Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
2 Corinthians 2:14

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 14. Now, thanks be unto God — His coming dispelled all my fears, and was the cause of the highest satisfaction to my mind; and filled my heart with gratitude to God, who is the Author of all good, and who always causes us to triumph in Christ; not only gives us the victory, but such a victory as involves the total ruin of our enemies; and gives us cause of triumphing in him, through whom we have obtained this victory.

A triumph, among the Romans, to which the apostle here alludes, was a public and solemn honour conferred by them on a victorious general, by allowing him a magnificent procession through the city.

This was not granted by the senate unless the general had gained a very signal and decisive victory; conquered a province, c. On such occasions the general was usually clad in a rich purple robe, interwoven with figures of gold, setting forth the grandeur of his achievements his buskins were beset with pearls, and he wore a crown, which at first was of laurel, but was afterwards of pure gold. In one hand he had a branch of laurel, the emblem of victory; and in the other, his truncheon. He was carried in a magnificent chariot, adorned with ivory and plates of gold, and usually drawn by two white horses. (Other animals were also used: when Pompey triumphed over Africa, his chariot was drawn by elephants; that of Mark Antony, by lions; that of Heliogabalus, by tigers; and that of Aurelius, by deer.) His children either sat at his feet in the chariot, or rode on the chariot horses. To keep him humble amidst these great honours a slave stood at his back, casting out incessant railings, and reproaches; and carefully enumerating all his vices, c. Musicians led up the procession, and played triumphal pieces in praise of the general and these were followed by young men, who led the victims which were to be sacrificed on the occasion, with their horns gilded, and their heads and necks adorned with ribbons and garlands. Next followed carts loaded with the spoils taken from the enemy, with their horses, chariots, c. These were followed by the kings, princes, or generals taken in the war, loaded with chains. Immediately after these came the triumphal chariot, before which, as it passed, the people strewed flowers, and shouted Io, triumphe!

The triumphal chariot was followed by the senate and the procession was closed by the priests and their attendants, with the different sacrificial utensils, and a white ox, which was to be the chief victim. They then passed through the triumphal arch, along the via sacra to the capitol, where the victims were slain.

During this time all the temples were opened, and every altar smoked with offerings and incense.

The people at Corinth were sufficiently acquainted with the nature of a triumph: about two hundred years before this, Lucius Mummius, the Roman consul, had conquered all Achaia, destroyed Corinth, Thebes, and Chalcis; and, by order of the senate, had a grand triumph, and was surnamed Achaicus. St. Paul had now a triumph (but of a widely different kind) over the same people; his triumph was in Christ, and to Christ he gives all the glory; his sacrifice was that of thanksgiving to his Lord; and the incense offered on the occasion caused the savour of the knowledge of Christ to be manifested in every place. As the smoke of the victims and incense offered on such an occasion would fill the whole city with their perfume, so the odour of the name and doctrine of Christ filled the whole of Corinth and the neighbouring regions; and the apostles appeared as triumphing in and through Christ, over devils, idols, superstition, ignorance, and vice, wherever they came.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Paul’s sincerity in his ministry (2:12-17)

Once again Paul states that all his movements were guided by an interest for the Corinthians, not for himself. He was so keen to meet Titus and hear news of the Corinthians that he could not concentrate on his work in Troas. So rather than wait for Titus in Troas he went across to Macedonia, in the hope of meeting him there (12-13).
The good news that Titus brought from Corinth leads Paul to an outburst of praise to God. He pictures the preachers of the gospel joining Christ in his victory procession. The gospel is triumphant. In another illustration he likens the gospel to a sweet smell that spreads everywhere (14). But some reject the gospel, and to them it is an offensive stench that kills. The preachers whom God calls to carry such a message of life and death have a great responsibility. They are not hawkers trying to sell goods for their own gain, but announcers of God’s message. They have no mixed motives, but are concerned only for the spiritual well-being of others (15-17).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

But thanks be to God, who is always leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the savor of his knowledge in every place.

THE TRIUMPH METAPHOR

Suddenly, in the light of the good news brought by Titus, Paul sees the glorious triumph of the gospel through him; and he compared it to a glorious triumph, like those for Roman emperors, with Christ as the great Conqueror and himself as a captive participating in it and sharing in the glory of it.

The Corinthians knew about triumphs, for the triumph of L. Mummius over the conquest of Corinth was one of the most splendid spectaculars the world had ever seen; and then in A.D. 51, only five or six years before 2 Corinthians was written, Claudius had celebrated his triumph over the Britons; "and their king Caractacus had been led in the procession, but his life was spared." F. W. Farrar, op. cit., p. 30.

Such a triumph always featured the conquering here, whose many captives were led behind, some to be freed, others to be slaughtered as a feature of the spectacle; and Paul’s appeal to the triumph metaphor envisioned Christ as the great Conqueror who leads all people, whether they will or not; Paul’s view of himself in this was that of his being willingly led in the train of Christ and expecting to receive his mercy at last. "The haughty Cleopatra had said, `I will not be led in triumph’"; Ibid. and there are many like that with regard to Christ.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Now thanks be unto God ... - There seem to have been several sources of Paul’s joy on this occasion. The principal was, his constant and uniform success in endeavoring to advance the interests of the kingdom of the Redeemer. But in particular he rejoiced;

1. Because Titus had come to him there, and had removed his distress; compare 2 Corinthians 2:13.

(2)Because he learned from him that his efforts in regard to the church at Corinth had been successful, and that they had hearkened to his counsels in his first letter; and,

1. Because he was favored with signal success in Macedonia. His being compelled, therefore, to remove from Troas and to go to Macedonia had been to him ultimately the cause of great joy and consolation. These instances of success Paul regarded as occasions of gratitude to God.

Which always causeth us - Whatever may be our efforts, and wherever we are. Whether it is in endeavoring to remove the errors and evils existing in a particular church, or whether it be in preaching the gospel in places where it has been unknown, still success crowns our efforts, and we have the constant evidence of divine approbation. This was Paul’s consolation in the midst of his many trials; and it proves that, whatever may be the external circumstances of a minister, whether poverty, want, persecution, or distress, he will have abundant occasion to give thanks to God if his efforts as a minister are crowned with success.

To triumph in Christ. - To triumph through the aid of Christ, or in promoting the cause of Christ. Paul had no joy which was not connected with Christ, and he had no success which he did not trace to him. The word which is rendered here as “triumph” (θριαμβευοντι thriambeuonti from θριαμβέυω thriambeuō) occurs in no other place in the New Testament, except in Colossians 2:15. It is rendered there as “triumphing over them in it,” that is, triumphing over the principalities and powers which he had spoiled, or plundered; and it there means that Christ led them in triumph after the manner of a conqueror. The word is used here in a causative sense - the sense of the Hebrew Hiphil conjugation. It properly refers to a triumph; or a triumphal procession. Originally the word θριαμβος thriambos meant a hymn which was sung in honor of Bacchus; then the tumultuous and noisy procession which constituted the worship of the god of wine; and then any procession of a similar kind. - Passow. It was particularly applied among both the Greeks and the Romans to a public and solemn honor conferred on a victorious general on a return from a successful war in which he was allowed a magnificent entrance into the capital.

In these triumphs, the victorious commander was usually preceded or attended by the spoils of war; by the most valuable and magnificent articles which he had captured; and by the princes, nobles, generals, or people whom he had subdued. The victor was drawn in a magnificent chariot, usually by two white horses. Other animals were sometimes used. “When Pompey triumphed over Africa, his chariot was drawn by elephants; that of Mark Antony was drawn by lions; that of Heliogabalus pulled by tigers; and that of Aurelius drawn by deer” - Clark. The people of Corinth were not unacquainted with the nature of a triumph. About 147 years before Christ, Lucius Mummius, the Roman consul, had conquered all Achaia, and had destroyed Corinth, Thebes, and Colchis, and by order of the Roman Senate was favored with a triumph, and was surnamed Achaicus. Tyndale renders this place: “Thanks be unto God which always giveth us the victory in Christ.” Paul refers here to a victory which he had, and a triumph with which he was favored by the Redeemer. It was a victory over the enemies of the gospel; it was success in advancing the interests of the kingdom of Christ; and he rejoiced in that victory, and in that success, with more solid and substantial joy than a Roman victor ever felt on returning from his conquests over nations, even when attended with the richest spoils of victory, and by humbled princes and kings in chains, and when the assembled thousands shouted Io triumphe!

And maketh manifest - Makes known; spreads abroad - as a pleasant fragrance is diffused through the air.

The savor - (ὀσμὴν osmēn). The smell; the fragrance. The word in the New Testament is used to denote a pleasant or fragrant odor, as of incense, or aromatics; John 12:3 see Ephesians 5:2; Philippians 4:18. There is an allusion here doubtless to the fact that in the triumphal processions fragrant odors were diffused around; flowers, diffusing a grateful smell, were scattered in the way; and on the altars of the gods incense was burned during the procession, and sacrifices offered, and the whole city was filled with the smoke of sacrifices, and with perfumes. So Paul speaks of knowledge - the knowledge of Christ. In his triumphings, the knowledge of the Redeemer was diffused abroad, like the odors which were diffused in the triumphal march of the conqueror. And that odor or savor was acceptable to God - as the fragrance of aromatics and of incense was pleasant in the triumphal procession of the returning victor. The phrase “makes manifest the savor of his knowledge,” therefore, means, that the knowledge of Christ was diffused everywhere by Paul, as the grateful smell of aromatics was diffused all around the triumphing warrior and victor. The effect of Paul’s conquests everywhere was to diffuse the knowledge of the Saviour - and this was acceptable and pleasant to God - though there might be many who would not avail themselves of it, and would perish; see 2 Corinthians 2:15.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

14.But thanks be to God Here he again glories in the success of his ministry, and shows that he had been far from idle in the various places he had visited; but that he may do this in no invidious way, he sets out with a thanksgiving, which we shall find him afterwards repeating. Now he does not, in a spirit of ambition, extol his own actions, that his name may be held in renown, nor does he, in mere pretense, give thanks to God in the manner of the Pharisee, while lifted up, in the mean time, with pride and arrogance. (Luke 18:11.) Instead of this, he desires from his heart, that whatever is worthy of praise, be recognised as the work of God alone, that his power alone may be extolled. Farther, he recounts his own praises with a view to the advantage of the Corinthians, that, on hearing that he had served the Lord with so much fruit in other places, they may not allow his labor to be unproductive among themselves, and may learn to respect his ministry, which God everywhere rendered so glorious and fruitful. For what God so illustriously honors, it is criminal to despise, or lightly esteem. Nothing was more injurious to the Corinthians, than to have an unfavorable view of Paul’s Apostleship and doctrine: nothing, on the other hand, was more advantageous, than to hold both in esteem. Now he had begun to be held in contempt by many, and hence, it was not his duty to be silent. In addition to this, he sets this holy boasting in opposition to the revilings of the wicked.

Who causeth us to triumph If you render the word literally, it will be, Qui nos triumphat — Who triumpheth over us. ⁽³³⁸⁾ Paul, however, means something different from what this form of expression denotes among the Latins. ⁽³³⁹⁾ For captives are said to be triumphed over, when, by way of disgrace, they are bound with chains and dragged before the chariot of the conqueror. Paul’s meaning, on the other hand, is, that he was also a sharer in the triumph enjoyed by God, because it had been gained by his instrumentality, just as the lieutenants accompanied on horseback the chariot of the chief general, as sharers in the honor. ⁽³⁴⁰⁾ As, accordingly, all the ministers of the gospel fight under God’s auspices, so they also procure for him the victory and the honor of the triumph; ⁽³⁴¹⁾ but, at the same time, he honors each of them with a share of the triumph, according to the station assigned him in the army, and proportioned to the exertions made by him. Thus they enjoy, as it were, a triumph, but it is God’s rather than theirs. ⁽³⁴²⁾

He adds, in Christ, in whose person God himself triumphs, inasmuch as he has conferred upon him all the glory of empire. Should any one prefer to render it thus: “Who triumphs by means of us,” even in that way a sufficiently consistent meaning will be made out.

