I have examined with some carefulness two of the Pauline Epistles, which are admitted to be genuine by the school of Bauer. Different as they are in their scope and occasion, I think we have discovered in them the traces of a common design. One as little as the other is written to establish the formal doctrine of justification by faith. One as much as the other sets forth Christ as the common foundation upon which Jew and Gentile could stand, the bond of human society, the root of human righteousness. In trying to ascertain whether the remaining ten Epistles bear the same tokens I shall be much less minute, lest the object of these lectures should be lost sight of through my attention to details, and lest I should seem to aim at supplying my reader with a commentary, not to assist him in reading the New Testament for himself.
The Second Epistle to the Corinthians has a manifest connection with the First, yet they are so different in their character, and in the subjects of which they treat, that many seem to regard the external links between them as the only proofs that they were addressed to the same persons. Few, however, can fail to perceive that at least one of the threads which was woven into the web of the first letter runs through the second. The question of the honor which is due to ministers of the Gospel, arose naturally there out of the remarks on the false honor which the Corinthians were putting upon them. In the second letter the subject takes a more personal form, is more connected with conflicts and griefs, ecstasies and humiliations, in the Apostle’s own mind; but it does not less concern the peculiar habits of the Corinthian Church, or the order of all Christian society.
The Apostle had spoken in the close of his last letter of visiting Corinth. He had not executed his purpose. Some members of the Church seem to have suspected him of making such promises carelessly or lightly. He protests against the imputation. He had not put off his visit inconsiderately, but deliberately. He believed it was better for them that he should not come at once. He was anxious, it seems, that they should exercise their own free judgment in the case of the person whom he had pronounced excommunicate. He did not wish to oppress that person or them by his presence. He had therefore sent Titus to them instead of going himself. He was greatly delighted with the news Titus had brought him of the way in which they received his letter, of the impression which it had made upon them, of their zeal to relieve themselves of the guilt in which he had told them they were sharers. He conceives they have done all that was required of them in punishing the incestuous offender; he was content, and even anxious, that they should now forgive him. Their forgiveness would be his, as their punishment had been his.
The Apostle dwells with characteristic fervor and animation upon this part of the report which Titus had made to him. His expressions of satisfaction are proportioned to the severity of his previous rebukes. It is evident that there were other observations made by his friend and messenger which were not equally gratifying. The Apostle hints with great delicacy and courtesy, but with some irony, that the Corinthians had promised a collection for the suffering members of other churches which they had not yet made; that the Macedonians, with less pretensions and less means, had done more; that it would be well for their honor as well as his, if his boasting of them was not proved to be untrue.
It is also clear that the jealousies and suspicions which had existed against the Apostle himself, and were stirred up by the rival parties, had not been removed by his epistle, but had taken a new form in consequence of it. “He can write powerfully,” said his opponents, “when he is at a distance; but how feeble he is when he is among us!” The simple form in which he had presented his Gospel, the little pains he had taken to adapt it to the refined palates of intellectual people, were still causes of offence. There were many who represented him as only half an apostle, without the outward designation of one, without the proofs of a commission which those of the circumcision had, or the eloquence which belonged to Apollos. The old leaven was evidently at work. False apostles, mere traders in a Gospel, who would have been inferior sophists among heathens, were doing their utmost to establish their own reputation by undermining Paul. Vanity, party-spirit, self-exaltation, were still painfully characteristic of the Church. And where these existed, however much there might be of genuine sorrow for a particular offence, even of practical amendment, there could not be that repentance and reformation which spring from a full knowledge of the evil that each man has in himself. The old sensual corruptions, as well as the old intellectual conceits, would manifest themselves as they had done before.
