appear in glory greater still? Both the μᾶλλον
("rather"), and the future (ἔσται), in ver. 8, are logical.
Paul speaks, to use Bengel's expression, looking forward
as it were from the Old Testament into the New.
He does not say in what the glory of the new consists.
He does not say that it is veiled at present, and will
be manifested when Christ comes to transfigure His
own. Even the use of "hope" in ver. 12 does not
prove this. He leaves it quite indefinite; and arguing
from the nature of the two ministries, which has just
been explained, simply concludes that in glory the new
must far transcend the old.
(2) In vv. 9 and 10 he puts a new point upon
this. "Death" and "life" are here replaced by "condemnation"
and "righteousness." It is through condemnation
that man becomes the prey of death; and the
grace which reigns in him to eternal life reigns through
righteousness (Rom. v. 21). The contrast of these
two words is very significant for Paul's conception of
the Gospel: it shows how essential to his idea of
righteousness, how fundamental in it, is the thought
of acquittal or acceptance with God. Men are bad
men, sinful men, under God's condemnation; and he
cannot conceive a Gospel at all which does not
announce, at the very outset, the removal of that condemnation,
and a declaration in the sinner's favour.
Perhaps there are other ways of conceiving men, and
other aspects in which God can come to them as their
Saviour; but the Pauline Gospel has proved itself, and
will always prove itself anew, the Gospel for the sinful,
who know the misery of condemnation and despair.
Mere pardon, as it has been called, may be a meagre
conception, but it is that without which no other
Christian conception can exist for a moment. That
which lies at the bottom of the new covenant, and
supports all its magnificent promises and hopes, is this:
"I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember
their sins no more." If we could imagine this taken
away, what were left? Of course the righteousness
which the Gospel proclaims is more than pardon; it
is not exhausted when we say it is the opposite of
condemnation; but unless we feel that the very nerve
of it lies in the removal of condemnation, we shall never
understand the New Testament tone in speaking of it.
It is this which explains the joyous rebound of the
Apostle's spirit whenever he encounters the subject;
he remembers the black cloud, and now there is clear
shining; he was under sentence then, but now he is
justified by faith, and has peace with God. He cannot
exaggerate the contrast, nor the greater glory of the
new state. Granting that the ministry of condemnation
had its glory—that the revelation of law "had an
austere majesty of its own"—does not the ministry of
righteousness, the Gospel which annulled the condemnation
and restored man to peace with God, overflow
with glory? When he thinks of it, he is tempted to
withdraw the concession he has made. We may call
the old dispensation and its ministry glorious if we
like; they are glorious when they stand alone; but
when comparison is made with the new,Chrysostom explains ἑν τούτῳ τῷ μέρει by κατὰ τὸν τῆς συγκρίσεως
λόγον, and this is substantially right. But I think the words merely
anticipate ἑίνεκεν τῆς ὑπερβαλλούσης δόξης.
they are not
glorious at all. The stars are bright till the moon
rises; the moon herself reigns in heaven till her
splendour pales before the sun; but when the sun
shines in his strength, there is no other glory in the
sky. All the glories of the old covenant have vanished
for Paul in the light which shines from the Cross and
from the Throne of Christ.
(3) A final superiority belongs to the new dispensation
and its ministry as compared with the old—the
superiority of permanence to transiency. "If that
which passeth away was with glory, much more that
which remaineth is in glory." The verbs here are
supplied by the translators, but one may question
whether the contrast of past and present was so definite
in the Apostle's mind. I think not, and the reference
to Moses' face does not prove that it was. All through
these comparisons St. Paul expresses himself with the
utmost generality; logical and ideal, not temporal,
relations, dominate his thoughts. The law was given in
glory (ἐγενήθη ἐν δόξῃ, ver. 7)—there is no dispute about
that; but what the eleventh verse makes prominent
is that while glory is the attendant or accompaniment
of the transient, it is the element of the permanent.
The law is indeed of God; it has a function in the
economy of God; it is at the very lowest a negative
preparation for the Gospel; it shuts men up to the
acceptance of God's mercy. In this respect the glory
on Moses' face represents the real greatness which
belongs to the law as a power used by God in the
working out of His loving purpose. But at the best
the law only shuts men up to Christ, and then its work
is done. The true greatness of God is revealed, and
with it His true glory, once for all, in the Gospel.
There is nothing beyond the righteousness of God,
manifested in Christ Jesus, for the acceptance of faith.
That is God's last word to the world: it has absorbed
in it even the glory of the law; and it is bright for
ever with a glory above all other. It is God's chief
end to reveal this glory in the Gospel, and to make
men partakers of it; it has been so always, is so still,
and ever shall be; and in the consciousness that he
has seen and been saved by the eternal love of God,
and is now a minister of it, the Apostle claims this
finality of the new covenant as its crowning glory.
The law, like the lower gifts of the Christian life,
passes away; but the new covenant abides, for it is
the revelation of love—that love which is the being
and the glory of God Himself.
These qualities of the Christian dispensation, which
constitute its newness, are too readily lost sight of. It
is hard to appreciate and to live up to them, and hence
they are always lapsing out of view, and requiring to
be rediscovered. In the first age of Christianity there
were many myriads of Jews, the Book of Acts tells us,
who had very little sense of the newness of the Gospel;
they were exceedingly zealous for the law, even for
the letter of all its ritual prescriptions: Paul and his
spiritual conception of Christianity were their bugbear.
In the first half of the second century the religion even
of the Gentile Churches had already become more
legal than evangelical; there was wanting any sufficient
apprehension of the spirituality, the freedom, and the
newness of Christianity as opposed to Judaism; and
though the reaction of Marcion, who denied that there
was any connexion whatever between the Old Testament
and the New, went to a false and perverse
extreme, it was the natural, and in its motives the
legitimate, protest of spirit and life against letter and
law. The Reformation in the sixteenth century was
essentially a movement of similar character: it was the
rediscovery of the Pauline Gospel, or of the Gospel in
those characteristics of it which made Paul's heart leap
for joy—its justifying righteousness, its spirituality, its
liberty. In a Protestant scholasticism this glorious
Gospel has again been lost oftener than once; it is
lost when "a learned ministry" deals with the New
Testament writings as the scribes dealt with the Old;
it is lost also—for extremes meet—when an unlearned
piety swears by verbal, even by literal, inspiration, and
takes up to mere documents an attitude which in
principle is fatal to Christianity. It is in the life of
the Church—especially in that life which communicates
itself, and makes the Christian community what the
Jewish never was, essential a missionary community—that
the safeguard of all these high characteristics lies.
A Church devoted to learning, or to the maintenance
of a social or political position, or even merely to the
cultivation of a type of character among its own
members, may easily cease to be spiritual, and lapse
into legal religion: a Church actively engaged propagating
itself never can. It is not with the "letter"
one can hopefully address unbelieving men; it is only
with the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the heart;
and where the Spirit is, there is liberty. None are so
"sound" on the essentials of the faith as men with the
truly missionary spirit; but at the same time none are
so completely emancipated, and that by the self-same
Spirit, from all that is not itself spiritual.
X
THE TRANSFIGURING SPIRIT
"Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech,
and are not as Moses, who put a veil upon his face, that the children
of Israel should not look stedfastly on the end of that which was
passing away: but their minds were hardened: for until this very
day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remaineth unlifted;
which veil is done away in Christ. But unto this day, whensoever
Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart. But whensoever
it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is
the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But
we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the
Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even
as from the Lord the Spirit."—2 Cor. iii. 12-18 (R.V.).
The "hope" which here explains the Apostle's
freedom of speech is to all intents and purposes
the same as the "confidence" in ver. 4.In the LXX. ἑλπίζω is often used as the rendering of בָּטַה confidere.
It is much
easier to suppose that the word is thus used, with a
certain latitude, as it might be in English, than to force
upon it a reference to the glory to be revealed when
Christ comes again, and to give the same future reference
to "glory" all through this passage. The
new covenant is present, and present in its glory; and
though it has a future, with which the Apostle's hope
is bound up, it is not in view of its future only, it is
because of what it is even now, that he is so grandly
confident, and uses such boldness of speech. It is
quite fair to infer from chap. iv. 3—"if our Gospel is
veiled, it is veiled in those that are perishing"—that
Paul's opponents at Corinth had charged him with
behaviour of another kind. They had accused him
of making a mystery of his Gospel—preaching it in
such a fashion that no one could really see it, or
understand what he meant. If there is any charge
which the true preacher will feel keenly, and resent
vehemently, it is this. It is his first duty to deliver
his message with a plainness that defies misunderstanding.
He is sent to all men on an errand of life
or death; and to leave any man wondering, after the
message has been delivered, what it is about, is the
worst sort of treachery. It belies the Gospel, and
God who is its author. It may be due to pride, or
to a misguided intention to commend the Gospel to
the wisdom or the prejudices of men; but it is never
anything else than a fatal mistake.
Paul not only resents the charge; he feels it so
acutely that he finds an ingenious way of retorting it.
"We," he says, "the ministers of the new covenant, we
who preach life, righteousness, and everlasting glory,
have nothing to hide; we wish every one to know
everything about the dispensation which we serve. It
is the representatives of the old who are really open
to the charge of using concealment; the first and the
greatest of them all, Moses himself, put a veil on his
face, thatAttempts have been made to render πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι otherwise:
e.g., πρὸς has been taken as in Matt. xix. 8, which would
give the meaning, "considering that the children of Israel did not look on," etc. Moses would thus veil himself in view of the fact that
they did not see: the veil would be the symbol of the judicial blindness
which was henceforth to fall on them.
the children of Israel should not look stedfastly
on the end of that which was passing away.
The glory on his face was a fading glory, because it
was the glory of a temporary dispensation; but he
did not wish the Israelites to see clearly that it was
destined to disappear; so he veiled his face, and left
them to think the law a permanent divine institution."
Perhaps the best thing to do with this singular
interpretation is not to take it too seriously. Even
sober expositors like Chrysostom and Calvin have
thought it necessary to argue gravely that the Apostle
is not accusing the law, or saying anything insulting of
Moses; while Schmiedel, on the other hand, insists
that a grave moral charge is made against Moses, and
that Paul most unjustly uses the Old Testament, in
its own despite, to prove its own transitoriness. I
believe it would be far truer to say that the character
of Moses never crossed Paul's mind in the whole
passage, for better or worse; he only remembered, as
he smarted under the accusation of veiling his Gospel
of the new covenant, a certain transaction under the
old covenant in which a veil did figure—a transaction
which a Rabbinical interpretation, whimsical indeed to
us, but provoking if not convincing to his adversaries,
enabled him to turn against them. As for proving
the transitoriness of the Old Testament by a forced and
illegitimate argument, that transitoriness was abundantly
established to Paul, as it is to us, on real grounds;
nothing whatever depends on what is here said of
Moses and the veil. It is not necessary, if we take
this view, to go into the historical interpretation of the
passage in Exod. xxxiv. 29-35. The comparison of the
Apostle with the Old Testament writer has been made
more difficult for the English reader by the serious
error in the Authorised Version of Exod. xxxiv. 33.
Instead of "till Moses had done speaking with them,"
we ought to read, as in the Revised Version, "when
Moses had done speaking." This exactly reverses the
meaning. Moses spoke to the people with face bare
and radiant; the glory was to be visible at least in his
official intercourse with them, or whenever he spoke for
God. At other times he wore the veil, putting it off,
however, when he went into the tabernacle—that is,
whenever he spoke with God. In all divine relations,
then, we should naturally infer, there was to be the open
and shining face; in other words, so far as he acted as
mediator of the old covenant, Moses really acted in the
spirit of Paul. It would therefore have been unjust in
the Apostle to charge him with hiding anything, if the
charge had really meant more than this—that Paul saw
in his use of the veil a symbol of the fact that the
children of Israel did not see that the old covenant
was transitory, and that its glory was to be lost in that
of the new. No one can deny that this was the fact,
and no one therefore need be exercised if Paul pictured
it in the manner of his own time and race, and not in
the manner of ours. To suppose that he means to
charge Moses with a deliberate act of dishonesty is to
suppose what no sensible person will ever credit; and
we may return, without more ado, to the painful
situation which he contemplates.
Their minds were hardened. This is stated historically,
and seems to refer in the first instance to those
who watched Moses put on the veil, and became
insensible, as he did so, to the nature of the old
covenant. But it is applicable to the Jewish race
at all periods of their history; they never discovered
the secret which Moses hid from their forefathers
beneath the veil. The only result that followed the
labours even of great prophets like Isaiah had been
the deepening of the darkness; having eyes the people
saw not, having ears they heard not; their heart was
fat and heavy, so that they did not apprehend the ways
of God nor turn to Him. All around him the Apostle
saw the melancholy evidence that there had been no
change for the better. Until this day the same veil
remains, when the Old Testament is read,I cannot suppose that ἐπὶ τῇ ἀναγνώσει τῆς π. διαθήκης means
anything different from ἡνίκα ἄν ἀναγινώσκηται Μωϋσῆς. It conveys
no sense, that I can see, to sau that there are two veils, one upon the
reading, and another upon the e(art. Uet many take it so.
not taken
away; for it is only undone in Christ, and of Christ
they will know nothing. He repeats the sad statement,
varying it slightly to indicate that the responsibility
for a condition so blind and dreary rests not with the
old covenant itself, but with those who live under it.
"Until this day, I say, whensoever Moses is read, a
veil lies upon their heart."
This witness, we must acknowledge, is almost as
true in the nineteenth century as in the first. The
Jews still exist as a race and a sect, acknowledging
the Old Testament as a revelation from God, basing
their religion upon it, keeping their ancient law so far
as circumstances enable them to keep it, not convinced
that as a religious constitution it has been superseded
by a new one. Many of them, indeed, have abandoned
it without becoming Christians. But in so doing they
have become secularists; they have not appreciated the
old covenant to the full, and then outgrown it; they
have been led for various reasons to deny that there
ever was anything divine in it, and have renounced
together its discipline and its hopes. Only where the
knowledge of the Christ has been received is the veil
which lies upon their hearts taken away; they can
then appreciate both all the virtues of the ancient
dispensation and all its defects; they can glorify God
for what it was and for what it shut them up to; they
can see that in all its parts it had a reference to
something lying beyond itself—to a "new thing" that
God would do for His people; and in welcoming the
new covenant, and its Mediator Jesus Christ, they
can feel that they are not making void, but establishing,
the law.
This is their hope, and to this the Apostle looks in
ver. 16: "But whensoever it shall turn to the Lord,
the veil is taken away." The Greek expression of this
passage is so closely modelled on that of Exod. xxxiv. 34,
that Westcott and Hort print it as a quotation. Moses
evidently is still in the Apostle's mind. The veiling
of his face symbolised the nation's blindness; the
nation's hope is to be seen in that action in which
Moses was unveiled. He uncovered his face when he
turned from the people to speak to God. "Even so,"
says the Apostle, "when they turn to the Lord, the veil
of which we have been speaking is taken away,The present, where we might expect the future, conveys the
certainty and decisiveness of the result.
and
they see clearly."The subject of the verb ἐπιστρέψῃ ("turn") is not in point of
grammar very clear. It may be Israel, or the heart on which a veil
lies, or any one, taken indefinitely. Practically, the application is
limited to those who live under the old covenant, and yet have its
nature hidden from them. Hence it is fair to render, as I have done,
"when they turn to the Lord."
One can hardly avoid feeling in
this a reminiscence of the Apostle's own conversion.
He is thinking not only of the unveiling of Moses, but
of the scales which fell from his own eyes when he
was baptised in the name of Jesus, and was filled with
the Holy Ghost, and saw the old covenant and its
glory lost and fulfilled in the new. He knew how
stupendous was the change involved here; it meant
a revolution in the whole constitution of the Jews'
spiritual world as vast as that which was wrought
in the natural world when the sun supplanted the
earth as the centre of our system. But the gain
was corresponding. The soul was delivered from an
impasse. Under the old covenant, as bitter experience
had shown him, the religious life had come to
a dead-lock; the conscience was confronted with a
torturing, and in its very nature insoluble, problem:
man, burdened and enslaved by sin, was required to
attain to a righteousness which should please God.
The contradictions of this position were solved, its
mystery was abolished, when the soul turned to the
Lord, and appropriated by faith the righteousness and
life of God in him. The old covenant found its place,
an intelligible and worthy though subordinate place,
in the grand programme of redemption; the strife
between the soul and God, between the soul and the
conditions of existence, ceased; life opened out again;
there was a large room to move in, an inspiring power
within; in one word, there was spiritual life and
liberty, and Christ was the author of it all.
This is the force of the seventeenth verse: "Now the
Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty." The Lord, of course, is Christ, and
the Spirit is that of which Paul has already spoken in
the sixth verse. It is the Holy Spirit, the Lord and
Giver of life under the new covenant. He who turns
to Christ receives this Spirit; it is through it that
Christ dwells in His people; what are called "fruits
of the Spirit" are traits of Christ's own character which
the Spirit produces in the saints; practically, therefore,
the two may be identified, and hence the expression
"the Lord is the Spirit," though startling at first sight,
is not improper, and ought not to mislead.The peculiarity of the passage has given occasion to conjectures,
of which by far the most ingenious is Baljon's: Οὗ δὲ ὁ Κύριος, τὸ
Πνεῦμά ἐστιν, οὗ δὲ τὸ Πνεῦμα Κυρίου, ἐλευθερία: "Where the Lord is,
the Spirit is; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
It is a
mistake to connect it with such passages as Rom. i. 4,
and to draw inferences from it as to Paul's conception
of the person of Christ. He does not say "the Lord
is spirit," but "the Lord is the Spirit"; what is in view
is not the person of Christ so much as His power.
To identify the Lord and the Spirit without qualification,
in the face of the benediction in chap. xiii. 14,
is out of the question. The truth of the passage is the
same as that of Rom. viii. 9 ff.: "If any man have not
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ
is in you," etc. Here, so far as the practical experience
of Christians goes, no distinction is made between the
Spirit of Christ and Christ Himself; Christ dwells in
Christians through His Spirit. The very same truth,
as is well known, pervades the chapters in the Fourth
Gospel in which Christ consoles His disciples for His
departure from this world; He will not leave them
orphans—He will come to them, and remain with them
in the other Comforter. To turn to Christ, the Apostle
wishes to assert with the utmost emphasis, is not to
do a thing which has no virtue and no consequences;
it is to turn to one who has received of the Father the
gift of the Holy Ghost, and who immediately sets up
the new spiritual life, which is nothing less than His
own life, by that Spirit, in the believing soul. And
summing up in one word the grand characteristic and
distinction of the new covenant, as realised by this
indwelling of Christ through His Spirit, he concludes:
"And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
In the interpretation of the last word, we must have
respect to the context; liberty has its meaning in
contrast with that state to which the old covenant
had reduced those who adhered to it. It means freedom
from the law; freedom, fundamentally, from its condemnation,
thanks to the gift of righteousness in
Christ; freedom, also, from its letter, as something
simply without us and over against us. No written
word, as such, can ever be pleaded against the voice
of the Spirit within. Even the words we call in an
eminent sense "inspired," words of the Spirit, are
subject to this law: they do not put a limit to the
liberty of the spiritual man. He can overrule the
letter of them when the literal interpretation or application
would contravene the spirit which is common both
to them and him. This principle is capable of being
abused, no doubt, and by bad men and fanatics has
been abused; but its worst abuses can hardly have
done more harm than the pedantic word-worship which
has often lost the soul even of the New Testament,
and read the words of the Lord and His Apostles with
a veil upon its face through which nothing could be
seen. There is such a thing as an unspiritual scrupulosity
in dealing with the New Testament, now that
we have it in documentary form, just as there used to
be in dealing with the Old; and we ought to remind
ourselves continually that the documentary form is an
accident, not an essential, of the new covenant. That
covenant existed, and men lived under it and enjoyed
its blessings, before it had any written documents at
all; and we shall not appreciate its characteristics, and
especially this one of its spiritual freedom, unless
we put ourselves occasionally, in imagination, in their
place. It is far easier to make Paul mean too little
than too much; and the liberty of the Spirit in which
he exults here covers, we may be sure, not only liberty
from condemnation, and liberty from the unspiritual
yoke of the ritual law, but liberty from all that is in
its nature statutory, liberty to organise the new life,
and to legislate for it, from within.
The bearing of this passage on the religious blindness
of the Jews ought not to hide from us its permanent
application. The religious insensibility of his
countrymen will cease, Paul says; their religious
perplexities will be solved, when they turn to Christ.
This is the beginning of all intelligence, of all freedom,
of all hope, in things spiritual. Much of the religious
doubt and confusion of our own times is due to the preoccupation
of men's minds with religion at points from
which Christ is invisible. But it is He who is the
key to all human experiences as well as to the Old
Testament; it is He who answers the questions of the
world as well as the questions of the Jews; it is He
who takes our feet out of the net, opens the gate of
righteousness before us, and gives us spiritual freedom.
It is like finding a pearl of great price when the soul
discovers this, and to point it out to others is to do
them a priceless service. Disregard everything else in
the meantime, if you are bewildered, baffled, in bonds
which you cannot break; turn to Jesus Christ, as
Moses turned to God, with face uncovered; put down
prejudice, preconceptions, pride, the disposition to make
demands; only look stedfastly till you see what He
is, and all that perplexes you will pass away, or appear
in a new light, and serve a new and spiritual purpose.
Something like this larger application of his words
passed, we may suppose, before the Apostle's mind
when he wrote the eighteenth verse. In the grandeur
of the truth which rises upon him he forgets his controversy
and becomes a poet. We breathe the ampler
ether, the diviner air, as we read: "But we all, with
unveiled face beholding as in a glass the glory of the
Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory
to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit." I have kept
here for κατοπτριζόμενοι the rendering of the Authorised
Version, which in the Revised has been relegated to
the margin, and replaced by "reflecting as a mirror."
There do not seem to be sufficient grounds for the
change, and the old translation is defended in Grimm's
Lexicon, in Winer's Grammar, and by Meyer, Heinrici,
and Beet. The active voice of the verb κατοπτρίζω
means "to exhibit in a mirror"; and the middle, "to
mirror oneself"—i.e., "to look at oneself in a mirror."
This, at least, is the sense of most of the examples of
the middle which are found in Greek writers; but as
it is quite inapplicable here, the question of interpretation
becomes rather difficult. It is, however, in accordance
with analogy to say that if the active means "to
show in a mirror," the middle means "to get shown to
one in a mirror," or, as the Authorised Version puts it,
"to behold in a mirror." I cannot make out that any
analogy favours the new rendering, "reflecting as a
mirror"; and the authority of Chrysostom, which
would otherwise be considerable on this side, is lessened
by the fact that he seems never to have raised
the question, and in point of fact combines both renderings.Hom. vii. on 2 Cor., p. 486, E.: Οὐ μόνον ὁρῶμεν εἰς τὴν δόξαν τοῦ
Θεοῦ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐκεῖθεν δεχόμεθά τινα αἴγλην.
His illustration of the polished silver lying in
the sunshine, and sending back the rays which strike
it, is in favour of the change; but when he writes,
"We not only look upon the glory of God, but also
catch thence a kind of radiance," he may fairly be
claimed for the other side. There are two reasons also
which seem to me to have great weight in favour of
the old rendering: first, the expression "with unveiled
face," which, as Meyer remarks, is naturally of a piece
with "beholding"; and, second, an unequivocal example
of the middle voice of κατοπτρίζομαι in the sense of
"seeing," while no unequivocal example can be produced
for "reflecting." This example is found in
Philo i. 107 (Leg. Alleg., iii. 33), where Moses prays
to God: "Show not Thyself to me through heaven or
earth, or water or air, or anything at all that comes
into being; nor let me see Thy form mirrored in any
other thing than in Thee, even in God" (Μηδὲ κατοπτρισαίμην
ἐν ἄλλῳ τινὶ τὴν σὴν ἰδέαν ἢ ἐν σοὶ τῷ Θεῷ).
This seems to me decisive, and there is the less reason
to reject it on other than linguistic grounds, when we
consider that the idea of "reflecting," if it is given up
in κατοπτριζόμενοι, is conserved in μεταμορφούμεθα.
The transformation has the reflection of Christ's glory
for its effect, not for its cause; but the reflection,
eventually, is there.
Assuming, then, that "beholding as in a glass" is
the right interpretation of this hard word, let us go on
to what the Apostle says. "We all" probably means
"all Christians," and not only "all Christian teachers."
If there is a comparison implied, it is between the two
dispensations, and the experiences open to those who
lived under them, not between the mediator of the old
and the heralds of the new. Under the old covenant
one only saw the glory; now the beatific vision is open
to all. We all behold it "with unveiled face." There
is nothing on Christ's part that leads to disguise, and
nothing on ours that comes between us and Him.
The darkness is past, the true light already shines, and
Christian souls cannot look on it too fixedly, or drink
it in to excess. But what is meant by "the glory of
the Lord" on which we gaze with face unveiled?
It will not be questioned, by those who are at home
in St. Paul's thoughts, that "the Lord" means the
exalted Saviour, and that the glory must be something
which belongs to Him. Indeed, if we remember that
in the First Epistle, chap. ii. 8, He is characteristically
described by the Apostle as "the Lord of glory," we
shall not feel it too much to say that the glory is everything
which belongs to Him. There is not any aspect
of the exalted Christ, there is not any representation of
Him in the Gospel, there is not any function which He
exercises, that does not come under this head. "In
His temple everything saith Glory!" There is a glory
even in the mode of His existence: St. Paul's conception
of Him is dominated always by that appearance
on the way to Damascus, when he saw the Christ
through a light above the brightness of the sun. It
is His glory that He shares the Father's throne,So Meyer, from whom the particulars in this sentence are taken.
that
He is head of the Church, possessor and bestower of
all the fulness of divine grace, the coming Judge of
the world, conqueror of every hostile power, intercessor
for His own, and, in short, bearer of all the
majesty which belongs to His kingly office. The essential
thing in all this—essential to the understanding of
the Apostle, and to the existence of the apostolic "Gospel
of the glory of Christ" (chap. iv. 4)—is that the glory in
question is the glory of a Living Person. When Paul
thinks of it, he does not look back, he looks up; he
does not remember, he beholds in a glass; the glory
of the Lord has no meaning for him apart from the
present exaltation of the Risen Christ. "The Lord
reigneth; He is apparelled with majesty"—that is the
anthem of His praise.
I have insisted on this, because, in a certain reaction
from what was perhaps an exaggerated Paulinism, there
is a tendency to misapply even the most characteristic
and vital passages in St. Paul's Gospel, and pre-eminently
to misapply passages like this. Nothing
could be more misleading than to substitute here for
the glory of the exalted Christ as mirrored in the
apostolic Gospel that moral beauty which was seen in
Jesus of Nazareth. Of course I do not mean to deny
that the moral loveliness of Jesus is glorious; nor do
I question that in the contemplation of it in the pages
of our Gospels—subject to one grand condition—a transforming
power is exercised through it; but I do deny
that any such thing was in the mind of St. Paul. The
subject of the Apostle's Gospel was not Jesus the carpenter
of Nazareth, but Christ the Lord of glory; men,
as he understood the matter, were saved, not by dwelling
on the wonderful words and deeds of One who
had lived some time ago, and reviving these in their
imagination, but by receiving the almighty, emancipating,
quickening Spirit of One who lived and reigned
for evermore. The transformation here spoken of is
not the work of a powerful imagination, which can make
the figure in the pages of the Gospels live again, and
suffuse the soul with feeling as it gazes upon it; preach
this as gospel who will, it was never preached by an
apostle of Jesus Christ. It is the work of the Spirit,
and the Spirit is given, not to the memory or imagination
which can vivify the past, but to the faith which
sees Christ upon His throne. And it is subject to the
condition of faith in the living Christ that contemplation
of Jesus in the Gospels changes us into the same image.
There can be no doubt that at the present time many
are falling back upon this contemplation in a despairing
rather than a believing mood; what they seek and find
in it is rather a poetic consolation than religious inspiration;
their faith in the living Christ is gone, or is so
uncertain as to be practically of no saving power, and
they have recourse to the memory of what Jesus was
as at least something to cling to. "We thought that
it had been He which should have delivered Israel."
But surely it is as clear as day that in religion—in the
matter of redemption—we must deal, not with the dead,
but with the living. Paul may have known less or
more of the contents of our first three Gospels; he may
have valued them more or less adequately; but just
because he had been saved by Christ, and was preaching
Christ as a Saviour, the centre of his thoughts and
affections was not Galilee, but "the heavenlies." There
the Lord of glory reigned; and from that world He
sent the Spirit which changed His people into His
image. And so it must always be, if Christianity is to
be a living religion. Leave out this, and not only is
the Pauline Gospel lost, but everything is lost which
could be called Gospel in the New Testament.
The Lord of glory, Paul teaches here, is the pattern
and prophecy of a glory to be revealed in us; and as
we contemplate Him in the mirror of the Gospel,The idea of the mirror is not to be omitted, as of no consequence.
It is essential to the figure: "we see not yet face to face."
we
are gradually transformed into the same image, even as
by the Lord the Spirit. The transformation, these last
words again teach, is not accomplished by beholding,
but while we behold; it does not depend on the
vividness with which we can imagine the past, but
on the present power of Christ working in us. The
result is such as befits the operation of such a power.
We are changed into the image of Him from whom
it proceeds. We are made like Himself. It may seem
far more natural to say that the believer is made like
Jesus of Nazareth, than that he is made like the Lord
of glory; but that does not entitle us to shift the centre
of gravity in the Apostle's teaching, and it only tempts
us to ignore one of the most prominent and enviable
characteristics of the New Testament religious life.
Christ is on His throne, and His people are exalted and
victorious in Him. When we forget Christ's exaltation
in our study of His earthly life—when we are so preoccupied,
it may even be so fascinated, with what He
was, that we forget what He is—when, in other words,
a pious historical imagination takes the place of a
living religious faith—that victorious consciousness is lost,
and in a most essential point the image of the Lord
is not reproduced in the believer. This is why the
Pauline point of view—if indeed it is to be called
Pauline, and not simply Christian—is essential. Christianity
is a religion, not merely a history, though it
should be the history told by Matthew, Mark, and
Luke; and the chance of having the history itself
appreciated for religion is that He who is its subject
shall be contemplated, not in the dim distance of the
past, but in the glory of His heavenly reign, and that
He shall be recognised, not merely as one who lived
a perfect life in His own generation, but as the Giver
of life eternal by His Spirit to all who turn to Him.
The Church will always be justified, while recognising
that Christianity is a historical religion, in giving
prominence, not to its historicity, but to what makes
it a religion at all—namely, the present exaltation of
Christ. This involves everything, and determines, as
St. Paul tells us here, the very form and spirit of her
own life.
THE GOSPEL DEFINED
"Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained
mercy, we faint not: but we have renounced the hidden things of
shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God
deceitfully; but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves
to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But and if our
Gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing: in whom the
god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the
light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,
should not dawn upon them. For we preach not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.
Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ."—2 Cor. iv. 1-6 (R.V.).
In this paragraph Paul resumes for the last time
the line of thought on which he had set out at
chap. iii. 4, and again at chap. iii. 12. Twice he has
allowed himself to be carried away into digressions, not
less interesting than his argument; but now he proceeds
without further interruption. His subject is the
New Testament ministry, and his own conduct as a
minister.
"Seeing we have this ministry," he writes, "even as
we obtained mercy, we faint not." The whole tone of
the passage is to be triumphant; above the common joy
of the New Testament it rises, at the close (ver. 16 ff.),
into a kind of solemn rapture; and it is characteristic
of the Apostle that before he abandons himself to the
swelling tide of exultation, he guards it all with the
words, "even as we obtained mercy." There was
nothing so deep down in Paul's soul, nothing so constantly
present to his thoughts, as this great experience.
No flood of emotion, no pressure of trial, no necessity
of conflict, ever drove him from his moorings here.
The mercy of God underlay his whole being; it kept
him humble even when he boasted; even when engaged
in defending his character against false accusations—a
peculiarly trying situation—it kept him truly Christian
in spirit.
The words may be connected equally well, so far as
either meaning or grammar is concerned, with what
precedes, or with what follows. It was a signal proof
of God's mercy that He had entrusted Paul with the
ministry of the Gospel; and it was only what we should
expect, when one who had obtained such mercy turned
out a good soldier of Jesus Christ, able to endure hardship
and not faint. Those to whom little is forgiven,
Jesus Himself tells us, love little; it is not in them for
Jesus' sake to bear all things, believe all things, hope
all things, endure all things. They faint easily, and
are overborne by petty trials, because they have not
in them that fountain of brave patience—a deep abiding
sense of what they owe to Christ, and can never, by
any length or ardour of service, repay. It accuses us,
not so much of human weakness, as of ingratitude, and
insensibility to the mercy of God, when we faint in the
exercise of our ministry.
"We faint not," says Paul: "we show no weakness.
On the contrary, we have renounced the hidden things
of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the
Word of God deceitfully." The contrast marked by
ἀλλὰ is very instructive: it shows, in the things which
Paul had renounced, whither weakness leads. It betrays
men. It compels them to have recourse to arts which
shame bids them conceal; they become diplomatists
and strategists, rather than heralds; they manipulate
their message; they adapt it to the spirit of the time,
or the prejudices of their auditors; they make liberal
use of the principle of accommodation. When these
arts are looked at closely, they come to this: the
minister has contrived to put something of his own
between his hearers and the Gospel; the message has
really not been declared. His intention, of course,
with all this artifice, is to recommend himself to men;
but the method is radically vicious. The Apostle
shows us a more excellent way. "We have renounced,"
he says, "all these weak ingenuities; and by manifestation
of the truth commend ourselves to every man's
conscience in the sight of God."Expositors seem to be agreed that in this passage there is a
reference, more or less definite and particular, to the Judaising
opponents of St. Paul at Corinth. This may be admitted, but is not
to be forced. It is forced, e.g., by Schmiedel, who habitually reads
St. Paul as if (1) he had been expressly accused of everything which
he says he does not do, and (2) as if he deliberately retorted on his
opponents every charge he denied. Press this as he does, and whole
passages of the Epistles become a series of covert insinuations—a
kind of calumnious conundrums—instead of frank and bona fide statements
of Christian principle. The result condemns the process.
This is probably the simplest and most complete
directory for the preaching of the Gospel. The
preacher is to make the truth manifest. It is implied
in what has just been said, that one great hindrance
to its manifestation may easily be its treatment by the
preacher himself. If he wishes to do anything else at
the same time, the manifestation will not take effect.
If he wishes, in the very act of preaching, to conciliate
a class, or an interest; to create an opinion in favour
of his own learning, ability, or eloquence; to enlist
sympathy for a cause or an institution which is only
accidentally connected with the Gospel,—the truth will
not be seen, and it will not tell. The truth, we are
further taught here, makes its appeal to the conscience;
it is there that God's witness in its favour resides.
Now, the conscience is the moral nature of man, or
the moral element in his nature; it is this, therefore,
which the preacher has to address. Does not this
involve a certain directness and simplicity of method,
a certain plainness and urgency also, which it is far
easier to miss than to find? Conscience is not the
abstract logical faculty in man, and the preacher's
business is therefore not to prove, but to proclaim,
the Gospel. All he has to do is to let it be seen, and
the more nakedly visible it is the better. His object
is not to frame an irrefragable argument, but to produce
an irresistible impression. There is no such
thing as an argument to which it is impossible for a
wilful man to make objections; at least there is no
such thing in the sphere of Christian truth. Even if
there were, men would object to it on that very ground.
They would say that, in matters of this description,
when logic went too far, it amounted to moral intimidation,
and that in the interests of liberty they were
entitled to protest against it. Practically, this is what
Voltaire said of Pascal."Il voulut se servir de la supériorité de ce génie, comme les rois de
leur puissance; il crut tout soumettre, et tout abaisser par la force."
But there is such a thing as
an irresistible impression,—an impression made upon
the moral nature against which it is vain to attempt
any protest; an impression, which subdues and holds
the soul for ever. When the truth is manifested, and
men see it, this is the effect to be looked for; this,
consequently, is the preacher's aim. In the sight of
God—that is, acting with absolute sincerity—Paul
trusted to this simple method to recommend himself
to men. He brought no letters of introduction from
others; he had no artifices of his own; he held up the
truth in its unadorned integrity till it told upon the
conscience of his hearers; and after that, he needed
no other witness. The same conversions which
accredited the power of the message accredited the
character of him who bore it.
To this line of argument there is a very obvious
reply. What, it may be asked, of those on whom "the
manifestation of the truth" produces no effect? What
of those who in spite of all this plain appeal to conscience
neither see nor feel anything? It is sadly
obvious that this is no mere supposition; the Gospel
remains a secret, an impotent ineffective secret, to
many who hear it again and again. Paul faces the
difficulty without flinching, though the answer is
appalling. "If our Gospel is veiled (and the melancholy
fact cannot be denied), it is veiled in the case
of the perishing." The fact that it remains hidden
from some men is their condemnation; it marks them
out as persons on the way to destruction. The Apostle
proceeds to explain himself further. As far as the
rationale can be given of what is finally irrational, he
interprets the moral situation for us. The perishing
people in question are unbelievers, whose thoughts,
or minds, the god of this world has blinded.Grammarians differ much as to the relation of τῶν ἀπίστων
("which believe not") to ἐν οἶς ("in whom"). I have no doubt they are
the same. The natural way for the Apostle to express himself would
have been: "it is veiled in them that are perishing, whose minds the god of this world blinded." But he wished to include the moral
aspect of the case, the side of the personal responsibility of the
perishing, as of equal significance with the agency of Satan; and
this is what he does by adding τῶν ἀπίστων. Hence, though the
expression is capable of being grammatically tortured into something
different (the perishing becoming only a part of the unbelieving—so
Meyer), it is, by its sheer grammatical awkwardness, exempted
from liability to such rigorous treatment, and brought under the rules,
not of grammar, but of common sense.
The
intention of this blinding is conveyed in the last words
of ver. 4: "that the illumination which proceeds from
the Gospel, the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is
the image of God, may not dawn upon them."
Let these solemn words appeal to our hearts and
consciences, before we attempt to criticise them. Let us
have a due impression of the stupendous facts to which
they refer, before we raise difficulties about them, or
say rashly that the expression is disproportioned to
the truth. To St. Paul the Gospel was a very great
thing. A light issued from it so dazzling, so overwhelming,
in its splendour and illuminative power, that
it might well appear incredible that men should not
see it. The powers counteracting it, "the world-rulers
of this darkness," must surely, to judge by their success,
have an immense influence. Even more than an
immense influence, they must have an immense malignity.
For what a blessedness it meant for men, that
that light should dawn upon them! What a deprivation
and loss, that its brightness should be obscured!
Paul's whole sense of the might and malignity of the
powers of darkness is condensed in the title which he
here gives to their head—"the god of this world." It is
literally "of this age," the period of time which extends
to Christ's coming again. The dominion of evil is not
unlimited, in duration; but while it lasts it is awful
in its intensity and range. It does not seem an
extravagance to the Apostle to describe Satan as the
god of the present æon; and if it seems extravagant
to us, we may remind ourselves that our Saviour also
twice speaks of him as "the prince of this world." Who
but Christ Himself, or a soul like St. Paul in complete
sympathy with the mind and work of Christ, is capable
of seeing and feeling the incalculable mass of the
forces which are at work in the world to defeat the
Gospel? What sleepy conscience, what moral mediocrity,
itself purblind, only dimly conscious of the height
of the Christian calling, and vexed by no aspirations
toward it, has any right to say that it is too much
to call Satan "the god of this world"? Such sleepy
consciences have no idea of the omnipresence, the
steady persistent pressure, the sleepless malignity, of
the evil forces which beset man's life. They have no
idea of the extent to which these forces frustrate the
love of God in the Gospel, and rob men of their
inheritance in Christ. To ask why men should be
exposed to such forces is another, and here an irrelevant,
question. What St. Paul saw, and what becomes
apparent to every one in proportion as his interest in
evangelising becomes intense, is that evil has a power
and dominion in the world, which are betrayed, by their
counteracting of the Gospel, to be purely malignant—in
other words, Satanic—and the dimensions of which
no description can exaggerate. Call such powers Satan,
or what you please, but do not imagine that they are
inconsiderable. During this age they reign; they
have virtually taken what should be God's place in the
world.
It is the necessary complement of this assertion of
the malign dominion of evil, when St. Paul tells us that
it is exercised in the case of unbelievers. It is their
minds which the god of this world has blinded. We
need not try to investigate more narrowly the relations
of these two aspects of the facts. We need not say
that the dominion of evil produces unbelief, though
this is true (John iii. 18, 19); or that unbelief gives
Satan his opportunity; or even that unbelief and the
blindness here referred to are reciprocally cause and
effect of each other. The moral interests involved
are protected by the fact that blindness is only predicated
in the case in which the Gospel has been rejected
by individual unbelief; and the mere individualism,
which is the source of so many heresies, doctrinal and
practical, is excluded by the recognition of spiritual
forces as operative among men which are far more
wide-reaching than any individual knows. Nor ought
we to overlook the suggestion of pity, and even of hope,
for the perishing, in the contrast between their darkness
and the illumination which the Gospel of the
glory of Christ lights up. The perishing are not the
lost; the unbelievers may yet believe: "in our deepest
darkness, we know the direction of the light" (Beet).
Final unbelief would mean final ruin; but we are
not entitled to make sense the measure of spiritual
things, and to argue that because we see men blind
and unbelieving now they are bound for ever to remain
so. In preaching the Gospel we must preach with
hope that the light is stronger than the darkness, and
able, even at the deepest, to drive it away. Only,
when we see, as we sometimes will, how dense and
impenetrable the darkness is, we cannot but cry with
the Apostle, "Who is sufficient for these things?"
This passage is one of those in which the subject
of the Gospel is distinctly enunciated: it is the Gospel
of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. The
glory of Christ, or, which is the same thing, Christ
in His glory, is the sum and substance of it, that which
gives it both its contents and its character. Paul's
conception of the Gospel is inspired and controlled
from beginning to end by the appearance of the Lord
which resulted in his conversion. In the First Epistle
to the Corinthians (i. 18, 23), and in the Epistle to the
Galatians (vi. 14), he seems to find what is essential
and distinguishing in the Cross rather than the Throne;
but this is probably due to the fact that the significance
of the Cross had been virtually denied by those for
whom His words are meant. The Christ whom he
preached had died, and died, as the next chapter will
make very prominent, to reconcile the world to God;
but Paul preached Him as he had seen Him on that
ever-memorable day; with all the virtue of His atoning
death in it, the Gospel was yet the Gospel of His glory.
It is in the combination of these two that the supreme
power of the Gospel lies. In the distaste for the supernatural
which has prevailed so widely, many have
tried to ignore this, and to get out of the Cross alone
an inspiration which it cannot yield if severed from
the Throne. Had the story of Jesus ended with the
words "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
dead, and buried," it is very certain that these words
would never have formed part of a Creed—there would
never have been such a thing as the Christian religion.
But when these words are combined with what follows—"He
rose again from the dead on the third day, He
ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of
God the Father"—we have the basis which religion
requires; we have a living Lord, in whom all the
redemptive virtue of a sinless life and death is treasured
up, and who is able to save to the uttermost all that
trust Him. It is not the emotions excited by the
spectacle of the Passion, any more than the admiration
evoked by the contemplation of Christ's life, that save;
it is the Lord of glory, who lived that life of love, and
in love endured that agony, and who is now enthroned
at God's right hand. The life and death in one sense
form part of His glory, in another they are a foil to it;
He could not have been our Saviour but for them;
He would not be our Saviour unless He had triumphed
over them, and entered into a glory beyond.
When the Apostle speaks of Christ as the image
of God, we must not let extraneous associations with
this title deflect us from the true line of his thought.
It is still the Exalted One of whom he is speaking:
there is no other Christ for him. In that face which
flashed upon him by Damascus twenty years before, he
had seen, and always saw, all that man could see of
the invisible God. It represented for him, and for all
to whom he preached, the Sovereignty and the Redeeming
Love of God, as completely as man could understand
them. It evoked those ascriptions of praise which a
Jew was accustomed to offer to God alone. It inspired
doxologies. When it passed before the inward eye of
the Apostle, he worshipped: "to Him," he said, "be
the glory and the dominion for ever and ever."
Whether the pre-incarnate Son was also the image of
God, and whether the same title is applicable to Jesus
of Nazareth, are separate questions. If they are raised,
they must be answered in the affirmative, with the
necessary qualifications; but they are quite irrelevant
here. Much misunderstanding of the Pauline Gospel
would have been prevented if men could have remembered
that what was only of secondary importance to
them, and even of doubtful certainty—namely, the
exaltation of Christ—was itself the foundation of the
Apostle's Christianity, the one indubitable fact from
which his whole knowledge of Christ, and his whole
conception of the Gospel, set forth. Christ on the
throne was, if one may say so, a more immediate
certainty to Paul, than Jesus on the banks of the lake,
or even Jesus on the cross. It may not be natural or
easy for us to start thus; but if we do not make the
effort, we shall involuntarily dislocate and distort the
whole system of his thoughts.
In the fourth verse the stress is logically, if not
grammatically, on Christ. "The Gospel of the glory
of Christ," I say. "For we preach not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants
for Jesus' sake." Perhaps ambition had been laid to
Paul's charge; "the necessity of being first" is one of
the last infirmities of noble minds. But the Gospel is
too magnificent to have any room for thoughts of
self. A proud man may make a nation, or even a
Church, the instrument or the arena of his pride; he
may find in it the field of his ambition, and make it
subservient to his own exaltation. But the defence
which Paul has offered of his truthfulness in chap. i.
is as capable of application here. No one whom Christ
has seized, subdued, and made wholly His own for ever,
can practise the arts of self-advancement in Christ's
service. The two are mutually exclusive. Paul
preaches Christ Jesus as Lord—the absolute character
in which he knows Him; as for himself, he is every
man's servant for Jesus' sake. He obtained mercy,
that he might be found faithful in service: the very
name of Jesus kills pride in his heart, and makes him
ready to minister even to the unthankful and evil.