The odor of his knowledge. The triumph consisted in this, that God, through his instrumentality, wrought powerfully and gloriously, perfuming the world with the health-giving odor of his grace, while, by means of his doctrine, he brought some to the knowledge of Christ. He carries out, however, the metaphor of odor, by which he expresses both the delectable sweetness of the gospel, and its power and efficacy for inspiring life. In the mean time, Paul instructs them, that his preaching is so far from being savourless, that it quickens souls by its very odor. Let us, however, learn from this, that those alone make right proficiency in the gospel, who, by the sweet fragrance of Christ, are stirred up to desire him, so as to bid farewell to the allurements of the world.

He saysin every place, intimating by these words, that he went to no place in which he did not gain some fruit, and that, wherever he went, there was to be seen some reward of his labor. The Corinthians were aware, in how many places he had previously sowed the seed of Christ’s gospel. He now says, that the last corresponded with the first. ⁽³⁴³⁾

(338) “Qui triomphe tousiours de nous;” — “Who always triumpheth over us.”

(339) “Θριαμβεύειν with the accusative is used here like the hiphil of the Hebrew in the same way as μαθητεύειν (to make a disciple) (Matthew 13:52.) βασιλεύειν (to make a king) (1 Samuel 8:22) and others.” — Billroth on the Corinthians. — Bib. Cab. No. 23, p. 181 The meaning is — “maketh us to triumph.” — Ed.

(340) On such occasions the legati (lieutenants) of the general, and military tribunes, commonly rode by his side. (See Cic. Pis. 25.) — Ed.

(341) “A triumph among the Romans, to which the Apostle here alludes, was a public and solemn honor conferred by them on a victorious general, by allowing him a magnificent procession through the city. This was not granted by the senate unless the general had gained a very signal and decisive victory; conquered a province, etc. [...] The people at Corinth were sufficiently acquainted with the nature of a triumph: about two hundred years before this, Lucius Mummius, the Roman consul, had conquered all Achaia, destroyed Corinth, Thebes, and Chalcis; and, by order of the senate, had a grand triumph, and was surnamed Achaicus. ” — Dr. A. Clarke. — Ed.

(342) “C’est plustot au nom de Dieu, que en leur propre nom;” — “It is in God’s name, rather than in their own.”

(343) “La benediction de Dieu continue sur son ministere comme on l’y auoit apperceue au commencement;” — “The blessing of God continues upon his ministry, as they had seen it do at the beginning.”

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 2

But I determined this with myself, that I would not come again to you in heaviness ( 2 Corinthians 2:1 ).

"I wrote a heavy letter to you, but I was determined that I wasn't going to come again in heaviness."

For if I make you sorry [by having to rebuke you and deal with those issues], who is he then that maketh me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me [the ones that I made sorry]? ( 2 Corinthians 2:2 )

"You rejoice me, you cause my heart to rejoice when I see your faithfulness and all, but here I am rejoicing in the very same persons, they're causing me to rejoice, the very same persons that I had to make sorry."

And I wrote this same unto you, 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 ( 2 Corinthians 2:3 ).

So, "I didn't want to have sorrow when I came, I wanted it to be a joyful experience when I come. I want us both to be able to rejoice."

For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you ( 2 Corinthians 2:4 )

"That first epistle was a hard thing to write. I want to you know that it was hard for me; it was with a lot of anguish and with a lot of tears. The anguish of my heart, I wrote to you with tears. It wasn't, you know, the heavy rebuke of a hard-fisted tyrant. But the first epistle was coming out of a broken heart."

I think that we so often misunderstand God. Because we so often think of God coming down on our heads as a heavy tyrant, you know. When we read in the Bible the stories of the Bible, it's too bad that we can't somehow have it in record that we could hear the tone of voice. Because many times, the tone of voice really determines what is actually said. And your relationship with God, or your understanding of God, oftentimes, I believe, puts the wrong tone of voice on the word of God.

For instance, when Adam sinned in the garden and God came down to talk with Adam, and Adam hid himself from God. And God said, "Adam, where art thou?" What tone of voice do you hear? Heavy judgment, an arresting officer? Hand up, you're under arrest? I don't hear that tone of voice at all. I hear the sob of a heartbroken father. "Adam, where are you? What have you done?" And the disappointment of a heartbroken father over the failure of man, even as Jesus wept over Jerusalem when He saw what their actions was going to bring upon them. And God, knowing what Adam's action was going to bring upon mankind, sobbing over the failure of man. And when God deals with you, it's with tears, a heart filled with anguish. For He loves you and He wants only the best for you. Don't misunderstand God.

Paul didn't want them to misunderstand him, God's servant. "That heavy letter that I had to write to you, it was hard. I did it with anguish. It was with tears."

not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you. But if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me, but in part: that I may not overcharge you all ( 2 Corinthians 2:4-5 ).

Now, you remember when he wrote the first epistle, he wrote to them concerning that man that was living in an adulteress relationship with his father's mother, or with his father's wife. And Paul had told the church that they should put him out of the fellowship, that they weren't to keep company with a brother who was an adulterer, that they should turn him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. It was not good that they just accepted and received this man into the fellowship of the believers, because he was leaven, and a little leaven will leaven the whole lump.

Now, they did follow Paul's injunction. They put the fellow out because of the adulteress life that he was living, but the desired effect came. The man did repent, and he wanted now to come back into fellowship, having cleaned up his act. But there were those that were still going to keep him from fellowship. And Paul is saying:

Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted of many. So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you that ye would confirm your love toward him ( 2 Corinthians 2:6-8 ).

Time now to receive him back.

For to this end also did I write, that I might know the proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things. To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices ( 2 Corinthians 2:9-11 ).

So, Paul encourages them to take the fellow back in, lest Satan really get hold of the guy and he lose out. That if they forgive him, he forgives him, in the stead of Christ, he offers that forgiveness. Jesus said to him, "Every sins you remit, they shall be remitted. Whoever's sins you retain, they shall be retained" ( John 20:23 ). Paul here is, in the name of Christ, forgiving the man because of the man's repentance.

Now, God doesn't require us to forgive, except there be repentance. If he repents, forgive him. Now, that bothers a lot of people. But I like to suggest that you think that through. God does not forgive apart from repentance. Jesus said, "Unless you repent, you're going to perish" ( Luke 13:3 ). God will not forgive apart from repentance. But where there is repentance, then there ought to be, and should be, immediate forgiveness. If your brother offends you and repents, forgive him. But there is not a requirement of forgiveness apart from repentance that I know of in the scriptures.

We are not ignorant of Satan's devices. Now, our problem is that we are ignorant many times of Satan's devices. I think that a lot of times we have real difficulty, because we don't recognize the real source of conflict, being ignorant of Satan's devices. I believe that Satan is able to attack us in the realm of the spirit, also in the realm of our emotions. I feel that some days when we just feel out of sorts and nasty, that really it is a spiritual attack of the enemy against us. I feel that a lot of times when there is this unrest within the home, the children are really on each other, that it is a spiritual battle that is going on. And if we are ignorant of Satan's devices, many times we can be drawn into these conflicts and we can lose our joy and the blessing of the Lord upon our lives as we get drawn into this physical kind of a contact. Satan is constantly trying to draw you into the physical realm to battle with you, because if he can get you into the physical arena, he can knock your block off. He can beat you to pieces. That's why I never like to meet him in the physical arena, in the area of the flesh. I don't want to meet him. I only want to meet him in the spiritual arena, because there I have the great advantage -- the name of Jesus Christ.

And so, a lot of times we have problems when we are ignorant of Satan's devices, and we need to recognize the source of this problem that we are facing. And recognizing the source, it is Satan that is coming against us. It is Satan that is allowing this or doing this to us. Then I can deal with it, and I resist him in the name of Jesus, and then I rejoice for the glorious victory that I have in Christ.

So those are the three R's of the spiritual walk. The recognition of the source of the problem. The resisting of his work, for the Bible says, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you" ( James 4:7 ). And then the rejoicing in the victory that we have through Jesus Christ over every work of the enemy. So remember the three R's. Don't be ignorant of his devices, or you can find yourself really being defeated more often than you'd like to be.

Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ's gospel ( 2 Corinthians 2:12 ),

He had gone to Troas from Ephesus in Acts, Chapter 20.

and a door was opened unto me of the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother; but taking my leave of them [so I left them], I went from thence into Macedonia ( 2 Corinthians 2:12-13 ).

So, Paul went to Troas. Opportunity was given to him to preach, but his spirit was so heavy, because Titus wasn't there, who was to meet him and bring him news of the church in Corinth. "We went on over to Macedonia." He just was restless, concerned, so concerned for the condition of the church in Corinth, for the believers there.

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place ( 2 Corinthians 2:14 ).

So, Paul gives thanks to God who causes us to always triumph. I love that. In Christ.

For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savor of death unto death; and to the other the savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? ( 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 )

God has made me responsible to be his representative, to bring a message to people, which to some is a message of eternal life, a sweet savour unto God, life to life. But to others who reject and who refuse, it's a message of death, of judgment. I bear God's word. To believe and to receive means life; to reject means death. To bear that kind of message, a message of life and death, is a heavy responsibility. The message that I bring, the teaching of God's word that I bring, a person's eternal life hangs in their believing that message. That is why it is so important that I teach the message clearly, that I teach it plainly, and that my life backs up what I say. Because it's a person's eternal life that's at stake. And if I get too much of my personality into it and they find my personality obnoxious and they go away from the message because of the way I have presented it, it was offensive or obnoxious to them, then it was a savor of death unto death. Tragic.

So, it is a heavy responsibility that I have in bearing this message, because it is life or death. And that is why Paul said, "Who is sufficient for these things? I mean, hey, I can't handle that, that I am responsible of bearing a message that can mean life or death. That's eternal life or death. Who is sufficient for these things?"

In the next chapter . . . and it's too bad we don't get there tonight, because Paul gives the answer to this question, "Who is sufficient for these things?" He says, "For our sufficiency is not of ourselves, but of Christ" ( 2 Corinthians 3:5 ). If that weren't the case, I wouldn't be here. You know, if God put it all on me, I'd say, "Noooo way." But our sufficiency is of Christ.

For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God ( 2 Corinthians 2:17 ):

There are people today who are guilty of corrupting the word of God, twisting the scriptures to their own ends, in order that they might gather a following after themselves. People who are always looking for some secret meaning within the scripture, making it mean something other than what it says. "Now, that's not really what God meant. What God meant was..." And then they go off on their own little tangents. "I'll tell you what God really meant to say. I know He said that, but that's not what He meant. Let me tell you what God really meant." And I become God's interpreter. Dangerous place to be, a place I don't want to be.

For I personally feel that God meant what He said. And if God didn't mean what He said, I don't know why He didn't say what He meant. But I do believe God meant what He said, and thus, I believe that always the plain and obvious meaning of the scripture is the correct interpretation. Unless your understanding of that scripture makes it seem foolish, then your understanding is wrong; your interpretation is wrong. Because God didn't say anything foolish. But I believe that the plain and obvious meaning. I believe that God meant what He said, and I believe that any of you can go home and take your Bible, and read it, and understand it, and know what God said, and know what God meant to say.

I don't have any science and health and keys to the scriptures to tell you what God meant to say. I don't have any Awake Magazines to tell you what God meant to say. I don't have any revelations from the angel Moroni to tell you what God meant to say. You see, people always say, "Well, there are so many religions and there are so many churches, and they say different things, so I'm confused. I don't know who to believe, so I don't go to any church." Agreed. A lot of churches are saying a lot of different things. And they are all saying they are right. Then how do I know? Just read the Book.

You see, we don't have any other books to pedal. We tell you, "Just read the Book." I'm not afraid of anything that you will come to believe by just reading this Book. I have such confidence in this Book and in the Holy Spirit to guide you in your understanding of this Book, that I don't have any worries or fears about what you're going to come to believe by reading this Book.