Such being the external circumstances which suggested the epistle, St. Paul, if he had had no other impulse, might naturally have discoursed on his own position and powers, or more generally on the position and powers of an apostle. But there was that in himself which more mightily compelled him to speak upon this subject, and which prevented him from treating it in a dry, didactic method. He says in the commencement of the letter, which is even more than ordinarily the guide to all the contents of it, that he would not have them ignorant of the conflict which came upon him in Asia, that he was distressed out of measure, that he despaired even of life. He rejoices in this conflict because it has shown him the death which is in himself, and the life which is in Christ; because it has taught him not to trust in himself, but in Him who raises the dead. He rejoices in it, further, because he believes that the consolation which he has received will affect others as well as himself, that as he has known the sorrows of others in himself, so they will share also in his thanksgiving.
This certainty that what he has gone through has been for the sake of others, that he has been entering into human grief and human joy as Christ himself did, gives him a sense of the nature of his ministry which all his previous experience had not imparted to him. Down in the depths of his own being he had been learning what a Gospel of life he had to preach, how close to every man lies the death from which that Gospel announces deliverance. It is awful to think of the power of his own words, what mysteries he has been proclaiming to human beings, how the knowledge of those mysteries may harden and stupefy the hearts which it does not purify. The mere trader in the divine word has no such sense of the fearfulness of his vocation; but one who is determined to speak it out in sincerity as God’s message must feel his own insufficiency.
Even the announcement of this determination sounds to him almost like a vaunt, or as if he wished to commend himself to the Corinthians. But that is not his meaning. He wants no commendatory letters to them or from them. He desires to grave his letters in their hearts, that they may themselves be his epistles. For this is the character of the New Testament ministry, this is its contrast with the Old. It is not written on stones, but in the heart. It does not stand outside of the man as a ministry of law and of terror, but comes to his own self as an effective ministry of righteousness. It is not the exhibition of God under a veil, but the manifestation of His unveiled face in Christ to the creature which is made in His image.
On this account, St. Paul tells the Corinthians who had complained of him for his plainness that he is bound to use great simplicity of speech. Those who maintained the Old Testament ministry against the New, might indeed clothe their speech in symbols, as Moses had hid his face with a veil. They could not look to the end of that which was abolished, for the veil was upon their hearts, that Old Testament veil which was done away in Christ. When they turned round to the Lord, the Ruler of their spirits, the veil would be taken away, and they would have the true spiritual liberty. Meantime, we who have confessed Him, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord’s Spirit.
Here then is the full explanation of what he had said before. There must be no craft or trickery in the management of this word of God. The New Testament minister must by manifestation of the truth commend himself to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And what if with all our boldness and plainness, there is still a veil over the Gospel, the veil is not in it, but in the hearts of those that believe not, whose thoughts the god of this world has blinded, so that the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, does not shine into them. For it is not ourselves we are preaching, but Him, the Illuminator of our hearts, in whose face the glory of God is made known to us.
And since it was not himself that he preached, but Christ, they might see why he had to go through such conflicts as that of which he had spoken. It was that the mere individual man might be crushed, and that the Christ might be revealed in all His power to the hearers as well as to the preacher. Through this came out his own faith in the power of the risen Christ, through this, his ability to speak of it. The outside man was consuming in these fires, the inner man was becoming renewed day by day. An invisible and eternal glory was manifesting itself and working itself out through these afflictions. He knew it to be so whenever his mind was fixed not upon the things seen but the things unseen; for the things seen were for a moment, the things not seen were eternal.