This is the force of the "for" with which the sixth
verse begins. It is as if he had written, "With our
experience, no other course is possible to us; for it is
God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." But
the connexion here is of little importance in comparison
with the grandeur of the contents. In this verse
we have the first glimpse of the Pauline doctrine,
explicitly stated in the next chapter—"that if any man
be in Christ, he is a new creature." The Apostle finds
the only adequate parallel to his own conversion in
that grand creative act in which God brought light, by
a word, out of the darkness of chaos. It is not forcing
the figure unduly, nor losing its poetic virtue, to think
of gloom and disorder as the condition of the soul on
which the Sun of Righteousness has not risen. Neither
is it putting any strain upon it to make it suggest that
only the creative word of God can dispel the darkness,
and give the beauty of life and order to what was
waste and void. There is one point, indeed, in which
the miracle of grace is more wonderful than that of
creation. God only commanded the light to shine out
of darkness when time began; but He shone Himself
in the Apostle's heart: Ipse lux nostra (Bengel). He
shone "to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ." In that light
which God flashed into his heart, he saw the face of
Jesus Christ, and knew that the glory which shone
there was the glory of God. What these words mean
has already been explained. In the face of Jesus
Christ, the Lord of Glory, Paul saw God's Redeeming
Love upon the throne of the universe; it had descended
deeper than sin and death; it was exalted now above
all heavens; it filled all things. That sight he carried
with him everywhere; it was his salvation and his
Gospel, the inspiration of his inmost life, and the
motive of all his labours. One who owed all this to
Christ was not likely to make Christ's service the
theatre of his own ambitions; he could not do anything
but take the servant's place, and proclaim Jesus Christ
as Lord.
There is a difficulty in the last half of ver. 6: it is
not clear what precisely meant by πρὸς φωτισμὸν τῆς
γνώσεως τῆς δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ κ.τ.λ. By some the
passage is rendered: God shined in our hearts, "that
He might bring into the light (for us to see it) the
knowledge of His glory," etc. This is certainly legitimate,
and strikes me as the most natural interpretation.
It would answer then to what Paul says in Gal. i. 15 f.,
referring to the same event: "It pleased God to reveal
His Son in me." But others think all this is covered
by the words "God shined in our hearts," and they take
πρὸς φωτισμὸν κ.τ.λ., as a description of the apostolic
vocation: God shined in our hearts, "that we might
bring into the light (for others to see) the knowledge
of His glory," etc. The words would then answer to
what follows in Gal. i. 16: God revealed His Son in me,
"that I might preach Him among the heathen." This
construction is possible, but I think forced. In Paul's
experience his conversion and vocation were indissolubly
connected; but πρὸς φωτισμὸν κ.τ.λ., can only
mean one, and the conversion is the likelier.
THE VICTORY OF FAITH
"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding
greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves; we
are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not
unto despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not
destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. For we
which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the
life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then
death worketh in us, but life in you. But having the same spirit of
faith, according to that which is written, I believed, and therefore
did I speak; we also believe, and therefore also we speak; knowing
that He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with
Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your
sakes, that the grace, being multiplied through the many, may cause
the thanksgiving to abound unto the glory of God.
"Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying,
yet our inward man is renewed day by day. For our light
affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more
exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the
things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the
things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not
seen are eternal."—2 Cor. iv. 7-18 (R.V.).
In the opening verses of this chapter Paul has
magnified his office, and his equipment for it. He
has risen to a great height, poetic and spiritual, in
speaking of the Lord of glory, and of the light which
shines from His face for the illumining and redemption
of men. The disproportion between his own nature
and powers, and the high calling to which he has been
called, flashes across his mind. It is quite possible
that this disproportion, viewed with a malignant eye,
had been made matter of reproach by his adversaries.
"Who," they may have said, "is this man, who soars
to such heights, and makes such extraordinary claims?
The part does not suit him; he is quite unequal to it;
his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible."
It is possible, further, though I hardly think it
probable, that the very sufferings Paul endured in his
apostolic work were cast in his teeth by Jewish teachers
at Corinth; they were read by these spiteful interpreters
as signs of God's wrath, the judgment of the
Almighty on a wanton subverter of His law. But
surely it is not too much to suppose that Paul could
sometimes think unchallenged. A soul as great and
as sensitive as his might well be struck by the contrast
which pervades this passage without requiring to have
it suggested by the malice of his foes. The interpretation
which he puts upon the contrast is not merely a
happy artifice (so Calvin), and still less a tour de force;
it is a profound truth, a favourite, if one may say so,
in the New Testament, and of universal application.
"We have this treasure," he writes—the treasure of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ, including the apostolic vocation to diffuse that
knowledge—"we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the exceeding greatness of the power [which it
exercises, and which is exhibited in sustaining us in
our function] may be seen to be God's, and not from
us." Earthen vessels are fragile, and what the word
immediately suggests is no doubt bodily weakness, and
especially mortality; but the nature of some of the
trials referred to in vv. 8 and 9 (ἀπορούμενοι, ἀλλ' οὐκ
ἐξαπορύμενοι) shows that it would be a mistake to
confine the meaning to the body. The earthen vessel
which holds the priceless treasure of the knowledge
of God—the lamp of frail ware in which the light of
Christ's glory shines for the illumination of the world—is
human nature as it is; man's body in its weakness,
and liability to death; his mind with its limitations
and confusions; his moral nature with its distortions
and misconceptions, and its insight not yet half restored.
It was not merely in his physique that Paul
felt the disparity between himself and his calling to
preach the Gospel of the glory of Christ; it was in
his whole being. But instead of finding in this disparity
reason to doubt his vocation, he saw in it an
illustration of a great law of God. It served to protect
the truth that salvation is of the Lord. No one who
saw the exceeding greatness of the power which the
Gospel exercised—not only in sustaining its preachers
under persecution, but in transforming human nature,
and making bad men good—no one who saw this, and
looked at a preacher like Paul, could dream that the
explanation lay in him. Not in an ugly little Jew,
without presence, without eloquence, without the means
to bribe or to compel, could the source of such courage,
the cause of such transformations, be found; it must
be sought, not in him, but in God. "God hath chosen
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
and God hath chosen the weak things of the world
to confound the things which are mighty; and base
things of the world, and things which are despised,
hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to
bring to nought things which are." And the end of it
all is that he which glorieth should glory in the Lord.
This verse is never without its application; and
though the contempt of the world did not suggest it
to St. Paul, it may naturally enough recall it to us.
One would sometimes think, from the tone of current
literature, that no person with gifts above contempt is
any longer identified with the Gospel. Clever men, we
are told, do not become preachers now—still less do
they go to church. They find it impossible to have
real or sincere intellectual intercourse with Christian
ministers. Perhaps this is not so alarming as the
clever people think. There always have been men in
the world so clever that God could make no use of
them; they could never do His work, because they
were so lost in admiration of their own. But God's
work never depended on them, and it does not depend
on them now. It depends on those who, when they
see Jesus Christ, become unconscious, once and for
ever, of all that they have been used to call their
wisdom and their strength—on those who are but
earthen vessels in which another's jewel is kept, lamps
of clay in which another's light shines. The kingdom
of God has not changed its administration since the
first century; its supreme law is still the glory of God,
and not the glory of the clever men; and we may be
quite sure it will not change. God will always have
his work done by instruments who are willing to have
it clear that the exceeding greatness of the power is
His, and not theirs.
The eighth and ninth verses illustrate the contrast
between Paul's weakness and God's power. In the
series of participles which the Apostle uses, the earthen
vessel is represented by the first in each pair, the divine
power by the second. "We are pressed on every side,
but not straitened"—i.e., not brought into a narrow
place from which there is no escape. "We are perplexed,
but not unto despair," or, preserving the relation
between the words of the original, "put to it, but not
utterly put out." This distinctly suggests inward rather
than merely bodily trials, or at least the inward aspect
of these: constantly at a loss, the Apostle nevertheless
constantly finds the solution of his problems. "Pursued,
but not abandoned"—i.e., not left in the enemy's hands.
"Smitten down, but not destroyed": even when trouble
has done its worst, when the persecuted man has been
overtaken and struck to the ground, the blow is not
fatal, and he rises again. All these partial contrasts
of human weakness and Divine power are condensed
and concentrated in the tenth verse in one great contrast,
the two sides of which are presented in their
divinely intended relation to each other: "always
bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the
life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body." And
this again, with its mystical poetic aspect, especially in
the first clause, is reaffirmed and rendered into prose
in ver. 11: "For we, alive as we are, are ever being
delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also
of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh."
Paul does not say that he bears about in his body
the death of Jesus (θάνατος), but his dying (νέκρωσις,
mortificatio), the process which produces death. The
sufferings which come upon him daily in his work for
Jesus are gradually killing him; the pains, the perils,
the spiritual pressure, the excitement of danger and the
excitement of deliverance, are wearing out his strength,
and soon he must die. In the very same way Jesus
Himself had spent His strength and died, and in that
life of weakness and suffering which was always
bringing him nearer the grave, Paul felt himself in
intimate sympathetic communion with his Master: it
was "the dying of Jesus" that he carried about in his
body. But that was not all. In spite of the dying,
he was not dead. Perpetually in peril, he had a perpetual
series of escapes; perpetually at his wits end,
his way perpetually opened before him. What was the
explanation of that? It was the life of Jesus manifesting
itself in his body. The life of Jesus can only mean
the life which Jesus lives now at God's right hand; and
these repeated escapes of the Apostle, these restorations
of his courage, are manifestations of that life; they are,
so to speak, a series of resurrections. Paul's communion
with Jesus is not only in His dying, but in His
rising again; he has the evidence of the Resurrection,
because he has its power, present with him, in these
constant deliverances and renewals. Nay, the very
purpose of his sufferings and perils is to provide occasion
for the manifestation of this resurrection life.
Unless he were exposed to death, God could not deliver
him from it; unless he were pressed in the spirit, God
could not give him relief; there could be no setting off
of the exceeding greatness of His power in contrast
with the exceeding frailty of the earthen vessel. The
use of body and of mortal flesh in these verses
has been appealed to in support of an interpretation
which would limit the meaning to what is merely physical:
"I am in daily danger of death, God daily delivers
me from it, and thus the life of Jesus is manifested in
me." This is of course included in the interpretation
given above; but I cannot suppose it is all the Apostle
meant. The truth is, there is no such thing in the
passage, or indeed in human life, as a merely physical
experience. To be delivered to death for Jesus' sake
is an experience which is at once and indissolubly
physical and spiritual; it could not be, unless the soul
had its part, and that the chief part, in it. To be
delivered from such death is also an experience as
much spiritual as physical. And in both aspects, and
not least in the first, is the life of Jesus manifested.
Nor can I see that it is in the least degree unnatural
for one who feels this to speak of that life as being
manifested in his "body," or in his "mortal flesh";
it is a way which all men understand of describing the
human nature, which is the scene of the manifestation,
as a frail and powerless thing.
The moral of the passage is similar to that of chap. i.
3-11. Suffering, for the Christian, is not an accident;
it is a divine appointment and a divine opportunity.
To wear life out in the service of Jesus is to open it
to the entrance of Jesus' life; it is to receive, in all its
alleviations, in all its renewals, in all its deliverances,
a witness to His resurrection. Perhaps it is only by
accepting this service, with the daily dying it demands,
that that witness can be given to us; and "the life of
Jesus" on His throne may become inapprehensible and
unreal in proportion as we decline to bear about in our
bodies His dying. All who have commented on this
passage have noticed the iteration of the name of Jesus.
Singulariter sensit Paulus dulcedinem ejus. Schmiedel
explains the repetition as partly accidental, and partly
indicative of the fact that Christ's death is here regarded
as a purely human occurrence, and not as a redemptive
deed of the Messiah. This points in the right direction,
though it may fairly be doubted whether Paul would
have drawn this distinction, or could even have been
made to understand it. The analytic tendency of the
modern mind often disintegrates what depends for its
virtue on being kept whole and entire, and this seems
to me a case in point. The use of the name Jesus
rather indicates that, in recalling the actual events of
his own career, Paul saw them run continually parallel
to events in the career of Another; they were one in
kind with that painful series of incidents which ended
in the death of the historical Saviour. People have
often sought in the Epistles of Paul for traces of a
knowledge of Christ like that which is conserved in the
first three Gospels; in this expression, τὴν νέκρωσιν
τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, and in the repetition of the historical proper
name, there is an indirect but quite convincing proof
that the general character of Christ's life was known to
the Apostle. And though he does not dwell on Christ's
sympathy with the fulness and power of the writer to
the Hebrews, it is evident from this passage that he
was in sympathetic fellowship with One who had
suffered as he suffered, and that even to name His
human name was consolation.
In ver. 12 an abrupt conclusion is drawn from all
that precedes: "So then death worketh in us, but life
in you." Ironice dictum, is Calvin's comment, and the
words are at least intelligible if so taken. The stinging
passage beginning at chap. iv. 8 of the First Epistle
is ironical in precisely this sense—"We are fools for
Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak,
but ye are strong; ye have glory, but we have dishonour":
this is as it were a variation on the theme
"death worketh in us, but life in you." Still, the irony
does not seem in place here: Paul writes in all seriousness
that the sufferings which he endures as a preacher
of the Gospel, and which eventually bring death to
him—which are the approaches of death, or death itself
at work—are the means by which life, in the most unqualified
sense, comes to be at work in the Corinthians.
If the death and life which are in view wherever the
Gospel appears are to be distributed among them, the
death is his, and the life theirs; the dying of Jesus is
borne about by the Evangelist, while those who accept
the message he brings at this cost are made partakers
in Jesus' life.
Not indeed that the contrast can be thus absolute:
the thirteenth verse corrects this hasty inference. If
death alone were at work in St. Paul, it would frustrate
his vocation; he would not be able to preach at all.
But he is able to preach. In spite of all the discouragement
which his sufferings might beget, his faith remains
vigorous; he is conscious of possessing that same
confidence toward God which animated the ancient
Psalmist to sing, "I believed, therefore I spoke." "We
also," he says, "believe, and therefore also we speak."
What he believes, and what prompts his utterance, we
read in the thirteenth verse: "We speak; knowing that
He who raised Jesus shall raise us also likeΣὺν Ἰησοῦ is the true reading: sameness of kind is meant, not of
time.
Jesus, and
shall present us with you. With you, I say: for the
whole thing is for your sakes, that the grace, having
become abundant, may by means of manyΔιὰ τῶν πλειόνων is construed in the R.V. with πλεονάσασα (so
Meyer): De Wette takes it as above; in the A.V. the διὰ is made to
govern τὴν εὐχαριστίαν. There is no grammatical decision certain
here.
cause the
thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God."
What an interesting illustration this is of the communion
of the saints! Paul recognises a spiritual
kinsman in the writer of the Psalm;The Hebrew Psalm cxvi. 10 is at this precise point practically
unintelligible, but that does not justify any one in saying that the fine
thought of the Apostle is utterly foreign to the original text. The
open confession of God, as a duty of faith, pervades the psalm from
this point to the end (the verses beginning Ἐπίστευσα διὸ ἐλάλησα
make a psalm by themselves in the LXX.).
faith in God, the
power which faith confers, the obligations which faith
imposes, are the same in all ages. He recognises
spiritual kinsmen in the Corinthians also. All his
sufferings have their interest in view, and it is part of
his joy, as he looks on to the future, that when God
raises him from the dead, as He raised His own Son,
He will present him along with them. Their unity
will not be dissolved by death. The word here rendered
"present" has often a technical sense in Paul's Epistles;
it is almost appropriated to the presenting of men before
the judgment-seat of Christ. Good scholars insist on
that meaning here; but even with the proviso that acceptance
in the judgment is taken for granted, I cannot feel
that it is quite congruous. There is such a thing as
presentation to a sovereign as well as to a judge—the
presenting of the bride to the bridegroom on the wedding
day as well as of the criminal to the justice—and it
is the great and glad occasion which answers to the
feeling in the Apostle's mind. The communion of the
saints, in virtue of which his sufferings bring blessing
to the Corinthians, has its issue in the joyful union of
all before the throne. As Paul thinks of that, he sees
an end in the Gospel lying beyond the blessing it brings
to men. That end is God's glory. The more he toils
and suffers, the more God's grace is made known
and received; and the more it is received, the more
does it cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory
of God.
Two practical reflections present themselves here,
nearly related to each other. The first is that faith
naturally speaks; the second, that grace merits thanksgiving.
Put the two into one, and we may say that
grace received by faith merits articulate thanksgiving.
Much modern faith is inarticulate, and it is far too
soothing to be true if we say, Better so. Of course the
utterance of faith is not prescribed to it; to be of any
value it must be spontaneous. Not all the believing are
to be teachers and preachers, but all are to be confessors.
Every one who has faith has a witness to
bear to God. Every one who has accepted God's grace
by faith has a thankful acknowledgment of it to make,
and at some time or other to make in words. It is
not the faculty of speech that is wanting where this is
not done; it is courage and gratitude; it is the same
Spirit of faith which prompted the Psalmist and St.
Paul. It is true that hypocrites sometimes speak, and
that testimonies and thanksgivings are apt to be discredited
on their account; but bad money would never
be put in circulation unless good money was indisputably
valuable. It is not the dumb, but the confessing
Christian, not the taciturn, but the outspokenly thankful,
who glorifies God, and helps on the Gospel. Calvin
is properly severe on our "pseudo-nicodemi," who
make a merit of their silence, and boast that they
have never by a syllable betrayed their faith. Faith
is betrayed in another and more serious sense when it
is kept secret.
But to return to the Apostle, who himself, at ver. 16,
returns to the beginning of the chapter, and resumes
the οὐκ ἐγκακοῦμεν of ver. 1: "Wherefore we faint
not." "Wherefore" means "With all that has been
said in view"; not only the glorious future in which
Paul and his disciples are to be raised and presented
together to Christ, but his daily experience of the life
of Jesus manifested in his mortal flesh. This kept
him brave and strong. "We faint not; but though
our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is
renewed day by day." The outward man covers the
same area as "our body," or "our mortal flesh." It
is human nature as it is constituted in this world—a
weak, fragile, perishable thing. Paul could not mistake,
and did not hide from himself, the effect which his
apostolic work had upon him. He saw it was killing
him. He was old long before the time. He was a
sorely broken man at an age when many are in the
fulness of their strength. The earthen vessel was
visibly crumbling. Still, that was not the whole of his
experience. "The inward man is renewed day by
day." The meaning of these words must be fixed
mainly by the opposition in which they stand to
οὐκ ἐγκακοῦμεν ("we faint not"). The same word
(ἀνακαινοῦσθαι) is used of the renewal of the soul in
the Creator's image (Col. iii. 10)—i.e., of the work of
sanctification; but the opposition in question proves
that this is not contemplated here. We must rather
think of the daily supply of spiritual power for apostolic
service—of the new strength and joy which were given
to St. Paul every morning, in spite of the toils and
sufferings which every day exhausted him. Of course
we can say of all people, bad as well as good, "The
outward man is decaying." Time tires the stoutest
runner, crumbles the compactest wall. But we cannot
say of all, "The inward man is renewed day by day."
That is not the compensation of every one; it is the
compensation of those whose outward man has decayed
in Jesus' service, who have been worn out in labours
for His sake. It is they, and they only, who have a
life within which is independent of outward conditions,
which sufferings and deaths cannot crush, and which
never grows old. The decay of the outward man in the
godless is a melancholy spectacle, for it is the decay
of everything; in the Christian it does not touch that
life which is hid with Christ in God, and which is in
the soul itself a well of water springing up to life
eternal.
But who shall speak of the two great verses in which
the Apostle, leaving controversy out of sight, solemnly
weighs against each other time and eternity, the seen
and the unseen, and claims his inheritance beyond?
"Our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh
for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight
of glory; while we look not at the things which are
seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the
things which are seen are temporal; but the things
which are not seen are eternal." One can imagine
that he was dictating quick and eagerly as he began
the sentence; he "crowds and hurries and precipitates"
the grand contrasts of which his mind is full. Affliction
in any case is outweighed by glory, but the
affliction in question is a light matter, the glory a
great weight: the light affliction is but momentary—it
ends with death at the latest, it may end in the
coming of Jesus to anticipate death; the weight of glory
is eternal; and as if this were not enough, the light
affliction which is but for a moment works out for
us the weight of glory which endures for ever, "in
excess and to excess," in a way above conception,
to a degree above conception: it works out for us
the things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
nor man's heart conceived, "all that God has prepared
for them that love Him" (1 Cor. ii. 9). If Paul spoke
fast and with beating heart as he crowded all this
into two brief lines, we can well believe that the pressure
was relaxed, and that the pen moved more steadily
and slowly over the contemplative words that follow:
"while we look not to the things which are seen,
but to the things which are not seen: for the things
which are seen are temporal, but the things which are
not seen are eternal." This sentence is sometimes
translated conditionally: "provided we look," etc. This
is legitimate, but unnecessary. The Apostle is speaking,
in the first instance, of himself, and the looking
is taken for granted. The look is not merely equivalent
to vision; it means that the unseen is the goal
of him who looks. The eye is to be directed to it,
not as an indifferent object, but as a mark to aim
at, an end to attain. This observation goes some way
to limit the application of the whole passage. The
contrast of things seen and things unseen is sometimes
taken in a latitude which deprives it of much of
its force: psychology and metaphysics are dragged in
to define and to confuse the Apostle's thought. But
everything here is practical. The things seen are to
all intents and purposes that tempest-tossed life of
which St. Paul has been speaking, that daily dying,
that pressure, perplexity, persecution, and downcasting,
which are for the present his lot. To these he does
not look: in comparison with that to which he does
look, these are a light and momentary affliction which
is not worth a thought. Similarly, the things unseen
are not everything, indefinitely, which is invisible; to
all intents and purposes they are the glory of Christ.
It is on this the Apostle's eye is fixed, this which
is his goal. The stormy life, even when most is made
of its storms, passes; but Christ's glory can never pass.
It is infinite, inconceivable, eternal. There is an inheritance
in it for all who keep their eyes upon it, and,
sustained by a hope so high, bear the daily death of
a life like Paul's as a light and momentary affliction.
The connexion between the two is so close that the
one is said to work for us the other. By divine
appointment they are united; fellowship with Jesus
is fellowship all through—in the daily dying, which
soon has done its worst, and then in the endless life.
We may say, if we please, that the glory is the reward
of the suffering; it would be truer to say that it was
its compensation, truer still that it was its fruit. There
is a vital connexion between them, but no one can
imagine he is reading Paul's thought who should find
here the idea that the trivial service of man can make
God his debtor for so vast a sum. The excellency
of the power which raises the earthen vessel to this
height of faith, hope, and inspiration is itself God's,
and God's alone.
Distrust of the supernatural, insistence on the present
and the practical, and the pride of a self-styled
common sense, have done much to rob modern Christianity
of this vast horizon, to blind it to this heavenly
vision. But wherever the life of Jesus is being manifested
in mortal flesh—wherever in His service and
for His sake men and women die daily, wearing out
nature, but with spirit ceaselessly renewed—there the
unseen becomes real again. Such people know that
what they do is not for one dead, but for One who
lives; they know that the daily inspirations they
receive, the hopes, the deliverances, are wrought in
them, not by themselves, but by One who has all power
in heaven and on earth. The things that are unseen
and eternal stand out as what they are in relation to
lives like these; to other lives, they have no relation
at all. A worldly and selfish career does not work
out an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, and
therefore to the worldly and selfish man heaven is
for ever an unpractical, incredible thing. But it not
only comes out in its brightness, it comes out as a
mighty inspiration and support, to every one who
bears about in his body the dying of Jesus; as he
fastens his eye upon it, he takes heart anew, and in
spite of daily dying "faints not."
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE
"For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved,
we have a building from God, a house not made with hands,
eternal, in the heavens. For verily in this we groan, longing to be
clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven: if so be that
being clothed we shall not be found naked. For indeed we that are
in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would
be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal
may be swallowed up of life. Now He that wrought us for this very
thing is God, who gave unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Being
therefore always of good courage, and knowing that, whilst we are at
home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith,
not by sight); we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather
to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.
Wherefore also we make it our aim, whether at home or absent,
to be well-pleasing unto Him. For we must all be made manifest
before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the
things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether
it be good or bad."—2 Cor. v. 1-10 (R.V.).
That outlook on the future, which at the close of
chap. iv. is presented in the most general terms,
is here carried out by the Apostle into more definite
detail. The passage is one of the most difficult in
his writings, and has received the most various interpretations;
yet the first impression it leaves on a
simple reader is probably as near the truth as the
subtlest ingenuity of exegesis. It is indeed to such
first impressions that one often returns when the mind
has ceased to sway this way and that under the impact
of conflicting arguments.
The Apostle has been speaking about his life as a
daily dying, and in the first verse of this chapter he
looks at the possibility that this dying may be consummated
in death. It is only a possibility, for to the end
of his life it was always conceivable that Christ might
come, and forestall the last enemy. Still, it is a
possibility; the earthly house of our tabernacle may
be dissolved; the tent in which we live may be taken
down. With what hope does the Apostle confront such
a contingency? "If this befall us," he says, "we have
a building from God, a house not made with hands,
eternal, in the heavens." Every word here points the
contrast between this new house and the old one, and
points it in favour of the new. The old was a tent; the
new is a building: the old, though not literally made
with hands, had many of the qualities and defects of
manufactured articles; the new is God's work and God's
gift: the old was perishable; the new is eternal.
When Paul says we have this house in the heavens, it
is plain that it is not heaven itself; it is a new body
which replaces and surpasses the old. It is in the
heavens in the sense that it is God's gift; it is something
which He has for us where He is, and which we
shall wear there. "We have it" means "it is ours";
any more precise definition must be justified on grounds
extraneous to the text.
The second verse brings us to one of the ambiguities
of the passage. "For verily," our R.V. reads, "in
this we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our
habitation which is from heaven." The meaning which
the English reader finds in the words "in this we
groan" is in all probability "in our present body we
groan." This is also the meaning defended by Meyer,
and by many scholars. But it cannot be denied that
ἐν τούτῳ does not naturally refer to ἡ ἐπίγειος ἡμῶν
οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους. If it means "in this body," it must
be attached specially to σκήνους, and σκήνους is only
a subordinate word in the clause. Elsewhere in the
New Testament ἐν τούτῳ means "on this account," or
"for this reason" (see 1 Cor. iv. 4; John xvi. 30: Ἐν
τούτῳ πιστεύομεν ὅτι ἀπὸ Θεοῦ ἐξῆλθες), and I prefer to
take it in this sense here: "For this cause—i.e., because
we are the heirs of such a hope—we groan, longing
to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from
heaven." If Paul had no hope, he would not sigh
for the future; but the very longing which pressed the
sighs from his bosom became itself a witness to the
glory which awaited him. The same argument, it has
often been pointed out, is found in Rom. viii. 19 ff.
The earnest expectation of the creation, waiting for
the manifestation of the sons of God, is evidence that
this manifestation will in due time take place. The
spiritual instincts are prophetic. They have not been
implanted in the soul by God only to be disappointed.
It is of the longing hope of immortality—that very
hope which is in question here—that Jesus says: "If
it were not so, I would have told you."
The third verse states the great gain which lies in
the fulfilment of this hope: "Since, of course, being
clothed [with this new body], we shall not be found
naked [i.e., without any body]." I cannot think, especially
looking on to ver. 4, that these two verses (2 and 3)
mean anything else than that Paul longs for Christ to
come before death. If Christ comes first, the Apostle
will receive the new body by the transformation, instead
of the putting off, of the old; he will, so to speak, put it
on above the old ἐπενδύσασθαι; he will be spared the
shuddering fear of dying; he will not know what it is
to have the old tent taken down, and to be left houseless
and naked. We do not need to investigate the
opinions of the Hebrews or the Greeks about the
condition of souls in Hades in order to understand
these words; the conception, figurative as it is, carries
its own meaning and impression to every one. It is
reiterated, rather than proved, in the fourth verse:The true rendering here is that in the margin of the R.V.
"For we who are in the tabernacle groan also, being
burdened, in that our will is not to be unclothed, but
to be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be
swallowed up of life." It is natural to take βαρούμενοι
("being burdened") as referring to the weight of care
and suffering by which men are oppressed while in the
body; but here also, as in the similar case of ver. 2,
the proper reference of the word is forward. What
oppresses Paul, and makes him sigh, is the intensity
of his desire to escape "being unclothed," his immense
longing to see Jesus come, and, instead of passing
through the terrific experience of death, to have the
corruptible put on incorruption, and the mortal put on
immortality, without that trial.
This seems plain enough, but we must remember
that the confidence which Paul has been expressing in
the first verse is meant to meet the very case in which
this desire is not gratified, the case in which death has
to be encountered, and the tabernacle taken down. "If
this should befall us," he says, "we have another body
awaiting us, far better than that which we leave, and
hence we are confident." The confidence which this
hope inspires would naturally, we think, be most
perfect, if in the very act of dissolution the new body
were assumed; if death were the initial stage in the
transformation scene in which an that is mortal is
swallowed up by life; if it were, not the ushering of
the Christian into a condition of "nakedness," which,
temporary though it be, is a mere blank to the mind and
imagination, but his admission to celestial life; if "to
be absent from the body" were immediately, and in the
fullest sense of the words, the same thing as "to be at
home with the Lord." This is, in point of fact, the
sense in which the passage is understood by a good many
scholars, and those who read it so find in it a decisive
turning-point in the Apostle's teaching on the last things.
In the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, they say,
and indeed in the First to the Corinthians also, Paul's
eschatology was still essentially Jewish. The Christian
dead are οἱ κοιμώμενοι, or οἱ κοιμηθέντες ("those that
sleep"); nothing definite is said of their condition; only
it is implied that they do not get the incorruptible body
till Jesus comes again and raises them from the dead.
In other words, those who die before the Parousia
have the soul-chilling prospect of an unknown term of
"nakedness." Here this terror is dispelled by the
new revelation made to the Apostle, or the new insight
to which he has attained: there is no longer any such
interval between death and glory; the heavenly body
is assumed at once; the state called κοιμᾶσθαι ("being
asleep") vanishes from the future. Sabatier and
Schmiedel, who adopt this view, draw extreme consequences
from it. It marks an advance, according to
Schmiedel, of the highest importance. The religious
postulate of an uninterrupted communion of life with
Christ, violated by the conception of a κοιμᾶσθαι, or
falling asleep, is satisfied; Christ's descent from heaven,
and a simultaneous resurrection and judgment, become
superfluous; judgment is transferred to the moment of
death, or rather to the process of development during
life on earth; and, finally, the place of eternal blessedness
passes from earth (the Jewish and early Christian
opinion, probably shared by Paul, as he gives no indication
of the contrary) to heaven. All this, it is further
pointed out, is an approximation, more or less close,
to the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul,
and may even have been excogitated in part under its
influence; and it is at the same time a half-way house
between the Pharisaic eschatology of First Thessalonians
and the perfected Christian doctrine of a passage like
John v. 24: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that
heareth My word, and believeth Him that sent Me,
hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but
hath passed out of death into life."
There is no objection to be made in principle to
the idea that the Apostle's outlook on the future was
subject to modification—that he was capable of attaining,
or even did attain, a deeper insight, with experience,
into the connexion between that which is and
that which is to come. But it is surely somewhat
against the above estimate of the alleged change here
that Paul himself seems to have been quite unconscious
of it. He was not a man whose mind wrought at
unawares, and who passed unwittingly from one standpoint
to another. He was nothing if not reflective.
According to Sabatier and Schmiedel, he had made
a revolutionary change in his opinions—a change so
vast that on account of it Sabatier reckons this Epistle,
and especially this passage, the most important in all
his writings for the comprehension of his theological
development; and yet, side by side with the new
revolutionary ideas, uttered literally in the same breath
with them, we find the old standing undisturbed.
The simultaneous resurrection and judgment, according
to Schmiedel, should be impossible now; but in chap.
iv. 14 the resurrection appears precisely as in Thessalonians
and in chap. v. 10 the judgment, precisely as
in all his Epistles from the first to the last. As for the
inconsistency between going to be at home with the
Lord and the Lord's coming, it also recurs in later
years: Paul writes to the Philippians that he has a
desire to depart and to be with Christ; and in the
same letter, that the Lord is at hand, and that we wait
for the Saviour from heaven. Probably the misleading
idea in the study of the whole subject has been the
assumption that the κοιμώμενοι—the dead in Christ—were
in some dismal, dreary condition which could
fairly be described as "nakedness." There is not a
word in the New Testament which favours this idea.
Where we see men die in faith, we see something quite
different. "To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise."
"Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." "I saw the souls of
them which had been slain for the Word of God ...
and there was given them, to each one, a white robe."
When Paul speaks of those who have fallen asleep,
in First Thessalonians, it is with the express intention
of showing that those who survive to the Parousia have
no advantage over them. "Jesus Christ died for us," he
writes (1 Thess. v. 10), "that, whether we wake or
sleep, we may live together with Him." And he uses one
most expressive word in a similar connexion (1 Thess.
iv. 14): "Them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring
[ἄξει] with Him." Suave verbum, says Bengel: dicitur
de viventibus. May we not say with equal cogency, not
only "de viventibus," but "de viventibus cum Iesu"?
Those who are asleep are with Him; they are in
blessedness with Him; what their mode of existence is
it may be impossible for us to conceive, but it is certainly
not a thing to shrink from with horror. The taking
down of the old tent in which we live here is a thing
from which one cannot but shrink, and that is why
Paul would rather have Christ come, and be saved the
pain and fear of dying. With death in view he mentions
the new body as the ground of his confidence,
because it is the final realisation of the Christian hope,
the crown of redemption (Rom. viii. 23). But he does
not mean to say that, unless the new body were granted
in the very instant of dying, death would usher him
into an appalling void, and separate him from Christ.
This assumption, on which the interpretation of
Sabatier and Schmiedel rests, is entirely groundless,
and therefore that interpretation, in spite of a superficial
plausibility, is to be decidedly rejected. It is to
be rejected all the more when we are invited to see the
occasion which produced Paul's supposed change of
opinion in the danger which he had lately incurred in
Asia (chap. i. 8-10). Paul, we are to imagine, who
had always been confident that he would live to see the
Parousia, had come to very close quarters with death,
and this experience constrained him to seek in his
religion a hope and consolation more adequate to the
terribleness of death than any he had yet conceived.
Hence the mighty advance explained above. But is it
not absurd to say that a man, whose life was constantly
in peril, had never thought of death till this time?
Can any one seriously believe that, as Sabatier puts
it, "the image of death, with which the Apostle had not
hitherto concerned himself, [here] enters for the first
time within the scope of his doctrine"? Can any one
who knows the kind of man Paul was deliberately
suggest that fear and self-pity conferred on him an
enlargement of spiritual vision which no sympathy for
bereaved disciples, and no sense of fellowship with
those who had fallen asleep in Jesus, availed to bestow?
Believe this who will, it seems utterly incredible to me.
The passage says nothing inconsistent with Thessalonians,
or First Corinthians, or Philippians, or Second
Timothy, about the last things: it expresses in a special
situation the constant Christian faith and hope—"the
redemption of the body"; that is the possession of the
believer ἔχομεν; it is ours; and the Apostle is not
concerned to fix the moment of time at which hope becomes
sight. "Come what will," he says, "come death
itself, this is ours; and because it is ours, though we
dread the possible necessity of having to strip off the
old body, and would fain escape it, we do not allow it
to dismay us."
The Apostle cannot look to the end of the Christian
hope without referring to its condition and guarantee.
"He that wrought us for this very thing is God, who
gave us the earnest of the Spirit." The future is never
considered in the New Testament in a speculative
fashion; nothing could be less like an apostle than to
discuss the immortality of the soul. The question of
life beyond death is for Paul not a metaphysical but a
Christian question; the pledge of anything worth the
name of life is not the inherent constitution of human
nature, but the possession of the Divine Spirit. Without
the Spirit, Paul could have had no such certainty,
no such triumphant hope, as he had; without the Spirit
there can be no such certainty yet. Hence it is idle
to criticise the Christian hope on purely speculative
grounds, and as idle to try on such grounds to establish
it. That hope is of a piece with the experience which
comes when the Spirit of Him who raised up Christ
from the dead dwells in us, and apart from this experience
it cannot even be understood. But to say that
there is no eternal life except in Christ is not to accept
what is called "conditional immortality"; it is only to
accept conditional glory.
The fifth verse marks a pause: in the three which
follow Paul describes the mood in which, possessed of
the Christian hope, he confronts all the conditions of
the present and the alternatives of the future. "We
are of good courage at all times," he says. "We know
that while we are at home in the body we are away
from home as far as the Lord is concerned—at a
distance from Him." This does not mean that fellowship
is broken, or that the soul is separated from the
love of Christ; it only means that earth is not heaven,
and that Paul is painfully conscious of the fact. This
is what is proved by ver. 7: We are absent from the
Lord, our true home, "for in this world we are walking
through the realm of faith, not through that of actual
appearance."This translation is Schmiedel's. For the use of διὰ cf. Rev. xxi. 24:
Καὶ περιπατήσουσιν τὰ ἔθνη διὰ τοῦ φωτὸς αὐτης. It cannot mean "by"
faith, in the sense of "according to" faith, or as faith directs. Nor
can it be proved that εῖδος ever means "sight."
There is a world, a mode of existence,
to which Paul looks forward, which is one of actual
appearance; he will be in Christ's presence there, and
see Him face to face (1 Cor. xiii. 12). But the world
through which his course lies meanwhile is not that
world of immediate presence and manifestation; on the
contrary, it is a world of faith, which realises that
future world of manifestation only by a strong spiritual
conviction; it is through a faith-land that Paul's journey
leads him. All along the way his faith keeps him in
good heart; nay, when he thinks of all that it ensures,
of all that is guaranteed by the Spirit, he is willing
rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home
with the Lord.
"For, ah! the Master is so fair,
His smile so sweet on banished men,
That they who meet it unaware
Can never turn to earth again;
And they who see Him risen afar,
At God's right hand to welcome them,
Forgetful stand of home and land,
Desiring fair Jerusalem."
If he had to make his choice, it would incline this way,
rather than the other; but it is not his to make a
choice, and so he does not express himself unconditionally.
The whole tone of the passage anticipates
that of Phil. i. 21 ff.: "For to me to live is Christ, and
to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh,—if this is
the fruit of my work, then what I shall choose I wot
not. But I am in a strait betwixt the two, having the
desire to depart and to be with Christ; for it is very
far better: yet to abide in the flesh is more needful for
your sake." Nothing could be less like the Apostle
than a monkish, unmanly wish to die. He exulted in
his calling. It was a joy to him above all joys to
speak to men of the love of God in Jesus Christ. But
nothing, on the other hand, could be less like him than
to lose sight of the future in the present, and to forget
amid the service of men the glory which is to be
revealed. He stood between two worlds; he felt the
whole attraction of both; in the earnest of the Spirit he
knew that he had an inheritance there as well as here.
It is this consciousness of the dimensions of life that
makes him so immensely interesting; he never wrote
a dull word; his soul was stirred incessantly by impulses
from earth and from heaven, swept by breezes
from the dark and troubled sea of man's life, touched
by inspirations from the radiant heights where Christ
dwelt. We do not need to be afraid of the reproach of
"other worldliness" if we seek to live in this same
spirit; the reproach is as false as it is threadbare. It
would be an incalculable gain if we could recover the
primitive hope in something like its primitive strength.
It would not make us false to our duties in the world,
but it would give us the victory over the world.
In bringing this subject to a close, the Apostle strikes
a graver note. A certain moral, as well as a certain
emotional temper, is evoked by the Christian hope.
It fills men with courage, and with spiritual yearnings;
it braces them also to moral earnestness and vigour.
"Wherefore also we make it our aim"—literally, we
are ambitious, the only lawful ambition—"whether
at home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto Him."
Modes of being are not of so much consequence. It
may agree with a man's feelings better to live till
Christ comes, or to die before He comes, and go at
once to be with Him; but the main thing is, in whatever
mode of being, to be accepted in His sight. "For
we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat
of Christ, that each one may receive the things done
in the body, according to what he hath done, whether
it be good or bad." The Christian hope is not clouded
by the judgment-seat of Christ; it is sustained at the
holy height which befits it. We are forbidden to
count upon it lightly. "Every man," we are reminded,
"that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself
even as He is pure." It is not necessary for us to
seek a formal reconciliation of this verse with Paul's
teaching that the faithful are accepted in Christ Jesus;
we can feel that both must be true. And if the
doctrine of justification freely, by God's grace, is that
which has to be preached to sinful men, the doctrine of
exact retribution, taught in this passage, has its main
interest and importance for Christians. It is Christians
only who are in view here, and the law of requital
is so exact that every one is said to get back, to carry
on for himself, the very things done in the body. In
this world, we have not seen the last of anything.
We shall all be manifested before the judgment-seat
of Christ; all that we have hidden shall be revealed.
The books are shut now, but they will be opened
then. The things we have done in the body will
come back to us, whether good or bad. Every pious
thought, and every thought of sin; every secret prayer,
and every secret curse; every unknown deed of
charity, and every hidden deed of selfishness: we will
see them all again, and though we have not remembered
them for years, and perhaps have forgotten them
altogether, we shall have to acknowledge that they are
our own, and take them to ourselves. Is not that a
solemn thing to stand at the end of life? Is it not
a true thing? Even those who can say with the
Apostle, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and rejoice in
hope of His glory," know how true it is. Nay, they
most of all know, for they understand better than others
the holiness of God, and they are especially addressed
here. The moral consciousness is not maintained in
its vigour and integrity if this doctrine of retribution
disappears; and if we are called by a passage like
this to encourage ourselves in the Lord, and in the
hope which He has revealed, we are warned also that
evil cannot dwell with God, and that He will by no
means clear the guilty.
THE MEASURE OF CHRIST'S LOVE
"Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but
we are made manifest unto God; and I hope that we are made
manliest also in your consciences. We are not again commending
ourselves unto you, but speak as giving you occasion of glorying on
our behalf, that ye may have wherewith to answer them that glory
in appearance and not in heart. For whether we are beside ourselves,
it is unto God; or whether we are of sober mind, it is unto you.
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that
One died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they
which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who
for their sakes died and rose again."—2 Cor. v. 11-15 (R.V.).
The Christian hope of immortality is elevated and
solemnised by the thought of the judgment-seat
of Christ. This is no strange thought to St. Paul;
many a time he has set himself in imagination in that
great presence, and let the awe of it descend upon his
heart. This is what he means when he writes, "Knowing
the fear of the Lord." Like the pastors addressed
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, he exercises his office
as one who must render an account. In this spirit,
he says, he persuades men. A motive so high, and
so stern in its purifying power, no minister of Christ
can afford to dispense with. We need something to
suppress self-seeking, to keep conscience vigorous, to
preserve the message of reconciliation itself from degenerating
into good-natured indifference, to prohibit
immoral compromises and superficial healing of the
soul's hurts. Let us familiarise our minds, by meditation,
with the fear due to Christ the judge, and a new
element of power will enter into our service, making
it at once more urgent and more wholesome than it
could otherwise be.
The meaning of the words "we persuade men" is
not at once clear. Interpreters generally find in them
a combination of two ideas—we try to win men for
the Gospel, and we try to convince them of our own
purity of motive in our evangelistic work. The word
is suitable enough to express either idea; and though
it is straining it to make it carry both, the first is
suggested by the general tenor of the passage, and the
second seems to be demanded by what follows. "We
try to convince men of our disinterestedness, but we
do not need to try to convince God; we have been
manifested to Him already;The φανερωθῆναι of the last judgment, ver. 10, has as good as taken
place—for God.
and we trust also that
we have been manifested in your consciences." Paul
was well aware of the hostility with which he was
regarded by some of the Corinthians, but he is confident
that, when his appeal is tried in the proper court,
decision must be given in his favour, and he hopes that
this has really been done at Corinth. Often we do
not give people in his position the benefit of a fair
trial. It is not in our consciences they are arraigned—i.e.,
in God's sight, and according to God's law—but
at the bar of our prejudices, our likes and dislikes,
sometimes even our whims and caprices. It is not
their character which is taken into account, but something
quite irrelevant to character. Paul did not care
for such estimates as these. It was nothing to him
whether his appearance made a favourable impression on
those who heard him—whether they liked his voice, his
gestures, his manners, or even his message. What he
did care for was to be able to appeal to their consciences,
as he could appeal to God, to whom all things were naked
and opened, that in the discharge of his functions as an
evangelist he had been absolutely simple and sincere.