I don't have to say to you, "Oh now, don't read that book. If you read that you'll get confused. You can read this for two years and you'll be in darkness. But you read our books which explain this book to you. And you don't have to read this book anymore, all you read is our explanations."

Why do they have to do that? Because if you just read this Book, you'll never come to their explanations. I mean, they are so weird and far out, that unless it was explained to you that way, you would have never have guessed it. You could never have come to believe it that way, except it was taught to you that this is what God really meant.

Hey, I don't have any qualms or fears about your reading the Book. In fact, I encourage you, read the Book and get it first hand. Let God speak to you right out of His word. You're not going to come up with any weird doctrines or be lead astray. The Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of truth, will lead you into all truth if you'll read the Book.

Now, that's what makes us different. Others are afraid for you to read the Book, unless you also read theirs. Definitely read theirs. Because you can't understand this Book, you see. No, no, that's not so. You can understand this Book, for the Spirit of God will teach you the truth. Read the Book.

For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ ( 2 Corinthians 2:17 ).

We speak as God's servants before God, His truth.

Father, we thank You for Your word which gives light, for the entrance of thy word gives light. The light unto our path to guide us into truth. May we walk in the light and in the truth of thy word. Bless, Lord, thy word to our hearts tonight. Help us to assimilate it, to meditate upon it, and to feed from it, that our spiritual man might grow and become strong. In Jesus' name, Father. Amen.

May the Lord keep His hand upon your life in a wonderful way this week. May it be a week of spiritual growth, as you come to a richer, fuller understanding of the grace and the love of God towards you that He has demonstrated in Jesus Christ. And may the promises of God be to you "yes" in Christ, and may you begin to experience the richness and the blessings of those promises of God as His peace and His joy and His love fill your life. And may He use you as His instrument in sharing that joy and peace with others. In Jesus' name. "

Contending for the Faith

As an Apostle, Paul Is Accountable to God

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.

Paul digresses in verse 14 through chapter seven, verse 4, to prove his work as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ: Paul has mentioned the negative side and his concern about not receiving peace of mind since Titus was not in Troas. At this point, he does not tell the Corinthians about his meeting Titus and receiving the good report in Macedonia. He does, however, imply that he receives a wonderful report about the Corinthians’ obedience to his previous letter. The implication is recognized when he erupts in thanksgiving to God. Paul was negative in talking about his lack of mental "rest," but now he expresses the positive side of "triumph" where Christ "causeth" (thriambeuo), meaning Christ always "leads (him) in triumph" (Arndt and Gingrich 364). The words "to triumph" (thriambeuo) mean "to grant one complete success" (Thayer 292-1-2358). Paul gives praise and glory to God for all successful conversions and restorations attributed to him by his preaching the gospel.

And maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place: The words "maketh manifest" (phaneroo) mean to "know what has been hidden or unknown" (Thayer 648-1-5319). By the words "the savour of his knowledge," Paul speaks figuratively to compare the gospel message, that is, the "knowledge" about Christ to the "savour" (osme), meaning "fragrance" or pleasant aroma of incense. Bratcher translates:

"God uses us to proclaim the message about Christ; it is like a pleasant smell that spreads everywhere" (27). Robertson says, "The knowledge of God is here the aroma which Paul had scattered like an incense bearer" (218). Paul’s analogy is showing that the knowledge of Christ is represented as a fragrance brought to the lost by him and other apostles.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

2. The treatment of the offender and the result of the severe letter 2:5-17

Paul in this pericope explained his perspective on the encouraging and discouraging experiences of his recent ministry. He did so to let the Corinthians know how he felt about them and to encourage his readers to adopt his attitude toward ministry. "Ministry" was a favorite term of Paul’s. He used it 51 times in its verb and noun forms, and 20 of these occur in 2 Corinthians. Its six appearances in chapters 8 and 9 refer to the collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem, a particular form of ministry. So its meaning is not uniform.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

This outburst of praise sprang from Paul’s deep-seated conviction that God’s working in and through him, regardless of the appearance of the set-back just mentioned, proceeded on triumphantly. This viewpoint is one of the great emphases of this epistle. Jesus Christ is without exception continuing to advance in His work. He is building His church and the gates of hell are not prevailing against it (Matthew 16:18). Because Paul and the Corinthians were in Christ they shared in this triumph.

"The major objection to the hypothesis that 2 Corinthians 2:14 is the beginning of a new letter, one of several said to have been combined to create 2 Corinthians, is the fact that such a letter has no clearly defined ending. . . .

"The thesis of this article is that it was the resonances of the term ’Macedonia’ in 2.13 that switched Paul’s thoughts into the channel evidenced in 2.14-17." [Note: Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, "Paul and Macedonia: The Connection Between 2 Corinthians 2:13-14," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 25 (October 1985):99, 100.]

Paul compared the irresistible advance of the gospel, in spite of temporary setbacks, to a Roman triumph.

"Christ undertook a battle not rightly his; we share in a triumph not rightly ours." [Note: Harris, p. 332.]

Paul compared the wafting of fragrant incense, as the triumph proceeded through the streets of Rome, to God disseminating the knowledge of Himself through the apostles.

"The metaphor is at the same time triumphal and antitriumphal. It is as God leads his servants as prisoners of war in a victory parade that God spreads the knowledge of Christ everywhere through them. Whereas in such victory processions the prisoners would be dejected and embittered, from this captive’s lips comes only thanksgiving to God, his captor. Here is restated the power-in-weakness theme (cf. 2 Corinthians 1:3-11) that pervades the letter." [Note: Barnett, p. 150.]

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Thanksgiving for a share in Christ’s triumph 2:14-17

"The passage that follows (2 Corinthians 2:14 to 2 Corinthians 7:4) is the longest coherent section within 2 Corinthians and is, arguably, the centerpiece of the entire letter. Nonetheless, it is not freestanding, but continuous with what precedes it." [Note: Barnett, p. 137. See also Carson and Moo, pp. 436-38.]

Paul’s recollection of his happy reunion with Titus in Macedonia and the good news his friend brought from Corinth triggered the following "great digression." The Corinthians, Paul learned, had responded favorably to the "severe letter." The apostle viewed their response as a divine vindication of his apostleship and a triumph of divine grace in the Corinthians’ hearts.

". . . 2.14-7.4 is a lengthy digression on Paul’s part, caused by the contrast between the agitation of mind which he has just described and his present sense of relief and rejoicing." [Note: Bruce, p. 187.]

". . . one thought leads on to another in an outpouring of spiritual wealth unsurpassed in any other of his epistles." [Note: Hughes, p. 77.]

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 2

WHEN A SAINT REBUKES ( 2 Corinthians 1:23-24 ; 2 Corinthians 2:1-4 )

2:1-4 I call God to witness against my soul that it was because I wished to spare you that I did not come again to Corinth. I am not saying this because we have any desire to domineer over your faith, but because we desire to labour with you to produce joy. As far as faith is concerned, you stand firm. But for my own peace of mind I came to this decision--not to come to you again in grief. For, if I grieve you, who then is there to make me glad, except him who is grieved by what I have done? I write this very letter so that when I do come I may not incur grief at the hands of those from whom I ought to have joy, for I have never lost my confidence in every one of you, and I am still sure that my joy and the joy of all of you are one and the same thing. So I wrote you a letter out of much affliction and anguish of heart, it was through my tears I wrote it, not that I wanted you to be grieved, but that I wanted you to know the love I bear especially to you.

Here is the echo of unhappy things. As we have seen in the introduction, the sequence of events must have been this. The situation in Corinth had gone from bad to worse. The Church was tom with party divisions and there were those who denied the authority of Paul. Seeking to mend matters, Paul had paid a flying visit to Corinth. So far from mending things, that visit had exacerbated them and had nearly broken his heart. In consequence he had written a very severe letter of rebuke, written with a sore heart and through tears. It was just for that very reason that he had not fulfilled his promise to visit them again, for, as things were, the visit could only have hurt him and them.

Behind this passage lies the whole heart of Paul when he had to deal in severity with those he loved.

(i) He used severity and rebuke very unwillingly. He used them only when he was driven to use them and there was nothing else left to do. There are some people whose eyes are always focussed to find fault, whose tongues are always tuned to criticize, in whose voice there is always a rasp and an edge. Paul was not like that. In this he was wise. If we are constantly critical and fault-finding, if we are habitually angry and harsh, if we rebuke far more than we praise, the plain fact is that even our severity loses its effect. It is discounted because it is so constant. The more seldom a man rebukes, the more effective it is when he does. In any event, the eyes of a truly Christian man seek ever for things to praise and not for things to condemn.

(ii) When Paul did rebuke, he did it in love. He never spoke merely to hurt. There can be sadistic pleasure in seeing someone wince at a sharp and cruel word. But Paul was not like that. He never rebuked to cause pain; he always rebuked to restore joy. When John Knox was on his deathbed he said, "God knows that my mind was always void of hatred to the persons of those against whom I thundered my severest judgments." It is possible to hate the sin but love the sinner. The effective rebuke is that given with the arm of love round the other person. The rebuke of blazing anger may hurt and even terrify; but the rebuke of hurt and sorrowing love alone can break the heart.

(iii) When Paul rebuked, the last thing he wanted was to domineer. In a modern novel, a father says to his son, "I'll beat the fear of the loving God into you." The great danger which the preacher and the teacher ever incur is of coming to think that our duty is to compel others to think exactly as we do and to insist that if they do not see things as we see them, they must be wrong. The duty of the teacher is not to impose beliefs on other people, but to enable and to encourage them to think out their own beliefs. The aim is not to produce a pale copy of oneself, but to create an independent human being. One who was taught by that great teacher, A. B. Bruce, said, "He cut the cables and gave us a glimpse of the blue waters." Paul knew that as a teacher he must never domineer, although he must discipline and guide.

(iv) Finally, for all his reluctance to rebuke, for all his desire to see the best in others, for all the love that was in his heart, Paul nonetheless does rebuke when rebuke becomes necessary. When John Knox rebuked Queen Mary for her proposed marriage to Don Carlos, at first she tried anger and outraged majesty and then she tried "tears in abundance." Knox's answer was, "I never delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures. I can scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys, whom my own hand correcteth, much less can I rejoice in Your Majesty's weeping. But I must sustain, albeit unwillingly, Your Majesty's tears rather than I dare hurt my conscience, or betray my commonwealth through my silence." Not seldom we refrain from rebuke because of mistaken kindness, or because of the desire to avoid trouble. But there is a time when to avoid trouble is to store up trouble and when to seek for a lazy or cowardly peace is to court a still greater danger. If we are guided by love and by consideration, not for our own pride but for the ultimate good of others, we will know the time to speak and the time to be silent.

PLEADING FOR A SINNER'S PARDON ( 2 Corinthians 2:5-11 )

2:5-11 If anyone has caused grief, it is not I whom he has grieved, but to some extent--not to overstress the situation--all of you. To such a man the punishment that has been imposed by the majority is sufficient, so that, so far from inflicting severer punishment, you must forgive him and comfort him, lest such a one be engulfed by excess of grief. So then, I urge you, let your decision in regard to him be a decision of love. For when I wrote to you my purpose was to test you, to see if you are obedient in all things. Whatever you have forgiven anyone, I, too forgive. For what I have forgiven, if I had anything to forgive, I forgave for your sakes, in the presence of Christ, so that we might not be over-reached by Satan, for we well know his intentions.

Again we have a passage which is an echo of trouble and of unhappiness. When Paul had visited Corinth there had been a ring-leader to the opposition. This man had clearly personally insulted Paul who had insisted that discipline must be exercised upon him. The majority of the Corinthians had come to see that his conduct had not only hurt Paul, but had injured the good name of the whole Corinthian Church. Discipline had been exercised, but there were some who felt that it had not been sufficiently severe and who desired to impose a still greater punishment.