This contrast between that invisible and eternal glory of Christ which was revealing itself in them and through them, leads to the memorable passage respecting the earthly house of this tabernacle and the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, which is expanded through the fifth chapter. It is easy to see that that chapter could not have been written even by an Apostle who had not passed, and very recently passed, through the agony which he has recorded. Not a single sentence of it is intelligible if we forget that personal experience, or the results of it which have been referred to in the former part of the letter. If it is regarded as a mere history of a man balancing the future life against the present life, the world before death with the world after death, its whole meaning, either as it concerns the writer or the reader, is shrivelled and exhausted. But if it is the new Adam in the man struggling with the old, if it is the man claiming his portion in a divine and immortal Lord, confident of a new life for his body and spirit in Him, confident that that life is for his brethren as well as himself, and therefore willing that his present tabernacle should fall to pieces whenever it pleases God that it should, though perfectly content to groan in it while that is his appointed lot; then we can understand why he should speak of walking by faith, not by sight, of being absent from the body and present with the Lord, of desiring, whether absent or present, to be acceptable to Him. Then we can understand why he should anticipate for all men a manifestation before Christ the Lord of their spirits, that each may receive the things done through the instrumentality of the body, whether that be good or ill. And we can see how he connects this with what has gone before respecting the character of his ministry,—with his zeal, knowing the fear of God, to persuade men,—with his hope that his word is not only manifest to God, but manifest in their consciences. And one can see why with this confidence he should care very little whether he passed for a madman or a sober man in the estimate of those critics who judged by the mere outside. The love of Christ was pressing him to speak; for he had come to this conclusion, that if One died for all, then were all dead, and that he died for all, that those who live should not live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again. And thus too we can attach some meaning to those great words which follow: “So, if this be so, if there is this Lord over our spirits, and to speak of Him is our work, and to know him is our reward, henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. He is revealed to us as the Lord from heaven, as the Author of a new creation, so that if any man is in Christ he is a new creature; the old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new. And all things,” he says, “are of that God who had reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” All things must be contemplated as grounded in Him, as proceeding from Him. We are to testify “that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning their trespasses to them, and putting in us the word of reconciliation.” Here is the statement of the object of that ministry, the preparation for which he had been explaining to us before.
He is then an ambassador for Christ. God is exhorting them by him. He is praying them for Christ’s sake, to be reconciled to God. Being able to announce that the reconciliation is accomplished, that He who knew no sin has been made sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, all he has to do is to beseech them not to receive the grace which has been given to them in vain. They have heard of a gracious or acceptable time, a day of jubilee. It is now; the day is come. And he and those who are the heralds of that day, the messengers of the New Testament reconciliation, are bound in nothing to give offence; in all things to show that they are God’s ministers, exhibiting in themselves that contrast between power and weakness, glory and shame, death and life, which they preach with their lips when they preach Christ’s Cross and Resurrection, and say that men are to learn from these God’s will and their own condition.
The Apostle has poured out his heart to the Corinthians; he has shown them that in his secret battles he has been fighting for them as much as for himself. Now he beseeches them for a return, not a cold, dry, critical appreciation of his eloquence, or a comparison of him with other doctors, but the sympathy of churchmen, if not the affection of children to a father. To many it may seem that his exhortation not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, though needful in itself, is out of place here. But the knowledge which the first epistle gives us of the Corinthians, enables us to see its appropriateness, and the sense which it must bear. The Corinthian Christians were willing enough to exalt themselves above heathens, and to pass judgment upon them. But the habits of heathens they had not cast aside, the real glory of their Christian fellowship they had not understood. In nothing was the old Pagan temper more conspicuous than in the way of estimating their teachers. The most dividing and demoralizing tendencies of old Greece, those which were least compatible with the existence of one body with many members, broke out in their comparison of Paul with Apollos, in their desire to treat them both as sophists, not as divine ambassadors. The exhortation to come out and be separate from these unbelieving habits, is therefore a natural sequel to what the Apostle has said already, an introduction to what he is about to say of himself and his work.
It is sometimes thought that the latter part of this Epistle has an almost painfully personal character; so much is said of the suspicions of the Corinthians; of false Apostles; of St. Paul’s revelations; of his sufferings and humiliations. Doubtless if this part of the letter were separated from the other and were not interpreted by it, we should not be able to account for these allusions; we might have thought that the man had got the better of the ambassador. But when we have learnt how essentially the man and the ambassador are one, how impossible it is that they should ever be separated unless the office is ill discharged, or the human creature becomes a merely selfish one, the confession of personal grievances and sufferings, the “folly,” to use his own language, the boasting, the shame, are not merely revelations of a character which we should rejoice to meet with elsewhere, but are in the strictest sense such revelations of the relation between God and his creatures, and of the close bonds by which one man is related to another, as we look for in our Bible, and we shall find very imperfectly except there.