In speaking thus, he has no intention of again
recommending himself. Rather, as he says with a
touch of irony, it is for their convenience he writes;
he is giving them occasion to boast on his behalf, that
when they encounter people who boast in face and not
in heart they may not be speechless, but may have
something to say for themselves—and for him. It is
easy to read between the lines here. The Corinthians
had persons among them—Jewish and Judaising teachers
evidently—who boasted "in face"; in other words,
who prided themselves on outward and visible distinctions,
though as Paul asserts, they had nothing
within to be proud of. There are suggestions of these
distinctions elsewhere, and we can imagine the claims
men made, the airs they gave themselves, or at least
the recognition they consented to accept, on the ground
of them. Their eloquence, their knowledge of the
Scriptures, their Jewish descent, their acquaintance
with the Twelve, above all acquaintance with Jesus
Himself—these were their credentials, and of these their
followers made much. Perhaps even on their own
ground Paul could have met and routed most of them,
but meanwhile he leaves them in undisturbed possession
of their advantages, such as they are. He only sums
up these advantages in the disparaging word "face,"
or "appearance"; they are all on the outside; they
amount to "a fair show in the flesh," but no more. He
would not like if his disciples could make no better boast
of their master, and all the high things he has written,
from chap. ii. 14 on to chap. v. 10, especially his vindication
of the absolute purity of his motives, furnish them,
if they choose to take it so, with grounds of counter-boasting,
far deeper and more spiritual than those of
his adversaries. For he boasts, not "in appearance,
but in heart." The ironical tone in this is unmistakable,
yet it is not merely ironical. From the beginning of
Christianity to this day, Churches have gathered round
men, and made their boast in them. Too often it has
been a boast "in face," and not "in heart"—in gifts,
accomplishments, and distinctions, which may have
given an outward splendour to the individual, but
which were entirely irrelevant to the possession of the
Christian spirit. Often even the imperfections of the
natural man have been gloried in, simply because they
were his; and the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches,
for example, owe some of their most distinctive features
to an exaggerated appreciation of those very characteristics
of Luther and Calvin which had no Christian
value. The same thing is seen every day, on a smaller
scale, in congregations. People are proud of their
minister, not for what he is in heart, but because he
is more learned, more eloquent, more naturally capable,
than other preachers in the same town. It is a pity
when ministers themselves, like the Judaists in Corinth,
are content to have it so. The true evangelist or
pastor will choose rather, with St. Paul, to be taken
for what he is as a Christian, and for nothing else;
and if he must be spoken about, he will be spoken of
in this character, and in no other. Nay, if it really
comes to glorying "in face," he will glory in his weaknesses
and incapacities; he will magnify the very
earthenness of the earthen vessel, the very coarseness
of the clay, as a foil to the power and life of Christ
which dwell in it.
The connexion of ver. 13 with what precedes is
very obscure. Perhaps as fair a paraphrase as any
would run thus: "And well may you boast of our
complete sincerity; for whether we are beside ourselves,
it is to God; or whether we are of sober mind, it is
unto you; that is, in no case is self-interest the motive
or rule of our conduct." Connexion apart, there is a
further difficulty about εἴτε ἐξέστημεν. The Revised
Version renders it "whether we are beside ourselves,"
but in the margin gives "were" for "are." It makes
a very great difference which tense we accept. If
the proper meaning is given by "are," the application
must be to some constant characteristic of the Apostle s
ministry. His enthusiasm, his absolute superiority to
common selfish considerations such as are ordinarily
supreme in human life, his resolute assertion of truths
lying beyond the reach of sense, the unearthly flame
which burned unceasingly in his bosom, and never
more brightly than when he wrote the fourth and fifth
chapters of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians—all
these constitute the temper which is described as being
"beside oneself," a kind of sacred madness. It was
in this sense that the accusation of being beside himself
was brought on a memorable occasion against Jesus
(Mark iii. 21, ἐξέστη). The disciple and the Master
alike seemed to those who did not understand them to
be in an overstrained, too highly wrought condition
of spirit; in the ardour of their devotion they allowed
themselves to be carried beyond all natural limits, and
it was not improper to speak of applying some kindly
restraint. At first sight this interpretation seems
very appropriate, and I do not think that the tense of
ἐξέστημεν is decisive against it.According to Winer ἐξέστη in Mark iii. 21 has the present sense
= insanity; and so it might be with ἐξέστημεν here. The verb occurs
fifteen times in the New Testament, and except in these two passages
has always the sense of being amazed or astonished beyond measure.
Those who think it is
point to the change to the present tense in the next
clause, εἴτε σωφρονοῦμεν, and allege that this would have
no motive unless ἐξέστημεν were a true past. But this
may be doubted. On the one hand, ἐξέστη in Mark iii. 21
can hardly mean anything but "He is beside Himself"—i.e.,
it is virtually a present; on the other, the
grammatical present ἐξιστάμεθα would not unambiguously
convey the idea of madness, and would therefore
be inappropriate here. But assuming that the change of
tense has the effect of making ἐξέστημεν a real past, and
that the proper rendering is "whether we were beside
ourselves," what is the application then? We must
suppose that some definite occasion is before the Apostle
and his readers, on which he had been in an ecstasy
(cf. ἐν ἐκστάσει, Acts xi. 5; ἐγένετο ἐπ' αὐτὸν ἔκστασις,
Acts x. 10), and that his opponents availed themselves of
this experience, in which he had passed, for a time, out
of his own control, to whisper the malicious accusation
that he had once not been quite right in his mind, and
that this explained much. The Apostle, we should have
to assume, admits the fact alleged, but protests against
the inference drawn from it, and the use made of the
inference. "I was beside myself," he says; "but it
was an experience which had nothing to do with my
ministry; it was between God and my solitary self;
and to drag it into my relations with you is a mere
impertinence." That the "ecstasis" in question was
his vision of Jesus on the way to Damascus, and that
his adversaries sought to discredit that, and the apostleship
of Paul as grounded on that, is one of the
extravagances of an irresponsible criticism. Of all
experiences that ever befell him, his conversion is the
very one which was not solely his own affair and God's,
but the affair of the whole Church; and whereas he
speaks of his ecstasies and visions with evident reluctance
and embarrassment, as in chap. xii. 1 ff., or refuses
to speak of them at all, as here (assuming this interpretation
to be the true one), he makes his conversion
and the appearance of the Lord the very foundation
of his preaching, and treats of both with the utmost
frankness. It must be something quite different from
this—something analogous perhaps to me speaking
with tongues, in which "the understanding was
unfruitful," but for which Paul was distinguished
(1 Cor. xiv. 14-18)—that is intended here. Such rapt
conditions are certainly open to misinterpretation; and
as their spiritual value is merely personal, Paul declines
to discuss any allusion to them, as if it affected his
relation to the Corinthians.
The strongest point in favour of this interpretation
seems to me not the tense of ἐξέστημεν, but the use
of Θεῷ: "it is unto God." If the meaning were the
one first suggested, and the madness were the holy
enthusiasm of the Evangelist, that would be distinctly
a thing which did concern the Corinthians, and it would
not be natural to withdraw it from their censure as God's
affair. Nevertheless, one can conceive Paul saying that
he was answerable for his extravagances, not to them,
but to his Master; and that his sober-mindedness, at
all events, had their interests in view. On a survey
of the whole case, and especially with Mark iii. 21, and
the New Testament use of the verb ἐξίσταμαι before
us, I incline to think that the text of the Revised Version
is to be preferred to the margin. The "being beside
himself" with which Paul was charged will not, then,
be an isolated incident in his career—an incident which
Jewish teachers, remembering the ecstasies of Peter
and John, could hardly object to—but the spiritual
tension in which he habitually lived and wrought. The
language, so far as I can judge, admits of this interpretation,
and it brings the Apostle's experience into line,
not only with that of his Master, but with that of many
who have succeeded him. But how great and rare is
the self-conquest of the man who can say that in his
enthusiasm and his sobriety alike—when he is beside
himself, and when his spirit is wholly subject to him—the
one thing which never intrudes, or troubles his
singleness of mind, is the thought of his own private
ends.
In the verses which follow, Paul lets us into the
secret of this unselfishness, this freedom from by-ends
and ambition: "For the love of Christ constraineth
us; because we thus judge, that One died for all, therefore
all [of them] died." "Constraineth" is one of the
most expressive words in the New Testament; the love
of Christ has hold of the Apostle on both sides, as it
were, and urges him on in a course which he cannot
avoid. It has him in its grasp, and he has no choice,
under its irresistible constraint, but to be what he is,
and to do what he does, whether men think him in his
mind or out of his mind. That the love of Christ means
Christ's love to us, and not our love to Him, is shown
by the fact that Paul goes on at once to describe in what
it consists. "It constrains us," he says, "because we
have come to this mind about it: One died for all; so then
all died." Here, we may say, is the content of Christ's
love, the essence of it, that which gives it its soul-subduing
and constraining power: He loved us, and
gave Himself for us; He died for all, and in that death
of His all died.
It may seem a hazardous thing to give a definition of
love, and especially to shut up within the boundaries of
a human conception that love of Christ which passes
knowledge. But the intelligence must get hold somehow
even of things inconceivably great, and the New
Testament writers, with all their diversity of spiritual
gifts, are at one as to what is essential here. They all
find Christ's love concentrated and focussed in His
death. They all find it there inasmuch as that death
was a death for us. Perhaps St. Paul and St. John
penetrated further, intellectually, than any of the others
into the mystery of this "for"; but if we cannot give
it a natural interpretation, and an interpretation in
which an absolutely irresistible constraint is hidden for
heart and will, we do not know what the Apostles meant
when they spoke of Christ's love. There has been
much discussion about the "for" in this place. It is
ὑπέρ, not ἀντί, and many render it simply "on our
behalf," or "for our advantage." That Christ did die
for our advantage is not to be questioned. Neither is
it to be questioned that this is a fair rendering of ὑπέρ.
But what does raise question is whether this interpretation
of the "for" supplies sufficient ground for the
immediate inference of the Apostle "so then all died."
Is it logical to say, "One died for the benefit of all:
hence all died"? From that premiss is not the only
legitimate conclusion "hence all remained alive"?
Plainly, if Paul's conclusion is to be drawn, the "for"
must reach deeper than this mere suggestion of our
advantage: if we all died, in that Christ died for us,
there must be a sense in which that death of His is
ours; He must be identified with us in it: there, on
the cross, while we stand and gaze at Him, He is not
simply a person doing us a service; He is a person
doing us a service by filling our place and dying our
death. It is out of this deeper relation that all services,
benefits, and advantages flow; and that deeper sense
of "for," to which Christ in His death is at once the
representative and the substitute of man, is essential
to do justice to the Apostle's thought. Without the
ideas involved in these words we cannot conceive, as
he conceived it, the love of Christ. We cannot understand
how that force, which exercised such absolute
authority over his whole life, appealed to his intelligence.
We do not mean what he meant even when we use
his words; we gain currency, under cover of them, for
ideas utterly inadequate to the spiritual depth of his.
If this were an exposition of St. Paul's theology, and
not of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, I should
be bound to consider the connexion between that
outward death of Christ in which the death of all is
involved, and the appropriation of that death to themselves
by individual men. But the Apostle does not
directly raise this question here; he only adds in the
fifteenth verse a statement of the purpose for which
Christ died, and in doing so suggests that the connecting
link is to be sought, in part at least, in the feeling
of gratitude. "He died for all, that they which live
should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him
who died for them and rose again." In dying our
death Christ has done something for us so immense
in love that we ought to be His, and only His, for
ever. To make us His is the very object of His death.
Before we know Him we are naturally selfish; we are
an end to ourselves, in the bad sense; we are our
own. Even the sacrifices which men make for their
families, their country, or their order, are but qualifications
of selfishness; it is not eradicated and
exterminated till we see and feel what is meant by
this—that Christ died our death. The life we have
after we have apprehended this can never be our own;
nay, we ourselves are not our own; we are bought
with a price; life has been given a ransom for us,
and our life is due to him "who died for us and rose
again." I believe the Authorised Version is right in
this rendering, and that it is a mistake to say, "who
for our sakes died and rose again." The Resurrection
has certainly significance in the work of Christ, but
not in precisely the same way as His death; and Paul
mentions it here, not to define its significance, but
simply because he could not think of living except for
One who was Himself alive.
One point deserves especial emphasis here—the
universality of the expressions. Paul has been speaking
of himself, and of the constraint which the love of
Christ, as he apprehends it, exercises upon him. But
he no sooner begins to define his thought of Christ's
love than he passes over from the first person to the
third. The love of Christ was not to be limited; what it
is to the Apostle it is to the world: He died for all, and
so all died. Whatever blessing Christ's death contained,
it contains for all. Whatever doom it exhausts and
removes, it exhausts and removes for all. Whatever
power it breaks, it breaks for all. Whatever ideal it
creates, whatever obligation it imposes, it creates and
imposes for all. There is not a soul in the world
which is excluded from an interest in that knowledge-surpassing
love which made our death its own. There
is not one which ought not to feel that omnipotent
constraint which enchained and swayed the strong,
proud spirit of Paul. There is not one which ought
not to be pouring out its life for Him who died in its
place, and rose to receive its service.
THE NEW WORLD
"Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him
so no more. Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature
[or, there is a new creation]: the old things are passed away; behold,
they are become new."—2 Cor. v. 16, 17 (R.V.).
The inferences which are here drawn depend upon
what has just been said of Christ's death for all
and the death of all in that death of His. In that
death, as inclusive of ours, the old life died, and with
it died all its distinctions. All that men were, apart
from Christ, all that constituted the "appearance"
(πρόσωπον, ver. 12) of their life, all that marked them
off from each other as such and such outwardly, ceased
to have significance the moment Christ's death was
understood as Paul here understands it. He dates his
inference with ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ("henceforth"). This does not
mean from the time at which he writes, but from the
time at which he saw that One had died for all, and so
all died. Here, as in other places, he divides his life
into "now" and "then," the Christian and the pre-Christian
stage (Rom. v. 9; Eph. ii. 11-13). The
transition from one to the other was revolutionary, and
one of its most startling results is that which he here
describes. "Then," the distinctions between men, the
"appearances" in which they boasted, had been important
in his eyes; "now," they have ceased to be,
HeThe "we" in the first clause of ver. 16 is emphatic.
never asks whether a man is Jew or Greek, rich
or poor, bond or free, learned or unlearned; these
are classifications "after the flesh," and have died in
Christ's death for all. To recognise them any longer,
to admit the legitimacy of claims based upon them—such
claims as his opponents in Corinth seem to have
been putting forth—would be to make Christ's death,
in a sense, of no effect. It would be to deny that when
He died for all, all died in Him; it would be to reanimate
distinctions that should have been annihilated
in His death.
To this rule of knowing no one after the flesh Paul
can admit no exception. Not even Christ is excepted.
"Even though we have known Christ after the flesh,
yet now we know Him so no more." This is a difficult
saying, and has been very variously interpreted. The
English reader inevitably supposes that Paul had known
Christ "after the flesh," but had outgrown that kind of
knowledge; and that he is intimating these two facts.
But it is quite possible to take the wordsAs Heinrici does.
as purely
hypothetical: "Supposing us to have known even Christ
after the flesh—a case which in point of fact was never
ours—yet now we know Him so no more." Grammar
does not favour this last rendering, though it does not
preclude it; and however the matter may be settled,
the bare supposition, as much as the fact, requires us
to give a definite meaning to the words about knowing
Christ after the flesh, and ceasing so to know Him.
Some have inferred from them that when Paul
became a Christian, and for some time after, his conception
of Christ had resembled that of the persons
whom he is here controverting: his Christ had been
to all intents and purposes a Jewish Messiah, and he
had only been able by degrees to overcome, though he
had at last overcome, the narrowness and nationalism
of his early years as a disciple. To know Christ after
the flesh would be to know Him in the character of
a deliverer of the Jews: His Jewish descent, His circumcision,
His observance of the Temple worship, His
limitation of His ministry to the Holy Land, would be
matters of great significance; and Jewish descent might
naturally be supposed to establish a prerogative in
relation to the Messiah for Jews as opposed to Gentiles.
Probably there were Christians whose original conception
of the Saviour was of this kind, and it is a fair
enough description to say that this amounts only to a
knowing of Christ after the flesh; but Paul can hardly
have been one of them. His Christian knowledge of
Christ dates from his vision of the Risen Lord on the
way to Damascus, and in that appearance there was
no room for anything that could be called "flesh." It
was an appearance of the Lord of Glory. It determined
all Paul's thoughts thenceforth. Nothing is more
remarkable in his Epistles than the strong sense that
what he calls his Gospel is one, unchanged, and unchangeable.
It is not Yes and No. Neither man nor
angel may modify it by preaching another Jesus than
he preaches. He is quite unconscious of any such
transformation of his Christology as is indicated above;
and in the absence of any trace elsewhere of a change
so important, it is impossible to read it into the verse
before us.
Another interpretation of the words would make
"knowing Christ after the flesh" refer to a knowledge
at first hand of the facts and outward conditions of
Christ's life in this world: a knowledge which Paul
had in his early Christian days valued highly, but
for which he no longer cared. There were numbers of
men alive then who had known Christ in this sense.
They had seen and heard Him in Galilee and Jerusalem;
they had much to tell about Him which would no
doubt be very interesting to believers; and more than
likely some of them emphasised this distinction of
theirs, and were disposed to be pretentious on the
strength of it. Whether Paul had ever known Christ
in this sense, it is impossible to say. But it is certain
that to such knowledge he would have assigned no
Christian importance whatever. And in doing so, he
would have been following the example of Christ
Himself. "Then shall ye begin to say, We have
eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast
taught in our streets. And He shall say, I tell you,
I know you not whence ye are." But it is impossible
to suppose that this is a matter on which Paul as a
Christian had ever needed to change his mind.
It is an interpretation in part akin to this which
makes St. Paul here decry all knowledge of the historical
Christ in comparison with the understanding
of His death and resurrection. To know Christ after
the flesh is in this case to know Him as He is represented
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and Paul is
supposed to say that, though narratives like these once
had an interest and value for him, they really have
it no longer: they are not essential to his Gospel,
which is constituted by the death and resurrection
alone. These great events and their consequences are
all he is concerned with; to know Christ after the
Evangelists is merely to know Him after the flesh;
and flesh, even His flesh, ought to have no significance
since His death.
It is a little difficult to take this quite seriously,
though it has a serious side. St. Paul, no doubt, makes
very few references to incidents in the life of our
Lord, or even to words which He spoke.See the excellent section on Paul and the Historical Christ in
Sabatier's The Apostle Paul (English Translation, pp. 76-85).
But he
is not singular in this. The Epistles of Peter and
John are historically as barren as his. They do not
add a word to the Gospel story; there is no new
incident, no new trait in the picture of Jesus, no new
oracle. Indeed, the only genuine addition to the
record is that one made by Paul himself—"the word
of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed
to give than to receive." The truth seems to be that
it is not natural for an apostle, nor for any inspired
man, to fall back on quotations, like a preacher gravelled
for lack of matter, or conscious of wanting authority.
Paul and his colleagues in apostleship had Christ
living in them, and recognised the spirit by which
they spoke as the spirit of their Master. So far as
this was the case, it was certainly a matter of indifference
to them whether they were acquainted with this
or that incident in His life, with this or that syllable
that He spoke on such and such an occasion. One
casual occurrence, one scene in Christ's sufferings,
one discourse which He delivered, would inevitably
be known with more exact and literal precision to
one person than to another; and there is no difficulty
in believing that the casual advantage which any
individual might thus possess was regarded by St.
Paul as a thing of no Christian consequence. Similar
differences exist still, and in principle are to be disregarded.
But it is another thing to say that all
knowledge of the historical Christ is irrelevant to
Christianity, and yet another to father such an opinion
on St. Paul. The attempt to do so is due in part,
I believe, to a misinterpretation of κατὰ σάρκα. Paul
has been read as if what he disclaimed and decried
were knowledge of Christ ἐν σαρκί. But the two
things are quite distinct. Christ lived in the flesh; but
the life that He lived in the flesh He lived after the
spirit, and when its spiritual import is regarded, it
is safe to say that no one ever knew Christ as He
was in the flesh—the Christ of Matthew, Mark, and
Luke—better than Paul. No one had been initiated
into Christ's character, as that character is revealed
in the story of the Evangelists, more fully than he.
No one ever knew the mind, the temper, the new
moral ideal of Christianity, better than Paul, and there
is no ultimate source for this knowledge but the historical
Christ. Paul could not in his work as an
evangelist preach salvation through the death and
resurrection of an unknown person; the story which
was the common property of the Church, and with
which her catechists everywhere indoctrinated the
new disciples, must have been as familiar to him, in
substance, as it is to us; and his evident knowledge
and appreciation of the character embodied in it forbids
us to think of this acquaintance with Christ as what
he means by knowing Him after the flesh. He might
have had the Gospel narratives by heart, and counted
them inestimably precious, and yet have spoken exactly
as he speaks here.
Nevertheless, this interpretation, though mistaken,
has a certain truth in it. There is a historical knowledge
of Christ which is a mere irrelevance to Christianity,
and it has sometimes a stress laid upon it by
its possessors which tempts one to speak of it in
St. Paul's scornful tone. Many so-called "Lives" of
Christ abound in it. They aim at a historical realism
which, to speak the plain truth, has simply no religious
value. Knowledge of localities, customs, costumes,
and so forth, is interesting enough; but if it should be
ever so full and ever so exact, it is not the knowledge
of Jesus Christ in any sense which makes a Gospel.
It is quite possible, nay it is more than possible, that
such knowledge may come between the soul and the
Lord. It was so when Jesus lived. There were
people who knew so well what He was like that they
were blind to what He was. In St. Paul's phrase we
may say that they knew Him "after the flesh," and it
kept them from knowing Him truly. They asked, "Is
not this the carpenter?" as if that were a piece of
undeniable insight; and they were not conscious that
only men blind to what He really was could ever have
asked a question so absurd. It was not the carpenter
who spoke with authority in the synagogues, and cast
out devils, and brought in the kingdom; it was the
Son of Man, the Son of God; and whether Paul meant
it so or not, we may use his language in this passage
to express the conviction, that one may really know
Christ, to whom the whole outward aspect of His life,
represented by "the carpenter of Nazareth," is indifferent;
nay, that one cannot know Him in any real
sense until these external things are indifferent. Or
to put the same thing in other words, we may say that
the knowledge of Christ which constitutes the Christian
is not the knowledge of what He was, but of what he
is; and if we know what He is, then all that is merely
outward in the history may pass away.
But if none of these interpretations answers exactly
to the Apostle's thought, where are we to seek the
meaning of his words? All these, it will be observed,
assume that Paul knew Christ "after the flesh," subsequent
to his conversion; that he shared, as a Christian,
views about Christ which he is now combating. As
these interpretations, however, are untenable, we must
assume that the time when he thus knew Christ was
before his conversion. He could look back to days
when his Messianic conceptions were carnal; when
the Christ was to be identified, for him, by tokens in
the domain of "appearance," or "flesh"; when He
was to be a national, perhaps merely a political deliverer,
and the Saviour of the Jews in a sense which gave
them an advantage over the Gentiles. But these days
were gone for ever. "Henceforth"—from the very
instant that the truth flashed on him, One died for all,
and so all died—they belonged to a past which could
never be revived or recalled. One died for all: that
means that Christ is Universal Redeemer. That same
One rose again: that means He is Universal Lord.
He has done the same infinite service for all, He makes
the same infinite claim upon all; there are no prerogatives
for any race, for any caste, for any individual
men, in relation to Him. In presence of His cross,
there is no difference: in His death, and in our death
in Him, all carnal distinctions die; "henceforth we
know no man after the flesh." Even kinship to Jesus
"after the flesh" does not base any prerogative in the
kingdom of God; even to have eaten and drunk in
His presence, and listened to His living voice, confers
no distinction there; He has not done more for His
brethren and His companions than He has done for us
all. And not only the carnal distinctions of men have
vanished away; the carnal Jewish conception of Christ
has vanished with them.
The seventeenth verse seems a new inference from
the same ground as the fifteenth. Indeed, it connects
so naturally with ver. 15 that one critic has suggested
that ver. 16 is spurious, and another that it was a later
insertion by the Apostle. Perhaps we may assume
that St. Paul, who had no fear of such critics before
his eyes, was capable of setting his sentences down
just as they occurred to him, and did not mind an
occasional awkwardness. When he writes "Wherefore
if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature,"
he is indeed drawing an inference from ver. 15, but he
is at the same time generalising and carrying on the
thought of ver. 16. The idea of the new creature
occurs in other places in his writings (e.g., Eph. ii. 10;
Gal. vi. 15), but both here and in Gal. vi. 15 I prefer
the rendering in the margin of the Revised Version—"If
any man is in Christ, there is a new creation: the
things passed away (when he died in Christ);Observe the aorist παρῆλθεν.
behold, they have become new." We may say, if we
please, that it is the new creature which makes the new
creation; the change in the soul which revolutionises
the world. Still, it is this universal change which the
Apostle, apparently, wishes to describe; and in the
sudden note of triumph with which he concludes—"Behold!
all is become new"—we feel, as it were,
one throb of that glad surprise with which he had
looked out on the world after God had reconciled him
to Himself by His Son. The past was dead to him,
as dead as Christ on His cross; all its ideas, all its
hopes, all its ambitions, were dead; in Christ, he was
another man in another universe.
This is the first passage in 2 Corinthians in which this
Pauline formula for a Christian—a man in Christ—is
used.Chap. ii. 14, 17, and chap. iii. 14, are more limited.
It denotes the most intimate possible union, a
union in which the believer's faith identifies him with
Jesus in His death and resurrection, so that he can say,
"I live no longer, but Christ liveth in me." It is the
Apostle's profoundest word, not on the Gospel, but on
the appropriation of the Gospel; not on Christ, but on
the Christian religion.Perhaps the use of ἐν Χριστῷ here may be determined by the wish
to express tacitly his opposition to those who claimed to be in a
special sense τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Paul's formula really asserts a much
more intimate relation to Christ than theirs.
It is mystical, as every true word
must be which speaks of the relation of the soul to the
Saviour; but it is intelligible to every one who knows
what it is to trust and to love, and through trust and
love to lose self in another whose life is greater and
better than his own. And when we have seen, even for
a moment, what it is to live in self or in the world, and
what to live in Christ, we can easily believe that this
union is equivalent to a re-creating and transfiguring of
all things.
It is impossible to point to all the applications of this
truth: "all things" is too wide a text. Every reader
knows the things which bulked most largely in his life
before he knew Christ, and it is easy for him to tell
the difference due to being in the Lord. In a sense
the new creation is in process as long as we live; it is
ideally that faith in Christ means death in His death;
ideally that with faith the old passes and the new is
there; the actual putting away of the old, the actual
production of the new, are the daily task of faith as it
unites the soul to Christ. We are in Him the moment
faith touches Him, but we have to grow up into Him
in all things. Only as we do so does the world change
all around us, till the promise is fulfilled of new heavens
and a new earth.
But there is one application of these words, directly
suggested by the context, which we ought not to overlook:
I mean their application to men, and the old
ways of estimating men. Those who are in Christ
have died to the whole order of life in which men are
judged "after the flesh." Perhaps the Christian Church
has almost as much need as any other society to lay
this to heart. We are still too ready to put stress upon
distinctions which are quite in place in the world, but
are without ground in Christ. Even in a Christian
congregation there is a recognition of wealth, of learning,
of social position, in some countries of race, which
is not Christian. I do not say these distinctions are
not real, but they are meaningless in relation to Christ,
and ought not to be made. To make them narrows
and impoverishes the soul. If we associate only with
people of a certain station, and because of their station,
all our thoughts and feelings are limited to a very small
area of human life; but if distinctions of station, of
intelligence, of manners, are lost in the common relation
to Christ, then life is open to us in all its length and
breadth; all things are ours, because we are His. To
be guided by worldly distinctions is to know only a few
people, and to know them by what is superficial in their
nature; but to see that such distinctions died in Christ's
death, and to look at men in relation to Him who is
Redeemer and Lord of all, is to know all our brethren,
and to know them not on the surface, but to the heart.
People lament everywhere the want of a truly social
and brotherly feeling in the Church, and try all sorts
of well-meant devices to stimulate it, but nothing short
of this goes to the root of the matter. The social, in this
universal sense, is dependent upon the religious. Those
who have died in Christ to the world in which these
separative distinctions reign will have no difficulty in
recognising each other as one in Him. Society is transfigured
for each of us when this union is accomplished;
the old things have passed, and all has become new.
RECONCILIATION
"But all things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through
Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that
God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning
unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word
of reconciliation. We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ,
as though God were intreating by us: we beseech you on behalf of
Christ, be ye reconciled to God. Him who knew no sin He made to
be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God
in Him."—2 Cor. v. 18-21 (R.V.).
"Est hic insignis locus, si quis alius est in toto Paulo: proinde
diligenter excutere singulas particulas convenit."—Calvin.
"If any man be in Christ," Paul has said, "there is
a new creation; he is another man and lives in
another world. But the new creation has the same
Author as the original one: it is all of God, who reconciled
us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and gave to us the
ministry of reconciliation." It is plain from these last
words that "us" does not mean Christians in general,
but in the first instance Paul himself. He is a typical
example of what it is to be in Christ; he understands
what his own words mean—"the old things passed
away; behold, they have become new"; he understands
also how this stupendous change has been
brought about. "It is due to God," he says, "who
reconciled us to Himself through Christ."
The great interest of this passage is its bearing upon
the Christian doctrine of reconciliation, and before we
go further it is necessary to explain precisely what this
word means. It presupposes a state of estrangement.
Now, a state of estrangement may be of two kinds: the
feeling of alienation and hostility may exist upon one
side only, or it may exist upon both. What, then, is
the character of that state of estrangement which
subsists between God and man independently of the
Gospel, and which the Gospel, as a ministry of reconciliation,
is designed to overcome? Is it one-sided, or
two-sided? Is there something to be put away in man
only, or something to be put away in God as well,
before reconciliation is effected?
These questions have been answered very confidently
in different ways. Many, especially in modern times,
assert with passionate eagerness that the estrangement
is merely one-sided. Man is alienated from God by
sin, fear, and unbelief, and God reconciles him to
Himself when He prevails with him to lay aside these
evil dispositions, and trust Him as his Father and his
Friend. "All things are of God, who reconciled us to
Himself through Christ," would mean in this case, "All
things are of God, who has won our friendship through
His Son." That this describes in part the effect of
the Gospel, no one will deny. It is one of its blessed
results that fear and distrust of God are taken away,
and that we learn to trust and love Him. Nevertheless,
this is not what the New Testament means by reconciliation,
though it is one of its fruits.
To St. Paul the estrangement which the Christian
reconciliation has to overcome is indubitably two-sided;
there is something in God as well as something in man
which has to be dealt with before there can be peace.
Nay, the something on God's side is so incomparably
more serious that in comparison with it the something
on man's side simply passes out of view. It is God's
earnest dealing with the obstacle on His own side to
peace with man which prevails on man to believe in
the seriousness of His love, and to lay aside distrust.
It is God's earnest dealing with the obstacle on His
own side which constitutes the reconciliation; the story
of it is "the word of reconciliation"; when men receive
it, they receive (Rom. v. 10) the reconciliation. "Reconciliation"
in the New Testament sense is not something
which we accomplish when we lay aside our
enmity to God; it is something which God accomplished
when in the death of Christ He put away everything
that on His side meant estrangement, so that He might
come and preach peace. To deny this is to take St.
Paul's Gospel away root and branch. He always conceives
the Gospel as the revelation of God's wisdom
and love in view of a certain state of affairs as subsisting
between God and man. Now, what is the really
serious element in this situation? What is it that
makes a Gospel necessary? What is it that the wisdom
and love of God undertake to deal with, and do deal
with, in that marvellous way which constitutes the
Gospel? Is it man's distrust of God? is it man's
dislike, fear, antipathy, spiritual alienation? Not if we
accept the Apostle's teaching. The serious thing which
makes the Gospel necessary, and the putting away of
which constitutes the Gospel, is God's condemnation of
the world and its sin; it is God's wrath, "revealed from
heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men" (Rom. i. 16-18). The putting away of this is
"reconciliation": the preaching of this reconciliation is
the preaching of the Gospel.
Much impatience has been shown in the criticism
of this conception. Clever men have exhibited their
talent and courage by calling it "heathenish"; and
others have undertaken to apologise for St. Paul by
describing this objection as "modern." I cannot
understand how any one should feel entitled either to
flout the Apostle on this matter, or to take him under
his patronage. If any one ever had the sense to distinguish
between what is real and unreal in regard to
God, between what is true and false spiritually, it was
he; even with Ritschl on one side and Schmiedel on
the other he is not dwarfed, and may be permitted to
speak for himself. The wrath of God, the condemnation
of God resting on the sinful world, are not,
whatever speculative theologians may think, unreal
things: neither do they belong only to ancient times.
They are the most real things of which human nature
has any knowledge till it receives the reconciliation.
They are as real as a bad conscience; as real as
misery, impotence, and despair. And it is the glory
of the Gospel, as St. Paul understood it, that it deals
with them as real. It does not tell men that they are
illusions, and that only their own groundless fear and
distrust have ever stood between them and God. It
tells them that God has dealt seriously with these
serious things for their removal, that awful as they are
He has put them away by an awful demonstration of
His love; it tells them that God has made peace at an
infinite cost, and that the priceless peace is now freely
offered to them.
When St. Paul says that God has given him the
ministry of reconciliation, he means that he is a
preacher of this peace. He ministers reconciliation
to the world. His work has no doubt a hortatory
side, as we shall see, but that side is secondary. It
is not the main part of his vocation to tell men to
make their peace with God, but to tell them that God
has made peace with the world. At bottom, the
Gospel is not good advice, but good news. All the good
advice it gives is summed up in this—Receive the good
news. But if the good news be taken away; if we
cannot say, God has made peace, God has dealt
seriously with His condemnation of sin, so that it
no longer stands in the way of your return to Him;
if we cannot say, Here is the reconciliation, receive it,—then
for man's actual state we have no Gospel at all.
In the nineteenth verse St. Paul explains more fully
the way in which he is looking at the subject:This seems to be the force of ὡς: it is a violent supposition that
it means "since," or "for," and that ὅτι is a marginal interpretation
of it which has crept into the text.
"to
wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world
to Himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses,
and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation."
The English Authorised Version puts a comma
at Christ: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to
Himself." It is safe to say that "God was in Christ"
is a sentence which neither St. Paul nor any other
New Testament writer could have conceived; the
"was" and the "reconciling" must be taken together,
and "in Christ" is practically equivalent to "through
Christ" in the previous verse—God was by means of
Christ reconciling the world to Himself. "Reconciling,"
of course, must be taken in the sense already
explained. The sentence does not mean that God
was trying to convert men, or to prevail with them
to lay aside their enmity, but that He was disposing
of everything that on His part made peace impossible.
When Christ's work was done, the reconciliation of the
world was accomplished. When men were called to
receive it, they were called to a relation to God; not in
which they would no more be against Him—though
that is included—but in which they would no more
have Him against them (Hofmann). There would be
no condemnation thenceforth to those who were in
Christ Jesus.
The connexion of the words "not reckoning unto
them their trespasses, and having committed unto us
the word of reconciliation," is rather difficult. The
last clause certainly refers to something which took
place after the work of reconciliation had been wrought;
Paul was commissioned to tell the story of it. It
seems most probable that the other is co-ordinate with
this, so that both are in a sense the evidence for
the main proposition. It is as if he had said: "God
was by means of Christ establishing friendly relations
between the world and Himself, as appears from this,
that He does not reckon their trespasses unto them,This makes λογιζόμενος a true present, not an imperfect participle.
It quite dislocates the sentence if it is co-ordinated with καταλλάσσων,
and not with θέμενος.
and has made us preachers of His grace." The very
universality of the expression—reconciling a world to
Himself—is consistent only with an objective reconciliation.
It cannot mean that God was overcoming
the world's enmity (though that is the ulterior object)
it means that God was putting away His own condemnation
and wrath. When this was done, He could
send, and did send, men to declare that it was done;
and among these men, none had a profounder appreciation
of what God had wrought, and what he himself
had to declare as God's glad tidings, than the Apostle
Paul.
This is the point we reach in ver. 20: "We are
ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, as though
God were intreating you by us; we beseech you, on
behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God." The Apostle
has just told us that all is of God, but all is at the same
time "in Christ," or "through Christ." Hence it is
on Christ's behalf he comes forward; it is the furtherance
of Christ's interests he has at heart. Nay, it is
that same interest which is at the heart of the Father,
who desires now to glorify the Son; so that when Paul
appeals to men on Christ's behalf it is as though God
Himself entreated them. Most expositors notice the
amazing contrast between πρεσβεύομεν ("we are ambassadors")
and δεόμεθα ("we beseech you"). The ambassador,
as a rule, stands upon his dignity; he maintains
the greatness of the person whom he represents. But
Paul in this lowly passionate entreaty is not false to
his Master; he is preaching the Gospel in the spirit
of the Gospel; he shows that he has really learned of
Christ; the very conception of the ambassador descending
to entreaty is, as Calvin says, an incomparable
commendation of the grace of Christ. One can imagine
how Saul the Pharisee would have spoken on God's
behalf; with what rigour, what austerity, what unbending,
uncompromising assurance. But old things
have passed away; behold, they have become new.
This single verse illumines, as by a lightning flash,
the new world into which the Gospel has translated
Paul, the new man it has made of him. The fire that
burned in Christ's heart has caught hold in his; his
soul is tremulous with passion; he is conscious of the
grandeur of his calling, yet there is nothing that he
would not do to win men for his message. It would
go to his heart like a sword if he had to take up the
old lament, "Who hath believed our report?" In his
dignity as Christ's ambassador and as the mouthpiece
of God, in his humility, in his passionate earnestness,
in the urgency and directness of his appeal, St. Paul
is the supreme type and example of the Christian
minister. In the passage before us he presents the
appeal of the Gospel in its simplest form: wherever
he stands before men on Christ's behalf his prayer is,
"Be ye reconciled unto God." And once more we
must insist on the apostolic import of these words.
It is the misleading nuance of "reconcile" in English
that makes so many take them as if they meant, "Lay
aside your enmity to God; cease to regard Him with
distrust, hatred, and fear"; in other words, "Show
yourselves His friends." In St. Paul's lips they cannot
possibly mean anything but, "Accept His offered friendship;
enter into that peace which He has made for the
world through the death of His Son; believe that He
has at infinite cost put away all that on His part stood
between you and peace; receive the reconciliation."
The Received Text and the Authorised Version attach
the twenty-first verse to this exhortation by γὰρ ("for"):
"For Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our
behalf." The "for" is spurious, and though it is not
inept the sentence gains greatly in impressiveness by
its omission. The Apostle does not point out the
connexion for us: in simply declaring the manner in
which God reconciled the world to Himself—the process
by which, the cost at which, He made peace—he leaves
us to feel how vast is the boon which is offered to
us in the Gospel, how tremendous the responsibility
of rejecting it. To refuse "the reconciliation" is to
contemn the death in which the Sinless One was made
sin on our behalf.
This wonderful sentence is the inspired commentary
on the statement of ver. 15—"One died for all." It
takes us into the very heart of the Apostolic Gospel.
Just because it does so, it has always been felt to be
of critical importance, alike by those who welcome and
by those who reject it; it condenses and concentrates
in itself the attraction of Christ and the offence of
Christ. It is a counsel of despair to evade it. It is not
the puzzle of the New Testament, but the ultimate
solution of all puzzles; it is not an irrational quantity
that has to be eliminated or explained away, but the
key-stone of the whole system of apostolic thought.
It is not a blank obscurity in revelation, a spot of
impenetrable blackness; it is the focus in which the
reconciling love of God burns with the purest and intensest
flame; it is the fountain light of all day, the
master light of all seeing, in the Christian revelation.
Let us look at it more closely.
God, we must observe in the first place, is the subject.
"All" is of him in the work of reconciliation, and this
above all, that He made the Sinless One to be sin. I
have read a book on the Atonement which quoted this
sentence three times, or rather misquoted it, never once
recognising that an action of God is involved. But
without this, there is no coherence in the Apostle's
thoughts at all. Without this, there would be no explanation
of reconciliation as God's work. God reconciled
the world to Himself—made peace into which the world
might enter—in making Christ sin on its behalf. What
precisely this means we shall inquire further on; but
it is essential to remember, whatever it mean, that God
is the doer of it.
Observe next the description of Christ—"Him that
knew no sin." The Greek negative (μὴ), as Schmiedel
remarks, implies that this is regarded as the verdict of
some one else than the writer. It was Christ's own
verdict upon Himself. He whose words search our
very hearts, and bring to light unsuspected seeds of
badness, never Himself betrays the faintest consciousness
of guilt. He challenges His enemies directly:
"Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" It is the verdict
of all sincere human souls, as uttered by the soldier
who watched His cross—"Truly this was a righteous
man." It is the verdict even of the great enemy who
assailed Him again and again, and found nothing in
Him, and whose agents recognised Him as the Holy
One of God. Above all, it is the verdict of God. He
was the beloved Son, in whom the Father was well
pleased. For three-and-thirty years, in daily contact
with the world and its sins, Christ lived and yet knew
no sin. To His will and conscience it was a foreign
thing. What infinite worth that sinless life possessed
in God's sight! When He looked down to earth it
was the one absolutely precious thing. Filled full of
righteousness, absolutely well-pleasing in His eyes, it
was worth more to God than all the world beside.
Now, God reconciled the world to Himself—He made
a peace which could be proclaimed and offered to the
world—when, all sinless as Christ was, He made Him
to be sin on our behalf. What does this mean? Not,
exactly, that He made Him a sin-offering on our behalf.
The expression for a sin-offering is distinct (περὶ
ἁμαρτίας), and the parallelism with δικαιοσύνη in the
next clause forbids that reference here. The sin-offering
of the Old Testament can at most have pointed towards
and dimly suggested so tremendous an utterance as
this; and the profoundest word of the New Testament
cannot be adequately interpreted by anything in the
Old. When St. Paul says, "Him that knew no sin
God made sin," he must mean that in Christ on His
cross, by divine appointment, the extremest opposites
met and became one—incarnate righteousness and the
sin of the world. The sin is laid by God on the Sinless
One; its doom is laid on Him; His death is the execution
of the divine sentence upon it. When He dies,
He has put away sin; it no longer stands, as it once
stood, between God and the world. On the contrary,
God has made peace by this great transaction; He has
wrought out reconciliation; and its ministers can go
everywhere with this awful appeal: "Receive the reconciliation;
Him who knew no sin God hath made sin on
our behalf, and there is henceforth no condemnation to
them that are in Christ."
No one who has felt the power of this appeal will
be very anxious to defend the Apostolic Gospel from
the charges which are sometimes made against it.
When he is told that it is impossible for the doom
of sin to fall on the Sinless One, and that even if
it were conceivable it would be frightfully immoral,
he is not disquieted. He recognises in the moral
contradictions of this text the surest sign that the
secret of the Atonement is revealed in it: he feels
that God's work of reconciliation necessarily involves
such an identification of sinlessness and sin. He
knows that there is an appalling side to sin, and he
is ready to believe that there is an appalling side to
redemption also—a side the most distant sight of which
makes the proudest heart quail, and stops every mouth
before God. He knows that the salvation which he
needs must be one in which God's mercy comes through,
and not over, His judgment; and this is the redemption
which is in Christ Jesus. But without becoming controversial
on a subject on which more than on any
other the temper of controversy is unseemly, reference
may be made to the commonest form of objection to
the apostolic doctrine, in the sincere hope that some
one who has stumbled at that doctrine may see it more
truly. The objection I refer to discredits propitiation
in the alleged interest of the love of God. "We do
not need," the objectors say, "to propitiate an angry
God. This is a piece of heathenism, of which a
Christian ought to be ashamed. It is a libel on the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose name
is love, and who waits to be gracious." What are we
to say to such words, which are uttered as boldly as
if there were no possible reply, or rather as if the
Apostles had never written, or had been narrow-minded
unreceptive souls, who had not only failed to understand
their Master, but had taught with amazing perversity
the very opposite of what He taught on the most
essential of all points—the nature of God and His
relation to sinful men? We must say this. It is
quite true that we have not to propitiate an offended
God: the very fact upon which the Gospel proceeds is
that we cannot do any such thing. But it is not true
that no propitiation is needed. As truly as guilt is a
real thing, as truly as God's condemnation of sin is
a real thing, a propitiation is needed. And it is here,
I think, that those who make the objection referred to
part company, not only with St. Paul, but with all the
Apostles. God is love, they say, and therefore He
does not require a propitiation. God is love, say the
Apostles, and therefore He provides a propitiation.
Which of these doctrines appeals best to the conscience?
Which of them gives reality, and contents, and substance,
to the love of God? Is it not the apostolic
doctrine? Does not the other cut out and cast away
that very thing which made the soul of God's love to
Paul and John? "Herein is love, not that we loved
God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins." "God commendeth His love
toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us.... Him that knew no sin He made to be
sin on our behalf." That is how they spoke in the
beginning of the Gospel, and so let us speak. Nobody
has any right to borrow the words "God is love"
from an apostle, and then to put them in circulation
after carefully emptying them of their apostolic import.
Still less has any one a right to use them as an
argument against the very thing in which the Apostles
placed their meaning. But this is what they do who
appeal to love against propitiation. To take the condemnation
out of the Cross is to take the nerve out
of the Gospel; it will cease to hold men's hearts with
its original power when the reconciliation which is
preached through it contains the mercy, but not the
judgment of God. Its whole virtue, its consistency
with God's character, its aptness to man's need, its
real dimensions as a revelation of love, depend ultimately
on this, that mercy comes to us in it through
judgment.
In the last words of the passage the Apostle tells
us the object of this great interposition of God: "He
made Christ to be sin on our behalf, that we might
become the righteousness of God in Him." Our condemnation
is made His; it is accepted, exhausted,
annihilated, on His cross; and when we receive the
reconciliation—when we humble ourselves to be forgiven
and restored at this infinite cost—there is no longer
condemnation for us: we are justified by our faith,
and have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. This is what is meant by becoming the
righteousness of God in Him. It is not, as the very
next sentence suggests, all that is included in the
Christian salvation, but it is all that the words themselves
contain. "In Him" has all promise in it, as well as
the present possession of reconciliation, with which the
Christian life begins; but it is this present possession,
and not the promise involved in it, which St. Paul
describes as the righteousness of God. In Christ,
that Christ who died for us, and in Him in virtue of
that death which by exhausting condemnation put
away sin, we are accepted in God's sight.