It is now that the supreme greatness of Paul emerges. His plea is that enough has been done; the man is now penitent and to exercise still further discipline would do far more harm than good. It might simply drive the man to despair, and to do that is not to serve Christ and the Church, but to offer an opportunity to Satan to lay hold upon the man. Had Paul been actuated by merely human motives he would have gloated over the hard fate of his former enemy. Nowhere does the majesty of his character better emerge than on this occasion, when, in the graciousness of his heart, he pleads for mercy on the man who had hurt him so much. Here is a supreme example of Christian conduct in face of injury and insult.

(i) Paul did not take the matter personally at all. It was not the injury done to his personal feelings which was important. What he was anxious about was the good discipline and the peace of the Church. There are some people who take everything personally. Criticism, even when it is kindly meant and kindly given, they take as a personal insult. Such people do more than any other kind of people to disturb the peace of a fellowship. It would be well to remember that criticism and advice are usually offered, not to hurt us, but to help us.

(ii) Paul's motive in the exercise of discipline was not vengeance but correction; he did not aim to knock a man down, but to help him to get up. His aim was to judge a man, not by the standards of abstract justice, but of Christian love. The fact is that quite often sins are good qualities gone wrong. The man who can plan a successful burglary has initiative and organizing power; pride is a kind of intensification of the independent spirit; meanness is thrift run to seed. Paul's aim in discipline was, not to eradicate such qualities as a man might have, but rather to harness them to higher purposes. The Christian duty is not to render the sinner harmless by battering him into submission, but to inspire him to goodness.

(iii) Paul's insistence was that punishment must never drive to despair and must never take the heart out of a man. The wrong kind of treatment often gives a man the last push into the arms of Satan. Over-severity may well drive him from the Church and its fellowship, while sympathetic amendment might well bring him in. Mary Lamb, who had terrible periods of insanity, was harshly treated by her mother. She used to sigh, "Why is it that I never seem able to do anything to please my mother?" Luther could scarcely bear to pray the Lord's Prayer because his own father had been so stern that the word father painted a picture of grim terror to him. He used to say, "Spare the rod and spoil the child--yes; but, beside the rod keep an apple, to give the child when he has done well." Punishment should encourage and not discourage. In the last analysis, this can happen only when we make it clear that, even when we are punishing a person, we still believe in him.

IN THE TRIUMPH OF CHRIST ( 2 Corinthians 2:12-17 )

2:12-17 When we had come to Troas to tell the good news of Christ, even when a door of opportunity stood open to us in the Lord, I had no rest for my spirit, because I did not find Titus, my brother, there. But thanks be to God who at all times leads us in the train of his triumph in Christ, and who, through us, displays the perfume of the knowledge of him in every place; for we are the sweet scent of Christ in God to those who are destined for salvation and to those who are destined for destruction. To the one we are a perfume from death, to the other a perfume from life to life. And who is adequate for these tasks? We do not, as so many do, make a traffic of the word of God but, as from utter purity of motives, as from God, in the very presence of God in Christ we speak.

Paul begins by telling how his anxiety to know what was happening in Corinth made him so restless that he could not wait in Troas, although a fruitful field was there, and sent him off to meet Titus who had not yet arrived. Then comes his shout of triumph to God who brought all things to a happy ending.

2 Corinthians 2:14-16 are difficult to understand by themselves, but when set against the background which was in Paul's thoughts they become a vivid picture. Paul speaks of being led in the train of the triumph of Christ; and then he goes on to speak of being the sweet scent of Christ to men, to some the perfume of death and to others the perfume of life.

In his mind is the picture of a Roman Triumph and of Christ as a universal conqueror. The highest honour which could be given to a victorious Roman general was a Triumph. To attain it he must satisfy certain conditions. He must have been the actual commander-in-chief in the field. The campaign must have been completely finished, the region pacified and the victorious troops brought home. Five thousand of the enemy at least must have fallen in one engagement. A positive extension of territory must have been gained, and not merely a disaster retrieved or an attack repelled. And the victory must have been won over a foreign foe and not in a civil war.

In a Triumph the procession of the victorious general marched through the streets of Rome to the Capitol in the following order. First came the state officials and the senate. Then came the trumpeters. Then were carried the spoils taken from the conquered land. For instance, when Titus conquered Jerusalem, the seven-branched candlestick, the golden table of the shew-bread and the golden trumpets were carried through the streets of Rome. Then came pictures of the conquered land and models of conquered citadels and ships. There followed the white bull for the sacrifice which would be made. Then there walked the captive princes, leaders and generals in chains, shortly to be flung into prison and in all probability almost immediately to be executed. Then came the lictors bearing their rods, followed by the musicians with their lyres; then the priests swinging their censers with the sweet-smelling incense burning in them. After that came the general himself. He stood in a chariot drawn by four horses. He was clad in a purple tunic embroidered with golden palm leaves, and over it a purple toga marked out with golden stars. In his hand he held an ivory sceptre with the Roman eagle at its top, and over his head a slave held the crown of Jupiter. After him rode his family; and finally came the army wearing all their decorations and shouting Io triumphs! their cry of triumph. As the procession moved through the streets, all decorated and garlanded, amid the cheering crowds, it made a tremendous day which might happen only once in a lifetime.

That is the picture that is in Paul's mind. He sees Christ marching in triumph throughout the world, and himself in that conquering train. It is a triumph which, Paul is certain, nothing can stop.

We have seen how in that procession there were the priests swinging the incense-filled censers. To the victors the perfume from the censers would be the perfume of joy and triumph and life; but to the wretched captives who walked so short a distance ahead it was the perfume of death, standing for the past defeat and their coming execution. So Paul thinks of himself and his fellow apostles preaching the gospel of the triumphant Christ. To those who will accept it, it is the perfume of life, as it was to the victors; to those who refuse it, it is the perfume of death, as it was to the vanquished.

Of one thing Paul was certain--not all the world could defeat Christ. He lived not in pessimistic fear, but in the glorious optimism which knew the unconquerable majesty of Christ.

Then once more comes the unhappy echo. There were those who said that he was not fit to preach Christ. There were those who said worse, that he was using the gospel as an excuse to line his own pockets. Again Paul uses the word eilikrineia ( G1505) for purity. His motives will stand the penetrating rays of the sun; his message is from God, it will stand the very scrutiny of Christ himself Paul never feared what men might say, because his conscience told him that he had the approval of God and the "Well done!" of Christ.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

2 Corinthians 2:14

But thanks be to God -- There seem to have been several sources of Paul’s joy on this occasion. But in particular he rejoiced;

(1)    Because Titus had come to him there, and had removed his distress; compare 2 Corinthians 1:1.

(2)    because he learned from him that his efforts in regard to the church at Corinth had been successful, and that they had hearkened to his counsels in his first letter.

God ... always leads us in triumphal procession -- The picture seems this: As victorious Roman generals would lead a victory procession through the streets of Rome upon their return, just so God leads us in victory over sin and death, etc.

Triumph in Christ -- (Triumphal procession -- NIV) The only other place this word occurs is in Colossians 2:15. See note on Ephesians 4:8.

through us diffuses [spreads] the fragrance -- As in the victorious procession the generals and soldiers would throw out coins to the people, God is spreading the gospel out everywhere. The gospel is likened to sweet smelling perfume spreading out to all those around it.

People seeing and hearing the news of the conversion and the life the Corinthians now lead for Christ would spread out everywhere.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Now thanks be unto God,.... The apostle having mentioned the door that was opened for him at Troas, to preach the Gospel with success, calls to mind the great and manifold appearances of God for him and his fellow ministers, in blessing their labours to the conversion of many souls; which causes him to break forth into thanksgiving to God, on this account: what he takes notice of, and is thankful to God for is, that he

always causeth us to triumph in Christ; not only had done so, but continued to do so: some versions ascribe this act of triumph to God, as his act, reading the passage thus, "now thanks be unto God, who triumphs over us", or "by us in Christ"; who has conquered us by his grace, and made use of us as instruments for the conversion of sinners; and so first triumphed over us, having subdued us to himself, and then over others by us, in whose hearts the arrows of his word have been sharp and powerful: so the word is used for the person's own act of triumph spoken of, Colossians 2:15, but here it signifies, as words do in the Hebrew conjugation "Hiphil", which most commonly denotes an effect upon another, or which is caused and produced in another, and is rightly rendered, "which causeth us to triumph"; and refers not to the triumph of faith, common with the apostles to other believers; though this is in Christ, in his righteousness, death, resurrection, ascension, session at God's right hand, and intercession; and is what God causes, and to whom thanks is to be given for it: but this is a triumph peculiar to ministers of the Gospel, who are made to triumph over men and devils, over the world, the reproaches, persecutions, smiles, and flatteries of it; over wicked men, by silencing them, stopping the mouths of gainsayers, refuting false teachers, and preserving the Gospel pure, in spite of all opposition; and by being made useful to the turning of many souls from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God: and this is

in Christ: it is owing to the victory he has got; it is by his strength, it is in his name, for his sake, and because of his glory herein concerned: and

always; wherever the ministers of Christ are called to labour, and wherever the Gospel is purely and powerfully preached by them, some good is done; and they are made to triumph over hell and earth, over sin, Satan, and the world; and for all this, thanks is due to God; for he it is that causes them to triumph, or they never could; as will easily appear, if we consider what poor weak instruments they themselves are; what opposition is made against them; what wonderful things are done by them; by what means they triumph, by the preaching of the cross, and that in the midst of the greatest pressures and afflictions. Thanks are also given to God, that he

maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place; by "his knowledge" is meant, either the knowledge of God, who causes the ministers of the Gospel to triumph; or the knowledge of Christ, in whom they triumph; or rather of both, of the knowledge of God in Christ; and designs the Gospel, which is the means thereof: and which is said to have a "savour" in it, and denotes the acceptableness of it to sensible souls; and the good name, fame, and credit, which Christ has by the faithful ministration of it; and is an allusion to Song of Solomon 1:3. Now this, God is said to make manifest; it was hid before, hid in himself, and to the sons of men; it was like a box of ointment shut, but now opened by the preaching of the word, which diffuses a fragrant smell; and therefore he is said to make it manifest "by us": the ministers of the Gospel, who openly, boldly, and faithfully preach it; and "by manifestation of the truth"; spread the savour of it, and that "in every place", where they come; their commission being at large, to go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      12 Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ's gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord,   13 I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother: but taking my leave of them, I went from thence into Macedonia.   14 Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.   15 For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish:   16 To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?   17 For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.

      After these directions concerning the excommunicated person the apostle makes a long digression, to give the Corinthians an account of his travels and labours for the furtherance of the gospel, and what success he had therein, declaring at the same time how much he was concerned for them in their affairs, how he had no rest in his spirit, when he found not Titus at Troas (2 Corinthians 2:13; 2 Corinthians 2:13), as he expected, from whom he hoped to have understood more perfectly how it fared with them. And we find afterwards (2 Corinthians 7:5-7; 2 Corinthians 7:5-7) that when the apostle had come into Macedonia he was comforted by the coming of Titus, and the information he gave him concerning them. So that we may look upon all that we read from this second chapter, 2 Corinthians 2:12-7; 2 Corinthians 2:12-72 Corinthians 2:12-7; 2 Corinthians 2:12-7, as a kind of parenthesis. Observe here,

      I. Paul's unwearied labour and diligence in his work, 2 Corinthians 2:12; 2 Corinthians 2:13. He travelled from place to place, to preach the gospel. He went to Troas from Philippi by sea (Acts 20:6), and thence he went to Macedonia; so that he was prevented from passing by Corinth, as he had designed, 2 Corinthians 1:16; 2 Corinthians 1:16. But, though he was prevented in his design as to the place of working, yet he was unwearied in his work.