I have alluded to the communications which he had received from Titus. There is nothing unnatural or violent in the transition to these. We feel that they have been worked into the tissue of the Apostle’s own life, that they have mingled with the pains and consolations with which he has already made us acquainted. I have remarked that he dwells first on the pleasant part of the news, passes gradually to that which is less encouraging, comes at last upon that which is most discreditable to his disciples and most bitter to himself. The subject of the Epistle is never forgotten. The keen satisfaction of the minister of Christ in any symptoms of good or improvement in his children, his clear and tender perception of their weaknesses, illustrate the doctrine that has been previously unfolded. Only when he comes to the injustice of the Corinthians towards himself personally, we seem to have the full exposition of that conflict which he had represented to us in general terms, and of which he had given us the results rather than the particulars.
The Apostle, we have seen, had been charged with assuming power to himself in his letters which he could not sustain by his personal appearance; for when he measured himself against the other teachers he was found inferior to them. This charge seems to have proceeded from teachers who trafficked with the honorable name of Apollos, and endeavored to draw followers after them by imitating his method. He declines all comparison with these men. Neither he nor they are the standard by which an Apostle’s work is to be tried. It is God’s calling. He has gone where he was sent. If these people have another Gospel to preach, or another Spirit to impart, be it so. Otherwise there is no excuse for their undervaluing of him. Whether he is insignificant or not in speech, he has told them what they wanted to know; he has at least preached to them freely; others have supported him, not they. If he has used authority heretofore not for their injury, but for their benefit, he will use it still. He will not let them be the victims of deceivers, though they may wish to be so. He has bound them to Christ; he will not give them up to those who pretend to be ministers of light while they are doing the works of the Spirit of evil.
Do they want tests of apostleship that are visible and palpable? What would they have? Do they want circumcised men, children of Abraham? He is that. Do they want men who have suffered? He has suffered as much as any. All these are mere vain things. He is unwilling to speak of them. It is folly to speak of them. But if they call upon him for such tokens, there they are.
Or perhaps they want men who have had mysterious revelations. He is not afraid to speak of such. For they do not glorify him as an individual. It is only as a man in Christ that they have been granted to him. And bitter humiliations have followed them. He has been taught not to exult in that which did not belong to himself. Therefore the infirmities, contempts, necessities, which were the signs of his fellowship with humanity, are as precious marks of Christ’s mercy as these revelations.
He has laid himself bare before them, has become a fool for their sakes, and now he will come to them again the third time in the same spirit as before, not to exact over them, not to plunder them, not to apologize to them, but to build up their Church, and for that end, if need be, to censure without sparing those who are corrupting and dividing it. They ask for proofs that Christ is speaking in him; they shall have them. He will come to them in his own weakness, but he will come to them in the might of Christ. He will speak to them of their own earthly weakness and of their own divine might. “Try yourselves,” he exclaims, “whether you are in the faith. Bring yourselves to the proof. Do ye not know your own selves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you are reprobate?” Our translators have used this word here with excellent effect. “Prove yourselves” answers to “reprobate,” as δοκιμάζετε answers to ἀδόκιμοι And thus we arrive at the true meaning of reprobate, that which has been tried and found worthless, not that which has been cast aside without trial. Still the Latin word does not express the whole meaning of the Greek word. The ἀδόκιμος is one who has lost the power of testing and proving himself. This is the sign that he has been proved worthless. If they do not know themselves, if they do not know that Christ is in them, they deserve this name, because they have lost the capacity of apprehending the truth. Paul hopes to show them that in this sense he is not reprobate; though as far as that word implies the loss of all reputation with them, he is willing to deserve it, so long as he may do them good. He has no power against the truth, only as a witness for the truth. He is glad to be weak if they may be strong. All he wishes is to establish them, to bind them together. He writes to them at a distance that he may not use the power which he possesses for edification and not destruction, when he is among them. He bids them rejoice, be strong, be of one mind, be at peace, and he assured them that the God of love and peace will be with them.