THE SIGNS OF AN APOSTLE
"And working together with Him we intreat also that ye receive
not the grace of God in vain (for He saith,
At an acceptable time I hearkened unto thee,
And in a day of salvation did I succour thee:
behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of
salvation): giving no occasion of stumbling in anything, that our
ministration be not blamed; but in everything commending ourselves,
as ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities,
in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in
watchings, in fastings; in pureness, in knowledge, in long-suffering,
in kindness, in the Holy Ghost, in love unfeigned, in the word of
truth, in the power of God; by the armour of righteousness on the
right hand and on the left, by glory and dishonour, by evil report and
good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well
known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed;
as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich;
as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
"Our mouth is open unto you, O Corinthians, our heart is enlarged.
Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own
affections. Now for a recompense in like kind (I speak as unto my
children), be ye also enlarged."—2 Cor. vi. 1-13 (R.V.).
The ministry of the Gospel is a ministry of reconciliation;
the preacher of the Gospel is primarily
an evangelist. He has to proclaim that wonderful
grace of God which made peace between heaven and
earth through the blood of the Cross, and he has to
urge men to receive it. Until this is done, there is
nothing else that he can do. But when sinful men
have welcomed the glad tidings, when they have consented
to accept the peace bought for them with so
great a price, when they have endured to be forgiven
and restored to God's favour, not for what they are,
nor for what they are going to be, but solely for what
Christ did for them on the cross, then a new situation
is created, and the minister of the Gospel has a new
task. It is to that situation St. Paul addresses himself
here. Recognising the Corinthians as people reconciled
to God by the death of His Son, he entreats them not
to receive the grace of God in vain. He does so,
according to our Bibles, as a fellow-worker with God.
This is probably right, though some would take the word
as in chap. i. 24, and make it mean "as fellow-workers
with you." But it is more natural, when we look to
what precedes, to think that St. Paul is here identifying
himself with God's interest in the world, and that he
speaks out of the proud consciousness of doing so.
"All is of God," in the great work of redemption; but
God does not disdain the sympathetic co-operation of
men whose hearts He has touched.
But what is meant by receiving the grace of God in
vain, or to no purpose? That might be done in an
infinite variety of ways, and in reading the words for
edification we naturally grasp at any clue suggested by
our circumstances. An expositor is bound to seek his
clue rather in the circumstances of the Corinthians; and
if we have regard to the general tenor of this Epistle,
and especially to such a passage as chap. xi. 4, we
shall find the true interpretation without difficulty.
Paul has explained his Gospel—his proclamation of
Jesus as Universal Redeemer in virtue of His dying
the sinner's death, and as Universal Lord in virtue of
His resurrection from the dead—so explicitly, because
he fears lest through the influence of some false teacher
the minds of the Corinthians should be corrupted from
the simplicity that is toward Christ. It would be
receiving the grace of God in vain, if, after receiving
those truths concerning Christ which he had taught
them, they were to give up his Gospel for another in
which these truths had no place. This is what he
dreads and deprecates, both in Corinth and Galatia:
the precipitate removal from the grace of Christ to
another Gospel which is no Gospel at all, but a
subversion of the truth. This is what he means by
receiving the grace of God in vain.
There are some minds to which this will not be
impressive, some to which it will only be provoking.
It will seem irrelevant and pithless to those who take
for granted the finality of the distinction between
religion and theology, or between the theory, as it is
called, and the fact of the Atonement. But for St. Paul,
as for all sufficiently earnest and vigorous minds, there
is a point at which these distinctions disappear. A
certain theory is seen to be essential to the fact, a
certain theology to be the constitutive force in the
religion. The death of Christ was what it was to him
only because it was capable of a certain interpretation:
his theory of it, if we choose to put it so, gave it its
power over him. The love of Christ constrained him
"because he thus judged"—i.e., because he construed
it to his intelligence in a way which showed it to be
irresistible. If these interpretations and constructions
are rejected, it must not be in the name of "fact" as
opposed to "theory," but in the name of other interpretations
more adequate and constraining. A fact of
which there is absolutely no theory is a fact which is
without relation to anything in the universe—a mere
irrelevance in man's mind—a blank incredibility—a
rock in the sky. Paul's "theory" about Christ's death
for sin was not to him an excrescence on the Gospel,
or a superfluous appendage to it: it was itself the
Gospel; it was the thing in which the very soul of
God's redeeming love was brought to light; it was the
condition under which the love of Christ became to
him a constraining power; to receive it and then reject
it was to receive the grace of God in vain.
This does not preclude us from the edifying application
of these words which a modern reader almost
instinctively makes. Peace with God is the first and
deepest need of the sinful soul, but it is not the sum-total
of salvation. It would, indeed, be received in
vain, if the soul did not on the basis of it proceed to
build up the new life in new purity and power. The
failure to do this is, unhappily, only too common.
There is no mechanical guarantee for the fruits of the
Spirit; no assurance, such as would make this appeal
unnecessary, that every man who has received the
word of reconciliation will also walk in newness of life.
But if an evangelical profession, and an immoral life,
are the ugliest combination of which human nature is
capable, the force of this appeal ought to be felt by the
weakest and the worst. "The Son of God loved me,
and gave Himself for me": can any of us hide that
word in his heart, and live on as if it meant nothing
at all?
Paul emphasises his appeal to the Corinthians by
a striking quotation from an ancient prophet (Isa.
xlix. 8): "At an acceptable time did I hearken
unto thee, And in a day of salvation did I succour
thee"; and he points it by the joyful exclamation:
"Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the
day of salvation." The passage in Isaiah refers to the
servant of Jehovah, and some scholars would insist
that even in the quotation a primary application must
be made to Christ. The ambassadors of the Gospel
represent His interest (chap. v. 20); this verse is, as it
were, the answer to His prayer: "Father, the hour is
come: glorify Thy Son." In answering the Son, the
Father introduces the era of grace for all who are,
or shall be, Christ's: behold, now is the time in which
God shows us favour; now is the day on which He
saves us. This is rather scholastic than apostolic,
and it is far more probable that St. Paul borrows the
prophet's words, as he often does, because they suit
him, without thinking of their original application.
What is striking in the passage, and characteristic both
of the writer and of the New Testament, is the union
of urgency and triumph in the tone. "Now" does
certainly mean "now or never"; but more prominently
still it means "in a time so favoured as this: in a time
so graced with opportunity." The best illustration of
it is the saying of Jesus to the Apostles: "Blessed are
your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.
For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and
righteous men have desired to see those things which
ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those
things which ye hear, and have not heard them." Now,
that we live under the reign of grace; now, when God's
redeeming love, omnipotent to save, shines on us from
the Cross; now, that the last days have come, and the
Judge is at the door, let us with all seriousness, and
all joy, work out our own salvation, lest we make the
grace of God of no effect.
St. Paul is as careful himself as he would have the
Corinthians to be. He does not wish them to receive
the Gospel in vain, and he takes pains that it shall
not be frustrated through any fault of his: "working
together with God we intreat you ... giving no
occasion of stumbling in anything, that our ministration
be not blamed." It is almost implied in a sentence
like this that there are people who will be glad of an
excuse not to listen to the Gospel, or not to take it
seriously, and that they will look for such an excuse
in the conduct of its ministers. Anything in the
minister to which objection can be raised will be used
as a shield against the Gospel. It does not matter that
in nine cases out of ten this plea for declining the grace
of God is impudent hypocrisy; it is one which the non-Christian
should never have. If it is not the chief end
of the evangelist to give no occasion of stumbling, it is
one of his chief rules. This is a matter on which Jesus
lays great stress. The severest words He ever spoke
were spoken against those whose conduct made faith
hard and unbelief easy. Of course they were spoken
to all, but they have special application to those who
are so directly identified with the Gospel as its ministers.
It is to them men naturally look for the proof of what
grace does. If its reception has been in vain in them;
if they have not learned the spirit of their message; if
their pride, or indolence, or avarice, or ill-nature, provoke
the anger or contempt of those to whom they
preach,—then their ministration is blamed, and the
shadow of that censure falls upon their message. The
grace of God which has to be proclaimed through
human lips, and to attest itself by its power over
human lives, might seem to be put in this way to too
great hazard in the world; but it has God behind it,
or rather it is itself God at work in His ministers as
their humility and fidelity allow Him; and in spite of
the occasions of stumbling for which there is no excuse,
God is always able to make grace prevail. Through
the faults of its ministers, nay, sometimes even with
those faults as a foil, men see how good and how
strong that grace is.
It is not easy to comment on the glowing passage
(vv. 4-10) in which St. Paul expands this sober habit
of giving no occasion of stumbling in anything into
a description of his apostolic ministry. Logically, its
value is obvious enough. He means the Corinthians
to feel that if they turn away from the Gospel which
he has preached to them they are passing censure
lightly on a life of unparalleled devotion and power.
He commends himself to them, as God's servants ought
always to do,Observe that it is ὡς Θεοῦ διάκονοι, not διακόνους.
by the life which he leads in the exercise
of his ministry; and to reject his Gospel is to condemn
his life as worthless or misspent. Will they venture
to do that when they are reminded of what it is, and
when they feel that it is all this for them? No right-minded
man will, without provocation, speak about
himself, but Paul is doubly protected. He is challenged,
by the threatened desertion from the Gospel of some,
at least, of the Corinthians; and it is not so much
of himself he speaks, as of the ministers of Christ; not
so much on his own behalf, as on behalf of the Gospel.
The fountains of the great deep are broken up within
him as he thinks of what is at issue; he is in all
straits, as he begins, and can speak only in unconnected
words, one at a time; but before he stops he has won
his liberty, and pours out his soul without restraint.
It is needless to comment on each of the eight-and-twenty
separate phrases in which St. Paul characterises
his life as a minister of the Gospel. But there
are what might be called breathing-places, if not logical
pauses, in the outburst of feeling, and these, as it
happens, coincide with the introduction of new aspects
of his work. (1) At first he depicts exclusively, and
in single words, its passive side. Christ had shown
him at his conversion how great things he must suffer
for His name's sake (Acts ix. 16), and here is his own
confirmation of the Lord's word: he has ministered
"in much patience—in afflictions, in necessities, in
distresses; in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults"—where
the enmity of men was conspicuous; "in labours,
in watchings, in fastings"—freely exacted by his own
devotion. These nine words are all, in a manner,
subordinated to "much patience"; his brave endurance
was abundantly shown in every variety of pain and
distress. (2) At ver. 6 he makes a new start, and
now it is not the passive and physical aspect of his
work that is in view, but the active and spiritual. All
that weight of suffering did not extinguish in him
the virtues of the new life, or the special gifts of the
Christian minister. He wrought, he reminds them, "in
purity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in
the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of
truth, in the power of God." The precise import of
some of these expressions may be doubtful, but this
is of less consequence than the general tenor of the
whole, which is unmistakable. Probably some of the
terms, strictly taken, would cross each other. Thus
the Holy Spirit and the power of God, if we compare
such passages as 1 Cor. ii. 4, 1 Thess. i. 5, are very
nearly akin. The same remark would apply to
"knowledge," and to "the word of truth," if the latter
refers, as I cannot but think it does,Some, because of the want of the article, make it equivalent to
"veracity."
to the Gospel.
"Purity" is naturally taken in the widest sense, and
"undissembled love" is peculiarly appropriate when
we think of the feelings with which some of the
Corinthians regarded Paul. But the main thing to
notice is how the "much endurance," which, to a superficial
observer, is the most conspicuous characteristic of
the Apostle's ministry, is balanced by a great manifestation
of spiritual force from within. Of all men in
the world he was the weakest to look at, the most
battered, burdened, and depressed, yet no one else had
in him such a fountain as he of the most powerful and
gracious life. And then (3) after another pause, marked
this time by a slight change in the construction (from
ἐν to διὰ), he goes on to enlarge upon the whole
conditions under which his ministry is fulfilled, and
especially on the extraordinary contrasts which are
reconciled in it. We commend ourselves in our work
he says, "by the armour of righteousness on the right
hand and the left, by glory and dishonour, by evil
report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as
unknown, and yet coming to be well known; as dying,
and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as
sorrowing, yet ever rejoicing; as poor, yet making
many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all
things." Here again it is not the details that are
important, but the whole, and yet the details require
notice. The armour of righteousness is that which
righteousness supplies, or it may even be that which
righteousness is: Paul's character equips him right and
left; it is both spear and shield, and makes him
competent either for attack or defence. Without
righteousness, in this sense of integrity, he could not
commend himself in his work as a minister of God.Beet, however, takes it in the technical sense: justification by
faith is the preacher's sword and shield.
But not only does his real character commend him;
his reputation does the same service, however various
that reputation may be. Through honour and dishonour,
through evil report and good report—through the truth
that is told about him, and through the lies—through
the esteem of his friends, the malignity of his enemies,
the contempt of strangers—the same man comes out,
in the same character, devoted always in the same
spirit to the same calling. It is indeed his very devotion
which produces these opposite estimates, and hence,
inconsistent as they are, they agree in recommending
him as a servant of God. Some said "He is beside
himself," and others would have plucked out their eyes
for his sake, yet both these extremely opposite attitudes
were produced by the very same thing—the passionate
earnestness with which he served Christ in the Gospel.
There are good scholars who think that the clauses
beginning "as deceivers, and true," are the Apostle's
own commentary on "through evil report and good
report"; in other words, that in these clauses he is
giving samples of the way in which he was spoken of,
to his honour or dishonour, and glorying that honour
and dishonour alike only guaranteed more thoroughly
his claim to be a minister of God. This might suit the
first two pairs of contrasts ("as deceivers, and true;
as unknown, and gaining recognition"), but it does not
suit the next ("as dying, and behold we live"), in which,
as in those that follow, the Apostle is not repeating
what was said by others, but speaking for himself, and
stating truth equally on both sides of the account.
After the first pair, there is no "dishonour," or "evil
report," in any of the states which he contrasts with
each other: though opposites, they have each their
truth, and the power and beauty of the passage, and of
the life which it describes, lie simply in this, that both
are true, and that through all such contrasts St. Paul
can prove himself the same loyal minister of the
reconciliation.
Each pair of opposites might furnish by itself a
subject for discourse, but what we are rather concerned
with is the impression produced by the whole. In
their variety they give us a vivid idea of the range of
St. Paul's experiences; in the regularity with which
he puts the higher last, and in the climax with which
he concludes, they show the victorious spirit with
which he confronted all that various life. An ordinary
Christian—an ordinary minister of the Gospel—may
well feel, as he reads, that his own life is by comparison
empty and commonplace. There is not that
terrible pressure on him from without; there is not
that irrepressible fountain of grace within; there is not
that triumphant spirit which can subdue all the world
contains—honour and dishonour, evil report and good
report—and make it pay tribute to the Gospel, and to
himself as a Gospel minister. Yet the world has still
all possible experiences ready for those who give
themselves to the service of God with the wholeheartedness
of Paul: it will show them its best and its
worst; its reverence, affection, and praise; its hatred,
its indifference, its scorn. And it is in the facing of
all such experiences by God's ministers that the ministry
receives its highest attestation: they are enabled to
turn all to profit; in ignominy and in honour alike
they are made more than conquerors through Him
who loved them. St. Paul's plea rises involuntarily
into a pæan; he begins, as we saw, with the embarrassed
tone of a man who wishes to persuade others
that he has taken sincere pains not to frustrate his
work by faults he could have avoided—"giving no
occasion of stumbling in anything, that the ministry be
not blamed"; but he is carried higher and higher, as
the tide of feeling rises within him, till it sets him
beyond the reach of blame or praise—at Christ's right
hand, where all things are his. Here is a signal fulfilment
of that word of the Lord: "I am come that they
might have life, and might have it more abundantly."
Who could have it more abundantly, more triumphantly
strong through all its vicissitudes, than the man who
dictated these lines?
The passage closes with an appeal in which Paul
descends from this supreme height to the most direct
and affectionate address. He names his readers by
name: "Our mouth is open unto you, O Corinthians;Rara et præsentissima appellatio (Bengel).
our heart is enlarged." He means that he has treated
them with the utmost frankness and cordiality. With
strangers we use reserve; we do not let ourselves go,
nor indulge in any effusion of heart. But he has not
made strangers of them; he has relieved his overcharged
heart before them, and he has established a
new claim on their confidence in doing so. "Ye are
not straitened in us," he writes; that is, "The awkwardness
and constraint of which you are conscious in your
relations with me are not due to anything on my side;
my heart has been made wide, and you have plenty
of room in it. But you are straitened in your own
affections. It is your hearts that are narrow: cramped
and confined with unworthy suspicions, and with the
feeling that you have done me a wrong which you are not
quite prepared to rectify. Overcome these ungenerous
thoughts at once. Give me a recompense in kind for
my treatment of you. I have opened my heart wide,
to you and for you; open your hearts as freely, to me
and for me. I am your father in Christ, and I have a
right to this from my children."
When we take this passage as a whole, in its original
bearings, one thing is plain: that want of love and
confidence between the minister of the Gospel and those
to whom he ministers has great power to frustrate the
grace of God. There may have been a real revival
under the minister's preaching—a real reception of
the grace which he proclaims—but all will be in vain
if mutual confidence fails. If he gives occasion of
stumbling in something, and the ministry is blamed;
or if malice and falsehood sow the seeds of dissension
between him and his brethren, the grand condition of
an effective ministry is gone. "Beloved, let us love
one another," if we do not wish the virtue of the Cross
to be of no effect in us.
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM
"Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship
have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light
with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or
what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement
hath a temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the
living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them;
and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Wherefore
Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord,
And touch no unclean thing;
And I will receive you,
And will be to you a Father,
And ye shall be to Me sons and daughters,
saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, beloved,
let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit,
perfecting holiness in the fear of God."—2 Cor. vi. 14-vii. 1 (R.V.).
This is one of the most peculiar passages in the
New Testament. Even a careless reader must
feel that there is something abrupt and unexpected
in it; it jolts the mind as a stone on the road does a
carriage wheel. Paul has been begging the Corinthians
to treat him with the same love and confidence which
he has always shown to them, and he urges this claim
upon them up to ver. 13. Then comes this passage
about the relation of Christians to the world. Then
again, at chap. vii. 2—"Open your hearts to us; we
wronged no man, we corrupted no man, we took
advantage of no man"—he returns to the old subject
without the least mark of transition. If everything
were omitted from chap. vi. 14 to chap. vii. 1 inclusive,
the continuity both of thought and feeling would be
much more striking. This consideration alone has
induced many scholars to believe that these verses do
not occupy their original place. The ingenious suggestion
has been made that they are a fragment of the
letter to which the Apostle refers in the First Epistle
(chap. v. 9): the sentiment, and to some extent even
the words, favour this conjecture. But as there is no
external authority for any conjecture whatever, and
no variation in the text, such suggestions can never
become conclusive. It is always possible that, on
reading over his letter, the Apostle himself may have
inserted a paragraph breaking to some extent the
closeness of the original connexion. If there is nothing
in the contents of the section inconsistent with his
mind, the breach of continuity is not enough to discredit
it.
Some, however, have gone further than this. They
have pointed to the strange formulæ of quotation—"as
God said," "saith the Lord," "saith the Lord Almighty"—as
unlike Paul. Even the main idea of the passage—"touch
not any unclean thing"—is asserted to be
at variance with his principles. A narrow Jewish
Christian might, it is said, have expressed this shrinking
from what is unclean, in the sense of being associated
with idolatry, but not the great Apostle of liberty. At
all events he would have taken care, in giving such
an advice under special circumstances, to safeguard
the principle of freedom. And, finally, an argument is
drawn from language. The only point at which it is
even plausible is that which touches upon the use
of the terms "flesh" and "spirit" in chap. vii. 1.
Schmiedel, who has an admirable excursus on the
whole question, decides that this, and this only, is
certainly un-Pauline. It is certainly unusual in Paul,
but I do not think we can say more. The "rigour
and vigour" with which Paul's use of these terms is
investigated seems to me largely misplaced. They did
undoubtedly tend to become technical in his mind, but
words so universally and so vaguely used could never
become simply technical. If any contemporary of Paul
could have written, "Let us cleanse ourselves from all
defilement of flesh and spirit," then Paul himself could
have written it. Language offers the same latitudes
and liberties to everybody, and one could not imagine
a subject which tempted less to technicality than the
one urged in these verses. Whatever the explanation
of their apparently irrelevant insertion here, I can see
nothing in them alien to Paul. Puritanism is certainly
more akin to the Old Testament than to the New, and
that may explain the instinctiveness with which the
writer seems to turn to the law and the prophets, and
the abundance of his quotations; but though "all
things are lawful" to the Christian, Puritanism has a
place in the New Testament too. There is no conception
of "holiness" into which the idea of "separation"
does not enter; and though the balance of
elements may vary in the New Testament as compared
with the Old, none can be wanting. From this point
of view we can best examine the meaning and application
of the passage. If a connexion is craved, the
best, I think, is that furnished by a combination of
Calvin and Meyer. Quasi recuperata auctoritate, says
Calvin, liberius jam eos objurgat: this supplies a link
of feeling between vv. 13 and 14. A link of thought
is supplied if we consider with Meyer that inattention
to the rule of life here laid down was a notable cause
of receiving the grace of God in vain (ver. 1).An ingenious defence of the place of these verses has been made
by Godet in his Introduction to St. Paul's Epistles. At chap. vi. 10
the Apostle suddenly stops, amazed, as it were, at himself and at what
the Spirit has just dictated to him. His heart swells, and he longs to
embrace the thankless Church to which he writes. What can be
the cause of its ingratitude? It is this. He has inexorably exacted
from them a sacrifice claimed by their Christian profession—abstinence
from banquets, etc., in idol temples (1 Cor. x.). But he has had no
choice; the promises God makes to His sons and daughters are made
on condition of such separation. Hence the entreaty in vii. 2 f.,
"Make room for me in your hearts: I have not deserved ill of any
one by what I have done."—Introduction, p. 381.
Let
us notice (1) the moral demand of the passage; (2) the
assumption on which it rests; (3) the Divine promise
which inspires its observance.
(1) The moral demand is first put in the negative
form: "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers." The
peculiar word ἑτεροζυγοῦντες ("unequally yoked") has a
cognate form in Lev. xix. 19, in the law which forbids
the breeding of hybrid animals. God has established
a good physical order in the world, and it is not to
be confounded and disfigured by the mixing of species.
It is that law (or perhaps another form of it in Deut.
xxii. 10, forbidding an Israelite to plough with an ox
and an ass under the same yoke) that is applied in an
ethical sense in this passage. There is a wholesome
moral order in the world also, and it is not to be confused
by the association of its different kinds. The
common application of this text to the marriage of
Christians and non-Christians is legitimate, but too
narrow. The text prohibits every kind of union in
which the separate character and interest of the Christian
lose anything of their distinctiveness and integrity.
This is brought out more strongly in the free quotation
from Isa. lii. 11 in ver. 17: "Come out from among
them, and be separate, saith the Lord, and touch not
anything unclean." These words were originally addressed
to the priests who, on the redemption of Israel
from Babylon, were to carry the sacred temple vessels
back to Jerusalem. But we must remember that, though
they are Old Testament words, they are quoted by a
New Testament writer, who inevitably puts his own
meaning into them. "The unclean thing" which no
Christian is to touch is not to be taken in a precise
Levitical sense; it covers, and I have no doubt was
intended by the writer to cover, all that it suggests to
any simple Christian mind now. We are to have no
compromising connexion with anything in the world
which is alien to God. Let us be as loving and conciliatory
as we please, but as long as the world is what
it is, the Christian life can only maintain itself in it in
an attitude of protest. There always will be things
and people to whom the Christian has to say No!
But the moral demand of the passage is put in a
more positive form in the last verse: "Let us cleanse
ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting
holiness in the fear of God." That is the ideal
of the Christian life. There is something to be overcome
and put away; there is something to be wrought
out and completed; there is a spiritual element or
atmosphere—the fear of God—in which alone these
tasks can be accomplished. The fear of God is an
Old Testament name for true religion, and even under
the New Testament it holds its place. The Seraphim
still veil their faces while they cry "Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord of Hosts," and still we must feel that great
awe descend upon our hearts if we would be partakers
of His holiness. It is this which withers up sin to the
root, and enables us to cleanse ourselves from all
defilement of flesh and spirit. St. Paul includes himself
in his exhortation here: it is one duty, one ideal,
which is set before all. The prompt decisive side of it
is represented in καθαρίσωμεν ("let us cleanse": observe
the aorist); its patient laborious side in ἐπιτελοῦντες
ἁγιωσύνην ("carrying holiness to completion)." Almost
everybody in a Christian Church makes a beginning
with this task: we cleanse ourselves from obvious and
superficial defilements; but how few carry the work
on into the spirit, how few carry it on ceaselessly
towards perfection. As year after year rolls by, as
the various experiences of his come to us with their
lessons and their discipline from God, as we see the
lives of others, here sinking ever deeper and deeper
into the corruptions of the world, there rising daily
nearer and nearer to the perfect holiness which is their
goal, does not this demand assert its power over us?
Is it not a great thing, a worthy thing, that we should
set ourselves to purge away from our whole nature,
outward and inward, whatever cannot abide the holy
eye of God; and that we should regard Christian
holiness, not as a subject for casual thoughts once a
week, but as the task to be taken up anew, with
unwearying diligence, every day we live? Let us be
in earnest with this, for surely God is in earnest.
(2) Observe now the assumption on which the demand
not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers is based.
It is that there are two ethical or spiritual interests in
the world, and that these are fundamentally inconsistent
with each other. This implies that in choosing
the one, the other has to be rejected. But it implies
more: it implies that at bottom there are only two
kinds of people in the world—those who identify themselves
with the one of these interests, and those who
identify themselves with the other.
Now, as long as this is kept in an abstract form
people do not quarrel with it. They have no objection
to admit that good and evil are the only spiritual forces
in the world, and that they are mutually exclusive.
But many will not admit that there are only two kinds
of persons in the world, answering to these two forces.
They would rather say there is only one kind of persons,
in whom these forces are with infinite varieties and modifications
combined. This seems more tolerant, more
humane, more capable of explaining the amazing mixtures
and inconsistencies we see in human lives. But
it is not more true. It is a more penetrating insight
which judges that every man—despite his range of
neutrality—would in the last resort choose his side;
would, in short, in a crisis of the proper kind, prove
finally that he was not good and bad, but good or bad.
We cannot pretend to judge others, but sometimes men
judge themselves, and always God can judge. And
there is an instinct in those who are perfecting holiness
in the fear of God which tells them, without in the
least making them Pharisaical, not only what things,
but what persons—not only what ideas and practices,
but what individual characters—are not to be made
friends of. It is no pride, or scorn, or censoriousness,
which speaks thus, but the voice of all Christian experience.
It is recognised at once where the young are
concerned: people are careful of the friends their
children make, and a schoolmaster will dismiss inexorably,
not only a bad habit, but a bad boy, from the
school. It ought to be recognised just as easily in
maturity as in childhood: there are men and women,
as well as boys and girls, who distinctly represent evil,
and whose society is to be declined. To protest against
them, to repel them, to resent their life and conduct as
morally offensive, is a Christian duty; it is the first
step towards evangelising them.
It is worth noticing in the passage before us how the
Apostle, starting from abstract ideas, descends, as he
becomes more urgent, into personal relations. What
fellowship have righteousness and lawlessness? None.
What communion has light with darkness? None.
What concord has Christ with Belial? Here the
persons come in who are the heads, or representatives,
of the opposing moral interests, and it is only now that
we feel the completeness of the antagonism. The
interest of holiness is gathered up in Christ; the
interest of evil in the great adversary; and they have
nothing in common. And so with the believer and the
unbeliever. Of course there is ground on which they
can meet: the same sun shines on them, the same soil
supports them, they breathe the same air. But in all
that is indicated by those two names—believer and
unbeliever—they stand quite apart; and the distinction
thus indicated reaches deeper than any bond of union.
It is not denied that the unbeliever may have much
that is admirable about him; but for the believer the
one supremely important thing in the world is that
which the unbeliever denies, and therefore the more he
is in earnest the less can he afford the unbeliever's
friendship. We need all the help we can get to fight
the good fight of faith, and to perfect holiness in the
fear of God; and a friend whose silence numbs faith,
or whose words trouble it, is a friend no earnest Christian
dare keep. Words like these would not seem so
hard if the common faith of Christians were felt to be
a real bond of union among them, and if the recoil from
the unbelieving world were seen to be the action of the
whole Christian society, the instinct of self-preservation
in the new Christian life. But, at whatever risk of
seeming harsh, it must be repeated that there has
never been a state of affairs in the world in which the
commandment had no meaning, "Come out from among
them, and be ye separate"; nor an obedience to this
commandment which did not involve separation from
persons as well as from principles.
(3) But what bulks most largely in the passage is
the series of divine promises which are to inspire and
sustain obedience. The separations which an earnest
Christian life requires are not without their compensation;
to leave the world is to be welcomed by God. It
is probable that the pernicious association which the
writer had immediately in view was association with
the heathen in their worship, or at least in their sacrificial
feasts. At all events it is the inconsistency of
this with the worship of the true God that forms the
climax of his expostulation—What agreement hath a
temple of God with idols? and it is to this, again, that
the encouraging promises are attached. "We," says
the Apostle, "are a temple of the living God." This
carries with it all that he has claimed: for a temple
means a house in which God dwells, and God can only
dwell in a holy place. Pagans and Jews alike recognised
the sanctity of their temples: nothing was guarded
more jealously; nothing, if violated, was more promptly
and terribly avenged. Paul had seen the day when he
gave his vote to shed the blood of a man who had
spoken disrespectfully of the Temple at Jerusalem, and
the day was coming when he himself was to run the
risk of his life on the mere suspicion that he had taken
a pagan into the holy place. He expects Christians to
be as much in earnest as Jews to keep the sanctity of
God's house inviolate; and now, he says, that house
are we: it is ourselves we have to keep unspotted from
the world.
We are God's temple in accordance with the central
promise of the old covenant: as God said, "I will dwell
in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and
they shall be My people." The original of this is
Lev. xxvi. 11, 12. The Apostle, as has been observed
already, takes the Old Testament words in a New
Testament sense: as they stand here in Second
Corinthians they mean something much more intimate
and profound than in their old place in Leviticus. But
even there, he tells us, they are a promise to us. What
God speaks, He speaks to His people, and speaks once
for all. And if the divine presence in the camp of
Israel—a presence represented by the Ark and its
tent—was to consecrate that nation to Jehovah, and
inspire them with zeal to keep the camp clean, that
nothing might offend the eyes of His glory, how much
more ought those whom God has visited in His Son,
those in whom He dwells through His Spirit, to cleanse
themselves from every defilement, and make their souls
fit for His habitation? After repeating the charge to
come out and be separate, the writer heaps up new
promises, in which the letter and the spirit of various
Old Testament passages are freely combined.So freely that Ewald thinks the words from κἀγὼ εἰσδέξομαι onward
are a quotation from some unknown source: as, e.g., Eph. v. 14.
The
principal one seems to be 2 Sam. vii., which contains
the promises originally made to Solomon. At ver. 14
of that chapter we have the idea of the paternal and
filial relation, and at ver. 8 the speaker is described in
the LXX., as here, as the Lord Almighty. But passages
like Jer. xxxi. 1, 9, also doubtless floated through the
writer's mind, and it is the substance, not the form,
which is the main thing. The very freedom with which
they are reproduced shows us how thoroughly the
writer is at home, and how confident he is that he
is making the right and natural application of these
ancient promises.
Separate yourselves, for you are God's temple:
separate yourselves, and you will be sons and daughters
of the Lord Almighty, and He will be your Father.
Hæc una ratio instar mille esse debet. The friendship
of the world, as James reminds us, is enmity with God;
it is the consoling side of the same truth that separation
from the world means friendship with God. It
does not mean solitude, but a more blessed society;
not renunciation of love, but admission to the only love
which satisfies the soul, because that for which the soul
was made. The Puritanism of the New Testament is
no harsh, repellent thing, which eradicates the affections,
and makes life bleak and barren; it is the condition
under which the heart is opened to the love of God,
and filled with all comfort and joy in obedience. With
Him on our side—with the promise of His indwelling
Spirit to sanctify us, of His fatherly kindness to enrich
and protect us—shall we not obey the exhortation to
come out and be separate, to cleanse ourselves from all
that defiles, to perfect holiness in His fear?
REPENTANCE UNTO LIFE
"Open your hearts to us: we wronged no man, we corrupted no
man, we took advantage of no man. I say it not to condemn you:
for I have said before, that ye are in our hearts to die together and
live together. Great is my boldness of speech toward you, great is
my glorying on your behalf: I am filled with comfort, I overflow with
joy in an our affliction.
"For even when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no
relief, but we were afflicted on every side; without were fightings,
within were fears. Nevertheless He that comforteth the lowly, even
God, comforted us by the coming of Titus; and not by his coming
only, but also by the comfort wherewith he was comforted in you,
while he told us your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me; so
that I rejoiced yet more. For though I made you sorry with my
epistle, I do not regret it, though I did regret; for I see that that
epistle made you sorry, though but for a season. Now I rejoice,
not that ye were made sorry, but that ye were made sorry unto
repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly sort, that ye
might suffer loss by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance
unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret: but
the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold, this selfsame
thing, that ye were made sorry after a godly sort, what earnest care
it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation,
yea, what fear, yea, what longing, yea, what zeal, yea, what
avenging! In everything ye approved yourselves to be pure in the
matter. So although I wrote unto you, I wrote not for his cause that
did the wrong, nor for his cause that suffered the wrong, but that
your earnest care for us might be made manifest unto you in the sight
of God. Therefore we have been comforted: and in our comfort we
joyed the more exceedingly for the joy of Titus, because his spirit
hath been refreshed by you all. For if in anything I have gloried to
him on your behalf, I was not put to shame; but as we spake all
things to you in truth, so our glorying also, which I made before
Titus, was found to be truth. And his inward affection is more
abundantly toward you, whilst he remembereth the obedience of you
all, how with fear and trembling ye received him. I rejoice that in
everything I am of good courage concerning you."—2 Cor. vii. 2-16
(R.V.).
In this fine passage St. Paul completes, as far as it
lay upon his side to do so, his reconciliation with
the Corinthians. It concludes the first great division
of his Second Epistle, and henceforth we hear no more
of the sinner censured so severely in the First (chap. v.),But see on chap. ii. 5-11.
or of the troubles which arose in the Church over the
disciplinary treatment of his sin. The end of a quarrel
between friends is like the passing away of a storm;
the elements are meant to be at peace with each other,
and nature never looks so lovely as in the clear shining
after rain. The effusion of feeling in this passage, so
affectionate and unreserved; the sense that the storm-clouds
have no more than left the sky, yet that fair
weather has begun, make it conspicuously beautiful even
in the writings of St. Paul.
He begins by resuming the appeal interrupted at
chap. vi. 13. He has charged the Corinthians with being
straitened in their own affections: distrust and calumny
have narrowed their souls, nay, shut them against him
altogether. "Receive us," he exclaims here—i.e., open
your hearts to us. "You have no cause to be reserved:
we wronged no man, ruined no man, took advantage
of no man." Such charges had doubtless been made
against him. The point of the last is clear from chap.
xii. 16-18: he had been accused of making money out of
his apostolic work among them. The other words are
less precise, especially the one rendered "corrupted"
(ἐφθείραμεν), which should perhaps be rather explained,
as in 1 Cor. iii. 17, "destroyed." Paul has not wronged
or ruined any one in Corinth. Of course, his Gospel
made serious demands upon people: it insisted on readiness
to make sacrifices, and on actual sacrifice besides;
it proceeded with extreme severity against sinners like
the incestuous man; it entailed obligations, as we shall
presently hear, to help the poor even of distant lands;
and then, as still, such claims might easily be resented
as ruinous or unjust. St. Paul simply denies the
charge. He does not retort it; it is not his object to
condemn those whom he loves so utterly. He has told
them already that they are in his heart to die together
and to live together (vi. 11); and when this is so, there
is no place for recrimination or bandying of reproaches.
He is full of confidence in them;This is, I think, the only possible meaning of πολλή μοι παῤῥησία πρὸς
ὑμᾶς.
he can freely make
his boast of them. He has had affliction enough, but
over it all he has been filled with consolation; even
as he writes, his joy overflows (observe the present:
ὑπερπερισσεύομαι).
That word—"ye are in our hearts to die together and
to live together"—is the key to all that follows. It has
suffered much at the hands of grammarians, for whom it
has undeniable perplexities; but vehement emotion may
be permitted to be in some degree inarticulate, and we
can always feel, even if we cannot demonstrate, what
it means. "Your image in my heart accompanies me
in death and life,"So Schmiedel.
is as nearly as possible what the
Apostle says; and if the order of the words is unusual—for
"life" would naturally stand first—that may be due
to the fact, so largely represented in chap. iv., that his
life was a series of deadly perils, and of ever-renewed
deliverances from them, a daily dying and a daily
resurrection, through all the vicissitudes of which the
Corinthians never lost their place in his heart. More
artificial interpretations only obscure the intensity of
that love which united the Apostle to his converts. It
is levelled here, unconsciously no doubt, but all the more
impressively, with the love which God in Christ Jesus
our Lord bears to His redeemed. "I am persuaded,"
St. Paul writes to the Romans, "that neither death nor
life can separate us from that." "You may be assured,"
he writes here to the Corinthians, "that neither death
nor life can separate you from my love." The reference
of death and life is of course different, but the strength
of conviction and of emotion is the same in both cases.
St. Paul's heart is pledged irrevocably and irreversibly
to the Church. In the deep feeling that he is theirs,
he has an assurance that they also are his. The love
with which he loves them is bound to prevail; nay, it
has prevailed, and he can hardly find words to express
his joy. En qualiter affectos esse omnes Pastores conveniat
(Calvin).
The next three verses carry us back to chap. ii. 12 ff.,
and resume the story which was interrupted there at
ver. 14. The sudden thanksgiving of that passage—so
eager and impetuous that it left the writer no time
to tell what he was thankful for—is explained here.
Titus, whom he had expected to see in Troas, arrived
at length, probably at Philippi, and brought with him
the most cheering news. Paul was sadly in need of
it. His flesh had no rest: the use of the perfect
(ἔσχηκεν) almost conveys the feeling that he began to
write whenever he got the news, so that up to this
moment the strain had continued. The fights without
were probably assaults upon himself, or the Churches,
of the nature of persecution; the fears within, his
anxieties about the state of morals, or of Gospel truth,
in the Christian communities. Outworn and depressed,
burdened both in body and mind (cf. the expressions
in ii. 13 and vii. 5), he was suddenly lifted on high
by the arrival and the news of Titus. Here again, as
in ii. 14, he ascribes all to God. It was He whose very
nature it is to comfort the lowly who so graciously
comforted him. Titus apparently had gone himself
with a sad and apprehensive heart to Corinth; he had
been away longer than he had anticipated, and in the
interval St. Paul's anxiety had risen to anguish; but in
Corinth his reception had been unexpectedly favourable,
and when he returned he was able to console his
master with a consolation which had already gladdened
his own heart. Paul was not only comforted, his
sorrow was turned into joy, as he listened to Titus
telling of the longing of the Corinthians to see him,
of their mourning over the pain they had given him
by their tolerance for such irregularities as that of the
incestuous man or the unknown insulter of the Apostle,
and of their eagerness to satisfy him and maintain his
authority. The word "your" (ὑμῶν) in ver. 7 has a
certain emphasis which suggests a contrast. Before
Titus went to Corinth, it was Paul who had been
anxious to see them, who had mourned over their
immoral laxity, who had been passionately interested
in vindicating the character of the Church he had
founded; now it is they who are full of longing to
see him, of grief, and of moral earnestness; and it is
this which explains his joy. The conflict between the
powers of good in one great and passionate soul, and
the powers of evil in a lax and fickle community, has
ended in favour of the good; Paul's vehemence has
prevailed against Corinthian indifference, and made it
vehement also in all good affections, and he rejoices
now in the joy of his Lord.
Then comes the most delicate part of this reconciliation
(vv. 8-12). It is a good rule in making up
disputes to let bygones be bygones, as far as possible;
there may be a little spark hidden here and there under
what seem dead ashes, and there is no gain in raking
up the ashes, and giving the spark a chance to blaze
again. But this is a good rule only because we are
bad men, and because reconciliation is seldom allowed
to have its perfect work. We feel, and say, after we
have quarrelled with a person and been reconciled, that
it can never be the same again. But this ought not
to be so; and if we were perfect in love, or ardent in
love at all, it would not be so. If we were in one
another's hearts, to die together and to live together,
we should retrace the past together in the very act of
being reconciled; and all its misunderstandings and
bitterness and badness, instead of lying hidden in us
as matter of recrimination for some other day when we
are tempted, would add to the sincerity, the tenderness,
and the spirituality of our love. The Apostle sets us
an example here, of the rarest and most difficult virtue,
when he goes back upon the story of his relations with
the Corinthians, and makes the bitter stock yield sweet
and wholesome fruit.It is difficult to fix either the text or the punctuation in ver. 8,
and agreement among critics is quite hopeless. Practically they are
at one in omitting the γὰρ of the Received Text after βλέπω: and
Schmiedel agrees with Lachmann and Westcott and Hort that the original reading was probably βλέπων. The R.V. has the same
punctuation as the A.V., which probably means that the Revisers
could not get a sufficient majority to change it, not that it is quite
satisfactory as it stands. It certainly seems better to connect εἰ καὶ
μετεμελόμην with what follows (νῦν χαίρω) than with what precedes;
but the sense is not affected.
The whole result is in his mind when he writes,
"Although I made you sorry with the letter, I do not
regret it." The letter is, on the simplest hypothesis,
the First Epistle; and though no one would willingly
speak to his friends as Paul in some parts of that
Epistle speaks to the Corinthians, he cannot pretend
that he wishes it unwritten. "Although I did regret
it," he goes on, "now I rejoice." He regretted it, we
must understand, before Titus came back from Corinth.
In that melancholy interval, all he saw was that the
letter made them sorry; it was bound to do so, even
if it should only be temporarily; but his heart smote
him for making them sorry at all. It vexed him to
vex them. No doubt this is the plain truth he is
telling them, and it is hard to see why it should have
been regarded as inconsistent with his apostolic inspiration.
He did not cease to have a living soul because
he was inspired; and if in his despondency it crossed
his mind to say, "That letter will only grieve them,"
he must have said in the same instant, "I wish I had
never written it." But both impulses were momentary
only; he has heard now the whole effect of his letter,
and rejoices that he wrote it. Not, of course, that they
were made sorry—no one could rejoice for that—but
that they were made sorry to repentance. "For ye
were made sorry according to God, that in nothing ye
might suffer loss on our part. For sorrow according
to God worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance
which bringeth no regret. But the sorrow of the world
worketh death."
Most people define repentance as a kind of sorrow,
but this is not exactly St. Paul's view here. There
is a kind of sorrow, he intimates, which issues in
repentance, but repentance itself is not so much an
emotional as a spiritual change. The sorrow which
ends in it is a blessed experience; the sorrow which
does not end in it is the most tragical waste of which
human nature is capable. The Corinthians, we are
told, were made sorry, or grieved, according to God.
Their sorrow had respect to Him: when the Apostle's
letter pricked their hearts, they became conscious of
that which they had forgotten—God's relation to them,
and His judgment on their conduct. It is this element
which makes any sorrow "godly," and without this,
sorrow does not look towards repentance at all. All
sins sooner or later bring the sense of loss with them;
but the sense of loss is not repentance. It is not
repentance when we discover that our sin has found
us out, and has put the things we most coveted beyond
our reach. It is not repentance when the man who
has sown his wild oats is compelled in bitterness of
soul to reap what he has sown. It is not a sorrow
according to God when our sin is summed up for
us in the pain it inflicts upon ourselves—in our own
loss, our own defeat, our own humiliation, our own
exposure, our own unavailing regret. These are not
healing, but embittering. The sorrow according to God
is that in which the sinner is conscious of his sin in
relation to the Holy One, and feels that its inmost
soul of pain and guilt is this, that he has fallen away
from the grace and friendship of God. He has
wounded a love to which he is dearer than he is to
himself: to know this is really to grieve, and that
not with a self-consuming, but with a healing, hopeful
sorrow. It was such a sorrow to which Paul's
letter gave rise at Corinth: it is such a sorrow which
issues in repentance, that complete change of spiritual
attitude which ends in salvation, and need never be
regretted. Anything else—the sorrow, e.g., which is
bounded by the selfish interests of the sinner, and is
not due to his sinful act, but only to its painful consequences—is
the sorrow of the world. It is such as
men feel in that realm of life in which no account
is taken of God; it is such as weakens and breaks
the spirit, or embitters and hardens it, turning it now
to defiance and now to despair, but never to God,
and penitent hope in Him. It is in this way that
it works death. If death is to be defined at all, it
must be by contrast with salvation: the grief which
has not God as its rule can only exhaust the soul,
wither up its faculties, blight its hopes, extinguish and
deaden all.