      II. His success in his work: A great door was opened to him of the Lord,2 Corinthians 2:12; 2 Corinthians 2:12. He had a great deal of work to do wherever he came, and had good success in his work; for God made manifest the savour of his knowledge by him in every place where he came. He had an opportunity to open the door of his mouth freely, and God opened the hearts of his hearers, as the heart of Lydia (Acts 16:14), and the apostle speaks of this as a matter of thankfulness to God and of rejoicing to his soul: Thanks be to God, who always causeth us to triumph in Christ. Note, 1. A believer's triumphs are all in Christ. In ourselves we are weak, and have neither joy nor victory; but in Christ we may rejoice and triumph. 2. True believers have constant cause of triumph in Christ, for they are more than conquerors through him who hath loved them, Romans 8:37. 3. God causeth them to triumph in Christ. It is God who has given us matter for triumph, and hearts to triumph. To him therefore be the praise and glory of all. 4. The good success of the gospel is a good reason for a Christian's joy and rejoicing.

      III. The comfort that the apostle and his companions in labour found, even when the gospel was not successful to the salvation of some who heard it, 2 Corinthians 2:15-17; 2 Corinthians 2:15-17. Here observe,

      1. The different success of the gospel, and its different effects upon several sorts of persons to whom it is preached. The success is different; for some are saved by it, while others perish under it. Nor is this to be wondered at, considering the different effects the gospel has. For, (1.) Unto some it is a savour of death unto death. Those who are willingly ignorant, and wilfully obstinate, disrelish the gospel, as men dislike an ill savour, and therefore they are blinded and hardened by it: it stirs up their corruptions, and exasperates their spirits. They reject the gospel, to their ruin, even to spiritual and eternal death. (2.) Unto others the gospel is a savour of life unto life. To humble and gracious souls the preaching of the word is most delightful and profitable. As it is sweeter than honey to the taste, so it is more grateful than the most precious odours to the senses, and much more profitable; for as it quickened them at first, when they were dead in trespasses and sins, so it makes them more lively, and will end in eternal life.

      2. The awful impressions this matter made upon the mind of the apostle, and should also make upon our spirits: Who is sufficient for these things?2 Corinthians 2:16; 2 Corinthians 2:16. Tis hikanos--who is worthy to be employed in such weighty work, a work of such vast importance, because of so great consequence? Who is able to perform such a difficult work, that requires so much skill and industry? The work is great and our strength is small; yea, of ourselves we have no strength at all; all our sufficiency is of God. Note, If men did seriously consider what great things depend upon the preaching of the gospel, and how difficult the work of the ministry is, they would be very cautious how they enter upon it, and very careful to perform it well.

      3. The comfort which the apostle had under this serious consideration, (1.) Because faithful ministers shall be accepted of God, whatever their success be: We are, if faithful, unto God a sweet savour of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15; 2 Corinthians 2:15), in those who are saved and in those also who perish. God will accept of sincere intentions, and honest endeavours, though with many they are not successful. Ministers shall be accepted, and recompensed, not according to their success, but according to their fidelity. Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord,Isaiah 49:5. (2.) Because his conscience witnessed to his faithfulness, 2 Corinthians 2:17; 2 Corinthians 2:17. Though many did corrupt the word of God, yet the apostle's conscience witnessed to his fidelity. He did not mix his own notions with the doctrines and institutions of Christ; he durst not add to, nor diminish from, the word of God; he was faithful in dispensing the gospel, as he received it from the Lord, and had no secular turn to serve; his aim was to approve himself to God, remembering that his eye was always upon him; he therefore spoke and acted always as in the sight of God, and therefore in sincerity. Note, What we do in religion is not of God, does not come from God, will not reach to God, unless it be done in sincerity, as in the sight of God.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

2 Corinthians 1:1-24. It is impossible to read the two epistles to the Corinthians with the smallest care without perceiving the strong contrast between the wounded tone of the first epistle (the heart aggrieved so much the more because it loved the saints), and now, in the second, that same heart filled with consolation about them from God. This is exceedingly assuring, and it is as evidently divine, the effectual working of God's own grace.

In human things nothing really shuts out decay. The utmost wise men essay is to put a drag on the progress of corruption, and to stave off as long as may be the too rapid inroads of death. Thanks be to God, it h not so in divine things. There is nothing which so brings out the resources of God as His supremacy over evil in grace, nothing that so manifests His tender mercy and His goodness wherever there is real faith. And spite of the painful disorders of the Corinthians, reality was there. So the apostle, though heart-broken because of their state, would confidently look up to God about them, even in his first so strongly reproving epistle; for it was the Lord Himself who had told him He had much people in that city. There was small appearance of it when he wrote the earlier letter to them; but the Lord was right, as He always is, and the apostle confided in the Lord spite of appearances. He now tastes the joyful fruit of his faith in the recovering grace of the Lord. Hence in this epistle we have not so much as in the former the evidence of their outward disorders. The apostle is not occupied as there with the regulation of the state of the church as such, but we see souls restored. There is indeed the result of that salutary dealing in the very different state of individuals, and also of the assembly; but very emphatically, whatever might be the effect on the many, to a large extent there is a blessed unfolding of life in Christ in its power and effects.

Thus our epistle reminds us to a certain extent of the epistle to the Philippians, resembling it, though not of course the same, nor by any means of so lofty a character; but nevertheless a state appears wholly different from the downward path which the first epistle had reproved. For this change God had prepared His servant; for He takes in everything in His matchless wisdom and ways. He considers not only those written to, but the one He was employing to write. Assuredly He had dealt with them, but He had also dealt with His servant Paul. It was another sort of dealing, not without humbling to them, in him withering to nature, without the shame that necessarily befell the saints at Corinth, but so much the more fitting him to go out in love toward them. As he knew what God's grace had wrought in their hearts, he could the more freely express the sympathy he felt, and, encouraged by all that had been wrought, take up what remained to be accomplished in them. But the unfailing grace of God, that works in the midst of weakness and in the face of death, and had so wrought mightily in him, made the Corinthians very dear to him, and enabled him to bring to bear on their circumstances and their state the most suited comfort that it was ever the mission of that blessed man to minister to the hearts of those that were broken down.

This he now pours forth abundantly, "Blessed be God;" for his heart, surcharged with grief when the first epistle was written, could open, "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble," no matter what, were it through grave faults, were it to their own deep shame and to his grief as once. But now the comfort far overcomes the sorrow, and we are enabled to "comfort them that are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." Here with a true heart he at once brings in the sufferings of Christ: "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation."

The difference in this from Philippians, to which I have referred, is remarkable. The point in hand there is, that they were working out their own salvation, the apostle being, in a certain sense, completely shut out from them. Unable from circumstances, he there lets them know that he does not mingle himself with them in the same way. Their state did not need it. Undoubtedly this is a difference; but it is only that which is owing to their manhood in grace. Here they wanted more. It was the unfolding of grace in both; but the difference was largely to the credit of His name in the Philippians. It was the proof of their excellent condition that the apostle had such perfect confidence in them, even while he was absolutely precluded from being near them. He was at a distance from them, and had but small prospect of meeting with them shortly.

To the Corinthians he could speak otherwise. He was comparatively near, and was hoping the third time, as he tells us in the latter part of the epistle, to come to them. Nevertheless he interweaves his own experience with theirs in a way which is wonderfully gracious to those who had a heart. "And whether we be afflicted," he says, "it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation." Was it not the reckoning of grace? Whatever came on them, it was for their comfort. If affliction, the Lord would turn it to their blessing; if joy and consolation, no less to their blessing. At the same time he lets them know what trouble had come upon himself, and in the most delightful manner turns it to account. Whatever was the might of God that had sustained him when there was nothing on their part to give him comfort, but rather to add to the anguish of his spirit, now that grace was operating in their hearts, he shows how dependant he felt on their prayers. Truly beautiful is grace, and far different from the manner of man.

How blessed to have the working of God not only in Him that is absolute perfection, but in one who feels like ourselves, who had the same nature in the same state that has wrought such continual mischief towards God! At the same time, it is proved by such a one as this servant of God to be only the means of furnishing additional proof in another form that the might of God's Spirit is without limit, and can work the greatest moral wonders even in a poor human heart. Undoubtedly we should lose much if we had it not in its full perfection in Christ; but how much we should lose if we had not also the working of grace, not where human nature was itself lovely, not a spot without nor a taint of sin within, but where everything natural was evil, and nothing else; where nevertheless the power of the Holy Ghost wrought in the new man, lifting the believer completely above the flesh. This was the case with the apostle.

At the same time there was the answer of grace in their hearts, though it might be developed comparatively but little. Evidently there was a great deal that required to be set right in them; but they were on the right road. This was a joy to his heart, and so at once he encourages them, and gives them to know how little his heart had turned away from them, how he loved to link himself with them instead of standing aloof from them. "Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf. For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity," etc. He had been charged with the contrary. Being a man of remarkable wisdom and power of discernment, he paid the penalty that this must always entail in this world. That is, they imputed it to his ability and natural penetration; and the real power of the Spirit of God was thus merely accredited to flesh.

There was also an imputation of vacillation if not dishonesty. His purpose of visiting Corinth had been set aside. First of all the apostle takes this up in a spirit of self-renunciation, bent on Christ's glory. Supposing their imputation to be true, supposing Paul had been as fickle-minded a man as his enemies insinuated, if he had said he would come and did not come after all, what then? At any rate his preaching was not thus. The word that Paul preached was not "yea and nay." In Christ it was "Yea," where there is no "nay." There is no refusal nor failure. There is everything to win, and comfort, and establish the soul in Christ. There is no negation of grace, still less of uncertainty in Christ Jesus the Lord. There is everything that can comfort the sad, attract the hard, and embolden the distrustful. Let it be the very vilest, what is there lacking that can lead on and into the highest place of blessing and enjoyment of God, not only in hope, but even now by the Spirit of God in the face of all adversaries? This was the Christ that he loved to preach. By Him came grace and truth. He at least is absolutely what He speaks. Who or what was so worthy of trust? And this is put in a most forcible way. "For," says he, "all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen." It is not a bare literal accomplishment of the promises. This is not the, statement any more than the state of things which is come in now; but as to all the promises of God, it matters not what they may be, in Him is the yea, and in Him the Amen, to the glory of God by us. They have found their every verification in Christ.

Was eternal life promised? In Him was eternal life in its highest form. For what will be eternal life in the millennial day compared with that which was and now is in Jesus? It will be a most real introduction and outshining of eternal life in that day; but still in Christ the believer has it now, and in its absolute perfection. Take, again, remission of sins. Will that display of divine mercy, so needed by and precious to the guilty sinner, be known in the millennium at all comparably with what God has brought in and sends out now in Christ? Take what you please, say heavenly glory; and is not Christ in it in all perfection? It does not matter, therefore, what may be looked at, "whatever be the promises of God, in him is the yea, and in him the Amen." It is not said in us. Evidently there are many promises not yet accomplished as regards us. Satan has not lost but acquired, in the dominion of the world, a higher place by the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ; but faith can see in that very act by which he acquired it his eternal downfall. Now is the judgment of the world. The prince of the world is judged, but the sentence is not executed yet. Instead of being dethroned by the cross, he has thereby gained in the world that remarkable place and title. But for all that, whatever the apparent success of the devil, and whatever the delay as to "the promises of God, in Him is the yea, and in Him the Amen, unto the glory of God by us."

But further, the apostle is not content with this alone. He would have them know, having thus described the word which he preached, that which was infinitely dearer to him than his own character. Now he tells them that it was to spare them he had not come to Corinth. This ought to have been a reproof; and it is given in the most delicate manner. It was the sweet result of divine love in his heart. He preferred to tarry or turn aside, rather than to visit the Corinthians in their then condition. Had he come at all, he must have come with a rod, and this he could not endure. He wished to come with nothing but kindness, to blame nobody, to speak of nothing painful and humiliating to them (albeit, in truth, more humiliating to him, for he loved them). And as a parent would be ashamed in his child's shame far more than the child is capable of feeling, so precisely the apostle had this feeling about those he had begotten in the gospel. He loved the Corinthians dearly, spite of all their faults, and he would rather bear their unworthy suggestions of a fickle mind because he did not visit them at once, than come to censure them in their evil and proud state. He wished to give them time, that he might come with joy.