St. Paul can point to the experience of the Corinthians
themselves as furnishing a demonstration of
these truths. "Consider your own godly sorrow," he
seems to say, "and what blessed fruits it bore. What
earnest care it wrought in you! how eager became
your interest in a situation to which you had once
been sinfully indifferent!" But "earnest care" is not
all. On the contrary (ἀλλὰ), Paul expands it into a
whole series of acts or dispositions, all of which are
inspired by that sorrow according to God. When they
thought of the infamy which sin had brought upon the
Church, they were eager to clear themselves of complicity
in it (ἀπολογίαν), and angry with themselves
that they had ever allowed such a thing to be
(ἀγανάκτησιν); when they thought of the Apostle,
they feared lest he should come to them with a rod
(φόβον), and yet their hearts went out in longing
desires to see him (ἐπιπόθησιν); when they thought
of the man whose sin was at the bottom of all this
trouble, they were full of moral earnestness, which
made lax dealing with him impossible (ζῆλον), and
compelled them to punish his offence (ἐκδίκησιν). In
every way they made it evident that, in spite of early
appearances, they were really pure in the matter.
They were not, after all, making themselves partakers,
by condoning it, of the bad man's offence.
A popular criticism disparages repentance, and especially
the sorrow which leads to repentance, as a mere
waste of moral force. We have nothing to throw away,
the severely practical moralist tells us, in sighs and
tears and feelings: let us be up and doing, to rectify
the wrongs for which we are responsible; that is the
only repentance which is worth the name. This passage,
and the experience which it depicts, are the answer to
such precipitate criticism. The descent into our own
hearts, the painful self-scrutiny and self-condemnation,
the sorrowing according to God, are not waste of moral
force. Rather are they the only possible way to
accumulate moral force; they apply to the soul the
pressure under which it manifests those potent virtues
which St. Paul here ascribes to the Corinthians. All
sorrow, indeed, as he is careful to tell us, is not repentance;
but he who has no sorrow for his sin has not
the force in him to produce earnest care, fear, longing,
zeal, avenging. The fruit, of course, is that for which
the tree is cultivated; but who would magnify the fruit
by disparaging the sap? That is what they do who
decry "godly sorrow" to exalt practical amendment.
With this reference to the effect of his letter upon
them, the Apostle virtually completes his reconciliation
to the Corinthians. He chooses to consider the effect
of his letter as the purpose for which it was written,
and this enables him to dismiss what had been a very
painful subject with a turn as felicitous as it is affectionate.
"So then, though I did write to you, it was not
for his sake who did the wrong [the sinner of 1 Cor.
v.], nor for his who had it done to him [his father]But see on chap. ii. 5-11.
;
but that you yourselves might become conscious of
your earnest care of our interests in the sight of God."
Awkward as some of the situations had been, all that
remained, so far as the Apostle and the Corinthians
were concerned, was this: they knew better than
before how deeply they were attached to him, and how
much they would do for his sake. He chooses, as I
have said, to regard this last result of his writing as
the purpose for which he wrote; and when he ends the
twelfth verse with the words, "For this cause, we have
been comforted,"This is the true text. Instead of ἐπὶ τῇ παρακλήσει in ver. 13 all
critical editions read ἐπὶ δὲ τῇ π., and make these words begin a
new paragraph.
it is as if he said, "I have got what
I wanted now, and am content."
But content is far too weak a word. Paul had heard
all this good news from Titus, and the comfort which
it gave him was exalted into abounding joy when he
saw how the visit to Corinth had gladdened and
refreshed the spirit of his friend. Evidently Titus
had accepted Paul's commission with misgivings: possibly
Timothy, who had been earlier enlisted for the
same service (1 Cor. xvi. 10), had found his courage
fail him, and withdrawn. At all events, Paul had
spoken encouragingly to Titus of the Corinthians before
he started; as he puts it in ver. 14, he had boasted
somewhat to him on their account; and he is delighted
that their reception of Titus has shown that his confidence
was justified. He cannot refrain here from a
passing allusion to the charges of prevarication discussed
in the first chapter; he not only tells the truth about
them (as Titus has seen), but he has always told the
truth to them. These verses present the character of
Paul in an admirable light: not only his sympathy
with Titus, but his attitude to the Corinthians, is
beautifully Christian. What in most cases of estrangement
makes reconciliation hard is that the estranged
have allowed themselves to speak of each other to
outsiders in a way that cannot be forgotten or got over.
But even when the tension between Paul and the
Corinthians was at its height, he boasted of them to
Titus. His love to them was so real that nothing
could blind him to their good qualities. He could say
severe things to them, but he would never disparage
or malign them to other people; and if we wish friendships
to last, and to stand the strains to which all
human ties are occasionally subject, we must never
forget this rule. "Boast somewhat," even of the man
who has wronged you, if you possibly can. If you
have ever loved him, you certainly can, and it makes
reconciliation easy.
The last results of the painful friction between Paul
and the Corinthians were peculiarly happy. The
Apostle's confidence in them was completely restored,
and they had completely won the heart of Titus. "His
affections are more abundantly toward you, as he
remembers the obedience of you all, how with fear and
trembling ye received him." "Fear and trembling" is
an expression which St. Paul uses elsewhere, and
which is liable to be misunderstood. It does not suggest
panic, but an anxious scrupulous desire not to
be wanting to one's duty, or to do less than one ought
to do. "Work out your salvation with fear and
trembling, for it is God that worketh in you," does not
mean "Do it in a constant state of agitation or alarm,"
but "Work on with this resource behind you, in the
same spirit with which a young man of character would
work, who was starting in business on capital advanced
by a friend." He would proceed, or ought to proceed,
with fear and trembling, not of the sort which paralyse
intelligence and energy, but of the sort which peremptorily
preclude slackness or failure in duty. This
is the meaning here also. The Corinthians were not
frightened for Paul's deputy, but they welcomed him
with an anxious conscientious desire to do the very
utmost that duty and love could require. This, says
Calvin, is the true way to receive ministers of Christ:
and it is this only which will gladden a true minister's
heart. Sometimes, with the most innocent intention,
the whole situation is changed, and the minister,
though received with the utmost courtesy and kindness,
is not received with fear and trembling at all. Partly
through his own fault, and partly through the fault
of others, he ceases to be the representative of anything
that inspires reverence, or excites to conscientious
earnestness of conduct. If, under these circumstances,
he continues to be kindly treated, he is apt to end in
being, not the pastor, but the pet lamb of his flock. In
apostolic times there was no danger of this, but modern
ministers and modern congregations have sometimes
thrown away all the possibilities of good in their
mutual relations by disregarding it. The affection
which they ought to have to each other is Christian,
not merely natural; controlled by spiritual ideas and
purposes, and not a matter of ordinary good feeling;
and where this is forgotten, all is lost.
THE GRACE OF LIBERALITY
"Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God
which hath been given in the Churches of Macedonia; how that in
much proof of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep
poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. For according
to their power, I bear witness, yea and beyond their power, they gave
of their own accord, beseeching us with much intreaty in regard of
this grace and the fellowship in the ministering to the saints: and
this, not as we had hoped, but first they gave their own selves to the
Lord, and to us by the will of God. Insomuch that we exhorted
Titus, that as he had made a beginning before, so he would also complete
in you this grace also. But as ye abound in everything, in faith,
and utterance, and knowledge, and in all earnestness, and in your
love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also. I speak not by the
way of commandment, but as proving through the earnestness of others
the sincerity also of your love. For ye know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became
poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich. And herein
I give my judgment: for this is expedient for you, who were the first
to make a beginning a year ago, not only to do, but also to will. But
now complete the doing also; that as there was the readiness to will,
so there may be the completion also out of your ability. For if the
readiness is there, it is acceptable according as a man hath, not
according as he hath not. For I say not this, that others may be
eased, and ye distressed: but by equality; your abundance being a
supply at this present time for their want, that their abundance also
may become a supply for your want; that there may be equality: as
it is written, He that gathered much had nothing over; and he that
gathered little had no lack."—2 Cor. viii. 1-15 (R.V.).
With the eighth chapter begins the second of the
three great divisions of this Epistle. It is concerned
exclusively with the collection which the Apostle
was raising in all the Gentile Christian communities
for the poor of the Mother Church at Jerusalem. This
collection had great importance in his eyes, for various
reasons: it was the fulfilment of his undertaking, to the
original Apostles, to remember the poor (Gal. ii. 10);
and it was a testimony to the saints in Palestine of the
love of the Gentile brethren in Christ. The fact that
Paul interested himself so much in this collection,
destined as it was for Jerusalem, proves that he distinguished
broadly between the primitive Church and its
authorities on the one hand, and the Jewish emissaries
whom he treats so unsparingly in chaps. x. and xi. on
the other.
Money is usually a delicate topic to handle in the
Church, and we may count ourselves happy in having
two chapters from the pen of St. Paul in which he
treats at large of a collection. We see the mind of
Christ applied in them to a subject which is always
with us, and sometimes embarrassing; and if there
are traces here and there that embarrassment was felt
even by the Apostle, they only show more clearly
the wonderful wealth of thought and feeling which he
could bring to bear on an ungrateful theme. Consider
only the variety of lights in which he puts it, and all of
them ideal. "Money," as such, has no character, and
so he never mentions it. But he calls the thing which
he wants a grace (χάρις), a service (διακονία), a communion
in service (κοινωνία), a munificence (ἁδρότης),
a blessing (εὐλογία), a manifestation of love. The
whole resources of Christian imagination are spent in
transfiguring, and lifting into a spiritual atmosphere,
a subject on which even Christian men are apt to
be materialistic. We do not need to be hypocritical
when we speak about money in the Church; but
both the charity and the business of the Church
must be transacted as Christian, and not as secular,
affairs.
Paul introduces the new topic with his usual felicity.
He has got through some rough water in the first seven
chapters, but ends with expressions of joy and satisfaction.
When he goes on in the eighth chapter, it is in
the same cheerful key. It is as though he said to the
Corinthians: "You have made me very happy, and
now I must tell you what a happy experience I have
had in Macedonia. The grace of God has been
poured out on the Churches, and they have given
with incredible liberality to the collection for the
Jewish poor. It so moved me that I begged Titus,
who had already made some arrangements in connexion
with this matter among you, to return and
complete the work."
Speaking broadly, the Apostle invites the Corinthians
to look at the subject through three media: (1) the
example of the Macedonians; (2) the example of the
Lord; and (3) the laws by which God estimates
liberality.
(1) The liberality of the Macedonians is described as
"the grace of God given in the Churches." This is the
aspect of it which conditions every other; it is not the
native growth of the soul, but a divine gift for which
God is to be thanked. Praise Him when hearts are
opened, and generosity shown; for it is His work.
In Macedonia this grace was set off by the circumstances
of the people. Their Christian character was
put to the severe proof of a great affliction (see 1 Thess.
ii. 14 f.); they were themselves in deep poverty; but
their joy abounded nevertheless (1 Thess. i. 6), and
joy and poverty together poured out a rich stream of
liberality.Ἁπλότης is literally simplicity or singleness of heart, the disposition
which, when it gives, does so without arrière-pensée: in point
of fact this is identical with the liberal or generous disposition. Cf.
chap. ix. 11, 13; Rom. xii. 8; James i. 5.
This may sound paradoxical, but paradox
is normal here. Strange to say, it is not those to
whom the Gospel comes easily, and on whom it imposes
little, who are most generous in its cause. On the contrary,
it is those who have suffered for it, those who
have lost by it, who are as a rule most open-handed.
Comfort makes men selfish, even though they are
Christian; but if they are Christian, affliction, even
to the spoiling of their goods, teaches them generosity.
The first generation of Methodists in England—the
men who in 1843 fought the good fight of the faith in
Scotland—illustrate this law; in much proof of affliction,
it might be said of them also, the abundance of
their joy, and their deep poverty, abounded unto the
riches of their liberality. Paul was almost embarrassed
with the liberality of the Macedonians. When he
looked at their poverty, he did not hope for much
(ver. 5). He would not have felt justified in urging
people who were themselves in such distress to do
much for the relief of others. But they did not need
urging: it was they who urged him. The Apostle's
sentence breaks down as he tries to convey an adequate
impression of their eagerness (ver. 4), and he has to
leave off and begin again (ver. 5). To their power, he
bears witness, yes and beyond their power, they gave
of their own accord. They importuned him to bestow
on them also the favour of sharing in this service to the
saints. And when their request was granted, it was no
paltry contribution that they made; they gave themselves
to the Lord, to begin with, and to the Apostle,
as His agent in the transaction, by the will of God.
The last words resume, in effect, those with which
St. Paul introduced this topic: it was God's doing, the
working of His will on their wills, that the Macedonians
behaved as they did. I cannot think the English version
is right in the rendering: "And this, not as we had
hoped, but first they gave their own selves to the
Lord." This inevitably suggests that afterwards they
gave something else—viz., their subscriptions. But
this is a false contrast, and gives the word "first"
(πρῶτον) a false emphasis, which it has not in the
original. What St. Paul says is virtually this: "We
expected little from people so poor, but by God's will
they literally put themselves at the service of the Lord,
in the first instance, and of us as His administrators.
They said to us, to our amazement and joy, 'We are
Christ's, and yours after Him, to command in this
matter.'" This is one of the finest and most inspiring
experiences that a Christian minister can have, and,
God be thanked, it is none of the rarest. Many a
man besides Paul has been startled and ashamed by
the liberality of those from whom he would not have
ventured to beg. Many a man has been importuned
to take what he could not have dared to ask. It is a
mistake to refuse such generosity, to decline it as too
much; it gladdens God, and revives the heart of man.
It is a mistake to deprive the poorest of the opportunity
of offering this sacrifice of praise; it is the poorest in
whom it has most munificence, and to whom it brings
the deepest joy. Rather ought we to open our hearts
to the impression of it, as to the working of God's
grace, and rouse our own selfishness to do something
not less worthy of Christ's love.
This was the application which St. Paul made of the
generosity of the Macedonians. Under the impression
of it he exhorted Titus, who on a previous occasionPrevious to his recent visit? So Schmiedel. Or simply = formerly?
had
made some preliminary arrangements about the matter
in Corinth, to return thither and complete the work.
He had other things also to complete, but "this grace"
was to be specially included (καὶ τὴν χάριν ταύτην).
Perhaps one may see a gentle irony in the tone of
ver. 7. "Enough of argument," the Apostle says:This, according to Hermann (quoted by Meyer), is often the force
of ἀλλά, which is certainly a surprising word here.
"let
Christians distinguished as you are in every respect—in
faith and eloquence and knowledge and all sorts of
zeal, and in the love that comes from you and abides
in us—see that they are distinguished in this grace
also." It is a real character that is suggested here by
way of contrast, but not exactly a lovely one: the man
who abounds in spiritual interests, who is fervent,
prayerful, affectionate, able to speak in the Church, but
unable to part with money.
(2) This brings the Apostle to his second point, the
example of the Lord. "I do not speak by way of commandment,"
he says, "in urging you to be liberal; I am
only taking occasion, through the earnestness of others,
to put the sincerity of your love to the proof. If you
truly love the brethren you will not grudge to help
them in their distress. The Macedonians, of course,
are no law for you; and though it was from them I
started, I do not need to urge their example; 'for ye
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though
He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that
ye through His poverty might become rich.'" This is
the one pattern that stands for ever before the eyes of
Christian men, the fountain of an inspiration as strong
and pure to-day as when Paul wrote these words.
Read simply, and by one who has the Christian
creed in his mind, the words do not appear ambiguous.
Christ was rich, they tell us; He became poor for our
sakes, and by His poverty we become rich. If a commentary
is needed, it is surely to be sought in the
parallel passage Phil. ii. 5 ff. The rich Christ is the
pre-existent One, in the form of God, in the glory
which He had with the Father before the world was;
He became poor when He became man. The poor
men are those whose lot Christ came to share, and in
consequence of that self-impoverishment of His they
become heirs of a kingdom. It is not necessary, indeed
it is utterly misleading, to ask curiously how Christ
became poor, or what kind of experience it was for
Him when He exchanged heaven for earth, and the
form of God for the form of a servant. As Mr. Gore
has well said, it is not the metaphysics of the Incarnation
that St. Paul is concerned with, either here or in
Philippians, but its ethics. We may never have a
scientific key to it, but we have a moral key. If we
do not comprehend its method, at least we comprehend
its motive, and it is in its motive that the inspiration
of it lies. We know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ;
and it comes home to our hearts when the Apostle
says, "Let that mind—that moral temper—be in you
which was also in Him." Ordinary charity is but the
crumbs from the rich man's table; but if we catch
Christ's spirit, it will carry us far beyond that. He
was rich, and gave up all for our sakes; it is no less
than poverty on His part which enriches us.
The older theologians, especially of the Lutheran
Church, read this great text differently, and their opinion
is not yet quite extinct. They referred ἐπτώχευσεν,
not to Christ's entrance on the incarnate state, but to
His existence in it;Translating it, of course, "was poor," or "lived poor": which is
not impossible in itself.
they puzzled themselves to conceive
of Him as rich and poor at the same time; and
they quite took the point from St. Paul's exhortation by
making ἐπτώχευσεν πλούσιος ὢν describe a combination,
instead of an interchange, of states. It is a counsel
of despair when a recent commentator (Heinrici),
sympathising with this view, but yielding to the comparison
of Phil. ii. 5 ff., tries to unite the two interpretations,
and to make ἐπτώχευσεν cover both the coming
to earth from heaven and the life in poverty on earth.
No word can mean two different things at the same
time: and in this daring attempt we may fairly see a
final surrender of the orthodox Lutheran interpretation.
Some strange criticisms have been passed on this
appeal to the Incarnation as a motive to liberality. It
shows, Schmiedel says, Paul's contempt for the knowledge
of Christ after the flesh, when the Incarnation is
all he can adduce as a pattern for such a simply human
thing as a charitable gift. The same contempt, then,
we must presume, is shown in Philippians, when the
same great pattern is held up to inspire Christians with
lowly thoughts of themselves, and with consideration
for others. It is shown, perhaps, again at the close of
that magnificent chapter—the fifteenth in First Corinthians—where
all the glory to be revealed when Christ
transfigures His people is made a reason for the sober
virtues of stedfastness and patience. The truth is
rather that Paul knew from experience that the supreme
motives are needed on the most ordinary occasions.
He never appeals to incidents, not because he does not
know them, or because he despises them, but because
it is far more potent and effectual to appeal to Christ.
His mind gravitates to the Incarnation, or the Cross,
or the Heavenly Throne, because the power and virtue
of the Redeemer are concentrated there. The spirit
that wrought redemption, and that changes men into
the image of the Lord—the spirit without which no
Christian disposition, not even the most "simply human,"
can be produced—is felt there, if one may say so, in
gathered intensity; and it is not the want of a concrete
vision of Jesus such as Peter and John had, nor a
scholastic insensibility to such living and love-compelling
details as our first three Gospels furnish, that makes
Paul have recourse thither; it is the instinct of the
evangelist and pastor who knows that the hope of
souls is to live in the presence of the very highest
things. Of course Paul believed in the pre-existence
and in the Incarnation. The writer quoted above does
not, and naturally the appeal of the text is artificial
and unimpressive to him. But may we not ask, in
view of the simplicity, the unaffectedness, and the
urgency with which St. Paul uses this appeal both
here and in Philippians, whether his faith in the pre-existence
can have had no more than the precarious
speculative foundation which is given to it by so many
who reconstruct his theology? "Christ, the perfect
reconciler, must be the perfect revealer of God; God's
purpose—that for which He made all things—must be
seen in Him; but that for which God made all things
must have existed (in the mind of God) before all
things; therefore Christ is (ideally) from everlasting."
This is the substance of many explanations of how
St. Paul came by his Christology; but if this had been
all, could St. Paul by any possibility have appealed
thus naïvely to the Incarnation as a fact, and a fact
which was one of the mainsprings of Christian morality?
(3) The Apostle pauses for a moment to urge his
plea in the interest of the Corinthians themselves. He
is not commanding, but giving his judgment: "this," he
says, "is profitable for you, who beganThe προ in προενήρξασθε seems to mean "before the Macedonians."
a year ago, not
only to do, but also to will.The order of "do" and "will" is peculiar and has not been
clearly explained.
But now complete the
doing also." Every one knows this situation, and its
evils. A good work which has been set on foot with
interest and spontaneity enough, but which has begun
to drag, and is in danger of coming to nothing, is very
demoralising. It enfeebles the conscience, and spoils
the temper. It develops irresolution and incapacity,
and it stands perpetually in the way of anything else
that has to be done. Many a bright idea stumbles
over it, and can get no further. It is not only worldly
wisdom, but divine wisdom, which says: "Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." If
it is the giving of money, the building of a church, the
insuring of a life, complete the doing. To be always
thinking about it, and always in an ineffective way
busy about it, is not profitable for you.
It is in this connexion that the Apostle lays down
the laws of Christian liberality. In these verses (11
to 15) there are three. (a) First, there must be readiness,
or, as the Authorised Version puts it, a willing
mind. What is given must be given freely; it must be a
gracious offering, not a tax. This is fundamental. The
law of the Old Testament is re-enacted in the New: "Of
every man whose heart maketh him willing shall ye
take the Lord's offering." What we spend in piety and
charity is not tribute paid to a tyrant, but the response
of gratitude to our Redeemer: and if it has not this
character He does not want it. If there be first a
willing mind, the rest is easy; if not, there is no need
to go on. (b) The second law is, "according as a man
has." Readiness is the acceptable thing, not this or
that proof of it. If we cannot give much, then a ready
mind makes even a little acceptable. Only let us
remember this, that readiness always gives all that is
in its power. The readiness of the poor widow in the
Temple could only give two mites, but two mites were
all her living; the readiness of the Macedonians was
in the depths of poverty, but they gave themselves to
the Lord. The widow's mites are an illustrious example
of sacrifice, and this word of the Apostle contains a
moving appeal for generosity; yet the two together
have been profaned times innumerable to cloak the
meanest selfishness. (c) The third law is reciprocity.
Paul does not write that the Jews may be relieved
and the Corinthians burdened, but on the principle of
equality: at this crisis the superfluity of the Corinthians
is to make up what is wanting to the Jews, and at
some other the situation will be exactly reversed.
Brotherhood cannot be one-sided; it must be mutual,
and in the interchange of services equality is the result.
This, as the quotation hints, answers to God's design
in regard to worldly goods, as that design is indicated
in the story of the manna: He that gathered much had
no more than his neighbours, and he that gathered little
had no less. To be selfish is not an infallible way of
getting more than your share; you may cheat your
neighbour by that policy, but you will not get the better
of God. In all probability men are far more nearly on
an equality, in respect of what their worldly possessions
yield, than the rich in their pride, or the poor in their
envious discontent, would readily believe; but where
inequality is patent and painful—a glaring violation of
the divine intention here suggested—there is a call for
charity to redress the balance. Those who give to the
poor are co-operating with God, and the more a community
is Christianised, the more will that state be
realised in which each has what he needs.
THE FRUITS OF LIBERALITY
"But thanks be to God, which putteth the same earnest care for
you into the heart of Titus. For indeed he accepted our exhortation;
but being himself very earnest, he went forth unto you of his own
accord. And we have sent together with him the brother whose
praise in the Gospel is spread through all the Churches; and not only
so, but who was also appointed by the Churches to travel with us
in the matter of this grace, which is ministered by us to the glory of
the Lord, and to show our readiness: avoiding this, that any man
should blame us in the matter of this bounty which is ministered by
us: for we take thought for things honourable, not only in the sight
of the Lord but also in the sight of men. And we have sent with
them our brother, whom we have many times proved earnest in
many things, but now much more earnest by reason of the great
confidence which he hath in you. Whether any inquire about Titus,
he is my partner, and my fellow-worker to you-ward; or our
brethren, they are the messengers of the Churches, they are the glory
of Christ. Show ye therefore unto them in the face of the Churches
the proof of your love, and of our glorying on your behalf.
"For as touching the ministering to the saints, it is superfluous for
me to write to you: for I know your readiness, of which I glory on
your behalf to them of Macedonia, that Achaia hath been prepared
for a year past; and your zeal hath stirred up very many of them.
But I have sent the brethren, that our glorying on your behalf may
not be made void in this respect; that, even as I said, ye may be
prepared: lest by any means, if there come with me any of Macedonia,
and find you unprepared, we (that we say not, ye) should be put to
shame in this confidence. I thought it necessary therefore to intreat
the brethren, that they would go before unto you, and make up
beforehand your afore-promised bounty, that the same might be ready,
as a matter of bounty, and not of extortion.
"But this I say, He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly;
and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Let each
man do according as he hath purposed in his heart; not grudgingly,
or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. And God is able to
make all grace abound unto you; that ye, having always all sufficiency
in everything, may abound unto every good work: as it is written,
He hath scattered abroad, he hath given to the poor;
His righteousness abideth for ever.
And He that supplieth seed to the sower and bread for food, shall
supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the fruits
of your righteousness: ye being enriched in everything unto all
liberality, which worketh through us thanksgiving to God. For the
ministration of this service not only filleth up the measure of the
wants of the saints, but aboundeth also through many thanksgivings
unto God; seeing that through the proving of you by this ministration
they glorify God for the obedience of your confession unto the
Gospel of Christ, and for the liberality of your contribution unto
them and unto all; while they themselves also, with supplication
on your behalf, long after you by reason of the exceeding grace
of God in you. Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift."—2
Cor. viii. 16-ix. 15 (R.V.).
This long passage has a good many difficulties of
detail, for the grammarian and the textual critic.
Where it seems necessary, these will be referred to in
the notes; but as the large meaning of the writer is
hardly affected by them, they need not interrupt the
course of exposition. It falls into three parts, which
are clearly marked as such in the Revised Version:
(1) Chap. viii. 16-24, commending to the Corinthians
the three brethren who were to precede Paul and
prepare the collection; (2) Chap. ix. 1-5, appealing to
the motives of emulation and shame to reinforce love
in the matter; and (3) Chap. ix. 6-15, urging liberality,
and enlarging on the blessed fruits it yields. The
first of these divisions begins, and the last ends, with
an exclamatory ascription of thanks to God.
(1) Chap. viii. 16-24. Of the three men who acted
as commissioners in this delicate undertaking, only
one, Titus, is known to us by name. He had just
returned from Corinth; he knew all the critical points
in the situation; and no doubt the Apostle was glad
to have such a man at the head of the little party. He
was thankful to God that on the occasion of that
previous visit the Corinthians had completely won the
heart of Titus, and that his loyal fellow-worker needed
no compulsion to return. He was leavingΑὐθαίρετος ἐξῆλθεν: the aorists all through this passage are
virtually epistolary—ἐξῆλθεν = he is going; συνεπέμψαμεν = I am sending
with him.
Paul of his
own accord, full of earnest care for his Achaian friends.
Along with him went a second—the brother whose
praise in the Gospel was through all the Churches.
It is useless to ask who the brother was. A very
early opinion, alluded to by Origen, and represented
apparently in the traditional subscription to this Epistle,
identified him with Luke. Probably the ground for
this identification was the idea that his "praise in the
Gospel" referred to Luke's work as an evangelist.
But this cannot be: first, because Luke's Gospel cannot
have been written so early; and, secondly, because
"the Gospel" at this date does not mean a written
thing at all. This man's praise in the Gospel must
mean the credit he had acquired by his services to the
Christian faith; it might be by some bold confession,
or by activity as an evangelist, or by notable hospitality
to missionaries, or by such helpful ministries as the
one he was now engaged in. The real point of interest
for us in the expression is the glimpse it gives us of
the unity of the Church, and the unimpeded circulation
of one life through all its members. Its early divisions,
theological and racial, have been sufficiently emphasised;
it is well worth while to observe the unity of
the spirit. It was this, eventually, which gave the
Church its power in the decline of the Empire. It was
the only institution which extended over the area of
civilisation with a common spirit, common sympathies,
and a common standard of praise. It was
a compliment to the Corinthians to include in this
embassy one whose good name was honoured wherever
men met in the name of Jesus. This brother was at
the same time a deputy in a special sense. He had
been elected by the Churches who were contributing
to the collection, that he might accompany the Apostle
when it was taken to Jerusalem. This, in itself, is
natural enough, and it would not call for comment but
for the remark to which the Apostle proceeds—"avoiding
this, that any man should blame us in the matter
of this bounty which is ministered by us to the glory
of the Lord, and to show ourOur (ἡμῶν), not your (ὑμῶν), is the true reading. The precise
sense is doubtful. It may be as the R.V. gives it, though this completely
upsets the balance of the clauses πρὸς τὴν τοῦ Κυρίου δόξαν
and καὶ προθυμίαν ἡμῶν. The meaning should rather be: "which is
ministered by us, that the Lord may be glorified, and that we may be
made of good heart"; only Paul's spirits seem a small thing side by
side with the Lord's glory. There is something to say for the conjecture
that the καὶ before προθυμίαν should be κατά, even though this
could only be connected with χειροτονηθείς: "elected as we earnestly
desired."
readiness: for we take
thought for things honourable, not only in the sight of
the Lord, but also in the sight of men."
There was evidently an unpleasant side to this
transaction. Paul's interest in the collection, his
enemies had plainly said (chap. xii. 17, 18), was not
quite disinterested. He was capable of putting his
own hand into the bag. What ought a Christian man
to do in such a case? We shall see in a later chapter
how keenly Paul felt this unworthy imputation, and
with what generous passion he resented it; but here
he betrays no indignation; he joins with the Churches
who are making the collection in so ordering matters
as to preclude suspicion. Wherever the money is concerned,
his responsibility is to be shared with another.
It is a pity that Christ should not be glorified, and the
Apostle's zeal to help the poor saints made known,
without the accompaniment of these base suspicions
and precautionary measures; but in all things human,
evil will mingle with good, and the humble course is
best, which does not only what God knows to be
honourable, but what men must see to be so too. In
handling money especially, it is best to err on the safe
side. If most men are too readily suspected by others,
it only answers to the fact that most men are too ready
to trust themselves. We have an infinite faith in our
own honesty; and when auditors are appointed to
examine their books, the inexperienced are apt to
think it needless, and even impertinent. If they were
wise, they would welcome it as a protection against
suspicion and even against themselves. Many a man
has ruined himself—not to speak of those who trusted
him—by too blind a belief in his own integrity. The
third brother who accompanied Titus seems to have
been more closely associated with Paul than the second.
He had proved him often, in many things, and found
him uniformly earnest; and at this juncture the confidence
he had in the Corinthians made him more
earnest than ever. Paul extols the three in the highest
terms before he sends them off; if anybody in Corinth
wishes to know what they are, he is proud to tell.
Titus is his partner in the apostolic calling, and has
shared his work among them; the other brethren are
deputies (apostles) of Churches, a glory of Christ.
What an idealist Paul was! What an appreciation of
Christian character he had when he described these
nameless believers as reflections of the splendour of
Christ! To common eyes they might be commonplace
men; but when Paul looked at them he saw the dawning
of that brightness in which the Lord appeared to him
by the way. Contact with the grimy side of human
nature did not blind him to this radiance; rather did
this glory of Christ in men's souls strengthen him to
believe all things, to hope all things, to endure all
things. In showing before these honoured messengers
the proof of their love, and of his boasting on their
behalf, the Corinthians will show it,The T.R. has ἐνδείξασθε here, and so Westcott and Hort read
in text, with א, C, D**, etc. Most editors read with B, D*, E, F, G, etc.,
ἐνδεικνύμενοι. The imperative certainly seems to be a change made
to facilitate the construction. Reading the participle, we must supply
ἐνδείξεσθε, and put a comma after ἐνδεικνύμενοι: "in showing it to them,
[you will show it] before the Churches." This is the same kind of
ellipsis as in ver. 23.
he says, before
the face of the Churches. It will be officially reported
throughout Christendom.
(2) Chap. ix. 1-5. This section strikes one at first
as greatly wanting in connexion with what precedes.
It looks like a new beginning, an independent writing
on the same or a similar subject. This has led some
scholars to argue that either chap. viii. or chap. ix. belongs
to a different occasion, and that only resemblance
in subject has led to one of them being erroneously
inserted here beside the other. This, in the absence
of any external indication, is an extremely violent
supposition; and closer examination goes to dissipate
that first impression. The statements, e.g., in vv. 3-5
would be quite unintelligible if we had not chap. viii.
16-24 to explain them; and instead of saying there
is no connexion between ix. 1 and what precedes, we
should rather say that the connexion is somewhat
involved and circuitous—as will happen when one is
handling a topic of unusual difficulty. It is to be
explained thus. The Apostle feels that he has said a
good deal now about the collection, and that there is
a danger in being too urgent. He uses what he has
just said about the reception of the brethren as a
stepping-stone to another view of the subject, more
flattering to the Corinthians, to begin with, and less
importunate. "Maintain your character before them,"
he says in effect; "for as for the ministering to the
saints, it is superfluous for me to be writing to you
as I do."This is the force of τὸ γράφειν.
Instead of finding it necessary to urge
their duty upon them, he has been able to hold up
their readiness as an example to the Macedonians.
"Achaia has been prepared for a year past," he said
to his fond disciples in Thessalonica and Philippi; and
the zeal of the Achaians, or rivalry of them, roused
the majority of the Macedonians. This is one way of
looking at what happened; another, and surely Paul
would have been the first to say a more profound, is
that of chap. viii. 1—the grace of God was given in
the Churches of Macedonia. But the grace of God
takes occasions, and uses means; and here its opportunity
and its instrument for working in Macedonia
was the ready generosity of the Corinthians. It has
wrought, indeed, so effectively that the tables are
turned, and now it is the liberality of Macedonia which
is to provoke Corinth. Paul is sending on these
brethren beforehand, lest, if any of the Macedonians
should accompany him when he starts for Corinth
himself, they should find matters not so flourishing
as he had led them to believe. "That would put me to
shame," he says to the Corinthians, "not to speak of
you. I have been very confident in speaking of you as
I have done in Macedonia: do keep up my credit and
your own. Let this blessing, which you are going to
bestow on the poor, be ready as a blessing—i.e., as
something which one gives willingly, and as liberally
as he can; and not as a matter of avarice,The R.V. renders πλεονεξία "extortion"—the πλεονέκται being
those who get the money; but it seems to me more natural to render
"avarice," in which case both εὐλογία and πλεονεξία apply to the
Corinthians.
in which
one gives reluctantly, keeping as much as he can."
The legitimacy of such motives as are appealed to
in this paragraph will always be more or less questioned
among Christian men, but as long as human nature is
what it is they will always be appealed to. Ζηλότυπον
γὰρ τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένος (Chrys.). A great man
of action like St. Paul will of course find his temptations
along this line. He is so eager to get men to act,
and the inertness of human nature is so great, that
it is hard to decline anything which will set it in
motion. It is not the highest motive, certainly, when
the forwardness of one stimulates another; but in a
good cause, it is better than none. A good cause,
too, has a wonderful power of its own when men
begin to attend to it; it asserts itself, and takes
possession of souls on its own account. Rivalry becomes
generous then, even if it remains; it is a race
in love that is being run, and all who run obtain the
prize. Competitions for prizes which only one can
gain have a great deal in them that is selfish and
bad; but rivalry in the service of others—rivalry in
unselfishness—will not easily degenerate in this direction.
Paul does not need to be excused because he
stimulates the Macedonians by the promptitude of the
Corinthians—though he had his misgivings about this
last—and the Corinthians by the liberality of the
Macedonians. The real motive in both cases was "the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though He was
rich, yet for our sakes became poor." It is this which
underlies everything in the Christian heart, and nothing
can do harm which works as its auxiliary.
(3) Chap. ix. 6-15. In the third and last section
the Apostle resumes his direct and urgent tone. "I do
not need to write to you," he seems to say, "but
one thing I cannot but set down: He that soweth
sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he that
soweth bountifullyἘπ' εὐλογίαις: "so that blessings are associated therewith"
(Winer): the full hand in sowing makes a full hand in reaping.
shall reap also bountifully." That
is the law of God, and the nature of things, whether
men regard or disregard it. Charity is in a real sense
an investment, not a casting away of money; it is not
fruitless, but bears fruit in the measure in which it is
sown. Of course it cannot be enforced—that would
be to deny its very nature. Each is to give what
he has purposed in his heart, where he is free and
true: he is not to give out of grief, mourning over
what he gives and regretting he could not keep it;
neither is he to give out of necessity, because his
position, or the usages of his society, or the comments
of his neighbours, put a practical compulsion upon
him. God loves a cheerful giver. Money is nothing
to Him but as an index to the soul; unless the soul
gives it, and gives itself with it, He takes no account.
But He does take account of true charity, and because
He does, the charitable may be of good cheer: He will
not allow them to be without the means of manifesting
a spirit so grateful to Him. If we really wish to be
generous, He will not withhold from us the power
of being so. This is what the Apostle says in ver. 8:
"God is able to make all grace abound toward you,
that ye, having always all sufficiency in everything,
may abound unto every good work." There is, indeed,
another way of rendering αὐτάρκεια (sufficiency). Some
take it subjectively, not objectively, and make it mean,
not sufficiency, but contentment. But though a contented
spirit disposes people wonderfully to be generous,
and the discontented, who have never enough for themselves,
can never, of course, spare anything for
anybody else, this meaning is decidedly to be rejected.
The sufficiency, as ver. 10 also shows, is outward: we
shall always, if we are charitable, have by God's grace
the means of being more so. He is able to bless us
abundantly, that we may be able for every good work.
Observe the purpose of God's blessing. This is the
import of the quotation from the 112th Psalm, in which
we have the portrait of the good man: "He hath
dispersed"—what uncalculating liberality there is in
the very word—"he hath given to the poor: his
righteousness abideth for ever." The approximation, in
the Jewish morals of later times, of the ideas of righteousness
and almsgiving, has led some to limit
δικαιοσύνη in this passage (as in Matt. vi. 1) to the
latter sense. This is extremely improbable—I think
impossible. In the Psalm, both in ver. 3 and ver. 10
(LXX.), the expression "his righteousness abideth for
ever" reflects God's verdict on the character as a
whole. The character there described, and here referred
to by the relevant trait of generosity, is one
which need fear no chances of the future. He who
supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will
supply and multiply the seed sown by the generous
Corinthians (that they may ever be in a position to be
generous), and will cause also the fruits of their righteousness
to grow. Their righteousness, as it figures
in this last phrase, is of course represented, for the
time being, by their generosity; and the poetic expression
"fruits of righteousness," which is borrowed
from Hosea, designates the results which that generosity
produces. It is not only an investment which
guarantees to them the generous care of God for their
own welfare; it is a seed which bears another and
more spiritual harvest. With some expansion of heart
on this the Apostle concludes.
(a) It yields a rich harvest of thanksgiving to God.
This is expressed in ver. 12, and is the principal point.
It is something to fill up further the measure of a
brother's needs by a timely gift, but how much more
it is to change the tune of his spirit, and whereas we
found him cheerless or weak in faith, to leave him
gratefully praising God. True thankfulness to the
Heavenly Father is an atmosphere in which all virtues
flourish: and those whose charity bears fruit in this
grateful spirit are benefactors of mankind to an extent
which no money can estimate. It is probably forcing
the Apostle's language to insist that λειτουργία, as a
name for the collection, has any priestly or sacrificial
reference;Λειτουργία: for the general sense of "service," especially charitable
service, quite apart from priestly associations, see Phil. ii. 25,
30: and Grimm's Lexicon.
but unfeigned charity is in its very nature
a sacrifice of praise to God—the answer of our love
to His; and it has its best effect when it evokes
the thanksgivings to God of those who receive it.
Wherever love is, He must be first and last.
(b) The charity of the Corinthians bore another
spiritual fruit: in consequence of it the saints at Jerusalem
were won to recognise more unreservedly the
Christian standing of the Gentile brethren. This is
what we read in ver. 13. Taking occasion from the
proof of what you are, which this ministration of yours
has given them, they glorify God "for the obedience of
your confession unto the Gospel of Christ, and for the
liberality of your contribution unto them and unto all."
The verbal combinations possible here give free scope
to the ingenuity and the caprice of grammarians; but
the kind of thing meant remains plain. Once the
Christians of Jerusalem had had their doubts about the
Corinthians, and the other pagans who were said to
have received the Gospel; they had heard marvellous
reports about them certainly, but it remained to be
seen on what these reports rested. They would not
commit themselves hastily to any compromising relation
to such outsiders. Now all their doubts have been
swept away; the Gentiles have actually come to the
relief of their poverty, and there is no mistaking what
that means. The language of love is intelligible everywhere,
and there is only One who teaches it in such
relations as are involved here—Jesus Christ. Yes,
once they had their doubts of you; but now they will
praise God that you have obediently confessed the
Gospel, and frankly owned a fellowship with them and
with all. The last words mean, in effect, that the
Corinthians had liberally shared what they had with
them and with all; but the terms are so chosen as to
obliterate, as far as possible, all but the highest associations.
This, then, is another fruit of charity: it widens
the thoughts—it often improves the theology—of those
who receive it. All goodness, men feel instinctively,
is of God; and they cannot condemn as godless, or even
as beyond the covenant, those through whom goodness
comes to them.
(c) Finally, among the fruits of charity is to be
reckoned the direct response of brotherly love, expressed
especially in intercessory prayer, and in a longing to
see those on whom God's grace rests so abundantly.
An unknown and distant benefactor is sometimes better
than one near at hand. He is regarded simply in his
character as a benefactor; we know nothing of him
that can possibly discount his kindness; our mind is
compelled to rest upon his virtues and remember them
gratefully before God. One of the meanest experiences
of human nature that we can have—and it is not an
imaginary one—is to see people paying the debt of
gratitude, or at least mitigating the sense of obligation,
by thinking over the deficiencies in their benefactor's
character. "He is better off than we are; it is nothing
to him; and if he is kind to the poor, he has need to
be. It will take a lot of charity to cover all he would
like to hide." This revolting spirit is the extreme
opposite of the intercessory prayer and brotherly
yearning which St. Paul sees in his mind's eye among
the saints at Jerusalem. Perhaps he saw almost more
than was really to be seen. The union of hearts he
aimed at was never more than imperfectly attained.
But to have aimed at it was a great and generous
action, and to have brought so many Gentile Churches
to co-operate to this end was a magnificent service to
the kingdom of God.
These "fruits" are not as yet actually borne, but to
the Apostle's loving anticipation they are as good as
real. They are the fruits of "the righteousness" of
the Corinthians, the harvest that God has caused to
grow out of their liberality. From the very beginning
there have been two opinions as to what St. Paul
means by the exclamation with which he closes—"Thanks
be unto God for His unspeakable gift."
On the one hand, it is read as if it were a part of
what precedes, the unspeakable gift of God being
the numberless blessings that charity yields, by God's
goodness, both to those who give and to those who
receive it. Paul in this case would be thinking,
when he wrote, of the joy with which the Gentiles
gave, and of the gratitude, the willing recognition,
and the brotherly prayers and longing, with which the
Jews received, help in the hour of need. These
would be the unspeakable gift. On the other hand,
the sentence is read as if it stood apart, not the
continuation of what immediately precedes, but the
overflow of the Apostle's heart in view of the whole
situation. It becomes possible, then, to regard "God's
unspeakable gift" as the gift of redemption in His Son—the
great, original, unsearchable gift, in which everything
else is included, and especially all such manifestations
of brotherly love as have just been in view.
Sound feeling, I think, unequivocally supports the last
interpretation. The very word "unspeakable" is one
of a class that Paul reserves for this particular object;
the wisdom and love of God as displayed in man's
salvation are unspeakable, unsearchable, passing knowledge;
but nothing else is. It is to this his mind goes
back, instinctively, as he contemplates what has flowed
from it in the particular case before us; but it is the
great divine gift, and not its fruits in men's lives, however
rich and various, that it passes the power of words
to characterise. It is for it, and not for its results in
Jew or Gentile, that the Apostle so devoutly thanks
God.
WAR
"Now I Paul myself intreat you by the meekness and gentleness
of Christ, I who in your presence am lowly among you, but being
absent am of good courage toward you: yea, I beseech you, that
I may not when present show courage with the confidence wherewith
I count to be bold against some, which count of us as if we
walked according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we
do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are
not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strong
holds); casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is
exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought
into captivity to the obedience of Christ; and being in readiness to
avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall be fulfilled."—2
Cor. x. 1-6 (R.V.).
The last four chapters of the Second Epistle to
the Corinthians stand as manifestly apart as the
two about the collection. A great deal too much has
been made of this undeniable fact. If a man has
a long letter to write, in which he wishes to speak
of a variety of subjects, we may expect variations of
tone, and more or less looseness of connexion. If he
has something on his mind which it is difficult to speak
about, but which cannot be suppressed, we may expect
him to keep it to the end, and to introduce it, perhaps,
with awkward emphasis. The scholars who have
argued, on the ground of the extreme difference of tone,
and want of connexion, that chaps. x.-xiii. of this
Epistle were originally a separate letter, either earlier
(Weisse) or later (Semler) than the first seven chapters,
seem to have overlooked these obvious considerations.On Hausrath's view that this was a letter between our Ep. I.
and Ep. II. see the Introduction.
If Paul stopped dictating for the day at the end of
chap. ix.—if he even stopped a few moments in doubt
how to proceed to the critical subject he had still to
handle—the want of connexion is sufficiently explained;
the tone in which he writes, when we consider the
subject, needs no justification. The mission of Titus
had resulted very satisfactorily, so far as one special
incident was concerned—the treatment of a guilty person
by the Church; the tension of feeling over that case
had passed by. But in the general situation of affairs
at Corinth there was much to make the Apostle anxious
and angry. There were Judaists at work, impugning
his authority and corrupting his Gospel; there was at
least a minority of the Church under their influence;
there were large numbers living, apparently, in the
grossest sins (chap. xii. 20 f.); there was something, we
cannot but think, approaching spiritual anarchy. The
one resource the Apostle has with which to encounter
this situation—his one standing ground alike against
the Church and those who were corrupting it—is his
apostolic authority; and to the vindication of this he
first addresses himself. This, I believe, explains the
peculiar emphasis with which he begins: "Now I myself,
I Paul intreat you." Αὐτὸς ἐγὼ Παῦλος is not only
the grammatical subject of the sentence, but if one may
say so, the subject under consideration; it is the very
person whose authority is in dispute who puts himself
forward deliberately in this authoritative way. The δὲ
("now") is merely transitional; the writer moves on,
without indicating any connexion, to another matter.
In the long sentence which makes up the first and
second verses, everything comes out at once—the
Apostle's indignation, in that extreme personal emphasis;
his restraint of it, in the appeal to the meekness and
gentleness of Christ; his resentment at the misconstruction
of his conduct by enemies, who called him a
coward at hand, and a brave man only at a safe distance;
and his resolve, if the painful necessity is not spared
him, to come with a rod and not spare. It is as if
all this had been dammed up in his heart for long,
and to say a single word was to say everything. The
appeal to the meekness and gentleness of Christ is
peculiarly affecting in such a connexion; it is intended
to move the Corinthians, but what we feel is how it
has moved Paul. It may be needful, on occasion,
to assert oneself, or at least one's authority; but it
is difficult to do it without sin. It is an exhilarating
sensation to human nature to be in the right, and when
we enjoy it we are apt to enlist our temper in the divine
service, forgetting that the wrath of man does not work
the righteousness of God. Paul felt this danger, and
in the very sentence in which he puts himself and
his dignity forward with uncompromising firmness, he
recalls to his own and his readers' hearts the characteristic
temper of the Lord. How far He was, under
the most hateful provocation, from violence and passion!
How far from that sinful self-assertion, which cannot
consider the case and claims of others! It is when
we are in the right that we must watch our temper,
and, instead of letting anger carry us away, make our
appeal for the right by the meekness and gentleness
of Jesus. This, when right is won, makes it twice
blessed. The words, "who in your presence am
lowly among you, but being absent am of good courage
toward you," are one of the sneers current in Corinth
at Paul's expense. When he was there, his enemies
said, face to face with them, he was humble enough;This is the only place in the New Testament where ταπεινὸς
("lowly") is used in a bad (contemptuous) sense: in Christian lips
it is a term of praise (Matt. xi. 29); the speakers here had not learned
its Christian meaning.
it was only when he left them he became so brave.
This mean slander must have stung the proud soul of
the Apostle—the mere quotation of it shows this; but
the meekness and gentleness of Christ have entered
into him, and instead of resenting it he continues in
a still milder tone. He descends from urging or
entreating (παρακαλῶ) to beseeching (δέομαι). The
thought of Christ has told already on his heart and
on his pen. He begs them so to order their conduct
that he may be spared the pain of demonstrating the
falsehood of that charge. He counts on taking daring
action against some at Corinth who count of him as
though he walked after the flesh; but they can make
this face-to-face hardihood needless, and in the name,
not of his own cowardice, but of his Lord's meekness
and considerateness, he appeals to them to do so.
Δυσφημούμενοι παρακαλοῦμεν.
The charge of walking after the flesh is one that
needs interpretation. In a general way it means that
Paul was a worldly, and not a spiritual, man; and
that the key to his character and conduct—even in his
relations with Churches—was to be sought in his private
and personal interests. What this would mean in any
particular case would depend upon the circumstances.
It might mean that he was actuated by avarice, and,
in spite of pretences to be disinterested, was ruled at
bottom by the idea of what would pay; or it might
mean—and in this place probably does mean—that he
had an undue regard for the opinion of others, and
acted with feeble inconsistency in his efforts to please
them. A man of whom either of these things could be
truly said would be without spiritual authority, and
it was to discredit the Apostle in the Church that the
vague and damaging charge was made.
He certainly shows no want of courage in meeting
it. That he walks in the flesh, he cannot deny. He
is a human being, wearing the weak nature, and all its
maladies are incident to him. As far as that nature
goes, it is as possible that he, as that any man, should
be ruled by its love of ease or popularity; or, on the
other hand, should be overcome by timidity, and shrink
from difficult duties. But he denies that this is his
case. He spends his life in this nature, with all its
capacity for unworthy conduct; but in his Christian
warfare he is not ruled by it—he has conquered it, and
it has no power over him at all. "I was with you," he
wrote in the First Epistle, "with weakness and fear and
much trembling"; but "my speech and my preaching
were ... with demonstration of the Spirit and of
power." This is practically what he says here, and
what must be said by every man who undertakes to do
anything for God. No one can be half so well aware
as he, if he is sincere at all, of the immense contrast
between the nature in which he lives and the service
to which he is called. None of his enemies can know
so well as he the utter earthenness of the vessel in
which the heavenly treasure is deposited. But the
very meaning of a divine call is that a man is made
master of this weakness, and through whatever pain
and self-repression can disregard it for his work's sake.
With some men timidity is the great trial: for them,
it is the flesh. They are afraid to declare the whole
counsel of God; or they are afraid of some class, or of
some particular person: they are brave with a pen
perhaps, or in a pulpit, or surrounded by sympathising
spectators; but it is not in them to be brave alone, and
to find in the Spirit a courage and authority which
overbear the weakness of the flesh. From all such
timidity, as an influence affecting his apostolic work,
Paul can pronounce himself free. Like Jeremiah (Jer.
i. 6-8) and Ezekiel (Ezek. ii. 6-8), he is naturally capable,
but spiritually incapable of it. He is full of might by
the Spirit of the Lord: and when he takes the field in
the Lord's service, the flesh is as though it were not.
Since the expression ἐν σαρκὶ περιπατοῦντες refers to
the whole of the Apostle's life, it seems natural to take
στρατευόμεθα as referring to the whole of his ministry,
and not solely to his present campaign against the
Corinthians. It is of his apostolic labours in general—of
course including that which lay immediately before
him—that he says: "The weapons of our warfare are
not of the flesh, but mighty before GodThe dative in δυνατὰ τῷ Θεῷ is the same as in Jonah iii. 3, Acts
vii. 20. A vague rendering like "divinely powerful" is probably
nearest the meaning.
to the casting
down of strong holds."
Nobody but an evangelist could have written this
sentence. Paul knew from experience that men fortify
themselves against God: they try to find impregnable
positions in which they may defy Him, and live their
own life. Human nature, when God is announced to
speak, instinctively puts itself on its guard; and you
cannot pass that guard, as Paul was well aware, with
weapons furnished by the flesh. The weapons need to
be divinely strong; mighty in God's sight, for God's
service, with God's own might. There is an answer
in this to many of the questions that are being asked
at present about methods of evangelising; where the
divinely powerful weapons are found, such questions
give no trouble. No man who has ever had a direct
and unmistakable blessing on his work as an evangelist
has ever enlisted "the flesh" in God's service. No
such man has ever seen, or said, that learning,
eloquence, or art in the preacher; or bribes of any sort
to the hearer; or approaches to the "strong holds,"
constructed of amusements, lectures, concerts, and so
forth, were of the very slightest value. He who knows
anything about the matter knows that it is a life-and-death
interest which is at stake when the soul comes
face to face with the claims and the mercy of God; and
that the preacher who has not the hardihood to represent
it as such will not be listened to, and should not
be. Paul was armed with this tremendous sense of
what the Gospel was—the immensity of grace in it, the
awfulness of judgment; and it was this which gave him
his power, and lifted him above the arts, the wisdom,
and the timidity of the flesh. A man will hold his own
against anything but this. He will parley with any
weapon flesh can fashion or wield; this is the only one
to which he surrenders.
Perhaps in the fifth verse, which is an expansion of
"the casting down of strong holds," a special reference
to the Corinthians begins to be felt: at all events they
might easily apply it to themselves. "Casting down
imaginations," the Apostle says, "and every high thing
that is exalted against the knowledge of God." "Imaginations"
is probably a fair enough rendering of
λογισμούς, though the margin has "reasonings," and
the same word in Rom. ii. 15 is rendered "thoughts."
To what it applies is not very obvious. Men do
certainly fortify themselves against the Gospel in their
thoughts. The proud wisdom of the Greek was
familiar to the Apostle, and even the obvious fact that
it had not brought the world salvation was not sufficient
to lower its pride. The expression has sometimes
been censured as justifying the sacrificium intellectus,
or as taking away freedom of thought in religion. To
think of Paul censuring the free exercise of intelligence
in religion is too absurd; but there is no doubt that,
with his firm hold of the great facts on which the
Christian faith depends, he would have dealt very
summarily with theories, ancient or modern, which
serve no purpose but to fortify men against the pressure
of these facts. He would not have taken excessive
pains to put himself in the speculator's place, and see
the world as he sees it, with the most stupendous
realities left out; he would not have flattered with
any affected admiration that most self-complacent of
mortals—the wise of this world. He would have
struck straight at the heart and conscience with the
spiritual weapons of the Gospel; he would have spoken
of sin and judgment, of reconciliation and life in Christ,
till these great realities had asserted their greatness
in the mind, and in doing so had shattered the
proud intellectual structures which had been reared
in ignorance or contempt of them. "Thoughts" and
"imaginations" must yield to things, and make room
for them: it was on this principle Paul wrought. And
to "thoughts" or "imaginations" he adds "every
high thing [ὕψωμα] that exalts itself against the
knowledge of God." The emphasis is on "every";
the Apostle generalises the opposition which he has to
encounter. It may not be so much in the "thoughts"
of men, as in their tempers, that they fortify themselves.
Pride, which by the instinct of self-preservation sees at
once to the heart of the Gospel, and closes itself against
it; which hates equally the thought of absolute indebtedness
to God and the thought of standing on the same
level with others in God's sight,—this pride raises in
every part of our nature its protest against the great
surrender. It is implied in the whole structure of this
passage that "the knowledge of God" against which
every high thing in man rises defiantly is a humbling
knowledge. In other words, it is not speculative
merely, but has an ethical significance, which the
human heart is conscious of even at a distance, and
makes ready to acknowledge or to resist. No high
thing lifts itself up in us against a mere theorem—a
doctrine of God which is as a doctrine in algebra; it is
the practical import of knowing God which excites the
rebellion of the soul. No doubt, for the Apostle, the
knowledge of God was synonymous with the Gospel:
it was the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus
Christ; it was concentrated in the Cross and the Throne
of His Son, in the Atonement and the Sovereignty
of Christ. The Apostle had to beat down all the
barriers by which men closed their minds against this
supreme revelation; he had to win for these stupendous
facts a place in the consciousness of humanity answering
to their grandeur. Their greatness made him
great: he was lifted up on them; and though he walked
in the flesh, in weakness and fear and much trembling,
he could confront undaunted the pride and the wisdom
of the world, and compel them to acknowledge his
Lord.
This meaning is brought out more precisely in the
words with which he continues—"bringing every
thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." If we
suppose a special reference here to the Corinthians, it
will be natural to take νόημα ("thought") in a practical
sense—as, e.g., in chap. ii. 11, where it is rendered
"devices." The Corinthians had notions of their own,
apparently, about how a Church should be regulated—wild,
undisciplined, disorderly notions; and in the
absence of the Apostle they were experimenting with
them freely. It is part of his work to catch these runaway
thoughts, and make them obedient to Christ again.
It seems, however, much more natural to allow the wider
reference of αἰχμαλωτίζοντες to the whole of Paul's
apostolic work; and then νόημα also will be taken in
a less restricted sense. Men's minds, and all that goes
on in their minds (νοήματα covers both: see chaps, ii.
11, iii. 14, iv. 4), are by nature lawless: they are
without the sense of responsibility to guard and consecrate
the sense of freedom. When the Gospel makes
them captive, this lawless liberty comes to an end.
The mind, in all its operations, comes under law to
Christ: in its every thought it is obedient to Him.
The supremacy which Christ claims and exercises is
over the whole nature: the Christian man feels that
nothing—not even a thought—lies beyond the range in
which obedience is due to Him. This practical conviction
will not paralyse thinking in the very least, but
it will extinguish many useless and bad thoughts, and
give their due value to all.
The Apostle descends unmistakably from the general
to the particular in ver. 6: "Being in readiness to
avenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled."
Apparently what he contemplates in Corinth
is a disobedience which in part at least will refuse to
surrender to Christ. There is a spirit abroad there,
in the Judaists especially, and in those whom they
have influenced, which will not bend, and must be
broken. How Paul means to take vengeance on it, he
does not say. He is confident himself that the divinely
powerful weapons which he wields will enable him to
master it, and that is enough. Whatever the shape
the disobedience may assume,—hostility to the Gospel
of Paul, as subversive of the law; hostility to his
apostolic claims, as unequal to those of the Twelve;
hostility to the practical authority he asserted in
Churches of his founding, and to the moral ideals he
established there,—whatever the face which opposition
may present, he declares himself ready to humble it.
One limitation only he imposes on himself—he will do
this, "when the obedience of the Corinthians is fulfilled."
He expressly distinguishes the Church as a
whole from those who represent or constitute the disobedient
party. There have been misunderstandings
between the Church and himself; but as chaps. i. to vii.
show, these have been so far overcome: the body of
the Church has reconciled itself to its founder; it has
returned, so to speak, to its allegiance to Paul, and has
busied itself in carrying out his will. When this process,
at present only in course, is completed, his way
will be clear. He will be able to act with severity and
decision against those who have troubled the Church,
without running any risk of hurting the Church itself.
This leads again to the reflection that, with all his high
consciousness of spiritual power, with all his sense of
personal wrong, the most remarkable characteristic of
Paul is love. He waits to the last moment before he
resorts to severer measures; and he begs those who
may suffer from them, begs them by the meekness and
gentleness of Christ, to spare him such pain.
COMPARISONS
"Ye look at the things that are before your face. If any man
trusteth in himself that he is Christ's, let him consider this again
with himself, that, even as he is Christ's, so also are we. For though
I should glory somewhat abundantly concerning our authority (which
the Lord gave for building you up, and not for casting you down),
I shall not be put to shame: that I may not seem as if I would terrify
you by my letters. For, His letters, they say, are weighty and
strong; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no
account. Let such a one reckon this, that, what we are in word by
letters when we are absent, such are we also in deed when we are
present. For we are not bold to number or compare ourselves with
certain of them that commend themselves: but they themselves,
measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves with
themselves, are without understanding. But we will not glory
beyond our measure, but according to the measure of the province
which God apportioned to us as a measure, to reach even unto you.
For we stretch not ourselves overmuch, as though we reached not
unto you: for we came even as far as unto you in the Gospel of
Christ: not glorying beyond our measure, that is, in other men's
labours; but having hope that, as your faith groweth, we shall be
magnified in you according to our province unto further abundance,
so as to preach the Gospel even unto the parts beyond you, and not to
glory in another's province in regard of things ready to our hand.
But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. For not he that
commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth."—2
Cor. x. 7-18 (R.V.).
This passage abounds with grammatical and textual
difficulties, but the general import and the purpose
of it are plain. The self-assertion of αὐτὸς ἐγὼ Παῦλος
(ver. 1) receives its first interpretation and expansion
here: we see what it is that Paul claims, and we begin
to see the nature of the opposition against which his
claim has to be made good. Leaving questions of
grammatical construction aside, vv. 7 and 8 define the
situation; and it is convenient to take them as if they
stood alone.
There was a person in Corinth—more than one
indeed, but one in particular, as the τις in ver. 7 and
the singular φησὶνThis is the reading adopted by Westcott and Hort with most
MSS. except B.
in ver. 10 suggest—who claimed to
be Christ's, or of Christ, in a sense which disparaged
and was meant to disparage Paul. If we use the plural,
to include them all, we must not suppose that they are
identical with the party in the Church who are censured
in the First Epistle for saying, "I am of Christ," just
as others said, "I am of Paul," "I am of Apollos," "I
am of Cephas." That party may have been dependent
upon them, but the individuals here referred to are
taxed with an exclusiveness and arrogance, and in the
close of the chapter with a wanton trespassing on
Paul's province, which show that they were not native
to the Church, but intruders into it. They were confident
that they were Christ's in a sense which discredited
Paul's apostleship, and entitled them, so to
speak, to legitimate a Church which his labours had
called into being. Everything compels us to recognise
in them Jewish Christians, who had been connected
with Christ in a way in which Paul had not; who had
known Him in the flesh, or had brought recommendatory
letters from the Mother Church at Jerusalem; and who,
on the strength of these accidents, gave themselves airs
of superiority in Pauline Churches, and corrupted the
simplicity of the Pauline Gospel.
The first words in ver. 7—τὰ κατὰ πρόσωπον βλέπετε—are
no doubt directed to this situation, but they have
been very variously rendered. Our Authorised Version
has, "Do ye look on things after the outward appearance?"
That is, "Are you really imposed upon by the
pretensions of these men, by their national and carnal
distinctions, as if these had anything to do with the
Gospel?" This is a good Pauline idea, but it is doubtful
whether τὰ κατὰ πρόσωπον can yield it. The natural
sense of these words is, "What is before your face."
The Revised Version accordingly renders, "Ye look
at the things that are before your face": meaning,
apparently, "You allow yourselves to be carried away
by whatever is nearest to you—at present, by these interloping
Jews, and the claims they flaunt before your eyes."
It seems to me more natural, with many good scholars,
to take βλέπετε, in spite of its unemphatic position, as
imperative: "Look at the things which are before your
faces! The most obvious and palpable facts discredit
these Judaists and accredit me. A claim to be Christ's
is not to be made out à priori by any carnal prerogatives,
or any human recommendations; it is only made out
by this—that Christ Himself attests it by giving him
who makes it success as an evangelist. Look at what
confronts you! There is not a single Christian thing
you see which is not Christ's own testimony that I am
His; unless you are senseless and blind, my position
and authority as an apostle can never be impugned
among you." The argument is thus the same as that
which he uses in chap. iii. 1-3, and in the First Epistle,
chap. ix. 2.
At first Paul asserts only a bare equivalence to his
Jewish opponent: "Let him consider this with himself,
that, even as he is Christ's, so also are we." The
historical, outward connexion with Christ, whatever it
may have been, amounted in this relation to exactly
nothing at all. Not what Christ was, but what He is,
is the life and reality of the Christian religion. Not an
accidental acquaintance with Him as He lived in Galilee
or Jerusalem, but a spiritual fellowship with Him as
He reigns in the heavenly places, makes a Christian.
Not a letter written by human hands—though they
should be the hands of Peter or James or John—legitimates
a man in the apostolic career; but only the
sovereign voice which says, "He is a chosen vessel unto
Me, to bear My Name." Neither as Christian nor as
apostle can one establish a monopoly by making his
appeal to "the flesh." The application of this Christian
truth has constantly to be made anew, for human nature
loves a monopoly; it does not seem really to have a
thing, unless its possession of it is exclusive. We are
all too ready to unchurch, or unchristianise, others; to
say, "We are Christ's," with an emphasis which means
that others are not. Churches with a strong organisation
are especially tempted to this unchristian
narrowness and pride. Their members think almost
instinctively of other Christians as outsiders and inferiors;
they would like to take them in, to reordain
their ministers, to reform their constitution, to give
validity to their sacraments—in one word, to legitimate
them as Christians and as Christian societies. All this
is mere unintelligence and arrogance. Legitimacy is
a convenient and respectable political fiction; but to
make the constitution of any Christian body, which has
developed under the pressure of historical exigences,
the law for the legitimation of Christian life, ministry,
and worship everywhere, is to deny the essential character
of the Christian religion. It is to play toward
men whom Christ has legitimated by His Spirit, and by
His blessing on their work, precisely the part which the
Judaisers played toward Paul; and to compromise with
it is to betray Christ, and to renounce the freedom of
the Spirit.
But the Apostle does not stop short with claiming a
bare equality with his rivals. "For thoughThe difficult τε in ἐάν τε γὰρ is most easily explained by the
ellipse of a corresponding καί: of several reasons he might adduce,
Paul adduces only one (Schmiedel).
I should
boast somewhat more abundantly concerning our
authority ... I shall not be put to shame"—i.e., "The
facts I have invited you to look at will bear me out."
The key to this passage is to be found in 1 Cor. xv. 15,
where he boasts that, though the least of the apostles,
and not worthy to be called an apostle, he had, through
the grace of God given to him, laboured more abundantly
than all the rest. If it came to comparison, then, of
the attestation which Christ gave to their several labours,
and so to their authority, by success in evangelising, it
would not be Paul who would have to hide his head. But
he does not choose to boast any more of his authority
at this point. He has no desire to clothe himself in
terrors; on the contrary, he wishes to avoidThe ninth verse, Ἵνα μὴ δόξω κ.τ.λ. is most naturally taken with
what precedes, and most simply explained by supplying something
like, "but I say no more about it, i.e. about my authority, that I may
not seem," etc. To say more would look like trying to frighten them.
Others make it protasis to ver. 11, ver. 10 being then a parenthesis.
the very
appearance of scaring them out of their wits by his
letters (for ἐκφοβεῖν compare Mark ix. 6; Heb. xii. 21).
His authority has been given him, not for the pulling
down, but for the building up, of the Church; it is not
lordly (chap. i. 24), but ministerial; and he would
wish, not only to show it in kindly service, but also in
a kindly aspect. "Not for casting down," in ver. 8, is
no contradiction of "mighty for casting down" in ver. 4:
the object in the two cases is quite different. Many
things in man must be cast down—many high thoughts,
much pride, much wilfulness, much presumption and
sufficiency—but the casting down of these is the building
up of souls.
At this point comes what is logically a parenthesis,
and we hear in it the criticisms passed at Corinth on
Paul, and his own reply to them. "His letters," they
say (or, he says), "are weighty and strong; but his
bodily presence weak, and his speech of no account."
The last part of this criticism has been much misunderstood;
it is really of moral import, but has been read
in a physical sense. It does not say anything at all
about the Apostle's physique, or about his eloquence
or want of eloquence; it tells us that (according to
these critics), when he was actually present at Corinth,
he was somehow or other ineffective; and when he
spoke there, people simply disregarded him. An
uncertain tradition no doubt represents Paul as an
infirm and meagre person, and it is easy to believe that
to Greeks he must sometimes have seemed embarrassed
and incoherent in speech to the last degree (what,
for instance, could have seemed more formless to a
Greek than vv. 12-18 of this chapter?): nevertheless,
it is nothing like this which is in view here. The
criticism is not of his physique, nor of his style, but
of his personality—what is described is not his appearance
nor his eloquence, but the effect which the man
produced when he went to Corinth and spoke. It
was nothing. As a man, bodily present, he could get
nothing done: he talked, and nobody listened. It is
implied that this criticism is false; and Paul bids
any one who makes it consider that what he is in
word by letters when he is absent, that he will also
be in deed when he is present. The double rôle
of potent pamphleteer and ineffective pastor is not
for him.
The kind of criticism which was here passed on St.
Paul is one to which every preacher is obnoxious. An
epistle is, so to speak, the man's words without the
man; and such is human weakness, that they are often
stronger than the man speaking in bodily presence, that
is, than the man and his words together. The character
of the speaker, as it were, discounts all he says; and
when he is there, and delivers his message in person,
the message itself suffers an immense depreciation.
This ought not so to be, and with a man who cultivates
sincerity will not so be. He will be, himself, as good
as his words; his effectiveness will be the same
whether he writes or speaks. Nothing ultimately
counts in the work of a Christian minister but what
he can say and do and get done when in direct contact,
with living men. In many cases the modern sermon
really answers to the epistle as it is referred to in
this sarcastic comment; in the pulpit, people say, the
minister is impressive and memorable; but in the
ordinary intercourse of life, and even in the pastoral
relation, where he has to meet people on an equal
footing, his power quite disappears. He is an ineffective
person, and his words have no weight. Where this
is true, there is something very far wrong; and though
it was not true in the case of Paul, there are cases
in which it is. To bring the pastoral up to the level
of the pulpit work—the care of individual souls and
characters to the intensity and earnestness of study
and preaching—would be the saving of many a minister
and many a congregation.The following sentence from a letter of H. E. M. (a sister of
James Mozley's) is an interesting illustration of this truth: "I consider
Mr. Rickards as the type and model of a country parish and
domestic priest. All his powers and energies are expended on and
exerted for teaching, preaching, and talking. Bodily presence is his
vocation: unlike some, writers and others, he must be seen to be felt;
and unlike others again, writers and others, the more he is seen, the
more he is felt."
But to return to the text. The Apostle is disinclined
to pursue this line further: in defending himself against
these obscure detractors, he can hardly avoid the
appearance of self-commendation, which of all things
he abhors. An acute observer has remarked that when
war lasts long the opposing combatants borrow each
other's weapons and tactics: and it was this uninviting
weapon that the policy of his opponents laid to the
Apostle's hand. With ironical recognition of their
hardihood, he declines it: "We are not bold—have not
the courage—to number ourselves among, or compare
ourselves with, certain of them that commend themselves"—i.e.,
the Judaists who had introduced themselves
to the Church. "Far be it from me," says the
Apostle grimly, "to claim a place among, or near, such
a distinguished company." But he is too much in
earnest to prolong the ironical strain, and in the verses
which follow, from 12 to 16, he states in good set
terms the differences between himself and them.
(1) They measure themselves by themselves, and compare
themselves among themselves, and in so doing are
without understanding.See note, p. 311.
They constitute a religious
coterie, a sort of clique or ring in the Church, ignoring
all but themselves, making themselves the only standard
of what is Christian, and betraying, by that very proceeding,
their want of sense. There is a fine liberality
about this sharp saying, and it is as necessary now as
in the first century. Men coalesce, within the limits
of the Christian community, from affinities of various
kinds—sympathy for a type or an aspect of doctrine,
or liking for a form of polity; and as it is easy, so is it
common, for those who have united like to like, to set
up their own associations and preferences as the only
law and model for all. They take the air of superior
persons, and the penalty of the superior person is to be
unintelligent. They are without understanding. The
standard of the coterie—be it "evangelical," "high
church," "broad church," or what you please—is not
the standard of God; and to measure all things by it is
not only sinful but stupid. In contrast to this Judaistic
clique, who saw no Christianity except under their own
colours, Paul's standard is to be found in the actual
working of God through the Gospel. He would have
said with Ignatius, only with a deeper insight into
every word, "Where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic
Church." (2) Another point of difference is this: Paul
works independently as an evangelist; it has always
been his rule to break new ground. God has assigned
him a province to labour in, large enough to gratify
the highest ambition; he is not going beyond it, nor
exaggerating his authority, when he asserts his apostolic
dignity in Corinth; the Corinthians know as well as
he that he came all the way to them, and was the first
to come, ministering the Gospel of Christ. Nay, it is
only the weakness of their faith that keeps him from
going farther: and he has hope that as their faith
grows it will set him free to carry the Gospel beyond
them to Italy and Spain; this would be the crown
of his greatness as an evangelist, and it depends on
them (ἐν ὑμῖν μεγαλυνθῆναι) whether he is to win it;
in any case, the winning of it would be in harmony
with his vocation, the carrying of it out in glorious
fulness (κατὰ τὸν κανόνα εἰς περισσείαν); for, like John
Wesley, he could say the whole world was his parish.
If he boasts at all, it is not immeasurably; it is on the
basis of the gift and calling of God, within the limits
of what God has wrought by him and by no other; he
never intrudes into another's province and boasts of
what he finds done to his hand. But this was what
the Jews did. They did not propagate the Gospel with
apostolic enthusiasm among the heathen; they waited
till Paul had done the hard preliminary work, and
formed Christian congregations everywhere, and then
they slunk into them—in Galatia, in Macedonia, in
Achaia—talking as if these Churches were their work,
disparaging their real father in Christ, and claiming to
complete and legitimate—which meant, in effect, to
subvert—-his work. No wonder Paul was scornful,
and did not venture to put himself in a line with such
heroes.
Two feelings are compounded all through this passage:
an intense sympathy with the purpose of God that the
Gospel should be preached to every creature—Paul's
very soul melts into that; and an intense scorn for the
spirit that sneaks and poaches on another's ground,
and is more anxious that some men should be good
sectarians than that all men should be good disciples.
This evil spirit Paul loathes, just as Christ loathed it;
the temper of these verses is that in which the Master
cried, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte;
and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more
a son of hell than yourselves." Of course the evil
spirit must always be disguised, both from others and
from itself: the proselytiser assumes the garb of the
evangelist; but the proselytiser turned evangelist is
the purest example in the world of Satan disguised
as an angel of light. The show is divine, but the
reality is diabolical. It does not matter what the
special sectarianism is: the proselytising of a hierarchical
Church, and the proselytising of the Plymouth
Brethren, are alike dishonourable and alike condemned.
And the safeguard of the soul against this base spirit
is an interest like Paul's in the Christianising of those
who do not know Christ at all. Why should Churches
compete? why should their agencies overlap? why
should they steal from each other's folds? why should
they be anxious to seal all believers with their private
seal, when the whole world lies in wickedness? That
field is large enough for all the efforts of all evangelists,
and till it has been sown with the good seed from end
to end there can be nothing but reprobation for those
who trespass on the province of others, and boast that
they have made their own what they certainly did not
make Christ's.
At the close, to borrow Bengel's expression, Paul
sounds a retreat. He has liberated his mind about his
adversaries—always a more or less dangerous process;
and after the excitement and self-assertion are over,
he composes it again in the presence of God. He
checks himself, we feel, with that Old Testament word,
"Now he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. I
have always broken new ground; I have come as far
as you, and wish to go farther, evangelising; I never
have boasted of another man's labours as if they were
mine, or claimed the credit of what he had done; but
all this is mine only as God's gift. It is His grace
bestowed on me, and not in vain. I would not boast
except in Him; for not he who commends himself is
approved, but only he whom the Lord commends."
No character which is only self-certificated can stand the
test: no claim to apostolic dignity and authority can be
maintained which the Lord does not attest by granting
apostolic success.
Note on vv. 12 and 13.—In some MSS. (D*, F, G, 109, It., and some
Latins) the last two words of ver. 12 and the first two of ver. 13
(οὐ συνιᾶσιν· ἡμεῖς δέ) are omitted. Most editors of the text (Tischdf.
vii., Tregelles, Westcott and Hort) seem to think the omission
accidental; among exegetes, the fact that it yields an easy and
natural, though of course a quite different, sense, has caused some
hesitation. Thus Bengel, and recently Schmiedel, reject the words.
The latter renders the whole passage: "We do not venture to put
ourselves on a level, or to compare ourselves, with certain of those
who commend themselves; but in measuring ourselves by ourselves,
and comparing ourselves with ourselves, we shall not boast beyond
measure, but according to the measure of the rule," etc. This is no
doubt intelligible and appropriate enough, and certainly one's first
impression is that ἀλλ' αὐτοί in ver. 12 ought to refer to Paul; but
as the meaning yielded by the passage with the four words included
is equally appropriate, and their insertion immeasurably harder to
understand than their omission, it seems preferable to let them
stand, in the sense explained above. They are found (with the
variation of συνίσασιν for συνιᾶσιν in א*) in א**, B, minusc. Theodoret:
in E, K, L, P, the form is συνιοῦσιν. Apparently it is only
by an accident that their omission leaves good sense.
GODLY JEALOUSY
"Would that ye could bear with me in a little foolishness: nay indeed
bear with me. For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for
I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure
virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent
beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from
the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ. For if he that
cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or if ye
receive a different spirit, which ye did not receive, or a different
gospel, which ye did not accept, ye do well to bear with him. For
I reckon that I am not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.
But though I be rude in speech, yet am I not in knowledge; nay, in
everything we have made it manifest among all men to you-ward."—2
Cor. xi. 1-6 (R.V.).
All through the tenth chapter there is a conflict
in the Apostle's mind. He is repeatedly, as it
were, on the verge of doing something, from which
he as often draws back. He does not like to boast—he
does not like to speak of himself at all—but the
tactics of his enemies, and the faithlessness of the
Corinthians, are making it inevitable. In chap. xi.
he takes the plunge. He adopts the policy of his
adversaries, and proceeds to enlarge on his services
to the Church; but with magnificent irony, he first
assumes the mask of a fool. It is not the genuine
Paul who figures here; it is Paul playing a part to
which he has been compelled against his will, acting
in a character which is as remote as possible from his
own. It is the character native and proper to the
other side; and when Paul, with due deprecation,
assumes it for the nonce, he not only preserves his
modesty and his self-respect, but lets his opponents
see what he thinks of them. He plays the fool for the
occasion, and of set purpose; they do it always, and
without knowing it, like men to the manner born.
But it is the Corinthians who are directly addressed.
"Would that ye could bear with me in a little foolishness:
nay indeed bear with me." In the last clause,
ἀνέχεσθε may be either imperative (as the Revised
Version gives it in the text), or indicative (as in the
margin: "but indeed ye do bear with me"). The use
of ἀλλὰ rather favours the last; and it would be quite
in keeping with the extremely ironical tone of the
passage to render it so. Even in the First Epistle,
Paul had reflected on the self-conceit of the Corinthians:
"We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in
Christ." That self-conceit led them to think lightly
of him, but not just to cast him off; they still tolerated
him as a feeble sort of person: "Ye do indeed bear
with me." But whichever alternative be preferred, the
irony passes swiftly into the dead earnest of the second
verse: "For I am jealous over you with a godly
jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I
might present you as a pure virgin to Christ."
This is the ground on which Paul claims their
forbearance, even when he indulges in a little "folly."
If he is guilty of what seems to them extravagance, it
is the extravagance of jealousy—i.e., of love tormented
by fear. Nor is it any selfish jealousy, of which he
ought to be ashamed. He is not anxious about his
private or personal interests in the Church. He is
not humiliated and provoked because his former pupils
have come to their spiritual majority, and asserted their
independence of their master. These are common
dangers and common sins; and every minister needs
to be on his guard against them. Paul's jealousy over
the Corinthians was "a jealousy of God"; God had
put it into his heart, and what it had in view was God's
interest in them. It distressed him to think, not that
his personal influence at Corinth was on the wane,
but that the work which God had done in their souls
was in danger of being frustrated, the inheritance
He had acquired in them of being lost. Nothing but
God's interest had been in the Apostle's mind from
the beginning. "I betrothed you," he says, "to one
husband"—the emphasis lies on one—"that I might
present you as a pure virgin to Christ.""Woods, trees, meadows, and hills are my witnesses that I drew
on a fair match betwixt Christ and Anwoth."—S. Rutherford.
It is the Church collectively which is represented
by the pure virgin, and it ought to be observed that
this is the constant use in Scripture, alike in the Old
Testament and the New. It is Israel as a whole which
is married to the Lord; it is the Christian Church as
a whole (or a Church collectively, as here) which is the
Bride, the Lamb's wife. To individualise the figure,
and speak of Christ as the Bridegroom of the soul, is
not Scriptural, and almost always misleads. It introduces
the language and the associations of natural
affection into a region where they are entirely out of
place; we have no terms of endearment here, and
should have none, but high thoughts of the simplicity,
the purity, and the glory of the Church. Glory is
especially suggested by the idea of "presenting" the
Church to Christ. The presentation takes place when
Christ comes again to be glorified in His saints; that
great day shines unceasingly in the Apostle's heart,
and all he does is done in its light. The infinite issues
of fidelity and infidelity to the Lord, as that day makes
them manifest, are ever present to his spirit; and it is
this which gives such divine intensity to his feelings
wherever the conduct of Christians is concerned. He
sees everything, not as dull eyes see it now, but as
Christ in His glory will show it then. And it takes
nothing less than this to keep the soul absolutely pure
and loyal to the Lord.
The Apostle explains in the third verse the nature of
his alarm. "I fear," he says, "lest by any means, as
the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds
should be corrupted from the simplicity [and the purity]The words καὶ τῆς ἁγνότητος are bracketed by Westcott and
Hort. They are very strongly attested (by א, B, F, gr., G, etc.); but
as they are found in some authorities before, instead of after, τῆς
ἁπλότητος, it is not improbable that they may be a gloss on these
last words, suggested by ἁγνὴν in ver. 2, and incorporated in the text.
They rather blur than emphasise the thought.
which is toward Christ." The whole figure is very
expressive. "Simplicity" means singleness of mind;
the heart of the "pure virgin" is undivided; she ought
not to have, and will not have, a thought for any but
the "one man" to whom she is betrothed. "Purity"
again is, as it were, one species of "simplicity"; it is
"simplicity" as shown in the keeping of the whole
nature unspotted for the Lord. What Paul dreads
is the spiritual seduction of the Church, the winning
away of her heart from absolute loyalty to Christ. The
serpent beguiled Eve by his craftiness; he took advantage
of her unsuspecting innocence to wile her away
from her simple belief in God and obedience to Him.
When she took into her mind the suspicions he raised,
her "simplicity" was gone, and her "purity" followed.
The serpent's agents—the servants of Satan, as Paul
calls them in ver. 15—are at work in Corinth; and he
fears that their craftiness may seduce the Church from
its first simple loyalty to Christ. It is natural for us
to take ἁπλότης and ἁγνότης in a purely ethical sense,
but it is by no means certain that this is all that is
meant; indeed, if καὶ τῆς ἁγνότητος be a gloss, as
seems not improbable, ἁπλότης may well have a different
application. "The simplicity which is toward
Christ," from which he fears lest by any means "their
minds" or "thoughts" be corrupted, will rather be their
whole-hearted acceptance of Christ as Paul conceived
of Him and preached Him, their unreserved, unquestioning
surrender to that form of doctrine (τύπον διδαχῆς,
Rom. vi. 17) to which they had been delivered. This,
of course, in Paul's mind, involved the other—there is
no separation of doctrine and practice for him; but it
makes a theological rather than an ethical interest the
predominant one; and this interpretation, it seems to me,
coheres best with what follows, and with the whole preoccupation
of the Apostle in this passage. The people
whose influence he feared were not unbelievers, nor were
they immoral; they professed to be Christians, and
indeed better Christians than Paul; but their whole conception
of the Gospel was at variance with his; if they
made way at Corinth, his work would be undone. The
Gospel which he preached would no longer have that
unsuspicious acceptance; the Christ whom he proclaimed
would no longer have that unwavering loyalty; instead
of simplicity and purity, the heart of the "pure virgin"
would be possessed by misgivings, hesitations, perhaps
by out-right infidelity; his hope of presenting her to
Christ on the great day would be gone.
This is what we are led to by ver. 4, one of the
most vexed passages in the New Testament. The
text of the last word is uncertain: some read the imperfect
ἀνείχεσθε; others, including our Revisers, the
present ἀνέχεσθε. The last is the better attested, and
suits best the connexion of thought. The interpretations
may be divided into two classes. First, there are those
which assume that the suppositions made in this verse
are not true. This is evidently the intention in our
Authorised Version. It renders, "For if he that cometh
preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached,
or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received,
or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might
well bear with him." But—we must interpolate—nothing
of this sort has really taken place; for Paul counts
himself not a whit inferior to the very chiefest Apostles.
No one—not even Peter or James or John—could have
imparted anything to the Corinthians which Paul had
failed to impart; and hence their spiritual seduction, no
matter how or by whom accomplished, was perfectly
unreasonable and gratuitous. This interpretation, with
variations in detail which need not be pursued, is represented
by many of the best expositors, from Chrysostom
to Meyer. "If," says Chrysostom in his paraphrase,
"if we had omitted anything that should have been
said, and they had made up the omission, we do not
forbid you to attend to them. But if everything has
been perfectly done on our part, and no blank left, how
did they [the Apostle's adversaries] get hold of you?"
This is the broad result of many discussions; and it
is usual—though not invariable—for those who read
the passage thus to take τῶν ὑπερλίαν ἀποστόλων in
a complimentary, not a contemptuous, sense, and to
refer it, as Chrysostom expressly does, to the three
pillars of the primitive Church.
The objections to this interpretation are obvious
enough. There is first the grammatical objection, that
a hypothetical sentence, with the present indicative in
the protasis (εἰ ... κηρύσσει, εἰ ... λαμβάνετε), and
the present indicative in the apodosis (ἀνέχεσθε), can
by no plausibility of argument be made to mean, "If
the interloper were preaching another Jesus ... you
would be right to bear with him." Even if the imperfect
is the true reading, which is improbable, this translation
is unjustified.It is worth appending two ingenious notes on this. Bengel, who
holds that the suppositions are untrue, says: "Ponit conditionem,
ex parte rei, impossibilem; ideo dicit in imperfecto toleraretis: sed
pro conatu pseudo-apostolorum, non modo possibilem, sed plane
præsentem; ideo dicit in præsenti, prædicat." Schmiedel, who holds
that the suppositions are true, explains the impft. by saying that
Paul resolved, while dictating, to add the apodosis in the historical
tense to the timeless protasis, because the fact which it described
actually lay before him. They were tolerating the other teachers:
that is why Paul says ἀνείχεσθε. He happily compares Plato, Apol.,
33 A.: Εἰ δέ τίς μου λέγοντος ... ἐπιθυμεῖ ἀκούειν ... οὐδεvὶ πώποτε
ἐφθόνησα. Still, he prefers the present.
But there is a logical as well as a
grammatical objection. The use of γὰρ ("for") surely
implies that in the sentence which it introduces we
are to find the reason for what precedes. Paul is
afraid, he has told us, lest the Church should be
seduced from the one husband to whom he has
betrothed her. But he can never mean to explain a
real fear by making a number of imaginary suppositions;
and so we must find in the hypothetical
clauses here the real grounds of his alarm. People
had come to Corinth—ὁ ἐρχόμενος is no doubt collective,
and characterises the troublers of the Church as intruders,
not native to it, but separable from it—doing all the
things here supposed. Paul has espoused the Church
to One Husband; they preach another Jesus. Not,
of course, a distinct Person, but certainly a distinct
conception of the same Person. Paul's Christ was the
Son of God, the Lord of Glory, He who by His death
on the cross became Universal Redeemer, and by
His ascension Universal Lord—the end of the law,
the giver of the Spirit; it would be another Jesus if
the intruders preached only the Son of David, or the
Carpenter of Nazareth, or the King of Israel. According
to the conception of Christ, too, would be "the
spirit" which accompanied this preaching, the characteristic
temper and power of the religion it proclaimed.
The spirit ministered by Paul in his apostolic work
was one of power, and love, and, above all things,
liberty; it emancipated the soul from weakness, from
scruples, from moral inability, from slavery to sin and
law; but the spirit generated by the Judaising ministry,
the characteristic temper of the religion it proclaimed,
was servile and cowardly. It was a spirit of bondage
tending always to fear (Rom. viii. 15). Their whole
gospel—to give their preaching a name it did not
deserve (Gal. i. 6-9)—was something entirely unlike
Paul's both in its ideas and in its spiritual fruits.
Unlike—yes, and immeasurably inferior, and yet in
spite of this the Corinthians put up with it well enough.
This is the plain fact (ἀνέχεσθε) which the Apostle
plainly states. He had to plead for their toleration,
but they had no difficulty in tolerating men who by
a spurious gospel, an unspiritual conception of Christ,
and an unworthy incapacity for understanding freedom,
were undermining his work, and seducing their souls.
No wonder he was jealous, and angry, and scornful,
when he saw the true Christian religion, which has
all time and all nations for its inheritance, in danger
of being degraded into a narrow Jewish sectarianism;
the kingdom of the Spirit lost in a society in which
race gave a prerogative, and carnal ordinances were
revived; and, worse still, Christ the Son of God, the
Universal Reconciler, known only "after the flesh,"
and appropriated to a race, instead of being exalted
as Lord of all, in whom there is no room for Greek
or Jew, barbarian or Scythian, bond or free. The
Corinthians bore with this nobly (καλῶς); but he who
had begotten them in the true Gospel had to beg them
to bear with him.
There is only one difficulty in this interpretation, and
that is not a serious one: it is the connexion of ver. 5
with what precedes. Those who connect it immediately
with ver. 4 are obliged to supply something: for example,
"But you ought not to bear with them, for I consider
that I am in nothing behind the very chiefest apostles."
I have no doubt at all that ὁι ὑπερλίαν ἀπόστολοι—the
superlative apostles—are not Peter, James, and John,
but the teachers aimed at in ver. 4, the ψευδαπόστολοι
of ver. 13; it is with them, and not with the Twelve
or the eminent Three, that Paul is comparing himself.It is gratuitous to drag in a reference to the first Apostles, and
then to suppose the Corinthians drawing the inference—"if he is not
inferior to them, still less is he inferior to our new teachers." Such
an inference depends on a traditional conception of apostleship which
the Corinthians were not likely to share, and it is equally unnecessary
and improbable.
But even so, I agree with Weizsäcker that the connexion
for the γὰρ in ver. 5 must be sought further
back—as far back, indeed, as ver. 1. "You bear well
enough with them, and so you may well bear with
me, as I beg you to do; for I consider," etc. This is
effective enough, and brings us back again to the main
subject. If there is a point in which Paul is willing to
his inferiority to these superlative apostles,
it is the non-essential one of utterance. He grants
that he is rude in speech—not rhetorically gifted or
trained—a plain, blunt man who speaks right on. But
he is not rude in knowledge: in every respect he has
made that manifest, among all men, toward them.
The last clause is hardly intelligible, and the text is
insecure.Probably either ἐν παντὶ or ἐν πᾶσιν, the latter of which is omitted
in some authorities, is a gloss.
The reading φανερώσαντες is that of all the
critical editors; the object may either be indefinite (his
competence in point of knowledge), or, more precisely,
τὴν γνῶσιν itself, supplied from the previous clause. In
no point whatever, under no circumstances, has Paul
ever failed to exhibit to the Corinthians the whole truth
of God in the Gospel. This it is which makes him
scornful even when he thinks of the men whom the
Corinthians are preferring to himself.