In 2 Corinthians 2:1-17 this is entered into a little more, and the deep anxiety of his heart is shown about them. We may easily gather what an open door for evangelizing is to one who was a great preacher of the gospel, as well as an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles. Although such an opportunity now offered itself, and was, no doubt, a strong impelling cause to work there, still he had no rest for his spirit. His heart was disturbed about the state of Corinth, and the case that tried him most in their midst. It seemed as if he felt nothing else, as if there was no sufficient call to occupy him in other quarters. He could turn from that most animating and immediate reward to any labourer in this world. Whatever might be the preciousness of presenting Christ to those who knew Him not, to see the manifestation of the glory of Christ in those that did know Him, to see it restored where it was obscured was something even nearer to his heart. The one would be, no doubt, great joy to wretched souls, and the spread of the glory of the Lord in the regions beyond; but here the glory of the Lord had been tarnished in those that bore His name before men; and how could Paul feel this lightly? What pressed so urgently on him? Hence it was that no attraction of gospel service, no promise of work, however fair, that called him elsewhere, could detain him. He felt the deepest affliction about the saints, as he says here, and had no rest in his spirit, because he found not Titus his brother, who had been to see them.

Then, again, among the particular instances which most pressed on him was, his exceeding trouble about the man he had ordered them to put away. For this he had authority from God, and the responsibility of heeding it abides, I need not say, in its entirety for us. We are just as much under that authority as they were. But now that God had wrought in the man who was the chief and grossest evidence of the power of Satan in the assembly, what a comfort to his heart! This sin, unknown even among the Gentiles, and the more shameful as being where the name of the Lord Jesus had been confessed and the Spirit dwelt, became the occasion of the most salutary instruction for all their souls, for they had learnt what becomes God's assembly under such humiliating circumstances. And they had responded to the solemn call pressed on them in the name of the Lord, and had purged out the evil leaven from the midst of their paschal feast. Only now they were in danger on the judicial side. They were disposed to be as over-severe as they had been previously unexercised and lax. Paul would infuse the same spirit of grace towards the penitent offender that filled himself. They had realised at length the shame that had been done to the Lord's glory, and were indignant with themselves as parties to identifying His name, not to speak of themselves, with such scandals. Thus they were slow to forgive the man that had wrought such a wrong, and Satan sought in an opposite way to separate them in heart from the blessed apostle, who had roused them to just feelings after their too long slumber. Just as Paul was horrified at their indifference to sin at first, so now it was impossible but that he must be concerned, lest there should be a failure in grace as a little before in righteousness. But there is nothing like a manifestation of grace to call out grace; and he lets them know what was his own feeling, not merely about the wrong-doer, but about themselves. "To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also; for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; lest Satan should gain an advantage over us: for we are not ignorant of his devices." This is his spirit. It is no longer a command, but a trust reposed in the saints; and when we think of that which is afterwards to appear in this epistle, what was still at work among them as well as what had been, it is certainly a most blessed and beautiful proof of the reality of grace, and of the effects which can be, as they have been, produced by it in the heart of a saint here below. What do we not owe to Jesus?

After having disposed of this matter for the present (for he recurs to it afterwards), he turns to speak of the way in which he was led of God through trial, no matter of what character. let the question be of the man who had wandered so far astray, but was now restored really to the Lord, and to whom he desired that his brethren should publicly confirm their love; or let it be that he is turned aside from gospel work because of his anxiety on their account, he now tells them of the triumph which the Lord gave him to prove everywhere.

This leads in2 Corinthians 3:1-18; 2 Corinthians 3:1-18 to an unfolding of righteousness in Christ, but in a style considerably different from what we found in the Epistle to the Romans. There the broad and deep, foundations were exposed to view, as well as the Spirit's power and liberty consequent on the soul's submission to Christ's work. The proposition was God just and the justifier, not by blood only, but in that resurrection power in which Christ rose from among the dead. According to no less a work of such a Saviour we are justified.

But in this chapter the Spirit goes higher still. He connects righteousness with heavenly glory, while at the same time this righteousness and glory are shown to be perfectly in grace as regards us. It is not in the slightest degree glory without love (as sometimes people might think of glory as a cold thing); and if it withers up man from before it, the fleshly nature no doubt, it is only with a view to the enjoyment of greater vigour, through the power of Christ resting on us in our detected and felt weakness.

The chapter opens with an allusion to the habit so familiar to God's church of sending and requiring a letter of commendation. "Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?" Not at all. And what then is his letter of commendation? Themselves. What confidence he must have had in the gracious power of God, that his letter of commendation could be the Corinthian saints! He does not look around to choose the most striking instances of those converted by him. He takes what was perhaps the most humiliating scene that he had ever experienced, and he points even to these saints as a letter of commendation. And why so? Because he knew the power of life in Christ. He was reassured. In the darkest day he had looked up to God with confidence about it, when any other heart had failed utterly; but now that light was beginning to dawn upon them, yet still but dawned so to speak afresh, he could boldly say that they were not merely his, but Christ's, letter. Bolder and bolder evidently he becomes as he thinks of the name of the Lord and of that enjoyment which he had found, and found afresh, in the midst of all his troubles. Hence he says, "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the 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 fleshy tables of the heart." There were not wanting there those that endeavoured to impose legal principles on the Corinthians. Not that here it was the strongest or subtlest effort of the enemy. There was more of Sadduceeism at work among them than of Pharisaism; but still not infrequently Satan finds room for both, or a link between both. His ministry was emphatically not that which could find its type in any form of the law, or in what was written upon stone, but on the fleshy table of the heart by the Spirit of the living God. Accordingly this gives rise to a most striking contrast of the letter that kills and of the spirit that gives life. As is said here, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new covenant." Then lest any should conceive that this was the accomplishment of the Old Testament, he lets us know it is no more than the spirit of that covenant, not the letter. The covenant itself in its express terms awaits both houses of Israel in a day not yet arrived; but meanwhile Christ in glory anticipates for us that day, and this is, of course, "not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

Next, we find a long parenthesis; for the true connection of the end of verse 6 is with verse 17, and all between properly forms a digression. I shall read the words outside the parenthesis, in order to make this manifest. He had said that "the spirit giveth life." Now the Lord (he adds) "is that spirit;" which last word ought to be printed with a small "s," not a capital. Some Bibles have this, I dare say, correctly; but others, like the one in my hand, incorrectly. "That spirit" does not mean the Holy Ghost, though it is He alone that could enable a soul to seize the spirit under the letter. But the apostle, I believe, means that the Lord Jesus is the spirit of the different forms that are found in the law. Thus he turns aside in a remarkable but characteristic manner; and as he intimates in what sense he was the minister of the new covenant (i.e. not in a mere literal fashion but in the spirit of it), so he connects this spirit with the forms of the law all through. There is a distinct divine purpose or idea couched under the legal forms, as their inner spirit, and this, he lets us know, is really Christ the Lord "Now the Lord is that spirit." This it is that ran through the whole legal system in its different types and shadows.

Then he brings in the Holy Ghost, "and where" (not simply "that spirit," but) "the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." There is a notable difference between the two expressions. "The Spirit of the Lord" is the Holy Spirit that characterizes Christianity; but underneath the letter of the Jewish system, faith seized "the spirit" that referred to Christ. There was the outward ritual and commandment with which flesh made itself content; but faith always looked to the Lord, and saw Him, however dimly, beyond the letter in which God marked indelibly, and now makes known by ever accumulating proofs, that He from the first pointed to the One that was coming. A greater than anything then manifested was there; underneath the Moseses and the Aarons, the Davids and the Solomons, underneath what was said and done, signs and tokens converged on One that was promised, even Christ.

And now "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." This was unknown under the Levitical order of things. There was a veiled form of truth, and now it is manifest. The Holy Ghost brings us into the power and enjoyment of this as a present thing. Where He is, there is liberty.

But looking back for a moment at the parenthesis, we see that the direct effect of the law (no matter what may be the mercy of God that sustained, spite of its curse) is in itself a ministration of death. Law can only condemn; it can but enforce death as on God's part. It never was in any sense the intention of God by the law to introduce either righteousness or life. Nor these only, but the Spirit He now brings in through Christ. "If the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away," it was not at all an abiding thing, but merely temporary in its own nature, "how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be, rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation" (another point after the ministration of death; if it then) "be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory." It is not simply the mercy of God, you observe, but the ministration of righteousness. When the Lord was here below, what was the character of His ministration? It was grace; not yet a ministration of righteousness. Of course, He was emphatically righteous, and everything He did was perfectly consistent with the character of the Righteous. Never was there the smallest deflection from righteousness in aught He ever did or said. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. But when He went up to heaven on the footing of redemption through His blood, He had put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself: the ministration was not of grace merely, but of righteousness. In short, righteousness without redemption must destroy, not save; grace before redemption could not deliver, but at most forbear to judge; but righteousness founded on redemption provides the stablest possible basis for the believer.

Whatever the mercy displayed to us now, it is perfectly righteous in God to show it. He is vindicated in everything. Salvation is no stretch of His prerogative. Its language is not, "The person is guilty; but I will let him off; I will not execute the sentence against him." The Christian is now admitted to a place before God according to the acceptance of Christ Himself. Being altogether by Christ, it brings nothing but glory to God, because Christ who died was God's own Son, given of His own love for this very purpose, and there in the midst of all wrongs, of everything out of course here below, while the evil still remains unremoved, and death ravages still, and Satan has acquired all possible power of place as god and prince of this world, this deepest manifestation of God's own glory is given, bringing souls which were once the guiltiest and the vilest out of it, not only before God, but in their own souls, and in the knowledge and enjoyment of it, and all righteously through Christ's redemption. This is what the apostle triumphs in here. So he calls it not the ministration of life indeed; for there was always the new birth or nature through the mercy of God; but now he brings in a far fuller name of blessing, that of the Spirit, because the ministration of the Spirit is over and above life. It supposes life, but moreover also the gift and presence of the Holy Ghost. The great mistake now is when saints cling to the old things, lingering among, the ruins of death when God has given them a title flowing from grace, but abundant in righteousness, and a ministration not merely of life, but of the Spirit.

So he goes on farther, and says that "that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious." This again is another quality that he speaks of. We come to what abides to what never can be shaken, as he puts it to the Hebrews later. To this permanence of blessing we are come in Christ, no matter what else may come. Death may come for us; judgment certainly will for the world for man at least. The complete passing away of this creation is at hand. But we are already arrived at that which remains, and no destruction of earth can possibly affect its security; no removal to heaven will have any other effect than to bring out its lustre and abidingness. So he says, "Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: and not as Moses, which put a veil over his face."

This characterized the dealings of the law, that there never was the bringing God and man, so to speak, face to face. Such a meeting could not yet be. But now it is. Not only has God come down to man face to face, but man is brought to look in where God is in His own glory, and without a veil between. It is not the condescension of the Word made flesh coming down to where man is, but the triumph of accomplished righteousness and glory, because the Spirit comes down from Christ in heaven. It is the ministration of the Spirit, who comes down from the exalted man in glory, and has given us the assurance that this is our portion, now to look into it, soon to be with Him. Hence he says it is "not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished: but their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament; which veil is done away in Christ." This is as in Christ when known to us. So "even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away." But then we do not wait here for their turning to the Lord, which will be their portion by-and-by. Meanwhile the Lord has turned to us, turning us to Himself, in His great grace, and brought us into righteousness, peace, as well as glory in hope yea, in present communion, through redemption. The consequence is, all evil is gone for us, and all blessedness secured, and known to be so, in Christ; and, as he says here, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Then, he adds further, "We all, with open [unveiled] face, beholding ["as in a glass" is uncalled for] the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." Thus the effect of the triumph of our Lord Jesus, and of the testimony of the Holy Ghost, is to put us into present association with the glory of the Lord as the object before our souls; and this is what transforms us according to its own heavenly character.

In 2 Corinthians 4:1-18 the apostle takes into account the vessel that contains the heavenly treasure. He shows that as "we have this ministry, and "have received mercy" therefore to the uttermost, "we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is bid to them that are lost." Such is the solemn conclusion: "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

This is the gospel of the glory of Christ. It is not merely that we have the heavenly title, as we are taught in 1 Corinthians 15:1-58. The utmost on this subject brought before us there was, that we are designated "heavenly," and are destined to bear the image of the heavenly One by-and-by. The second epistle comes between the two points of title and destiny, with the transforming effect of occupation with Christ in His glory on high. Thus space is left for practice and experience between our calling and our glorification. But then this course between is by no means sparing to nature; for, as he shows here, "we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." God makes us feel this, and helps on the practical transformation; and by what means? By bringing us into every kind of trouble and sorrow, so as to make nothing of flesh. For it is the allowed liveliness of nature that hinders the manifestation of the treasure; whereas its judgment leaves room for the light to shine out. This, then, is what God carries on. It explained much in the apostle's path which they had not been in a state to comprehend; and it contributed, where received and applied in the Spirit, to advance God's objects as regards them. "Death worketh in us, but life in you." What grace, and how blessed the truth! But see the way in which the process is carried on, "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death." He speaks of the actualisation: all helps the great object, even such circumstances as seemed the most disastrous possible. God exposed His servant to death. This was only carrying out more effectually the breaking down that was always going on. "So then death worketh in us, but life in you. We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes." And thus then, if there was the endurance of affliction, he would encourage their hearts, calling, as he felt it, "light affliction." He knew well what trial was. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and 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."

This introduces the Christian's estimate of both death and judgment as measured by Christ. He looks now steadily at all that can possibly appal the natural heart. Death the Christian may pass through. Judgment will never be for the Christian. Nevertheless his sense of judgment, as it really will come, although not for himself, is most influential and for others too. There may be a mighty effect on the soul, and a deep spring of worship, and a powerful lever in service, through that which does not concern us at all. The sense of what it is may be all the more felt because we are delivered from its weight; and we can thus more thoroughly, because more calmly, contemplate it in the light of God, seeing its inevitable approach and overwhelming power for those that have not Christ. Accordingly he says, "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven."

But let us not forget that he takes care (for his heart was not relieved as to every individual in Corinth) to add solemnly, "If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked." He was not quite sure but that some there might be found exposed, because devoid of a Saviour. There are those who give this a very different turn, and make it to be a verse of consolation instead of warning; but such a view deprives us of the true scope of the clause. The common version and natural interpretation appears to me quite correct. It does not mean "since being clothed we shall not be found naked," which has no worthy lesson to convey to any soul. The readings differ, but that which answers to the common version I believe to be correct. The apostle would warn every soul that, although every one will be clothed in the day that is coming (namely, at the resurrection of the body, when souls are no longer found without the body but clothed), nevertheless some, even in spite of that clothing, shall be found naked. The wicked are then to be clothed no less than the saints, who will have been already raised or changed; their bodies shall be raised from the dead just as truly as those of the righteous; but when the unrighteous stand in resurrection before the great white throne, how, bare will they appear? What will it be in that day to have no Christ to clothe us?

After so salutary a caution to such as made too much of knowledge in the neglect of conscience, the apostle turns to that fulness of comfort which he was communicating to the saints. "We," he says, "that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened." He has no wish to deny the sorrow and weakness. He knew what it is to suffer and be sorrowful far better than any of them. "We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed." Thus there is no mere wish to get away from the present scene with its sadness and trial. It is never allowed one to be impatient. To desire to be with Christ is right; but to be restive under that which connects us with shame and pain is not of Christ. "Not for," then, "that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon." This was his ardent wish, to be "clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." It is not that he might die, but the very reverse, that the mortality already working in him might be swallowed up by Him who is eternal life, and our life.

He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God." It is not here wrought something for us, but "wrought us." This is a remarkable expression of the grace of God in associating with His unfailing purpose in Christ. "He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit;" given us, therefore, even now a taste of the blessedness and glory that are in store for us. "Therefore we are always confident." Think of such language! Think of it as the apostle's words describing, our portion, and in full view of both death and judgment! "We are always confident." We can easily understand one whose eye was simply on Christ and His love, saying, "We are confident," though turning to look at that which might well tax the stoutest heart. Certainly it were madness not to be overwhelmed by it, unless there were such a ministration of the Spirit as the apostle was then enjoying in its fruits in his soul. But he did enjoy it profoundly; and, what is more, he puts it as the common enjoyment of all Christians. It is not alone a question of his own individual feelings, but of that which God gave him to share now with the saints of God as such. "Therefore," says he, "we are always confident, 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 confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ."

This, again, is a very important truth indeed in its own place, and the effect is most striking; namely, deep anxiety about the lost, and the consciousness of our own manifestation to God now. Not that I mean by this that we shall not be manifested by-and-by; for we shall be perfectly. But if we are manifest in conscience before God now, it is evident that there is nothing that can cause the slightest uneasiness in our being manifested before Christ's tribunal. The truth is, so far is the manifestation before our Lord a source of alarm to the saint (though it should surely solemnise the heart), that I am persuaded the soul would lose a positive and substantial blessing, if it could by any possibility escape being manifested there. Nor does it matter what the degree of manifestation may now be in conscience. Still, it can never be perfect till then; and our God would give us perfection in this as in all else. It is now hindered by various causes, as far as we are concerned. There is the working of self-love in the hearts of the saints; there is that which has cast a film over the eye which dulls our souls. Alas! we know it too well.

The effect of our manifestation before the tribunal of Christ is, that we shall know as we are known. That is, it will be carrying out in absolute perfection what we now know in the measure of our spirituality. Now, what is the effect of one's arriving at a better knowledge of himself, and a deeper consciousness of the Christian's place in Christ? Always a real blessing, and a means of greater enjoyment of Christ. Is it not much to have a lowlier feeling about ourselves? to esteem others better than ourselves? and thus to deepen daily in the grace of the Lord Jesus? And are not these things the result? And will the perfect knowledge of ourselves be a loss, and not a gain?

At the same time, it is solemn assuredly for every secret to be spread out between the Lord and ourselves. It is solemn for all to be set in the light in which we may have been misled now, and which may have caused trouble and grief to others, casting reproach on the name of the Lord, in itself an affecting and afflicting thing. Never should we be deceived by Satan. He may accuse the saints, but they ought in no case to be deceived by him. He deceives the world, and accuses the brethren. Alas! we know, in point of fact, that we are liable through unwatchfulness to his wiles; but this does not make it less a humiliation for us, and a temporary advantage for Satan when we fall into his trap. We are not ignorant of his devices; but this will not always, nor in itself in any case, preserve us. There are defeats. The judgment-seat of Christ will disclose all; where each hidden thing will be clear; where nothing but the fruit of the Spirit shall stand for ever.

Nevertheless the sight of that judgment-seat brings at once before his eye, not the saints, but the perishing world; and so complete is the peace of his own spirit, so rich and sure the deliverance Christ has accomplished for all the saints, that the expressed effect is to kindle his heart about those that are braving everlasting destruction those on whom the judgment-seat can bring nothing but hopeless exclusion from God and His glory.

For we say here by the way, that we must be all manifested, whether saints or sinners. There is a peculiarity in the phrase which is, to my thinking, quite decisive as to its not meaning saints only. As to the objection to this founded on the word "we," there is no force in it at all. "We" is no doubt commonly used in the apostolic epistles for saints, but not for them exclusively. Context decides. Be assured that all such rules are quite fallacious. What intelligent Christian ever understood from scripture all the canons of criticism in the world? They are not to be trusted for a moment. Why have confidence in anything of the sort? Mere traditional formulas or human technicalities will not do for the ascertainment of God's word. The moment men rest on general laws by which to interpret scripture, I confess they seem to me on the brink of error, or doomed to wander in a desert of ignorance. We must be disciplined if we would learn indeed; and we need to read and hear things as God writes them; but we do well and wisely to eschew all human byways and short-cuts for deciding the sense of what God has revealed. It is not only the students of medieval divinity, or of modem speculation, who are in danger. None of us is beyond the need of jealousy over self, and of simple-hearted looking to the lord.

Here, indeed, the apostle's reasoning, and the nicety of language, furnish demonstrative evidence in the passage (that is, both in the spirit and in the letter), that we must all, whether saints or sinners, be manifested before Christ; not at the same time nor for the same end, but all before His judgment-seat at some time. Had the language been, "we must all be judged," the "we" must have been there limited to the unconverted. While they only come into judgment, believer and unbeliever must alike be manifested. The effect of manifestation for the believer will be the fulness of rest and delight in the ways of God. The effect of the manifestation for the unbeliever will be the total withering up of every excuse or pretence that had deceived him here below. No flesh shall glory in His presence, and man must stand self-convicted before the Judge of all. Thus the choice of language is, as usual in scripture, absolutely perfect, and to my mind quite decisive that the manifestation here is universal. This acts on the servant of Christ, who knows what the terror of the Lord is, and calls him out to "persuade men." What is meant by this? It is really to preach the gospel to men at large.

At the same time the apostle adds, "We commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf." For he had expressed his trust of being made manifest to their consciences, as well as stated how absolutely we are manifested to God. "For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause." Then he brings in the constraining power of the love of Christ, and why? Because, as he looked round him, he saw nothing but death written on man, and all that pertains to him here below. The whole scene was one vast grave. Of course, he was not thinking of the saints of God, but, contrariwise, in the midst of this universal death, as far as man is concerned, he rejoices to see some alive. I understand, therefore, that when he says, "If one die for all, then were all dead," he means those who had really died by sin, and because of the contrast it seems to me plain "He died for all, that they which live" (these are the saints, the objects of God's favour) "should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." What was the effect of this? That having thus before his soul, not the universal death of all only, but some who by grace were alive, through the death and resurrection of Christ, he now brings out, not the contrast of the new creation with all that went before yea, the contrast of the Messianic hopes as such with that higher glory which he was now asserting. Even a living Messiah could not satisfy what his soul had learnt to be in accordance with the glory of God. Not, of course, that he did not delight in the hope of his nation. It is one thing to value what God will do for the earth by-and-by, it is quite another to fail in appreciating that which God has now created and revealed in a risen Christ above, once rejected and dying for us. Accordingly it is one glory that will display the promises and ways of God triumphing over man and Satan; it is another and far surpassing glory which He who is the Messiah, but much more, and now the heavenly man, reveals. His death is the judgment of our sins in God's grace, and an end of the whole scene for us, and hence perfect deliverance from man and from present things yea, even from the best hopes for the earth.

What can be better than a Messiah come to bless man in this world? But the Christian is not occupied with this at all. According to the Old Testament he looked at it, but now that the Messiah is seen dead and risen, now that He is passed into heavenly glory through death, this is the glory for the Christian. "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh:" this puts the saints in a common position of knowledge. "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh." As for a living Messiah, and all the expectations that were bound up with Him and His coming here below, all this is passed away for the Christian. It is not that the Messiah will not return as such; but as for the sphere and character of our own relations, they are founded on death and resurrection, and seen on high. Such is the way the apostle treats it. He looks at Christ in His relationship with us as One that has passed out of this earth and the lower creation into heavenly places. It is there and thus we know Him. By knowing Him he means the special form of the truth with which we are concerned, the manner in which we are put into positive, living association with Him. That which we know as our centre of union, as the object of our souls, is Christ risen and glorified. In any other point of view, however bright and glorious, "now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ," etc.

It is not merely if any man look to Christ: the Old Testament saints rejoiced to see His day; but this is a very different thing from being in Christ. There are many who take the scriptures in so crude and vague a manner that to their eyes it is all the same; but I hope such is not the case with any here. No doubt, to be in Christ as we are now is through looking, to Him. But it was not always so. Take the disciples in the days of Christ's pathway here below: were they in Christ then? Certainly not. There was the working of divine faith in them. They were unquestionably "born again;" but is this the same thing as being "in Christ"? Being in Christ means that, redemption having come in, the Holy Ghost can and does give us a conscious standing in Christ in His now risen character. To be "in Christ" describes the believer, not in Old Testament times, but now.