When we look from the details of this passage to its
scope, some reflections are suggested, which have their
application still.
(1) Our conception of the Person of Christ determines
our conception of the whole Christian religion.
What we have to proclaim to men as gospel—what we
have to offer to them as the characteristic temper and
virtue of the life which the Gospel originates—depends
on the answer we give to Jesus' own question, "Whom
say ye that I am?" A Christ who is simply human
cannot be to men what a Christ is who is truly divine.
The Gospel identified with Him cannot be the same;
the spirit of the society which gathers round Him cannot
be the same. It is futile to ask whether such a
gospel and such a spirit can fairly be called Christian;
they are in point of fact quite other things from the
Gospel and the Spirit which are historically associated
with the name. It is plain from this passage that the
Apostle attached the utmost importance to his conceptions
of the Person and Work of the Lord: ought not
this to give pause to those who evacuate his theology
of many of its distinctive ideas—especially that of
the Pre-existence of Christ—on the plea that they are
merely theologoumena of an individual Christian, and
that to discard them leaves the Gospel unaffected?
Certainly this was not what he thought. Another
Jesus meant another spirit, another gospel—to use
modern words, another religion and another religious
consciousness; and any other, the Apostle was perfectly
sure, came short of the grandeur of the truth. The
spirit of the passage is the same with that in Gal. i. 6 ff.,
where he erects the Gospel he has preached as the
standard of absolute religious truth. "Though we, or
an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any
gospel other than that which we preached unto you,
let him be anathema. As we have said before, so say
I now again, If any man preacheth unto you any
gospel other than that which ye received, let him be
anathema."
(2) "The simplicity that is toward Christ"—the
simple acceptance of the truth about Him, and undivided
loyalty of heart to Him—may be corrupted by influences
originating within, as well as without, the Church.
The infidelity which is subtlest, and most to be dreaded,
is not the gross materialism or atheism which will not
so much as hear the name of God or Christ; but that
which uses all sacred names, speaking readily of Jesus,
the Spirit, and the Gospel, but meaning something else,
and something less, than these words meant in apostolic
lips. This it was which alarmed the jealous love
of Paul; this it is, in its insidious influence, which constitutes
one of the most real perils of Christianity at
the present time. The Jew in the first century, who
reduced the Person and Work of Christ to the scale of
his national prejudices, and the theologian in the nineteenth,
who discounts apostolic ideas when they do not
suit the presuppositions of his philosophy, are open to
the same suspicion, if they do not fall under the same
condemnation. True thoughts about Christ—in spite
of all the smart sayings about theological subtleties
which have nothing to do with piety—are essential to
the very existence of the Christian religion.
(3) There is no comparison between the Gospel of
God in Jesus Christ His Son and any other religion.
The science of comparative religion is interesting as a
science; but a Christian may be excused for finding
the religious use of it tiresome. There is nothing true
in any of the religions which is not already in his
possession. He never finds a moral idea, a law of the
spiritual life, a word of God, in any of them, to which
he cannot immediately offer a parallel, far more simple
and penetrating, from the revelation of Christ. He has
no interest in disparaging the light by which millions
of his fellow-creatures have walked, generation after
generation, in the mysterious providence of God; but
he sees no reason for pretending that that light—which
Scripture calls darkness and the shadow of death—can
bear comparison with the radiance in which he lives.
"If," he might say, misapplying the fourth verse—"if
they brought us another saviour, another spirit, another
gospel, we might be religiously interested in them;
but, as it is, we have everything already, and they, in
comparison, have nothing." The same remark applies
to "theosophy," "spiritualism," and other "gospels."
It will be time to take them seriously when they utter
one wise or true word on God or the soul which is not
an echo of something in the old familiar Scriptures.
FOOLISH BOASTING
"Or did I commit a sin in abasing myself that ye might be exalted,
because I preached to you the Gospel of God for nought? I robbed
other Churches, taking wages of them that I might minister unto
you; and when I was present with you and was in want, I was not
a burden on any man; for the brethren, when they came from
Macedonia, supplied the measure of my want; and in everything I
kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep
myself. As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this
glorying in the regions of Achaia. Wherefore? because I love you
not? God knoweth. But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut
off occasion from them which desire an occasion; that wherein they
glory, they may be found even as we. For such men are false
apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of
Christ. And no marvel; for even Satan fashioneth himself into an
angel of light. It is no great thing therefore if his ministers also
fashion themselves as ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be
according to their works.
"I say again, Let no man think me foolish; but if ye do, yet as
foolish receive me, that I also may glory a little. That which I speak,
I speak not after the Lord, but as in foolishness, in this confidence of
glorying. Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also.
For ye bear with the foolish gladly, being wise yourselves. For ye
bear with a man, if he bringeth you into bondage, if he devoureth
you, if he taketh you captive, if he exalteth himself, if he smiteth you
on the face. I speak by way of disparagement, as though we had
been weak. Yet whereinsoever any is bold (I speak in foolishness),
I am bold also. Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites?
so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I. Are they
ministers of Christ? (I speak as one beside himself) I more; in
labours more abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes
above measure, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty
stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned,
thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the
deep; in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in
perils from my countrymen, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in
the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils
among false brethren; in labour and travail, in watchings often, in
hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside
those things that are without, there is that which presseth upon me
daily, anxiety for all the Churches. Who is weak, and I am not
weak? who is made to stumble, and I burn not?"—2 Cor. xi. 7-29
(R.V.).
The connexion of ver. 7 with what precedes is
not at once clear. The Apostle has expressed
his conviction that he is in nothing inferior to "the
superlative apostles" so greatly honoured by the
Corinthians. Why, then, is he so differently treated?
A rudeness in speech he is willing to concede, but that
can hardly be the explanation, considering his fulness
of knowledge. Then another idea strikes him, and he
puts it, interrogatively, as an alternative. Can it be
that he did wrong—humbling himself that they might
be exalted—in preaching to them the Gospel of God
for nought, i.e. in declining to accept support from them
while he evangelised in Corinth? Do they appreciate
the interlopers more highly than Paul, because they
exact a price for their gospel, while he preached his
for nothing? This, of course, is bitterly ironical; but
it is not gratuitous. The background of fact which
prompted the Apostle's question was no doubt this—that
his adversaries had misinterpreted his conduct.
A true apostle, they said, has a right to be maintained
by the Church; the Lord Himself has ordained that
they who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel;
but he claims no maintenance, and by that very fact
betrays a bad conscience. He dare not make the
claim which every true apostle makes without the least
misgiving.
It would be hard to imagine anything more malignant
in its wickedness than this. Paul's refusal to claim
support from those to whom he preached is one of the
most purely and characteristically Christian of all his
actions. He felt himself, by the grace of Christ, a
debtor to all men; he owed them the Gospel; it was
as if he were defrauding them if he did not tell them
of the love of God in His Son. He felt himself in
immense sympathy with the spirit of the Gospel; it
was the free gift of God to the world, and as far as it
depended on him its absolute freeness would not be
obscured by the merest suspicion of a price to be paid.
He knew that in foregoing his maintenance he was
resigning a right secured to him by Christ (1 Cor.
ix. 14), humbling himself, as he puts it here, that
others might be spiritually exalted; but he had the joy
of preaching the Gospel in the spirit of the Gospel—of
entering, in Christ's service, into the self-sacrificing joy
of his Lord; and he valued this above all earthly
reward. To accuse such a man, on such grounds, of
having a bad conscience, and of being afraid to live by
his work, because he knew it was not what it pretended
to be, was to sound the depths of baseness. It gave
Paul in some measure the Master's experience, when
the Pharisees said, "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub,
the prince of the devils." It is really the prince of the
devils, the accuser of the brethren, who speaks in all
such malignant insinuations; it is the most diabolical
thing any one can do—the nearest approach to sinning
against the Holy Ghost—when he sets himself to find
out bad motives for good actions.
As we shall see further on, Paul's enemies made
more specific charges: they hinted that he made his
own out of the Corinthians indirectly, and that he
could indemnify himself, for this abstinence, from the
collection (chaps. xii. 16-18, chap. viii. and ix.). Perhaps
this is why he describes his actual conduct at Corinth
in such vigorous language (vv. 7-11), before saying
anything at all of his motives. "I preached to you the
Gospel of God," he says, "for nothing." He calls it "the
Gospel of God" with intentional fulness and solemnity;
the genuine Gospel, he means—not another, which is
no gospel at all, but a subversion of the truth. He
robbed other Churches, and took wages from them,
in order to minister to the Corinthians. There is a
mingling of ideas in the strong words here used. The
English reader thinks of Paul's doing less than justice
to other Churches that he might do more than justice
to the Corinthians; but though this is true, it is not all.
Both "robbed" (ἐσύλησα) and "wages" (ὀψώνιον), as
Bengel has pointed out, are military words, and it is
difficult to resist the impression that Paul used them
as such; he did not come to Corinth to be dependent
on any one, but in the course of a triumphant progress,
in which he devoted the spoils of his earlier victories
for Christ to a new campaign in Achaia.This (observe the aorist λαβών) implies that he brought some
money with him from Macedonia to Corinth.
Nay, even
when he was with them and was "in want" (what a
ray of light that one word ὑστερηθείς lets into his
circumstances!), he did not throw himself like a benumbing
weight on any one; what his own labours failed to
supply, the brethren (perhaps Silas and Timothy) made
good when they came from Macedonia. This has been
his practice, and will continue to be so. He swears
by the truth of Christ that is in him, that no man shall
ever stop his mouth, so far as boasting of this independence
is concerned, in the regions of Achaia. Why?
His tender heart dismisses the one painful supposition
which could possibly arise. "Because I love you not?
God knoweth." Love is wounded when its proffered
gifts are rejected with scorn, and when their rejection
means that it is rejected; but that was not the situation
here. Paul can appeal to Him who knows the heart
in proof of the sincerity with which he loves the
Corinthians.
His fixed purpose to be indebted to no one in
Achaia has another object in view. What that is he
explains in the twelfth verse. Strange to say, this
verse, like ver. 4, has received two precisely opposite
interpretations. (1) Some start with the idea that
Paul's adversaries at Corinth were persons who took
no support from the Church, and boasted of their
disinterestedness in this respect. The "occasion"
which they desired was an occasion of any sort for
disparaging and discrediting Paul; and they felt they
would have such an occasion if Paul accepted support
from the Church, and so put himself in a position of
inferiority to them. But Paul persists in his self-denying
policy, with the object of depriving them of
the opportunity they seek, and at the same time of
proving them—in this very point of disinterestedness—to
be in exactly the same position as himself. But
surely, throughout both Epistles, a contrast is implied,
in this very point, between Paul and his opponents:
the tacit assumption is always that his line of conduct
is singular, and is not to be made a rule. And in the
face of ver. 20 it is too much to assume that it was
the rule of his Judaising opponents in Corinth. (2)
Others start with the idea, which seems to me indubitably
right, that these opponents did accept support
from the Church. But even on this assumption
opinions diverge. (a) Some argue that Paul pursued
his policy of abstinence partly to deprive them of any
opportunity of disparaging him, and partly to compel
them to adopt it themselves ("that they may be found
even as we").That is, the two ἵνα are co-ordinate.
I can hardly imagine this being taken
seriously. Why should Paul have wanted to lift these
preachers of a false gospel to a level with himself in
point of generosity? To coerce them into a reluctant
self-denial could be no possible object to him either of
wish or hope. Hence there seems only (b) the other
alternative open, which makes the last clause—"that
wherein they boast, they may be found even as we"—depend,
not upon "what I do, that I will do," but
upon "them that desire occasion."That is, the ἵνα are not co-ordinate, but the second is subordinate
to τῶν θελόντων ἀφορμήν.
What the adversaries
desired was, not occasion to disparage Paul in
general, but occasion of being on an equality with him
in the matter in which they gloried—viz., their apostolic
claims. They felt the advantage which Paul's disinterestedness
gave him with the Corinthians; they
had not themselves the generosity needed to imitate
it; it was not enough to assail it with covert slanders
(chap. xii. 16-18), or to say that he was afraid to
claim an apostle's due; it would have been all they
wanted had he resigned it. Then they could have said
that in that in which they boasted—apostolic dignity—they
were precisely on a level with him. But not
to mention the spiritual motives for his conduct, which
have been already explained, and were independent of
all relation to his opponents, Paul was too capable a
strategist to surrender such a position to the enemy.
It would never be by action of his that he and they
found themselves on the same ground.
At the very mention of such an equality his heart
rises within him. "Found even as we! Why, such
men are false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning
themselves into apostles of Christ." Here, at last, the
irony is cast aside, and Paul calls a spade a spade.
The conception of apostleship in the New Testament
is not that dogmatic traditional one, which limits the
name to the Twelve, or to the Twelve and the Apostle
of the Gentiles; as we see from passages like chap. viii.
23, Acts xiv. 4, 14, it had a much larger application.
What Paul means when he calls his opponents false
apostles is not that persons in their position could
have no right to the name; but that persons with
their character, their aims, and their methods, would
only deceive others when they used it. It ought to
cover something quite different from what it actually
did cover in them. He explains himself further when
he calls them "deceitful workers." That they were
active he does not deny; but the true end of their
activity was not declared. As far as the word itself
goes, the "deceit" which they used may have been
intended to cloak either their personal or their proselytising
views. After what we have read in chap. x.
12-18, the latter seems preferable. The Judaising
preachers had shown their hand in Galatia, demanding
openly that Paul's converts should be circumcised, and
keep the law of Moses as a whole; but their experience
there had made them cautious, and when they came
to Corinth they proceeded more diplomatically. They
tried to sap the Pauline Gospel, partly by preaching
"another Jesus," partly by calling in question the
legitimacy of Paul's vocation. They said nothing
openly of what was the inevitable and intended issue of
all this—the bringing of spiritual Gentile Christendom
under the old Jewish yoke. But it is this which goes
to the Apostle's soul; he can be nothing but irreconcilably
hostile to men who have assumed the guise
of apostles of Christ, in order that they may with
greater security subvert Christ's characteristic work.
Paul dwells on the deceitfulness of their conduct as
its most offensive feature; yet he does not wonder
at it, for even Satan, he says, fashions himself into
an angel of light. It is no great thing, then, if
his servants also fashion themselves as servants of
righteousness.
We can only tell in a general way what Paul meant
when he spoke of Satan, the prince of darkness, transfiguring
himself so as to appear a heavenly angel.
He may have had some Jewish legend in his mind,
some story of a famous temptation, unknown to us,
or he may only have intended to represent to the
imagination, with the utmost possible vividness, one
of the familiar laws in our moral experience, a law
which was strikingly illustrated by the conduct of his
adversaries at Corinth. Evil, we all know, could never
tempt us if we saw it simply as it is; disguise is
essential to its power; it appeals to man through ideas
and hopes which he cannot but regard as good. So
it was in the very first temptation. An act which in
its essential character was neither more nor less than
one of direct disobedience to God was represented by
the tempter, not in that character, but as the means
by which man was to obtain possession of a tree good
for food (sensual satisfaction), and pleasant to the
eyes (æsthetic satisfaction), and desirable to make one
wise (intellectual satisfaction). All these satisfactions,
which in themselves are undeniably good, were the
cloak under which the tempter hid his true features.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and entered
Eden to ruin man, but he presented himself as one
offering to man a vast enlargement of life and joy.
This is the nature of all temptations; to disguise
himself, to look as like a good angel as he can, is the
first necessity, and therefore the first invention, of the
devil. And all who do his work, the Apostle says,
naturally imitate his devices. The soul of man is born
for good, and will not listen at all to any voice which
does not profess at least to speak for good: this is
why the devil is a liar from the beginning, and the
father of lies. Lying in word and deed is the one
weapon with which he can assail the simplicity of man.
But how does this apply to the Judaisers in Corinth?
To Paul, we must understand, they were men affecting
to serve Christ, but really impelled by personal, or at
the utmost by partisan, feelings. Their true object
was to win an ascendency for themselves, or for their
party, in the Church; but they made their way into
it as evangelists and apostles. Nominally, they were
ministers of Christ; really, they ministered to their
own vanity, and to the bigotry and prejudices of their
race. They professed to be furthering the cause of
righteousness,There has been some discussion as to the precise force of δικαιοσύνη
("righteousness") in this place. It seems to me most natural to take
it, without suspicion, in a perfectly simple sense: a minister of
righteousness is the truly good character which these bad men affect.
To suppose a covert sneer at their "legalism," or that they had pointed
to such matters as are discussed in 1 Cor. v., viii., and x., as indicating
the need of a gospel which would pay more attention to
righteousness than Paul's, is surely too clever.
but in sober truth the only cause which
was the better for them was that of their own private importance;
the result of their ministry was, not that bad
men became good, but that they themselves felt entitled
to give themselves airs. Over against all this unreality
Paul remembers the righteous judgment of God.
"Whose end," he concludes abruptly, "shall be according
to their works."
The most serious aspect of such a situation as this
is seen when we consider that men may fill it unconsciously:
they may devote themselves to a cause which
looks like the cause of Christ, or the cause of righteousness;
and at bottom it may not be Christ or righteousness
at all which is the animating principle in their
hearts. It is some hidden regard to themselves, or to
a party with which they are identified. Even when
they labour, and possibly suffer, it is this, and not
loyalty to Christ, which sustains them. It may be in
defence of orthodoxy, or in furtherance of liberalism,
that a man puts himself forward in the Church, and in
either case he will figure to those who agree with him
as a servant of righteousness; but equally in either
case the secret spring of his action may be pride, the
desire to assert a superiority, to consolidate a party
which is his larger self, to secure an area in which he
may rule. He may spend energy and talent on the
work; but if this is the ultimate motive of it, it is the
work of the devil, and not of God. Even if the doctrine
he defends is the true one—even if the policy he maintains
is the right one—the services he may accidentally
render are far outweighed by the domestication in the
Church of a spirit so alien to the Lord's. It is diabolical,
not divine; the Gospel is profaned by contact with it;
the Church is prostituted when it serves as an arena
for its exercise; when it comes forward in the interest
of righteousness, it is Satan fashioning himself into an
angel of light.
At this point Paul returns to the idea which has been
in his mind since chap. x. 7—the idea of boasting, or
rather glorying. He does not like the thing itself, and
just as little does he like the mask of a fool, under
which he is to play the part: he is conscious that neither
suits him. Hence he clears the ground once more,
before he commits himself. "Again, I say, let no man
think that I am foolish; but if that favour cannot be
granted, then even as a foolish person receive me, that
I also may boast a little." There is a fine satirical
reflection in the "also." If he does make a fool of
himself by boasting, he is only doing what the others
do, whom the Corinthians receive with open arms. But
it strikes his conscience suddenly that there is a higher
rule for the conduct of a Christian man than the example
of his rivals, or the patience of his friends. The tenderness
of Paul's spirit comes out in the next words: "What
I speak, I speak not after the Lord, but as in foolishness,
in this confidence of glorying." The Lord never boasted;
nothing could be conceived less like Him, less after His
mind; and Paul will have it distinctly understood that
His character is not compromised by any extravagance
of which His servant may here make himself guilty. As
a rule, the Apostle did speak "after the Lord"; his
habitual consciousness was that of one who had "the
mind of Christ," and who felt that Christ's character
was, in a sense, in his keeping. That ought to be the
rule for all Christians; we should never find ourselves
in situations in which the Christian character, with all
its responsibilities, affecting both ourselves and Him,
cannot be maintained. With Christ and His interests
removed from the scene, Paul at length feels himself
free to measure himself against his rivals. "Since
many glory after the flesh, I also will glory." The
flesh means everything except the spirit. Where Christ
and the Gospel are concerned, it is, according to Paul,
an absolute irrelevance, a thing to be simply left out
of account; but since they persist in dragging it in,
he will meet them on their own ground. What that
is, first comes out clearly in ver. 22: but the Apostle
delays again to urge his plea for tolerance. "Ye suffer
the foolish gladly, being wise yourselves." It answers
best to the vehemence of the whole passage to take
the first clause here—"Ye suffer the foolish gladly"—as
grim earnest, the reference being to the other
boasters, Paul's rivals; and only the second clause
ironically. Then ver. 20 would give the proof of this:
"Ye bear with the foolish gladly ... for ye bear with
a man if he enslaves you, if he devours you, if he takes
you captive, if he exalts himself over you, if he strikes
you on the face." We must suppose that this strong
language describes the overbearing and violent behaviour
of the Judaists in Corinth. We do not need
to take it literally, but neither may we suppose that
Paul spoke at random: he is virtually contrasting his
own conduct and that of the people in question, and
the nature of the contrast must be on the whole
correctly indicated. He himself had been accused of
weakness; and he frankly admits that, if comparison
has to be made with a line of action like this, the
accusation is just. "I speak by way of disparagement,
as though we had been weak." This rendering of the
Revised Version fairly conveys the meaning. It might
be expressed in a paraphrase, as follows: "In saying
what I have said of the behaviour of my rivals, I have
been speaking to my own disparagement, the idea involvedThis is the force of the ὡς: it leaves it open whether the idea
has reality answering to it or not.
being that I" (notice the emphatic ἡμεῖς) "have
been weak. Weak, no doubt, I was, if violent action
like theirs is the true measure of strength: nevertheless,
whereinsoever any is bold (I speak in foolishness), I
am bold also. On whatever ground they claim to
exercise such extraordinary powers, that ground I can
maintain as well as they."
Here, finally, the boasting does begin. "Are they
Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I.
Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I." This is
the sum and substance of what is meant by their
glorying after the flesh: they prided themselves on
their birth, and claimed authority on the strength of
it. They may have appealed, not only to the election
of Israel as the Old Testament represents it, but to
words of Jesus, like "Salvation is of the Jews." The
three names for what is in reality one thing convey
the impression of the immense importance which was
assigned to it. "Hebrews" seems the least significant;
it is merely the national name, with whatever historical
glories attached to it in Hebrew minds. "Israelites" is
a sacred name; it is identified with the prerogatives of
the theocratic people: Paul himself, when his heart
swells with patriotic emotion, begins the enumeration
of the privileges belonging to his kinsmen after the
flesh—"they, who are Israelites." "Seed of Abraham,"
again, is for the Apostle, and probably for these
rivals of his, equivalent to "heirs of the promises"; it
describes the Jewish people as more directly and immediately
interested—nay, as alone directly and immediately
interested—in the salvation of God. No one
could read Rom. ix. 4 f. without feeling that pride of
race—pride in his people, and in their special relation
to God and special place in the history of redemption—was
among the strongest passions in the Apostle's
heart; and we can understand the indignation and
scorn with which he regarded men who tracked him
over Asia and Europe, assailed his authority, and
sought to undermine his work, on the ground that he
was faithless to the lawful prerogatives of Israel.
There was not an Israelite in the world prouder of his
birth, with a more magnificent sense of his country's
glories, than the Apostle of the Gentiles: and it provoked
him beyond endurance to see the things in which
he gloried debased, as they were debased, by his rivals—made
the symbols of a paltry vanity which he
despised, made barriers to the universal love of God
by which all the families of the earth were to be blessed.
Driven to extremity, he could only outlaw such opponents
from the Christian community, and transfer the
prerogatives of Israel to the Church. "We," he taught
his Gentile converts to say—"we are the circumcision,
who worship by the Spirit of God, and rejoice in Christ
Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh" (Phil. iii. 3).
Here he does not linger long over what is merely
external. It is a deeper question that he asks in ver.
23, "Are they ministers of Christ?" and he feels like a
man beside himself, clean out of his senses (παραφρονῶν)—so
unsuitable is the subject for boasting—as he
answers, "I more." Many interpret this as if it meant,
"I am more than a servant of Christ," and then ask
wonderingly, "What more?" but surely the natural
meaning is, "I am a servant too, in a higher degree."
The proof of this is given in that tale of sufferings
which bursts irrepressibly from the Apostle's heart,
and sweeps us in its course like a torrent. If he
thought of his rivals when he began, and was instituting
a serious comparison when he wrote "in labours
more abundantly [than they]," they must soon have
escaped from his mind. It is his own life as a minister
of Christ on which he dwells; and after the first words,
if a comparison is to be made, he leaves the making of
it to others. But comparison, in fact, was out of the
question: the sufferings of the Apostle in doing service
to Christ were unparalleled and alone. The few lines
which he devotes to them are the most vivid light we
have on the apostolic age and the apostolic career.
They show how fragmentary, or at all events how
select, is the narrative in the Book of Acts. Thus of
the incidents mentioned in ver. 25 we learn but little
from St. Luke. Of the five times nine-and-thirty
stripes, he mentions none; of the three beatings with
rods, only one; of the three shipwrecks, none (for Acts
xxvii. is later), and nothing of the twenty-four hours in
the deep. It is not necessary to comment on details,
but one cannot resist the impression of triumph with
which Paul recounts the "perils" he had faced; so
many they were, so various, and so terrible, yet in the
Lord's service he has come safely through them all.
It is a commentary from his own hand on his own
word—"as dying, and, behold, we live!" In the
retrospect all these perils show, not only that he is a
true servant of Christ, entering into the fellowship of
his Master's sufferings to bring blessing to men, but
that he is owned by Christ as such: the Lord has
delivered him from deaths so great; yes, and will
deliver him; and his hope is set on Him for every
deliverance he may need (chap. i. 10).
But, after all, these perils are but outward, and the
very enumeration of them shows that they are things
of the past. In all their kinds and degrees—violence,
privation, exposure, fear—they are a historical testimony
to the devotion with which Paul has served Christ. He
bore in his body the marks which they had left, and
to him they were the marks of Jesus; they identified
him as Christ's slave. But not to mention incidental
matters,This, which is the second alternative given in the margin of the
Revised Version, seems to me the true meaning of χωρὶς τῶν παρεκτός.
there is another testimony to his ministry
which is ever with him—a burden as crushing as these
bodily sufferings, and far more constant in its pressure:
"that which cometh upon me daily, anxiety for all the
Churches." Short of this, anything of which man can
boast may be, at least in a qualified sense, "after the
flesh"; but in this identification of himself with Christ's
cause in the world—this bearing of others' burdens on
his spirit—there is that fulfilment of Christ's law which
alone and finally legitimates a Christian ministry. Nor
was it merely in an official sense that Paul was interested
in the affairs of the Church. When the Church is once
planted in the world, it has a side which is of the world,
a side which may be administered without a very heavy
expenditure of Christian feeling: this, it is safe to say,
is simply out of sight. Paul's anxiety for the Churches
is defined in all its scope and intensity in the passionate
words of the twenty-ninth verse: "Who is weak, and
I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I burn
not?" His love individualised Christian people, and
made him one with them. There was no trembling
timorous soul, no scrupulous conscience, in all the communities
he had founded, whose timidity and weakness
did not put a limit to his strength: he condescended
to their intelligence, feeding them with milk, and not
with meat; he measured his liberty, not in principle but
in practice, by their bondage; his heart thrilled with
their fears; in the fulness of his Christ-like strength he
lived a hundred feeble lives. And when spiritual harm
came to one of them—when the very least was made
to stumble, and was caught in the snare of falsehood
or sin—the pain in his heart was like burning fire.
The sorrow that pierced the soul of Christ pierced
his soul also; the indignation that glowed in the
Master's breast, as He pronounced woe on the man
by whom occasions of stumbling come, glowed again
in him. This is the fire that Christ came to cast on
the earth, and that He longed to see kindled—this
prompt intense sympathy with all that is of God in
men's souls, this readiness to be weak with the weak,
this pain and indignation when the selfishness or pride
of men leads the weak astray, and imperils the work
for which Christ died. And this is indeed the Apostle's
last line of defence. Nowhere could boasting be less
in place than when a man speaks of the lessons he has
learned at the Cross: yet these only give him a title
to glory as "a minister of Christ." If glorying here is
inadmissible, it is because glorying in every sense is
"folly."
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
"If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things that concern
my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is
blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not. In Damascus the
governor under Aretas the king guarded the city of the Damascenes,
in order to take me: and through a window was I let down in a
basket by the wall, and escaped his hands.
"I must needs glory, though it is not expedient; but I will come
to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ,
fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not; or whether
out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up
even to the third heaven. And I know such a man (whether in
the body, or apart from the body, I know not; God knoweth), how
that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words,
which it is not lawful for a man to utter. On behalf of such a one
will I glory: but on mine own behalf I will not glory, save in my
weaknesses. For if I should desire to glory, I shall not be foolish;
for I shall speak the truth: but I forbear, lest any man should
account of me above that which he seeth me to be, or heareth from
me. And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations—wherefore,
that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given
to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that
I should not be exalted overmuch. Concerning this thing I besought
the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And He hath said
unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My power is made
perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in
my weaknesses, that the strength of Christ may rest upon me.
Wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities,
in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake: for when I am weak,
then am I strong."—2 Cor. xi. 30-xii. 10 (R.V.).
The difficulties of exposition in this passage are
partly connected with its form, partly with its
substance: it will be convenient to dispose of the formal
side first. The thirtieth verse of the eleventh chapter—"If
I must needs glory, I will glory of the things that
concern my weakness"—seems to serve two purposes.
On the one hand, it is a natural and effective climax to
all that precedes; it defines the principle on which Paul
has acted in the glorying of vv. 23-29. It is not of
exploits that he is proud, but of perils and sufferings;
not of what he has achieved, but of what he has
endured, for Christ's sake; in a word, not of strength,
but of weakness. On the other hand, this same thirtieth
verse indubitably points forward; it defines the principle
on which Paul will always act where boasting is in
view; and it is expressly resumed in chap. xii., ver. 5
and ver. 9. For this reason, it seems better to treat
it as a text than as a peroration; it is the key to the
interpretation of what follows, put into our hands by
the Apostle himself. In the full consciousness of its
dangers and inconveniences, he means to go a little
further in this foolish boasting; but he takes security,
as far as possible, against its moral perils, by choosing
as the ground of boasting things which in the common
judgment of men would only bring him shame.
At this point we are startled by a sudden appeal to
God, the solemnity and fulness of which strike us, on
a first reading, as almost painfully gratuitous. "The
God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed
for ever, knoweth that I lie not." What is the explanation
of this extraordinary earnestness? There is a
similar passage in Gal. i. 19—"Now touching the things
which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not"—where
Lightfoot says the strength of the Apostle's
language is to be explained by the unscrupulous
calumnies cast upon him by his enemies. This may
be the clue to his vehemence here; and in point of
fact it falls in with by far the most ingenious explanation
that has been given of the two subjects introduced
in this paragraph. The explanation I refer to is that
of Heinrici. He supposes that Paul's escape from
Damascus, and his visions and revelations, had been
turned to account against him by his rivals. They had
used the escape to accuse him of ignominious cowardice:
the indignity of it is obvious enough. His visions and
revelations were as capable of misconstruction: it was
easy to call them mere illusions, signs of a disordered
brain; it was not too much for malice to hint that his
call to apostleship rested on nothing better than one
of these ecstatic hallucinations. It is because things
so dear to him are attacked—his reputation for personal
courage, which is the mainstay of all the virtues; his
actual vision of Christ, and divinely authorised mission—that
he makes the vehement appeal that startles us
at first. He calls God to witness that in regard to
both these subjects he is going to tell the exact truth:
the truth will be his sufficient defence. Ingenious as
it is, I do not think this theory can be maintained.
There is no hint in the passage that Paul is defending
himself; he is glorying, and glorying in the things that
concern his weakness. It seems more probable that,
when he dictated the strong words of ver. 31, the outline
of all he was going to say was in his mind; and as
the main part of it—all about the visions and revelations—was
absolutely uncontrollable by any witness but his
own, he felt moved to attest it thus in advance. The
names and attributes of God fall in well with this. As
the visions and revelations were specially connected
with Christ, and were counted by the Apostle among the
things for which he had the deepest reason to praise
God, it is but the reflection of this state of mind when
he appeals to "the God and Father of the Lord Jesus,
He who is blessed for evermore." This is not a random
adjuration, but an appeal which takes shape involuntarily
in a grateful and pious heart, on which the
memory of a signal grace and honour still rests. Of
course the verses about Damascus stand rather out
of relation to it. But it is a violence which nothing
can justify to strike them out of the text on this ground,
and along with them part or the whole of ver. 1 in
chap. xii.This is done by a number of critics, including Holsten and
Schmiedel.
For many reasons unknown to us the
danger in Damascus, and the escape from it, may have
had a peculiar interest for the Apostle; hæc persequutio,
says Calvin, erat quasi primum tirocinium
Pauli; it was his "matriculation in the school of persecution."
He may have intended, as Meyer thinks, to
make it the beginning of a new catalogue of sufferings
for Christ's sake, all of which were to be covered by
the appeal to God, and have abruptly repented, and
gone off on another subject; but whether or not, to
expunge the lines is pure wilfulness. The Apostle
glories in what he endured at Damascus—in the
imminent peril and in the undignified escape alike—as
in things belonging to his weakness. Another might
choose to hide such things, but they are precisely what
he tells. In Christ's service scorn is glory, ignominy
is honour; and it is the mark of loyalty when men
rejoice that they are counted worthy to suffer shame
for the Name.Godet gives the incident a peculiar turn, more ingenious than convincing.
"No doubt the list I have given is one of mere infirmities.
I might well boast of things apparently more glorious—as when the
whole of that great city, Damascus, was raised against me, and I
could only escape secretly."—Introduction au Nouv. Test., p. 393.
When we go on to chap. xii., and the second of the
two subjects with which boasting is to be associated,
we meet in the first verse with serious textual difficulties.
Our Authorised Version gives the rendering: "It
is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to
visions and revelations of the Lord." This follows the
Textus Receptus: Καυχᾶσθαι δὴ οὐ συμφέρει μοι·
ἐλεύσομαι γὰρ κ.τ.λ., only omitting the γὰρ (for I will
come). The MSS. are almost chaotic, but the most
authoritative editors—Tregelles, Tischendorf in his last
edition, and Westcott and Hort—agree in reading
Καυχᾶσθαι δεῖ οὐIn their margin Westcott and Hort read δὲ οὐ.
συμφέρον μὲν ἐλεύσομαι δὲ κ.τ.λ.
This is the text which our Revisers render: "I must
needs glory, though it is not expedient; but I will come to
visions and revelations of the Lord." Practically, the
difference is not so great after all. According to the
best authorities, Paul repeats that he is being forced to
speak as he does; the consciousness of the disadvantages
attendant on this course does not leave him, it
is rather deepened, as he approaches the highest and
most sacred of all subjects—visions and revelations
he has received from Christ. Of these two words,
revelations is the wider in import: visions were only
one of the ways in which revelations could be made.
Paul, of course, is not going to boast directly of the
visions and revelations themselves. All through the
experiences to which he alludes under this name he
was to himself as a third person; he was purely passive;
and to claim credit, to glory as if he had done or
originated anything, would be transparently absurd.
But there are "things of his weakness" associated
with, if not dependent on, these high experiences; and
it is in them, after due explanation, that he purposes
to exult.
He begins abruptly. "I know a man in Christ,
fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not;
or whether out of the body, I know not; God knoweth),
such a one caught up even to the third heaven." A
man in Christ means a Christian man, a man in his
character as a Christian. To St. Paul's consciousness
the wonderful experience he is about to describe was
not natural, still less pathological, but unequivocally
religious. It did not befall him as a man simply, still
less as an epileptic patient; it was an unmistakably
Christian experience. He only existed for himself,
during it, as "a man in Christ." "I know such a
man," he says, "fourteen years ago caught up even to
the third heaven." The date of this "rapture" (the
same word is used in Acts viii. 39; 1 Thess. iv. 17;
Rev. xii. 5: all significant examples) would be about
A.D. 44. This forbids us to connect it in any way with
Paul's conversion, which must have been twenty years
earlier than this letter; and indeed there is no reason
for identifying it with anything else we know of the
Apostle. At the date in question, as far as can be
made out from the Book of Acts, he must have been
in Tarsus or in Antioch. The rapture itself is described
as perfectly incomprehensible. He may have
been carried up bodily to the heavenly places; his
spirit may have been carried up, while his body
remained unconscious upon earth: he can express no
opinion about this; the truth is only known to God.
It is idle to exploit a passage like this in the interest
of apostolic psychology; Paul is only taking elaborate
pains to tell us that of the mode of his rapture he was
absolutely ignorant. It is fairer to infer that the event
was unique in his experience, and that when it happened
he was alone; had such things recurred, or had
there been spectators, he could not have been in doubt
as to whether he was caught up "in the body" or "out
of the body." The mere fact that the date is given
individualises the event in his life; and it is going
beyond the facts altogether to generalise it, and take
it as the type of such an experience as accompanied
his conversion, or of the visions in Acts xvi. 9,
xxii. 17 f., xviii. 9. It was one, solitary, incomparable
experience, including in it a complex of visions and
revelations granted by Christ: it was this, at all events,
to the Apostle; and if we do not believe what he tells
us about it, we can have no knowledge of it at all.
"Caught up even to the third heaven." The Jews
usually counted seven heavens; sometimes, perhaps
because of the dual form of the Hebrew word for
heaven, two; but the distinctions between the various
heavens were as fanciful as the numbers were arbitrary.
It adds nothing, even to the imagination, to speak of
an aerial, a sidereal, and a spiritual heaven, and to
suppose that these are meant by Paul; we can only
think vaguely of the "man in Christ" rising through
one celestial region after another till he came even to
the third. The word chosen to define the distance
(ἕως) suggests that an impression of vast spaces
traversed remained on the Apostle's mind; and that
the third heaven, on which his sentence pauses, and
which is a resting-place for his memory, was also a
station, so to speak, in his rapture. This is the only
supposition which does justice to the resumption in
ver. 3 of the deliberate and circumstantial language of
ver. 2. "And I know such a man—whether in the
body or apart from the body (I know not) God knoweth—how
that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard
unspeakable words that it is not lawful for a man to
utter." This is a resumption, not a repetition. Paul
is not elaborately telling the same story over again,
but he is carrying it on, with the same full circumstance,
the same grave asseveration, from the point
at which he halted. The rapture had a second stage,
under the same incomprehensible conditions, and in it
the Christian man passed out and up from the third
heaven into Paradise. Many of the Jews believed in
a Paradise beneath the earth, the abode of the souls
of the good while they awaited their perfecting at
the Resurrection (cf. Luke xvi. 23 ff., xxiii. 43); but
obviously this cannot be the idea here. We must
think rather of what the Apocalypse calls "the Paradise
of God" (ii. 7), where the tree of life grows,
and where those who overcome have their reward.
It is an abode of unimaginable blessedness, "far above
all heavens," to use the Apostle's own words elsewhere
(Eph. iv. 10). What visions he had, or what revelations,
during that pause in the third heaven, Paul does
not say; and at this supreme point of his rapture,
in Paradise, the words he heard were words unspeakable,
which it is not lawful for man to utter.
Mortal ears might hear, but mortal lips might not
repeat, sounds so mysterious and divine: it was not
for man (ἀνθρώπῳ is qualitative) to utter them.
But why, we may ask, if this rapture has its meaning
and value solely for the Apostle, should he refer
to it here at all? Why should he make such solemn
statements about an experience, the historical conditions
of which, as he is careful to assure us, are incomprehensible,
while its spiritual content is a secret? Is
not such an experience literally nothing to us? No,
unless Paul himself is nothing; for this experience was
evidently a great thing to him. It was the most sacred
privilege and honour he had ever known; it was
among his strongest sources of inspiration; it had
a powerful tendency to generate spiritual pride; and
it had its accompaniment, and its counter-weight, in
his sharpest trial. The world knows little of its
greatest men; perhaps we very rarely know what are
the great things in the lives even of the people who
are round about us. Paul had kept silence about this
sublime experience for fourteen years, and no man had
ever guessed it; it had been a secret between the Lord
and His disciple; and they only, who were in the
secret, could rightly interpret all that depended upon
it. There is a kind of profanity in forcing the heart to
show itself too far, in compelling a man to speak about,
even though he does not divulge, the things that it is
not lawful to utter. The Corinthians had put this
profane compulsion on the Apostle; but though he
yields to it, it is in a way which keeps clear of the
profanity. He tells what he dare tell in the third
person, and then goes on: "On behalf of such a one
will I glory, but on behalf of myself will I not glory,
save in my infirmities." Removere debemus τὸ ego a
rebus magnis (Bengel): there are things too great to
allow the intrusion of self. Paul does not choose to
identify the poor Apostle whom the Corinthians and
their misleading teachers used so badly with the man
in Christ who had such inconceivable honour put on
him by the Lord; if he does boast on behalf of such a
one, and magnify his sublime experiences, at all events
he does not transfer his prerogatives to himself; he
does not say, "I am that incomparably honoured man;
reverence in me a special favourite of Christ." On the
contrary, where his own interest has to be forwarded,
he will glory in nothing but his weaknesses. The one
thing about which he is anxious is that men should
not think too highly of him, nor go in their appreciation
beyond what their experience of him as a man
and a teacher justifies (ver. 6). He might, indeed,
boast, reasonably enough; for the truth would suffice,
without any foolish exaggeration; but he forbears, for
the reason just stated. We are familiar with the
danger of thinking too highly of ourselves; it is as
real a danger, though probably a less considered one,
to be too highly thought of by others. Paul dreaded
it; so does every wise man. To be highly thought
of, where the character is sincere and unpretentious,
may be a protection, and even an inspiration; but to
have a reputation, morally, that one does not deserve—to
be counted good in respects in which one is really
bad—is to have a frightful difficulty added to penitence
and amendment. It puts one in a radically false
position; it generates and fosters hypocrisy; it explains
a vast mass of spiritual ineffectiveness. The
man who is insincere enough to be puffed up by it is
not far from judgment.
But to return to the text. Paul wishes to be humble;
he is content that men should take him as they find
him, infirmities and all. He has that about him, too,
and not unconnected with these high experiences, the
very purpose of which is to keep him humble. If the
text is correct,The editors vary greatly in punctuation, especially as they do or
do not insert διὸ before the first ἵνα μὴ ὑπεραίρωμαι. Westcott and
Hort suspect some primitive error.
he expresses himself with some embarrassment.
"And by reason of the exceeding greatness
of the revelations—wherefore, that I should not be
exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in
the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that
I should not be exalted overmuch." The repetition
of the last word shows where the emphasis lies: Paul
has a deep and constant sense of the danger of spiritual
pride, and he knows that he would fall into it unless
a strong counter-pressure were kept up upon him.
I do not feel called on to add another to the numberless
disquisitions on Paul's thorn in the flesh. The
resources of imagination having been exhausted, people
are returning to the obvious. The thorn in the fleshFor the meaning "thorn," not "stake" or "cross," see Ezek.
xxviii. 24; Hosea ii. 8 (6); Num. xxxiii. 55.
was something painful, which affected the Apostle's
body; it was something in its nature purely physical,
not a solicitation to any kind of sin, such as sensuality
or pride, else he would not have ceased to pray for
its removal; it was something terribly humbling, if
not humiliating—an affection which might well have
excited the contempt and loathing of those who beheld
it (Gal. iv. 14, which probably refers to this subject);
it had begun after, if not in consequence of, the rapture
just described, and stood in a spiritual, if not a physical,
relation to it; it was, if not chronic or periodic, at
least recurrent; the Apostle knew that it would never
leave him. What known malady, incident to human
nature, fulfils all these conditions, it is not possible
with perfect certainty to say. A considerable mass
of competent opinion supports the idea that it must
have been liability to epileptic seizures.I should lay no stress here on what some so much insist upon—the
use of ἐξεπτύσατε in Gal. iv. 14, and the fact that morbus despui
suctus is a name for epilepsy: ἐκπτύειν does not mean despuere, and
after ἐξουθενεῖν it is necessarily metaphorical.
Such an
infirmity Paul might have suffered under in common
with men so great as Julius Cæsar and the first
Napoleon, as Mahomet, King Alfred, and Peter the
Great. But it does not quite satisfy the conditions.
Epileptic attacks, if they occur with any frequency
at all, invariably cause mental deterioration. Now,
Paul distinctly suggests that the thorn was a very
steady companion; and as his mind, in spite of it,
grew year after year in the apprehension of the Christian
revelation, so that his last thoughts are always his
largest and best, the epileptic hypothesis has its difficulties
like every other. Is it likely that a man who
suffered pretty constantly from nervous convulsions of
this kind wrote the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
after fourteen years of them, or the Epistles to the
Romans, Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians later
still? There is, of course, no religious interest in
affirming or denying any physical explanation of
the matter whatever; but with our present data I
do not think a certain explanation is within our
reach.
The Apostle himself is not interested in it as a
physical affection. He speaks of it because of its
spiritual significance, and because of the wonderful
spiritual experiences he has had in connexion with it.
It was given him, he says: but by whom? When
we think of the purpose—to save him from spiritual
pride—we instinctively answer, "God." And that, it can
hardly be doubted, would have been the Apostle's own
answer. Yet he does not hesitate to call it in the same
breath a messenger of Satan. The name is dictated
by the inborn, ineradicable shrinking of the soul from
pain; that agonising, humiliating, annihilating thing,
we feel at the bottom of our hearts, is not really of
God, even when it does His work. In His perfect
world pain shall be no more. It does not need science,
but experience, to put these things together, and to
understand at once the evil and the good of suffering.
Paul, at first, like all men, found the evil overpowering.
The pain, the weakness, the degradation of his malady,
were intolerable. He could not understand that only
a pressure so pitiless and humbling could preserve him
from spiritual pride and a spiritual fall. We are all
slow to learn anything like this. We think we can
take warning, that a word will be enough, that at most
the memory of a single pang will suffice to keep us
safe. But pains remain with us, and the pressure is
continuous and unrelieved, because the need of constraint
and of discipline is ceaseless. The crooked
branch will not bend in a new curve if it is only
tied to it for half an hour. The sinful bias in our
natures—to pride, to sensuality, to falsehood, or whatever
else—-will not be cured by one sharp lesson. The
commonest experience in human life is that the man
whom sickness and pain have humbled for the moment,
the very moment their constraint is lifted, resumes his
old habit. He does not think so, but it is really the
thorn that has been keeping him right; and when its
sharpness is blunted, the edge is taken from his conscience
too.
Paul besought the Lord, that is Christ, thrice, that
this thing might depart from him. The Lord, we may
be sure, had full sympathy with that prayer. He
Himself had had His agony, and prayed the Father
thrice that if it were possible the cup of pain might
pass from Him. He prayed, indeed, in express submission
to the Father's will; the voice of nature was
not allowed in Him to urge an unconditional peremptory
request. Perhaps in Paul on this occasion—certainly
often in most men—it is nature, the flesh and not the
spirit, which prompts the prayer. But God is all the
while guarding the spirit's interest as the higher, and
this explains the many real answers to prayer which
seem to be refusals. A refusal is an answer, if it is
so given that God and the soul thenceforth understand
one another. It was thus that Paul was answered
by Christ: "He hath said to me, My grace is sufficient
for thee: for [My] strength is made perfect in
weakness."
The first point to notice in this answer is the tense
of the verb: "He hath said." The A.V. with "He
said" misses the point. The sentence is present as
well as past; it is Christ's continuous, as well as
final, answer to Paul's prayer. The Apostle has been
made to understand that the thorn must remain in
his flesh, but along with this he has received the
assurance of an abiding love and help from the Lord.
We remember, even by contrast, the stern answer
made to Moses when he prayed that he might be
permitted to cross Jordan and see the goodly land—"Let
it suffice thee: speak no more unto Me of this
matter." Paul also could no more ask for the removal
of the thorn: it was the Lord's will that he should
submit to it for high spiritual ends, and to pray against
it would now have been a kind of impiety. But it is
no longer an unrelieved pain and humiliation; the
Apostle is supported under it by that grace of Christ
which finds in the need and abjectness of men the
opportunity of showing in all perfection its own condescending
strength. The collocation of "grace" and
"strength" in the ninth verse is characteristic of the
New Testament, and very significant. There are many
to whom "grace" is a holy word with no particular
meaning; "the grace of God," or "the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ," is only a vague benignity, which may
fairly enough be spoken of as a "smile." But grace, in
the New Testament, is force: it is a heavenly strength
bestowed on men for timely succour; it finds its opportunity
in our extremity; when our weakness makes us
incapable of doing anything, it gets full scope to work.
This is the meaning of the last words—"strength is made
perfect in weakness." The truth is quite general; it
is an application of it to the case in hand if we translate
as in the A.V. (with some MSS.): "My strength is made
perfect in [thy] weakness." It is enough, the Lord tells
Paul, that he has this heavenly strength unceasingly
bestowed upon him; the weakness which he has found
so hard to bear—that distressing malady which humbled
him and took his vigour away—is but the foil to it:
it serves to magnify it, and to set it off; with that Paul
should be content.
And he is content. That answer to his thrice-repeated
prayer works a revolution in his heart; he
looks at all that had troubled him—at all that he had
deprecated—with new eyes. "Most gladly therefore
will I rather glory in my infirmities—that is, glory
rather than bemoan them or pray for their removal—that
the power of Christ may spread its tabernacle over
me." This compensation far outweighed the trial. He
has ceased to speak now of the visions and revelations,
perhaps he has ceased already to think of them; he
is conscious only of the weakness and suffering from
which he is never to escape, and of the grace of Christ
which hovers over him, and out of weakness and
suffering makes him strong. His very infirmities
redound to the glory of the Lord, and so he chooses
them, rather than his rapture into Paradise, as matter
for boasting. "For this cause I am well content, on
Christ's behalf,Construe ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ with εὐδοκῶ.
in infirmities, in insults, in necessities,
in persecutions and distresses; for when I am weak,
then am I strong."
With this noble word Paul concludes his enforced
"glorying." He was not happy in it; it was not like
him; and it is a triumph of the Spirit of Christ in him
that he gives it such a noble turn, and comes out of
it so well. There is a tinge of irony in the first
passage (chap. xi. 21) in which he speaks of weakness,
and fears that in comparison with his high-handed
rivals at Corinth he will only have this to boast about;
but as he enters into his real experience, and tells us
what he had borne for Christ, and what he had learned
in pain and prayer about the laws of the spiritual life,
all irony passes away; the pure heroic heart opens
before us to its depths. The practical lessons of the
last paragraphs are as obvious as they are important.
That the greatest spiritual experiences are incommunicable;
that even the best men are in danger of elation
and pride; that the tendency of these sins is immensely
strong, and can only be restrained by constant pressure;
that pain, though one day to be abolished, is a means
of discipline actually used by God; that it may be a
plain duty to accept some suffering, or sickness, even
a humbling and distressing one, as God's will for
our good, and not to pray more for its removal; that
God's grace is given to those who so accept His will,
as a real reinforcement of their strength, nay, as a substitute,
and far more, for the strength which they have
not; that weakness, therefore, and helplessness, as
foils to the present help of God, may actually be
occasions of glorying to the Christian,—all these, and
many more, are gathered up in this passionate Apologia
of Paul.
NOT YOURS, BUT YOU
"I am become foolish: ye compelled me; for I ought to have been
commended of you: for in nothing was I behind the very chiefest
apostles, though I am nothing. Truly the signs of an apostle were
wrought among you in all patience, by signs and wonders and
mighty works. For what is there wherein ye were made inferior to
the rest of the Churches, except it be that I myself was not a burden
to you? forgive me this wrong.
"Behold, this is the third time I am ready to come to you; and I
will not be a burden to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the
children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the
children. And I will most gladly spend and be spent for your
souls. If I love you more abundantly, am I loved the less? But
be it so, I did not myself burden you; but, being crafty, I caught
you with guile. Did I take advantage of you by any one of them
whom I have sent unto you? I exhorted Titus, and I sent the
brother with him. Did Titus take any advantage of you? walked
we not by the same Spirit? walked we not in the same steps?
"Ye think all this time that we are excusing ourselves unto you. In
the sight of God speak we in Christ. But all things, beloved, are for
your edifying. For I fear, lest by any means, when I come, I should
find you not such as I would, and should myself be found of you such
as ye would not; lest by any means there should be strife, jealousy,
wraths, factions, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults; lest
when I come again, my God should humble me before you, and I
should mourn for many of them that have sinned heretofore, and
repented not of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness
which they committed."—2 Cor. xii. 11-21 (R.V.).
Expositors differ widely in characterising the
three or four brief paragraphs into which this
passage may be divided: (1) vv. 11-13; (2) vv. 14, 15,
and vv. 16-18; (3) vv. 19-21. What is clear is, that
we feel in it the ground-swell of the storm that has
raged through the last two chapters, and that it is not
till the beginning of chap. xiii. that the Apostle finally
escapes from this, and takes up an authoritative and
decisive attitude to the Corinthians. When he does
reach Corinth, it will not be to explain and justify
his own conduct, either against rivals or those whom
rivals have misled, but to take prompt and vigorous
action against disorders in the life of the Church.
(1) A review of what he has just written leads to
a burst of indignant remonstrance. "I have become
foolish." The emphasis is on the verb, not on the
adjective; it is the painful fact that the eleventh chapter
of Second Corinthians is a thing that no wise man
would have written if he had been left to himself and
his wisdom. Paul, who was a wise man, felt this, and
it stung him. He resented the compulsion which was
put upon him by the ingratitude and faithlessness of
the Corinthians. The situation ought to have been
exactly reversed. When he was defamed by strangers,
then they, who knew him, instead of hearkening to the
calumniators, ought to have stood up in his defence.
But they basely left him to defend himself, to plead his
own cause, to become a fool by "glorying." This kind
of compulsion should never be put upon a good man,
especially a man to whom, under God, we ourselves
have been deeply indebted. The services he has
rendered constitute a claim on our loyalty, and it is
a duty of affection to guard his character against disparagement
and malice.
Paul, in his deep consciousness of being wronged,
presses home the charge against the Corinthians.
They had every reason, he tells them, to act as his
advocates. When he was among them, he was in
nothing inferior to the "superlative" Apostles—this is
his last flout at the Judaist interlopers—nothing though
he was. The signs that prove a man to be an apostle
were wrought among them (the passive expression
keeps his agency in the background) in all patience,
by signs and wonders and mighty deeds. Their suspicions
of him, their willingness to listen to insinuations
against him, after such an experience, were unpardonable.
He can only think of one "sign of the apostle"
which was not wrought among them by his means, of
one point in which he had made them inferior to the
other Churches: he had not burdened them with his
support. They were the spoilt children of the apostolic
family; and he begs them, with bitter irony, to
forgive him this wrong. If they had only been converted
by a man who stood upon his rights!Αὐτὸς ἐγώ in ver. 13 has a peculiar emphasis, not easily explained.
It cannot mean "I did not, though my assistants did," for this is
denied in ver. 18. Neither can it mean "I did not, though the
Judaists did," for whatever is opposed to αὐτὸς ἐγώ must nevertheless
be conceived here as belonging to the same category, which the
Judaists did not. Possibly it only separates the person expressly
from his works, just recited, and has the same sort of value as in
Rom. ix. 3, where it emphasises the person as opposed to the heart
and conscience.
"The signs of an apostle" are frequently referred to
in Paul's Epistles, and are of various kinds. By far the
most important, and the most frequently insisted on, is
success in evangelistic work. He who converts men
and founds Churches has the supreme and final attestation
of apostleship, as Paul conceives it. It is to this
he appeals in 1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. iii. 1-3. In the
passage before us Calvin makes "patience" a sign—primum
signum nominat patientiam. Patience is certainly
a characteristic Christian virtue, and it is magnificently
exercised in the apostolic life; but it is not
peculiarly apostolic. Patience in the passage before
us, "every kind of patience," rather brings before
our minds the conditions under which Paul did his
apostolic work. Discouragements of every description,
bad health, suspicion, dislike, contempt, moral
apathy and moral licence—the weight of all these pressed
upon him heavily, but he bore up under them, and did
not suffer them to break his spirit or to arrest his
labours. His endurance was a match for them all,
and the power of Christ that was in him broke forth
in spite of them in apostolic signs. There were conversions,
in the first place; but there were also what he
calls here "signs [in a narrower sense], and wonders, and
mighty deeds." This is an express claim, like that made
in Acts xv. 12, Rom. xv. 19, to have wrought what we
call miracles. The three words represent miracles under
three different aspects: they are "signs" (σημεῖα), as
addressed to man's intelligence, and conveying a spiritual
meaning; they are "wonders" (τέρατα), as giving a
shock to feeling, and moving nature in those depths
which sleep through common experience; and they are
"mighty works" or "powers" (δυνάμεις), as arguing in
him who works them a more than human efficiency.
But no doubt the main character they bore in the
Apostle's mind was that of χαρίσματα, or gifts of grace,
which God ministered to the Church by His Spirit. It
is natural for an unbeliever to misunderstand even New
Testament miracles, because he wishes to conceive
them, as it were, in vacuo, or in relation to the laws of
nature; in the New Testament itself they are conceived
in relation to the Holy Ghost. Even Jesus is said in
the Gospels to have cast out devils by the Spirit of
God; and when Paul wrought "signs and wonders
and powers," it was in carrying out his apostolic work
graced by the same Spirit. What things he had done
in Corinth we have no means of knowing, but the
Corinthians knew; and they knew that these things
had no arbitrary or accidental character, but were the
tokens of a Christian and an apostle.
(2) In the second paragraph Paul turns abruptly
(ἰδοὺ, "behold!") from the past to the future. "This
is the third time I am ready to come to you, and I
will not burden you." The first clause has the same
ambiguity in Greek as in English; it is impossible to
tell from the words alone whether he had been already
twice, or only once, in Corinth. Other considerations
decide, I think, that he had been twice; but of course
these cannot affect the construction of this verse: for
the third time he is in a state of readiness—this is all
the words will yield. But when he makes the new
visit, whether it be his third or only his second, one
thing he has decided: he will act on the same principle
as before, and decline to be a burden to them. He
does not speak of it boastfully now, as in chap. xi. 10,
for his adversaries have passed out of view, but in one
of the most movingly tender passages in the whole
Bible. "I will not lie on you like a benumbing weight,
for I seek, not yours, but you." It is not his own
interest which brings him to Corinth again, but theirs;
it is not avarice which impels him, but love. In a
sense, indeed, love makes the greater claim of the two;
it is far more to demand the heart than to ask for
money. Yet the greater claim is the less selfish, indeed
is the purely unselfish one; for it can only be really
made by one who gives all that he demands. Paul's
own heart was pledged to the Corinthians; and when
he said "I seek you," he did not mean that he sought
to make a party of them, or a faction, in the interest
of his own ambition, but that the one thing he cared
for was the good of their souls. Nor in saying so does
he claim to be doing anything unusual or extraordinary.
It is only what becomes him as their father in Christ
(1 Cor. iv. 15). "I seek you; for the children ought
not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the
children." Filial duty, of course, is not denied here;
Paul is simply bringing himself as the spiritual father
of the Corinthians under the general rule of nature
that "love descends rather than ascends." If this
seems a hard saying to a child's heart, it is at least
true that it descends before it ascends. It all begins
from God: in a family, it all begins from the parents.
The primary duty of love is parental care; and nothing
is more unnatural, though at a certain level it is
common enough, than the desire of parents to make
money out of their children as quickly and as plentifully
as possible, without considering the ulterior interests
of the children themselves. This kind of selfishness
is very transparent, and is very naturally avenged by
ingratitude, and the Apostle for his part renounces it.
"I," he exclaims, with all the emphasis in his power—"I
have more than a natural father's love for you. I
will with all gladness spend, yes, and be spent to the
uttermost, for your souls! I will give what I have,
yes, and all that I am, that you may be profited."
And then he checks that rush of affection, and dams
up the overflowing passion of his heart in the abrupt
poignant question: "If I love you more abundantly,
am I loved less?"This is the reading of our Revisers, and of Westcott and Hort's
text. In their margin they read: "I will very gladly spend, etc., if
loving you [ἀγαπῶν instead of ἀγαπῶ] more abundantly I am loved the less." This reading and punctuation are adopted by a number
of scholars, but explained in two ways:—(1) As in the Authorised
Version, "though the more abundantly," etc. But εἰ ("if"), which is
the true reading (not εἰ καί), cannot be translated "though." (2) By
others it is rendered, "I will very gladly spend, etc., if the more
abundantly I love you the less I am loved": that is, "if things have
come to such a pass between us that the natural relations are utterly
inverted, I will make any sacrifice to restore them to a better footing."
This is insipid and flat to the last degree: textual and psychological
considerations combine to support the Revisers text.
This is not the first passage in the Epistle, nor, near
as we are to the end, is it the last, in which Paul shows
us the true spirit of the Christian pastor. "Not yours,
but you," is the motto of every minister who has learned
of Christ; and the noble words of ver. 15, "I will
very gladly spend and be spent to the last for your
souls," recall more nearly than any other words in
Scripture the law by which our Lord Himself lived—not
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give
life a ransom for many. Here, surely, is a sign of
apostleship—an unmistakable mark of the man who is
specially called to continue Christ's work. That work
cannot be done at all except in the spirit of Him who
inaugurated it, and though love like Paul's, and love
like Christ's, may be mocked and trampled on, it is the
only power which has the right to speak in Christ's
name. The joy of sacrifice thrills through the Apostle's
words, and it is joy in the Holy Ghost; it is a fellowship
with Christ in the very life of His life that lifts
Paul, for the moment, to the heavenly places. This is
the spirit in which wrong is to be met, and suspicion,
calumny, and contempt; it is in this, if at all, that we
can be more than conquerors. Nature says, "Stand
upon your rights; vindicate your position; insist on
having all that you conceive to be your due"; but love
says, "Spend and be spent, and spare not till all is
gone; life itself is not too much to give that love may
triumph over wrong."
It is not possible to write long as Paul writes in
these two verses (14 and 15). The tension is too great
both for him and for his readers. With ἔστω δέ—"But
be it so"—he descends from this height. He
writes in the first person, but he is plainly repeating
what he assumes others will say. "Very well, then, let
that pass," is the answer of his enemies to his friends
when that passionate protestation is read. "He did not
himself prove burdensome to us, but being crafty he
brought us into his net by guile. He exploited the
Church in his own interest by means of his agents."
This charge the Apostle meets with a downright
denial; he can appeal to the knowledge which the
Corinthians themselves possess of the manner in which
his agents have conducted themselves. He had no
doubt had occasion, far oftener than we know, to communicate
with so important and so restless a Church;
and he challenges the Corinthians to say that a single
one of those whom he had sent had taken advantage
of them. He instances—perhaps as the last of his
deputies, who had but just returned from Corinth when
he wrote this letter; perhaps as the one on whom
scandal had chosen to fasten—his "partner" and
"fellow-labourer toward them," Titus; and he refers to
an unknown brother who had accompanied him. They
cannot mean to say (μήτι) that Titus took advantage
of them? "Walked we not in the same Spirit?" A
modern reader naturally makes "spirit" subjective,
and takes it as equivalent to "the same moral temper
or principle"; an early Christian reader would more
probably think of the Holy Spirit as that which
ruled in Paul and Titus alike. In any case the same
Spirit led to the same conduct; they walked in the
same self-denying path, and scrupulously abstained
from burdening the Corinthians for their support.
(3) We feel the meanness of all this, and are glad
when the Apostle finally turns his back on it. It is an
indignity to be compelled even to allude to such things.
And the worst is, that no care a man can take will
prevent people from misunderstanding his indignant
protest, and from assuming that he is really on his
trial before them, and not improbably compromised.
Paul's mind is made up to leave the Corinthians no
excuse for such misunderstanding and presumption.
In ver. 19 he reads their ignoble thought: "Ye have
longΠάλαι is the true reading, not πάλιν. Westcott and Hort retain
the interrogation.
been thinking"—i.e., all through the last two
chapters, and, indeed, more or less all through the
Epistle; see chap. iii. 1—"that we are making our
defence at your bar. Far from it: at God's bar we
speak in Christ." He will not endure, with his visit
to Corinth close at hand, that there should be any
misapprehension as to their relations. His responsibility
as a Christian man is not to them, but to God;
He is the Master to whom he stands or falls; it is
He alone to whom he has to vindicate his life. The
Corinthians had been seating themselves in imagination
on the tribunal, and they are summarily set on the
floor. But Paul does not wish to be rude or unkind.
"You are not my judges, certainly," he seems to say,
"but all I have said and done, beloved, all I say and
do, is for your building up in Christian life. My heart
is with you in it all, and I sincerely intend your good."
We cannot sufficiently admire the combination in the
Apostle, or rather the swift alternation, of all those
intellectual and emotional qualities that balance each
other in a strong living character. He can be at once
trenchant and tender; inexorable in the maintenance
of a principle, and infinitely sympathetic and considerate
in his treatment of persons. We see all his qualities
illustrated here.
Their edification is the governing thought on which
the last verses of the chapter turn, and on which
eventually the whole Epistle rests (see chap. xiii. 10).
It is because he is interested in their edification that
he thinks with misgiving of the journey in prospect.
"I fear lest by any means when I come I find you
not such as I would, and on my part be found of you
not such as ye would." What these two fears imply
is unfolded in due order in the remainder of the letter.
The Corinthians, such as Paul would not have them,
are depicted in vv. 20 and 21; Paul, in a character
in which the Corinthians would prefer not to see him,
comes forward in chap, xiii., vv. 1-10. It is with the
first only of these two fears, the bad condition of the
Corinthian Church, that we are here concerned. This
first fear has two grounds. The first is the prevalence
of sins which may perhaps be summarised as sins
of self-will. Strife, jealousy, passions, factions and
low factious arts, backbitings, whisperings, swellings,
tumults: such is the catalogue. It illustrates what has
been well described as "the carnality of religious contention."
Almost all the sins here enumerated are
directly connected with the existence of parties and
party feeling in the Church. They are of a kind
which has disgraced the Church all through its history,
and the exceeding sinfulness of which is not yet recognised
by the great mass of professing Christians.
People do not consider that the Church, as a visible
society, more or less naturalised in the world, is as
capable as any other society of offering a career to
ambition, or of furnishing a theatre for the talents
and the energies of self-seeking men; and they have
a vague idea that the wilfulness, the intriguing and
factious arts, the jealousy and conceit of men, are better
things when put to the service of the Church than
when employed in mere selfishness. But they are
not. They are the very same, and they are peculiarly
odious when enlisted in His service who was meek and
lowly in heart, and who gave Himself for men. Paul's
first list of sins is only too life-like, and the fear
grounded on it is one which many a modern minister
can share. The second list is made up of what might
be called, in contrast with sins of self-will, sins of
self-indulgence—"uncleanness, fornication, and lasciviousness
that they wrought." Both together make up
what the Apostle calls the works of the flesh. Both
together are the direct opposite of those fruits of the
spirit in which the true life of the Church consists.
Paul writes as if he were more alarmed about the
sins of the latter class. He puts μὴ ("lest") instead of
μήπως ("lest by any means": ver. 20), marking thus
the climax, and something like the certainty,This is also suggested by the reading ταπεινώσει, which Tischendorf
adopts in ver. 21, with B, D, E, F, etc. א, A, K, followed by Westcott
and Hort, have ταπεινώσῃ.
of his sad
apprehension. "I fear," he says, "lest when I come
again my God should humble me before you"—or, perhaps
"in connexion with you." Nothing could more
bow down a true and loving heart like Paul's than to
see a Church that he had regarded as the seal of his
apostleship—a congregation of men "washed, sanctified,
and justified"—wallowing again in the mire of
sensual sins. He had been proud of them, had boasted
of them, had given thanks to God on their behalf: how
it must have crushed him to think that his labour on
them had come to this! Yet he writes instinctively
"my God." This humiliation does not come to him
without his Father; there is a divine dispensation in
it, as far as he is concerned, and he submits to it as
such. He dare not think of it as a personal insult; he
dare not think of the sinners as if they had offended
against him. He fears he will have to mourn over
numbers of those who have before sinned, and who will
not have repentedIt is more natural to construe ἐπὶ τῇ ἀκαθαρσιᾳ κ.τ.λ. with μετανοησάντων
than with πενθήσω.
of these sensualities before he reaches
Corinth. In chap. v. 2 of the First Epistle he sums up
his condemnation of the moral laxity of the Church in
the presence of such evils in the words: Ye did not
mourn. He himself will not be able to avoid mourning:
his heart grows heavy within him as he thinks of what
he must see before long. This, again, is the spirit of
the true pastor. Selfish anger has nothing healing in
it, nor has wounded pride; it is not for any man, however
good or devoted, to feel that he is entitled to resent
it, as a personal wrong, when men fall into sin. He is
not entitled to resent it, no matter how much he may
have spent, or how freely he may have spent himself,
upon them; but he is bound to bewail it. He is bound
to recognise in it, so far as he himself is free from responsibility,
a dispensation of God intended to make
him humble; and in all humility and love he is bound
to plead with the lapsed, not his own cause, but God's.
This is the spirit in which Paul confronts the sad duties
awaiting him at Corinth, and in this again we see "the
signs of the apostle."
The two catalogues of sins with which this chapter
closes remind us, by way of contrast, of the two
characteristic graces of Christianity: self-will or party
spirit, in all its forms, is opposed to brotherly love,
and self-indulgence, in all its forms, to personal purity.
There is much in this Epistle which would be called
by some people theological and transcendent; but no
one knew better than Paul that, though Christianity
must be capable of an intellectual construction, it is not
an intellectual system in essence, but a new moral life.
He was deeply concerned, as we have repeatedly seen,
that the Corinthians should think right thoughts about
Christ and the Gospel; but he was more than concerned,
he was filled with grief, fear, and shame, when he
thought of the vices of temper and of sensuality that
prevailed among them. These went to the root of
Christianity, and if they could not be destroyed it
must perish. Let us turn our eyes from them to the
purity and love that they obscure, and lift up our hearts
to these as the best things to which God has called us
in the fellowship of His Son.
CONCLUSION
"This is the third time I am coming to you. At the mouth of two
witnesses or three shall every word be established. I have said
beforehand, and I do say beforehand, as when I was present the
second time, so now, being absent, to them that have sinned heretofore,
and to all the rest, that, if I come again, I will not spare; seeing that
ye seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me; who to you-ward is
not weak, but is powerful in you: for He was crucified through
weakness, yet He liveth through the power of God. For we also
are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him through the power of
God toward you. Try your own selves, whether ye be in the faith;
prove your own selves. Or know ye not as to your own selves,
that Jesus Christ is in you? unless indeed ye be reprobate. But I
hope that ye shall know that we are not reprobate. Now we pray
to God that ye do no evil; not that we may appear approved, but
that ye may do that which is honourable, though we be as reprobate.
For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth. For we
rejoice, when we are weak, and ye are strong: this we also pray
for, even your perfecting. For this cause I write these things while
absent, that I may not when present deal sharply, according to the
authority which the Lord gave me for building up, and not for
casting down.
"Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfected; be comforted; be of
the same mind; live in peace: and the God of love and peace shall
be with you. Salute one another with a holy kiss.
"All the saints salute you.
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all."—2 Cor. xiii. (R.V.).
The first part of this chapter is in close connexion
with what precedes; it is, so to speak, the
explanation of St. Paul's fear (xii. 20) that when he
came to Corinth he would be found of the Corinthians
"not such as they would." He expresses himself with
great severity; and the abruptness of the first three
sentences, which are not linked to each other by any
conjunctions, contributes to the general sense of rigour.
"This is the third time I am coming to you" is a
resumption of chap. xii. 14, "This is the third time I
am ready to come to you," and labours under the
same ambiguity; it is perhaps more natural to suppose
that Paul had actually been twice in Corinth (and there
are independent reasons for this opinion), but the
words here used are quite consistent with the idea that
this was the third time he had definitely purposed and
tried to visit them, whether his purpose had been
carried out or not. When he arrives, he will proceed
at once to hold a judicial investigation into the condition
of the Church, and will carry it through with legal
stringency. "At the mouth of two and (where available)
three witnesses shall every question be brought to
decision." This principle of the Jewish law (Deut. xix.
15), to which reference is made in other New Testament
passages connected with Church discipline (Matt. xviii.
16; 1 Tim. v. 19), is announced as that on which
he will act. There will be no informality and no
injustice, but neither will there be any more forbearance.
All cases requiring disciplinary treatment will
be brought to an issue at once, and the decision will
be given rigorously as the matter of fact, attested by
evidence, requires.Although it is supported by commentators like Chrysostom and
Calvin, it is difficult to treat otherwise than as a whim the idea that
Paul's two or three visits to Corinth make him equal to the two or
three witnesses required by the law. So also Godet, who counts the three thus: (1) a warning by word of mouth during his second visit;
(2) this letter; (3) his actual arrival for the third time.
He feels justified in proceeding
thus after the reiterated warnings he has given them.
To these reference is made in the solemn words of
ver. 2. English readers can see, by comparing the
Revised Version with the Authorised, the difficulties of
translation which still divide scholars. The words
which the Authorised Version renders "as if I were
present" (ὡς παρών) are rendered by the Revisers
"as when I was present." All scholars connect this
ambiguous clause with τὸ δεύτερον: "the second time."
Hence there are two main ways in which the whole
passage can be rendered. The one is that which
stands in the Revised Version, and which is defended
by scholars like Meyer, Lightfoot,See Biblical Essays, p. 274.
and Schmiedel: it
is in effect this—"I have already forewarned, and do
now forewarn, as I did on the occasion of my second
visit, so also now in my absence, those who have
sinned heretofore, and all the rest, that if I come again
I will not spare." This is certainly rather cumbrous;
but assuming that chap. ii. 1 gives strong ground for
believing in a second visit already paid to Corinth—a
visit in which Paul had been grieved and humbled by
disorders in the Church, but had not been in a position
to do more than warn against their continuance—it
seems the only available interpretation. Those who
evade the force of chap. ii. 1 render here in the line
of the Authorised Version: "I have forewarned [viz.,
in the first letter, e.g. iv. 21], and do now forewarn,
as though I were present the second time, although
I am now absent, those who have sinned," etc. So
Heinrici. This, on grammatical grounds, seems quite
legitimate; but the contrast between presence and
absence, which is real and effective in the other rendering,
is here quite inept. We can understand a man
saying, "I tell you in my absence, just as I did when
I was with you that second time": but who would ever
say, "I tell you as if I were present with you a second
time, although in point of fact I am absent"? The
absence here comes in with a grotesque effect, and there
seems hardly room to doubt that the rendering in our
Revised Version is correct. Paul had, when he visited
Corinth a second time, warned those who had sinned
before that visit; he now warns them again, and all
others with them who anticipated his coming with an
evil conscience, that the hour of decision is at hand.
It is not easy to say what he means by the threat
not to spare. Many point to judgments like that
on Ananias and Sapphira, or on Elymas the sorcerer;
others to the delivering of the incestuous person to
Satan, "for the destruction of the flesh"; the supposition
being that Paul came to Corinth armed with a
supernatural power of inflicting physical sufferings on
the disobedient. This uncanny idea has really no
support in the New Testament, in spite of the passages
quoted; and probably what his words aim at is an
exercise of spiritual authority which might go so far
as totally to exclude an offender from the Christian
community.
The third verse is to be taken closely with the second:
"I will not spare, since ye seek a proof of Christ
that speaketh in me, who to you-ward is not weak, but
is powerful in you." The friction between the Corinthians
and the Apostle involved a higher interest than
his. In putting Paul to the proof, they were really
putting to the proof the Christ who spoke in him. In
challenging Paul to come and exert his authority, in
defying him to come with a rod, in presuming on what
they called his weakness, they were really challenging
Christ. The description of Christ in the last clause—"who
towards you is not weak, but is powerful in you,
or among you"—must be interpreted by the context.
It can hardly mean that in their conversion, and in their
experience as Christian people, they had evidence that
Christ was not weak, but strong: such a reference,
though supported by Calvin, is surely beside the mark.
The meaning must rather be that for the purpose in
hand—the restoration of order and discipline in the
Corinthian Church—the Christ who spoke in Paul was
not weak, but mighty. Certainly any one who looked
at Christ in Himself might see proofs, in abundance, of
weakness; going directly to the crowning one, "He
was crucified," the Apostle says, "in virtue of weakness."
Sin was so much stronger than He, in the days of His
flesh, that it did what it liked with Him. Sin mocked
Him, buffeted Him, scourged Him, spit upon Him,
nailed Him to the tree—so utter was His weakness,
so complete the triumph of sin over Him. But that is
not the whole story: "He liveth in virtue of the power
of God." He has been raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father; sin cannot touch Him any more:
He has all power in heaven and on earth, and all things
are under His feet. This double relation of Christ to
sin is exemplified in His Apostle. "For we also are
weak in Him; but we shall live with Him, in virtue of
God's power, toward you." The sin of the Corinthians
had had its victory over Paul on the occasion of his
second visit; God had humbled him then, even as
Christ was humbled on the cross; he had seen the
evil, but it had been too strong for him; in spite of
his warnings, it had rolled over his head. That
"weakness," as the Corinthians called it, remained; to
them he was still as weak as ever—hence the present
ἀσθενοῦμεν: but to the Apostle it was no discreditable
thing; it was a weakness "in Christ," or perhaps, as
some authorities read, "with Christ." In being overpowered
by sin for the moment, he entered into the
fellowship of his Lord's sufferings; he drank out of
the cup his Master drank upon the cross. But the
cross does not represent Christ's whole attitude to sin,
nor does that incapacity to deal with the turbulence,
disloyalty, and immorality of the Corinthians represent
the whole attitude of the Apostle to these disorders.
Paul is not only crucified with Christ, he has been
made to sit with Him in the heavenly places; and
when he comes to Corinth this time, it will not be in
the weakness of Christ, but in the victorious strength
of His new life. He will come clothed with power
from on high to execute the Lord's sentence on the
disobedient.
This passage has great practical interest. There
are many whose whole conception of the Christian
attitude toward evil is summed up in the words: "He
was crucified through weakness." They seem to think
that the whole function of love in presence of evil, its
whole experience, its whole method and all its resources,
are comprehended in bearing what evil chooses, or is
able, to inflict. There are even bad people, like the
Corinthians, who imagine that this exhausts the Christian
ideal, and that they are wronged if they are not allowed
by Christians to do what they like to them with impunity.
And if it is not so easy to act on this principle
in our dealings with one another—though there are
people mean enough to try it—there are plenty of
hypocrites who presume on it in their dealings with
God. "He was crucified through weakness," they say
in their hearts; the cross exhausts His relation to sin;
that infinite patience can never pass over to severity.
But the assumption is false: the cross does not exhaust
Christ's relation to sin; He passed from the cross to
the throne, and when He comes again it is as Judge.
It is the sin of sins to presume upon the cross; it is
a mistake that cannot be remedied to persist in that
presumption to the end. When Christ comes again,
He will not spare. The two things go together in
Him: the infinite patience of the cross, the inexorable
righteousness of the throne. The same two things go
together in men: the depth with which they feel evil,
the completeness with which they suffer it to work its
will against them, and the power with which they
vindicate the good. It is the worst blindness, as well
as the basest guilt, which, because it has seen the one,
refuses to believe in the other.
The Corinthians, by their rebellious spirit, were
putting Paul to the proof; in ver. 5 he reminds them
sharply that it is their own standing as Christians
which is in question, and not his. "Try yourselves,"
he says, with abrupt emphasis, "not me; try yourselves,
if ye are in the faith; put yourselves to the proof; or
know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is
in you?—unless, indeed, ye be reprobate." The meaning
here is hardly open to doubt:Another interpretation is worth mentioning. "Try yourselves,
I say; put yourselves to the proof; do not leave it for me to do
when I come. Why, do you not recognise as to your own selves
that Jesus Christ is among you, so that you have spiritual competence
to proceed in correcting the disorders of the Church?—unless,
indeed, ye are reprobates: which is an impossible supposition. But ἑαυτοὺς certainly suggests that in the implied contrast Paul is
object, not subject."
the Apostle urges his
readers individually to examine their Christian standing.
"Let each," he virtually says, "put himself to the proof,
and see whether he is in the faith." There is, indeed,
a difficulty in the clause, "Or know ye not as to your
own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed,
ye be reprobate." This may be read either as a test,
put into their hands to direct them in their self-scrutiny;
or as an appeal to them after—or even before—the
scrutiny has been made. The manner in which the
alternative is introduced—"unless, indeed, ye are
reprobates"—a manner plainly suggesting that the
alternative in question is not to be assumed, is in favour
of taking it in the sense of an appeal. After all, they
are a Christian Church with Christ among them, and
they cannot but know it. Paul, again, on his side
cannot think that they are reprobate, and he hopes
they will recognise that he is not, but on the contrary
a genuine Apostle, attested by God, and to be acknowledged
and obeyed by the Church. Very often that
temper which judges others, and calls legitimate spiritual
authority in question, is due, as in part it was among
the Corinthians, to inward misgivings. It is when
people ought to be putting themselves to the proof, and
are with cause afraid to begin, that they are most ready
to challenge others. It was a kind of self-defence—the
self-defence of a bad conscience—when the Corinthians
required Paul to demonstrate his apostolic claims before
he meddled with their affairs. It was a plea, the sole
purpose of which was to enable them to live on as they
were, immoral and impenitent. It is properly retorted
when he says, "Try yourselves if ye are in the faith; it
is in every sense of the word an impertinence to drag
in anybody else."
In both cases Paul hopes the result of the trial will
be satisfactory. He would not like to think the
Corinthians ἀδόκιμοι ("reprobate"), and no more would
he like them to regard him in that light. Still, the two
things are not on exactly the same footing in his mind;
their character is much dearer to him than his own
reputation, provided they are what they ought to be,
he does not care what is thought of himself. This
is the general sense of vv. 7 to 9, and except in
ver. 8 the details are clear enough. He prays to God
that the Corinthians may do no evil. His object in
this is not that he himself may appear approved;
indeed, if his prayer is granted, he will have no opportunity
of exercising the disciplinary authority of which
he has said so much. It will be open to any one then
to say that he is ἀδόκιμος, reprobate, a person to be
rejected because he has not demonstrated his claim to
apostolic authority by apostolic action. But as long as
they act well, which is the real object of his prayer, he
does not care, though he has to pass as ἀδόκιμος. He
can bear evil report as well as good report, and rejoice
to fulfil his vocation under the one condition as well as
the other. This is only one aspect of that sacrifice of
self to the interest of the flock which is indispensable
in the good shepherd. As compared with any single
member of his congregation, a minister may be more in
the eye of the world, more still in the eye of the
Church; and it is natural for him to think that some
self-assertion, some recognition and reputation, are due
to his position. It is a mistake: no man who understands
the position at all will dream of asserting his
own importance against that of the community. The
Church, the congregation even, no matter how much it
may be indebted to him, no matter if it owes to him, as
the Corinthian Church to Paul, its very existence in
Christ, is always greater than he; it will outlive him;
and, however tender he may naturally be of his own
position and reputation, if the Church prosper in
Christian character, he must be as willing to let these
dear possessions go, and to count them worthless, as
to part with money or any material thing.
The real difficulty here lies in the eighth verse, where
the Apostle explains, apparently, why he acts on the
principle just stated. "I pray this prayer for you," he
seems to say, "and I am content to pass as a reprobate,
while you do that which is honourable; for I can do
nothing against the truth, but for the truth." What
is the connexion of ideas alluded to by this "for"?
Some of the commentators give up the question in
despair; others only remind one of the French pastor
who said to some one who preached on Romans: "Saint
Paul est déjà fort difficile et ... vous veniez après."
As far as one can make out, he seems to say: "I act
on this principle because it is the one which furthers
the truth, and therefore is obligatory upon me; I am
not able to act on one which would injure or prejudice
the truth." The truth, in this interpretation, would be
synonymous, as it often is in the New Testament,
with the Gospel. Paul is incapable of acting in a way
that would check the Gospel, and its influence over
men; he has no choice but to act in its interest; and
therefore he is content to let the Corinthians think
what they please of him, provided his prayer is
answered, and they do no evil, but rather that which
is good before God. For this is what the Gospel
requires. "Content," indeed, is not a strong enough
word. "We rejoice," he says in ver. 9, "when we
are weak, and you are strong: this we also pray
for, even your perfecting." "Perfecting" is perhaps
as good a word as can be got for κατάρτισις:
it denotes the putting right of all that is defective
or amiss.
It is in favour of this interpretation of the eighth
verse that the reason seems at first out of proportion
to the conclusion. With an idealist like Paul it is
always so. He appeals to the loftiest motives to influence
the lowliest actions,—to faith in the Incarnation,
as a motive to generosity—to faith in the Resurrection
Life, as a motive to patient continuance in well-doing—to
faith in the heavenly citizenship of believers, as
a motive to separation from the licentious. In the
same way he appeals here to a universal moral rule
to explain his conduct in a particular case. His
principle everywhere is, not to act in prejudice of
(κατά) the Gospel, but in furtherance of it (ὑπέρ); he
has strength available for this last purpose, but none
at all for the former. It is the rule on which every
minister of Christ should always act; and if the line of
conduct which it pointed out sometimes led men to
disregard their own reputation, provided the Gospel was
having free course, the very strangeness of such a result
might turn to the furtherance of the truth. It is by-ends
that explain nine-tenths of spiritual inefficiency;
singleness of mind like this would save us our perplexities
and our failures alike.
It is because he has an interest like this in the
Corinthians that Paul writes as he has done while absent
from Corinth. He does not wish, when he comes among
them, to proceed with severity. The power the Lord
gave him would entitle him to do so; yet he remembers
that this power was given him, as he has remarked
already (x. 8), for building up, and not for casting
down. Even casting down with a view to building up
on a better basis was a less natural, if sometimes a
necessary, exercise of it; and he hopes that the severity
of his words will lead, even before his coming, to such
voluntary action on the part of the Church as will spare
him severity in deed.
This is practically the end of the letter, and the mind
involuntarily goes back to the beginning. We see now
the three great divisions of it plainly before our eyes.
In the first seven chapters Paul writes under the general
impression of the good news Titus has brought from
Corinth. It has made him glad, and he writes gladly.
The one case that he had been concerned about has
been disposed of in a way that he can consider satisfactory;
the Church, in the majority of its members, has
acted well in the matter. The eighth and ninth chapters
are a digression: they are concerned solely with the
collection for the poor at Jerusalem, and Paul inserts
them where they stand perhaps because the transition
was easy from his joy over the change at Corinth to
his joy over the liberality of the Macedonians. In
chaps, x. 1-xiii. 10 he evidently writes in a very different
strain. The Church, as a whole, has returned to its
allegiance, especially on the moral question at issue;
but there are Jewish interlopers in it, subverting the
Gospel, and reconverting Paul's converts to their own
illiberal faith; and there are also, as it would appear,
numbers of sensual people who have not yet renounced
the vilest sins. It is these two sets of persons who
are in view in the last four chapters; and it is the
utter inconsistency of Judaic nationalism on the one
hand, and Corinthian licence on the other, with the
spiritual Gospel of the Son of God, that explains
the seventy of his tone. "The truth" is at stake—the
truth for which he has suffered all that he recounts in
chap. xi.—and no vehemence is too passionate for the
occasion. Yet love controls it all, and he speaks
severely that he may not have to act severely; he
writes these things that, if possible, he may be spared
the pain of saying them.
And then the letter, like almost every letter, hastens
in disconnected sentences to its close. "Finally,
brethren, farewell." He cannot but address them
affectionately at parting; when the heart recovers from
the heat of indignation, its unchanging love speaks
again as before. Some would render χαίρετε "rejoice,"
instead of "farewell"; to Paul's readers, no doubt, it
had a friendly sound, but "rejoice" is far too strong.
In all the imperatives that follow there is a reminiscence
of their faults as well as a desire for their good: "be
perfected, be comforted, be of the same mind, live in
peace." There was much among them to rectify, much
that was inevitably disheartening to overcome, much
dissension to compose, much friction to allay; but as
he prays them to face these duties he can assure them
that the God of love and peace will be with them.
God can be characterised by love and peace; they are
His essential attributes, and He is an inexhaustible
source of them, so that all who make peace and love
their aim can count confidently to be helped by Him.
It is, as it were, the first step of obedience to these
precepts—the first condition of obtaining the presence
of God which has just been promised—when the
Apostle writes, "Greet one another with a holy kiss."
The kiss was the symbol of Christian brotherhood;
in exchanging it Christians recognised each other as
members of one family. To do this even in form, to
do it with solemnity in a public assembly of the whole
Church, was to commit themselves to the obligations
of peace and love which had been so set at naught in
their religious contentions. It is a generous encouragement
to them to recognise each other as children of
God when he adds that all the Christians about him
recognise them in that character. "All the saints
salute you." They do so because they are Christians
and because you are; acknowledge each other, as you
are all acknowledged from without.
The letter is closed, like all that the Apostle wrote,
with a brief prayer. "The grace of the Lord Jesus
[Christ], and the love of God, and the communion of
the Holy Spirit, be with you all." Of all such prayers
it is the fullest in expression, and this has gained for
it pre-eminently the name of the apostolic benediction.
It would be too much to say that the doctrine of the
Trinity, as it has been defined in the creeds, is explicitly
to be found here; there is no statement at all in this
place of the relations of Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit.
Still, it is on passages like this that the Trinitarian
doctrine of God is based; or rather it is in passages
like this that we see it beginning to take shape: it is
based on the historical fact of the revelation of God in
Christ, and on the experience of the new divine life
which the Church possesses through the Spirit. It is
extraordinary to find men with the New Testament in
their hands giving explanations, speculative or popular,
of this doctrine, which stand in no relation either to
the historical Christ or to the experience of the
Church. But these things hang together; and whatever
the worth may be of a Trinitarian doctrine which is not
essentially dependent on the Person of Christ and on
the life of His Church, it is certainly not Christian.
The historical original of the doctrine, and the impulse of
experience under which Paul wrote, are suggested even
by the order of the words. A speculative theologian
may try to deduce the Triune nature of God from the
borrowed assumption that God is love, or knowledge, or
spirit; but the Apostle has only come to know God as
love through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
this which reveals God's love and assures us of it; it
is this by which God commends His own love to us.
"No man cometh unto the Father but by Me," Jesus
said; and this truth, pre-announced by the Lord, is
certified here by the very order in which the Apostle
instinctively puts the sacred names. "The communion
of the Holy Spirit" stands last; it is in this that "the
grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God" become
the realised possessions of Christian men. The precise
force of "the communion" is open to doubt. If we
take the genitive in the same sense as it bears in the
previous clauses, the word will mean "the fellowship
or unity of feeling which is produced by the Spirit."
This is a good sense, but not the only one: what Paul
wishes may rather be the joint participation of them
all in the Spirit, and in the gifts which it confers. But
practically the two meanings coincide, and our minds
rest on the comprehensiveness of the blessing invoked
on a Church so mixed, and in many of its members so
unworthy. Surely "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy
Ghost" were with the man who rises so easily, so unconstrainedly,
after all the tempest and passion of this
letter, to such a height of love and peace. Heaven is
open over his head; he is conscious, as he writes, of
the immensities of that love whose breadth and length
and depth and height pass knowledge. In the Son
who revealed it—in God who is its eternal source—in
the Spirit through whom it lives in men—he is
conscious of that love and of its workings; and he
prays that in all its aspects, and in all its virtues, it
may be with them all.
Indexes
Index of Scripture Commentary
Index of Pages of the Print Edition