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." Thus there is a blessed and suited ministry. The law directed a people at a distance from God. It Supposed such a condition and dealt accordingly. Even if a poor brute touched the mountain, it was to be stoned. At length God came down to meet man in grace as he is; and man rejected God manifest in flesh. Redemption was thereby effected; man is brought without sin to God. Christ is the person who made both good. He brought God down to man, and He brought man in Himself up to God. Such is the position in which we stand. It is not any longer merely God coming down to man in Christ. This is neither the manner nor the measure in which He reveals Himself now. The Lord Jesus Christ is gone up to heaven; and this not as a sole individual, but as the head of a family. He would not take the place of headship until all the evil was completely gone. He would give us His own acceptance before God. He took His stand on retrieving God's moral glory by bearing our sins; yet as He came down, so He went up to God, holy and spotless. He had by His own blood blotted out the sins of others who believe in Him. It was not merely a born Messiah, the chief of Israel, but "God was in Christ."

Observe, not that God is in Christ, but that He was. It is a description of what was manifested when the Lord was here below. But if it be a mistake to read God is, it is a still greater error too common in books, old and new alike, that God has reconciled the world. This is not the meaning of the statement. The English version is perfectly right; the criticism that pretends to correct it is thoroughly wrong It is never said that the world is reconciled to God. Christ was a blessed and adequate image of God; and God was in Him manifesting Himself in the supremacy of His own grace here below. No doubt His law had its suited place; but God in grace is necessarily above the law. As man, at least as of Israel, Jesus was born under the law; but this was in not the slightest degree an abandonment of God's rights, and still less of His grace. God came near to men in love in the most attractive form, going in and out among them, taking up little children, entering into houses when asked, conversing by the way, going about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him. It was not merely in quest of the lost sheep of Israel. How could such grace be restrained only to Jews? God had larger thoughts and feelings than this. Therefore let a Gentile centurion come, or a Samaritan woman, or any body else: who was not welcome? For "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them."

Full of grace and truth, He would not even raise the question of this trespass or that. There was no doubt of man's guilt; but this was not the divine way of Christ. Other and more efficacious aims were in the hand of the God of all grace. He would save, but at the same time exercise the conscience more than ever. For great would be the loss for a sinner awakened, if it were possible for him not to take God's part against himself. This is the real course and effect of repentance in the soul. But God was in Christ reconciling the world for all that, yea in order to it. It was not a question of dealing with them for their trespasses. And what now that He is gone away? "He hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." He is gone, but not the errand of mercy for which He came. The Messiah as such disappears for the time; there remains the fruit of the blessed manifestation of God in Christ in an evil world. "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us: we pray in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God." But how can this be? On what basis can we essay such a task! Not because the Spirit of God is in us, however true it may be, but because of the atonement. Redemption by Christ's blood is the reason. "For God hath made him. to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

Then, following up this in the next chapter (2 Corinthians 6:1-18), the, true moral traits of the Christian ministry are shown, and what a price it had in his eyes. What should not be done and endured for the sake of worthily carrying out this ministration of Christ here below! What should be the practical witness to a righteousness not acquired by us, but freely given of God! Such is the character of it, according to the work of Christ before God and of His redemption; so we should "give no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments." In every thing crushing to nature did the apostle fulfil his mission. Is the reproach of Christ to be an apostolic perquisite? Are not His servants to share it still? Is it not true from first to last?

Again, in serving the Lord, there are two special ways in which we are apt to go astray. Some err by an undue narrowness, others by as injurious laxity. In fact, it is never right to be narrow, and always wrong to be lax. In Christ there is no license or excuse for either. But the Corinthians, like others, were in danger on both sides; for each provokes the other. Hence the appeal, "O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels." There was the caution against a narrow heart; but now against a lax path he warns, "Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" Thus is embraced individual responsibility as well as corporate. "For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them."

Thus, as in the exercise of ministry according to Christ, there was nothing that should not be endured; there was no scorn or trial, no pain or shame, but what he himself counted as nothing that Christ only should be served, and the witness of His name kept up in this world according to His grace; so now he presses on the saints what is incumbent on them as the epistle of Christ, to make good a true witness for Him in this world, steering clear of all that is hard and narrow, which is altogether alien from the grace of God, and of that laxity which is still more offensive to His nature. In the first verse of 2 Corinthians 7:1-16 the whole matter is wound up, "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." The second verse evidently belongs to the subject succeeding. In the rest of the seventh chapter he renews (and has, I think, connected both with these words about the ministry and the responsibility of the saints) what he had alluded to already among them. He touches, with that delicate tact so characteristic of him, on their repentance. He would encourage their hearts in every way, but now ventures to go somewhat farther in the grace of Christ.

Accordingly his own feelings are told out, how exceedingly cast down he had been, and oppressed on every side, so that he had no rest. "Without were fightings, within were fears." Indeed, the fear had gone so far, that he had actually been tried as to the inspired epistle he had written. The apostle had a question raised in his mind about his own inspired epistle! Yet what writing was more certainly of God? "For though I made you sorry with the letter, I do not regret, though I did regret." How clearly we learn, whatever the working of God in man, that after all the inspiration of a vessel is far above his own will, and the fruit of the action of the Holy Ghost! As we find an unholy man might be inspired of God to bring out a new communication for example, a Balaam or a Caiaphas, so holy men of God still more. But the remarkable thing to note is the way in which a question was raised even about an epistle which God has preserved in His own book, and, without a doubt, divinely inspired. But he also mentions how glad he was now that, having sent off that letter, he had made them sorry. "For I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance; for ye were made sorry according to God, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing." How great is the grace! "For sorrow according to God worketh repentance to salvation not to be regretted: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed according to God, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." What a comfort to the heart that had been so profoundly touched by their state!

In 2 Corinthians 8:1-24, and 2 Corinthians 9:1-15, the subject of contributing for saints is resumed, though a great deal more fully than in 1 Corinthians 16:1-24, and with a fresh spring of joy communicated to his spirit. What an evidence is given of the exercises of his heart in this thing too! It appears he had spoken confidently about the Corinthian saints. There had been afterwards much to wound and weaken that confidence; but he now returns to the matter, and reckons with certainty that the God who had wrought in the painful matter, not of the guilty man only, but in them all about it, that His grace would also give him cause for joy in rousing their hearts into largeness of love for those that were depressed elsewhere. He had boasted of the liberality of the Corinthians, which had kindled zeal in others. On the one hand, he would have his hope of them verified, on the other he desired none to be burdened, but certainly fruit Godward both in the givers and in the receivers. How rich and enriching in His grace! Blessed be God for His unspeakable gift!

In 2 Corinthians 10:1-18, and 2 Corinthians 11:1-33 he comes to another subject his own ministry on which a few words must suffice. Enough had been cleared away to open his heart on it: he could enlarge here. It was his confidence in them that made him write. When his spirit was bound, because of there being so much to cause shame and pain, he could not be free; but now he is. Hence we have here a most blessed opening of what this servant of God felt in what was necessarily a sore distress to his spirit. For what could be more humbling than that the Corinthian saints, the fruit of his own ministry, had admitted into their hearts insinuations against him, doubts of the reality of his apostolate, all that lowering which, in other forms but not substantially unlike, we may have too often observed, and just in proportion to the importance and spiritual value of the trust reposed of God in any on the earth? The apostle knew sorrow as no other ever knew it. Not even the twelve tasted its bitterness as he did, from spirituality and from circumstances; and the manner in which he deals with it, the dignity, and at the same time the lowliness, the faith that looked right to the Lord, but at the same time the warmth of affection, grief of heart mingling with joy, furnish such a tableau as is unique even in the word of God. No such analysis appears anywhere else of the heart of one serving the saints in the midst of the greatest outrages to his love, as we recognise in this epistle. He bows to the charge of rudeness in speech; but they had used the admitted power of his letters against himself. Yet he warns lest what he is absent they may learn in him present. Others might exalt themselves through his labours; he hoped when their faith was increased to preach the gospel in the regions beyond. (2 Corinthians 10:1-18) They had exalted the other apostles in disparagement of him. They had even imputed to him selfishness. It might be true, thought they, that he had reaped no material benefit himself from them; but what about others, his friends? How much there was calculated to wound that generous heart, and, what he felt yet more, to damage his ministry! But in the midst of such sorrow and the rather as flowing from such sources, God watched over all with observant eye. Wonderfully hedged in was His servant, though to speak of himself he calls his folly. (2 Corinthians 11:1-33) But no human power or wit can protect a man of God from malice; nothing can shut out the shafts of evil speaking. In vain to look to flesh and blood for protection: were it possible, how much we should have missed in this epistle! Had his detractors been brethren of the circumcision from Jerusalem, neither the trial nor the blessing would have been anything like what it is for depth; but the fact that it came to Paul from his own children in Achaia was enough to pain him to the quick, and did prove him thoroughly.

But God sometimes lifts us up to look into the glory, as He comes down into the midst of our sorrows in pitiful mercy. This, with his own heart about it, the apostle brings before us lovingly, though it is impossible, within my limits, so much as to touch on all. He spreads before us his sorrows, dangers, and persecutions. This was the ministry of which he had boasted. He had been often whipped and stoned, had been weary, thirsty, hungry, by sea and land: these were the prizes he had received, and these the honours which the world gave him. How it all ought to have gone to their hearts, if they had any feeling at all, as indeed they had! It was good for them to feel it, for they had been taking their ease. He closes the list by telling them at last how he had been let down from the wall of a city in a basket, not a very dignified position for an apostle. It was anything but heroism thus to escape one's enemies.

But the same man who was thus let down immediately after speaks of being caught up to heaven. Now, it is this combination of the truest and most proper dignity that ever a man had in this world, for how few of the sons of man, speaking of course of Christians, that approached Paul in this respect; so on the other hand, how few since have known the dignity of being content to suffer and be nothing, of having every thought and feeling of nature thoroughly crushed, like Paul, within as well as without! So much the more as he was one who felt all most keenly, for he had a heart and mind equally capacious. Such was he who had to be thus tried as Christ's bondman. But when he comes to special wonders, he does not speak about himself; when about the basket he is open. Thus here he talks ambiguously. "I know a man" is his method of introducing the new portion. It is not I, Paul, but "a man in Christ" is taken up, who had seen such things as could not be expressed in human words, nor suited to man's present state. It is therefore left completely vague. The apostle himself says he does not know whether it was in the body, or out of the body; so completely was all removed from the ordinary experience and ken of man. But he adds what is much to be observed, "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh." Thus a deeper humiliation befell him than he had ever known, "a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan," the allowed counterbalance to such extraordinary experiences. It was Paul. The secret could not be hid. But Christ is here, as ever, the theme of the apostle from first to last. This was the treasure in the earthen vessel; and in order to bring about corresponding profit, God works by external means as well as by inward grace, so as to carry forward His work of enhancing always and increasingly what is in Christ, and making less and less of man.

The close of the chapter sketches, with painful truth but a loving hand, the outbreakings of that nature, crushed in him, pampered in them. For he dreaded lest God should humble him among them because of their evil ways. What love such a word bespeaks!

The final chapter (2 Corinthians 13:1-14) answers a challenge which he kept for the last place, as indeed it ill became the Corinthians above all men. What a distress to him to speak of it at all! They had actually dared to ask a proof that Christ had spoken to them by him. Had they forgotten that they owed their life and salvation in Christ to his preaching? As he put in the foreground patience as a sign of apostleship, which in him assuredly was taxed beyond measure, so now he fixes on this as the great seal of his apostleship at least, to them. What can be more touching? It is not what Jesus had said by him in books, or in what power the Spirit had wrought by him. "Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you . . . . . examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves." They were the living proof to themselves that he was an apostle of Christ to them. There is no allowance of a doubt in this appeal: rather the very reverse was assumed on their part, which the apostle admirably turns to the confusion of their indecorous and baseless doubts about himself. "Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction." Brief and pregnant salutations follow, with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost.