2 Corinthians 13 – Paul’s Final Admonitions

Paul finishes his letter to this problematic church with more direct warnings, and assertions of his authority. I think from everything he’s written that the questioning of his apostolic authority was the issue with the Corinthian church, and that would get them off the hook with regard to the sexual immorality that Paul was condemning. This is the way it always is, question apostolic (i.e., biblical) authority so you can get away with what you want. The only other option is to agree with God (his revelation to us through the apostles and prophets, Genesis to Revelation), which means repentance and change, as best we can, and full reliance on the gospel to restore and transform us.

In the previous verse Paul was afraid they wouldn’t repent “of the impurity, sexual sin, and debauchery in which they have indulged.” Now he gets down to brass tacks. He says he will visit them a third time (the first for a year and a half when he established the church, and a second, short and painful visit between 1 and 2 Corinthians), and quotes Deuteronomy 19:15 about a matter needing to be established by two or three witnesses. We’re not sure if that is a reference to his visits, or his ministry partners, but he then tells them why he’s coming:

² I already gave you a warning when I was with you the second time. I now repeat it while absent: On my return I will not spare those who sinned earlier or any of the others, ³ since you are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me.

We can’t know exactly what Paul means by not sparing those who persist in sin and rebellion, whether it’s some supernatural power that will be displayed, or simply excommunication. We might tend to think it’s the former given they are demanding this proof, but whatever it may be, Paul is pulling rank, exercising the authority God granted him as an apostle. It seems they, I’m sure at the behest of the fake apostles, are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through Paul, and he’s intent on giving it.

The important take away for our ecclesiology (the doctrine or study of the church, and how it is set up, etc.) is that blatant, unrepentant sin is unacceptable among God’s people. If that we’re not the case, what would separate the church from any other gathering of people? Come to think of it, every gathering of people in whatever kind of community has standards that must be adhered to, or it will not be a viable entity. The church’s standards, of course, are based on the inspiration and authority of Scripture, and are not optional. At least that’s what we as Protestants believe. For Catholics Scriptural authority is real, but it is subservient to the church’s authority.

Christ, Paul says, is not weak in dealing with them, but powerful among them, but with all their problems you wonder why he would say that. Positive thinking? Paul, as we’ve seen, is not above using psychology to coax and cajole these wayward young Christians, but he says this in the context of one of the main ironies of the Christian faith. Christ, he says, was crucified in weakness, but that shameful death was the means by which he now lives by God’s power. Without that display of weakness there could be no power, so he says: “Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him in our dealing with you.” Here’s the point: our weakness doesn’t determine us, as if we were a slave to it. Remember what Paul said in the first chapter of his first letter, that Christ Jesus is our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. We, like Paul is doing here, and as he has done throughout the letter, can speak this reality into existence. Our speaking doesn’t make it real; it already is!

He then encourages them to examine, or test, themselves to see whether they are “in the faith.” I love what he says next:

Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?

Then he turns it around and says,  

⁶ And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test. 

He wants them to live the Christian life not because it’s a reflection on him and his authority, but because that’s what they profess to believe. He keeps piling on, saying he “cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.” He doesn’t care if they perceive him as “weak,” only that they are strong, and he prays for their “perfection.” Aren’t you setting the bar kind of high, Paul? Actually, it was Jesus to commanded us to be perfect, so not at all. How could God demand anything else? Just because we can never be perfect, or even close to it, doesn’t mean we ought not to strive for it. We can take this examining or testing of ourselves too far, as I believe the Puritans did, and as fundamentalists have and still do. God doesn’t want us to go from being a navel gazing sinner, to a navel gazing Christian. What transforms us is outside of us, which is why Paul uses the phase, “in the faith.” The faith, pistis-πίστις, in the Bible is trust in something outside and apart from us, which is Christ’s death and resurrection. We don’t trust our effort or works; we trust him!

He ends the letter by saying he doesn’t want to be harsh in his use of authority when he visits them, which is why he writes as he does. The purpose, he reminds them, is not to tear them down, but to build them up. He gives some final exhortations, then ends it with this powerful Triune blessing:

¹⁴ May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

The Trinity wasn’t something made up by the church over hundreds of years, but proclaimed by it from the beginning. Jesus himself proclaimed it in the Great Commission!

2 Corinthians 12:11-21 – Paul Justifying their Ministry Among the Corinthians

The drumbeat of contentiousness with the Corinthians continues for the rest of the chapter. He gets more specific here about the issues they’re dealing with. First, he tells them he should have been commended by them, and that he’s not inferior to the “super-apostles.” They were giving up the real deal for fakes. As he says:

¹² I persevered in demonstrating among you the marks of a true apostle, including signs, wonders and miracles. 

Did the “super-apostles” do such works? They Couldn’t because only true apostles can do the miraculous. During the first generation of the church God saw that it was necessary to establish his redemptive message among his people by displays of the supernatural. It surprises some people that such displays are quite rare in redemptive history. For the vast majority of the 2,000 years recorded there were none. It was only at important turning points that God disrupts that natural order of his creation. The rest of the time things go on as they always have. So there is nothing from Noah to Abraham. Then nothing for the 400 years the Israelites are in Egypt, until Moses. Then once they go into the promised land through the time of the judges and kings it’s relatively quite, until the first prophets Elijah and Elisha, and that was another 400 to 500 years. And after these first two there are no outward miraculous displays recorded by the prophets, only their word that, Thus saith the Lord. So it’s another 800 plus years until Jesus comes on the scene, and God confirms his redemptive works in Christ, and then his apostles by signs, wonders, and miracles. Once they left the scene, it’s back to the way it’s always been for God’s people, trust the testimony of others.

Next he says he wasn’t a burden to them, and asks their forgiveness, sarcasm obvious. It seems some thought Paul wanted to benefit materially from them, when all he wanted was them! He tells them that he’s coming to see them for a third time, and that he wants them, not their possessions. Obviously the fraudulent apostles were accusing Paul of just that, and he says that’s just not true:

¹⁵ So I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well. If I love you more, will you love me less? 

It’s kind of bizarre that God wanted Paul’s cajoling and contentious relationship with the Corinthians to be in Scripture, for all Christians of all time to read. We can be assured this wasn’t an accident, and I’m sure there are many reasons, which is why we study it. One is certainly to show how the foundation of his church was built. It was messy and hard, and he wanted to show us that what Jesus said was true, and how, that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. We would be hard pressed to find a more dysfunctional environment that that of the Church of Corinth, yet that didn’t keep Christianity in a mere 250 plus years from taking over the Roman empire.

Paul wants them to know that their ministry to them is purely from God in Christ, and that everything they do is for their strengthening. Again we see from the assertion that they believe Paul and his partners have ulterior motives, or those other “apostles” are accusing them of such. When he gets to Corinth he’s afraid there may be may be “discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.” Why would he be afraid of this? Probably because those are characteristic of the Corinthian church, and is calling them out on it. Finally he gets to the main point:

²¹ I am afraid that when I come again my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual sin and debauchery in which they have indulged.

Unrepentant sin, sexual or otherwise, is poison in the church. As we saw previously, repent in Greek, metanoeó-μετανοέω, properly, “think differently after,” “after a change of mind“; to repent (literally, “think differently afterwards”). Martin Luther’s 95 Theses that he nailed to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517 started with a sentence that included the phrase, “our Lord and Master Jesus Christ . . . willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” Because sin, including ours, is ubiquitous in a fallen world, daily repentance is necessary, a daily agreeing with God about our continual failure to fully live up to the requirements of true righteousness.

Remember that holiness is not merely outward conformity to God’s moral law, but inward transformation of the heart toward embracing the greatest commandments of loving God, ourselves, and others. I don’t know about you, but I’m not very good at this, and I am daily made aware of that, so of course I repent every day. There is also great freedom in giving up our pretensions that we can somehow measure up. We can’t, ever, in this life, which is why Christianity is all gospel all the time, which is fundamentally about trusting that the Lord Jesus is our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. This really makes life so much easier as a sinner living in a fallen world among fallen people. When we blow it we don’t have to excuse or justify ourselves any longer, or hide or pretend we’re something we’re not. That, brothers and sisters, is true freedom. We’re sinners saved by grace! I’ll try to do better next time; move on! And because Jesus is our sanctification chances are we will.

2 Corinthians 12:1-10 – Paul’s Vision and his Thorn: The Power of Weakness

Paul feels compelled that he “must go on boasting.” He continues on this contentiousness relationship with the Corinthians for yet another of our chapters, seven in all. That’s a lot of papyrus! He says there is nothing to be gained, but he does it anyway, now going on to visions and revelations from the Lord:

 ² I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. ³ And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— ⁴ was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. 

It is reasonable to assume that these “super apostles” the Corinthians are comparing to Paul boast of their own visions and revelations, so Paul will boast of his. You can bet their boasting was no doubt self-serving, his anything but. He even does it in the third person, and speaks of it in very general, and hesitating terms. He is not telling them to boast of his own greatness, but to establish his credibility. The experience was so out of the ordinary that he doesn’t even know if it was in or out of his body. He just knows it was him, or “this man.”

You wonder why the things he heard are inexpressible, and can’t be told. I’d guess that the point of this divine exercise for Paul was not the content of what he saw and heard, as much as it was to steel him for his suffering for the gospel. If the gospel he passed on to them is real, is actually true, then he could endure anything, as indeed he did. We are all inclined to see this material life as all there is, and the Lord wanted to make sure Paul had absolutely no doubt that it is not! We should always remember the apologetics principle of the consideration of the alternative. Skeptics and critics would say Paul’s claim could not be real, that it was a dream, or illusion, or if not that, then he was simply lying. If it in fact was not real, then we have to believe Paul was either deluded or a liar. It is more difficult for me to believe this, than that Paul was telling the truth. Nobody suffers like he did for a lie, or for an illusion. Add to this the eyewitness testimony to the gospel he passed on, and I’ll trust Paul, not the skeptics.

The third heaven is how the ancients referenced the place where the divine dwelt. The first heaven would be the atmosphere, the second the celestial, then third God’s dwelling place. The word Paradise is an ancient Persian word meaning “enclosure, garden, park.” Luke has Jesus use this Greek word for whatever Aramaic word he used when he told the thief on the cross that he would be with him in paradise. It’s also the word used for garden in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, in Genesis 2. Gardens are peaceful, beautiful, full of life and harmony, a stark contrast with life in a fallen world that is often ugly, harsh, and difficult.

He follows this saying he will “boast about a man like that,” but not about himself because he will only boast about his weaknesses. That’s why he uses the third person. He could boast about this experience if he wanted to because it’s the truth, but he won’t. God knew that might be a problem, so to keep him from becoming conceited, he was given a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment him. That latter word in Greek, kolaphizó-κολαφίζω, means strike with the fist, buffet; hence, mistreat violently. There is only speculation as to what this torment is, but most think it’s some kind of physical ailment. Paul pleads with the Lord three times to take it away:

⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The word weakness implies something physical, so the Lord is telling Paul that weakness isn’t weak! God’s power is not synonymous with bodily health, and weakness of body somehow allows us to tap into God’s power, so that our end, our telos (perfect), can be fulfilled. So much for the so-called health and wealth gospel. This is more of the upside-down, inside-out nature of Christianity. From a merely human perspective this is ridiculous. The modern preoccupation, better said fetish, with health is one of the great idols of our age, maybe number one. That a frail body, or frail health, could be a source of strength makes no sense to people who are obsessed with denying their own mortality. All of us fall into this idolatrous trap at times because the cultural health fetish messaging is ubiquitous, but think about it. If we boast in our physical strength and health, we are weak in the Lord! Our perspective must always be eternal. We were created in Christ primarily for forever life, not this one.

One brief apologetic point. Notice that The Lord to whom Paul pleads, God, and his power is the same as Christ’s power. A clear implication about the Triune nature of God.

2 Corinthians 11 – False Apostles and Paul’s Suffering

Paul continues his defense of himself and his ministry among the Corinthians, which has pretty much taken up most of the content since chapter 6. In the first part of chapter 11 he addresses so called “super apostles” as what they are, false apostles. He is afraid that the Corinthians have been deceived even as Eve was deceived by the serpent, so that they will be led away from their “sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” He says they put up easily enough with a different Jesus, a different spirit, and a different gospel than the one they accepted. He asserts he is not the least inferior to those “super apostles,” even if he’s not a trained speaker. What he does have is knowledge. As he said in the previous chapter, they judge by appearances, surface things, not by substance.

These other apostles are obviously trying to cut in on Paul’s work, and he’s not putting up with it. He affirms his love for them, and then calls out these men for what they are:

¹³ For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. ¹⁴ And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. ¹⁵ It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

This is the most direct he’s gotten in condemning those who are trying to discredit Paul and his ministry among them. Point blank: they are Satan’s servants. They may play the game, say some of the right things, but they are inspired by hell. People nowadays complain that their churches have problems, and yet look at this church founded by the Apostle himself! Wherever there are sinners, saved or not, there are problems.

Then to make the contrast to these false apostles, he gets kind of rude with the Corinthians, that if they put up with fools, he may as well speak as a fool. If they put up with those who boast as the world does, he will boast as well. They, he says, put up with those who enslave or exploit or even slaps them in the face. Ouch! To Paul’s shame, he says, they were too weak for that? Too weak for what I’m not sure. To exploit and take advantage of them? That’s a strange thing to say, but Paul’s frustration with the situation is obviously intense. Then as a self-proclaimed fool, he boasts about his sufferings to establish his bona fides, implying that these “super apostles” surely would never put up with what he has. We might call them fair weather apostles, just in it for the glory. I’ll quote the entire passage because because he makes his suffering for the gospel so poetic:

 ²² Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I. ²³ Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. ²⁴ Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, ²⁶ I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. ²⁷ I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. ²⁸ Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. ²⁹ Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

So goes the romantic life of the Apostle Paul! And we complain about our suffering.

It looks like the main problem was fellow Jewish Christians, or those who claimed to be. And how do you explain Paul’s willingness to suffer so horribly for the gospel unless he was convinced it was the truth? You don’t, because it is! In I Corinthians 15 we see why he believed it: eyewitness testimony to the resurrected Jesus, including his own. Once the first believers were convinced Jesus actually, physically, materially came back from the dead, it was over. There was no stopping them! The persecutors eventually lost, and the world won, which is an indication how dangerous Christianity was in the minds of Jews, Romans, and Greeks. They could accept any religion, as long as it didn’t claim exclusivity as the only true religion, or didn’t demand the loyalty of slaves and kings alike. It was exactly Christianity’s transformative power that scared them the most, and that eventually transformed the world.

He then says that if he must boast, he will boast in things that show his weakness. And he wants them to know he isn’t making any of this up:

³¹ The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying. 

He even mentions his experience in Damascus right after he was converted when the Jews there tried to kill him, and he had to be lowered in a basket through an opening in the wall, a sign of things to come. We’ll see that he’s not done boasting in chapter 12.

2 Corinthians 10:7-18 – Let Him Who Boasts Boast in the Lord

In the rest of chapter 10 Paul continues the defense of his ministry. He had a contentious relationship the Corinthian church, and it seems to be driven by comparisons with others. In 1 Corinthians 1 he rebuked them for being divided over church leaders, factions following one person or another. He tells them here that they are looking at things according to appearances, on the surface of things. Basically they are shallow. Some of them clearly have a problem with Paul’s apostolic authority. You can almost hear them say, You can’t tell us what to do! But Paul is not afraid to boast of his authority, nor is he ashamed of it, because it’s used solely to build them up, not tear them down. Yet he feels the need to assure them that his letters are not meant to frighten them. He gives us the context of his remarks:

¹⁰ For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.” ¹¹ Such people should realize that what we are in our letters when we are absent, we will be in our actions when we are present.

Whoever the Corinthians were comparing him to, in person he just didn’t measure up, thus his contention that they are just looking at appearances. I guess Paul wasn’t the most impressive physical specimen, and in Greek pagan culture appearance and presentation, much as in our day, was everything. But they can be assured, what he’s communicating in his letters, and the authority he claims, will be the same in person. He says that he refuses to compare himself (and again, the letter is in his name and Timothy’s, thus the we) to those who commend themselves, and why:

When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.

Or, better in Greek, they lack understanding. Paul is too diplomatic to call them idiots, but that’s what they are. Whatever they are doing, it is leading the members of the church to question Paul, not only his authority, but if he is even sincere, as if he was in it for himself. That’s why in the next chapter he’ll boast about his sufferings endured for the sake of the gospel, and them.

Paul uses the word boast or boasting eight times in this passage. The word, kauchaomai-καυχάομαι, means properly, living with “head up high,” i.e. boasting from a particular vantage point by having the right base of operation to deal successfully with a matter. This is obviously a good boasting, not a prideful, self-centered boasting. He wants them to understand that his boasting is in them, and that they were able to bring them the gospel of Christ. He has no interest in taking credit for work done in someone else’s territory. Then he promptly seems to contradict himself:

¹⁷ But, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”¹⁸ For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.

The verse Paul quotes comes from Jeremiah 9, a particularly negative and unflattering picture of God’s people in Judah and Jerusalem. It’s all sin and judgment. Yet in the midst of all that negativity the Lord gives the answer to to all that sin to those who are “uncircumcised in heart”:

²³ This is what the Lord says:

“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
    or the strong man boast of his strength
    or the rich man boast of his riches,
²⁴ but let him who boasts boast about this:
    that he understands and knows me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
    justice and righteousness on earth,
    for in these I delight,”
declares the Lord.

We know from the whole testimony of Scripture that the human heart, all people at the core of their being, are naturally dead in sin, alienated from God, his enemies. It is only when the heart is transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit (born again), or circumcised, that it wants to boast in the Lord instead of the self. Human pride is the enemy of God because it enthrones man and dethrones God. We can only “boast in the Lord” because of the gospel, God’s wrath fully satisfied, so that he can now commend us in Christ. Think about what God is saying through Jeremiah. We’re not to boast in our wisdom, strength, or riches. What else is there! Only the redeemed child of God an look on these things as nothing, and gleefully boast that we find far more valuing in knowing him! That we are his! Get self out of the way, and everything tends work better, including ministry.

2 Corinthians 10:1-6 – We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ

Paul continues to address the contentious relationship he has with the Corinthians. Some people have said that he is “bold” in his letters, but in person unimpressive, even timid, but the point is he doesn’t want to have to be bold, to assert his authority. He says some people think they (Paul and those he ministers with) live according to the flesh, in my NIV translated as, standards of this world. We previously discussed the importance of this term in Paul, sarx-σάρξ, so I won’t do it again here, but standards of this world is a fair if not literal translation. It’s any way of looking at reality apart from God and his kingdom with focus on the self. He then defines exactly what that means (ESV):

³ For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. ⁴ For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. ⁵ We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

The context is Paul defending their ministry among the Corinthians, but the default way of interpreting this passage seems to be that the “we” is all Christians, that we have this power. No we don’t! Paul says in Ephesians that the foundation of the church, “God’s household” is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” So Paul is asserting the spiritual authority of the Apostles, and him as one of them. As Protestants we believe that same authority resides in the Bible, which is why the Reformers gave us sola Scriptura as one of the five solas of the Reformation. That, not the church, as Roman Catholics believe, is our ultimate authority. Our weapons are Scripture, the truth, the definition of all things by God’s revelation, and we need to learn how to wield them, every moment of every day.

So by extension, understood properly, the passage does indeed apply to us. Notice that we are engaged in a war. That’s a stark way to frame the Christian life, but if we’re honest with ourselves it sure feels that way much of the time. It ain’t easy. Non-Christians don’t get to sit this war out either. Paul said in chapter 4 said that in their case, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers.” As Dylan sang, you gotta serve somebody.

Pay says, in effect, they are human beings, but they wage this war not with human weapons, but weapons that have divine power. The less literal NIV gives us a good sense of Paul’s meaning: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.” And it is not over the Corinthians, but “strongholds,” or in Greek, a fortress, that this power is wielded. Paul is saying, in other words, this isn’t about us! This is a war that takes place in hearts and minds because that is where Satanic strongholds reside. Most Christians are familiar with Paul’s description of this war in Ephesians:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

This is a good reason not to see other people as our enemies, no matter what they do. Something a whole lot deeper is going on besides just us and them. Notice also, verse 5, that the issue at steak is the knowledge of God, and by implication, accurate knowledge. There is something profoundly cerebral about Christianity. It is foremost a thinking religion, a religion of the mind, and only when our understanding is engaged, do feelings and emotions follow. What exactly does taking every thought captive to obey Christ mean? The next verse:

⁶ And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

The word punish in Greek, ekdikeó-ἐκδικέω, doesn’t exactly mean punish, but rather to dispense justice, carrying a judgment completely through, i.e., with all that is appropriate to it. The Christian life requires that certain standards be upheld, and sometime adjudicated, what we call church discipline. The beauty of the Christian life is that the Bible is our ultimate authority, given to us as the Westminster Confession says, “by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life,” but that rule is broad and wide. By that I mean God grants us wide latitude to use wisdom and judgment, or discernment, in how we live our lives. Not every single thing we do or say is proscribed, or not, but the things that require obedience are very clear. God has provided everything we need in Scripture so that we can have a solid grasp on the “knowledge of God,” and live in that obedience, which includes repentance and forgiveness when we don’t!

 

2 Corinthians 9 – God Loves a Cheerful Giver

Paul spent the entirety of chapter 8 talking about a gift the Corinthians were going to be giving to the saints in Jerusalem, and continues talking about that through chapter 9. This must be a very important issue, and one Paul wants to make sure they get. As I said, charity, among many other aspects of Christianity, was completely novel in pagan culture, and helped eventually transform Western civilization. So we see why it’s so important; Paul is trying to turn them into not-pagans. Giving, not just financially, is the heart of the gospel, the heart of Christianity, and the heart of God! The first verses are almost funny:

There is no need for me to write to you about this service to the Lord’s people. ² For I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you in Achaia were ready to give; and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action.

I sense a large dose of sarcasm here. He doesn’t write as if they were particularly eager. Paul isn’t above using a little psychology in his dealing with the churches. (Macedonia was northern Greece, and Achaia southern.) He’s so confident in them that he says he’s going to send the brothers so that their “boasting about you in this matter should not prove hollow . . .” He tells them that their giving should not be done grudgingly, and then grounds giving in a biblical, and reality, principle:

⁶ Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.

The phrase using generously in Greek is “upon blessings upon blessings,” so the sense is that our generosity blesses others and blesses us, but in a copious way. Those who hold back these blessings get very little in return. The deceit is that if I just keep more of what I have, then I’ll have more, but Paul says it’s just the opposite. This sowing and reaping principle is true in life generally. Those who study more get better grades, those who work harder get more money, etc. Then Paul gets to the point:

⁷ Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Notice that giving is the decision of each person; giving cannot be coerced. This right of conscience, the freedom to choose, is fundamental to the essence of Christianity. Virtue can never be compelled because God made humans volitional and accountable beings. But Paul is spending an awful lot of time trying to persuade the Corinthians, and us, that we ought to want to give, gladly, eagerly. The reason? Because God loves it! And he uses agapa here, the love of choosing. And a reluctant giver, how does God feel about that person? He doesn’t say, but it ain’t love! And where ultimately does this eagerness come from? Us? Hardly:

⁸ And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

Always and in all things, it comes down to grace, God’s unmerited favor toward us. We can because he has. Paul is doing some powerful positive thinking here, but it’s positive thinking grounded in what God has done for us, not that somehow we’re inherently capable of doing these things. He then quotes a verse in Psalm 112, but actually mis-quotes it. He can’t do that! It’s Scripture! But so is Paul! The Psalm is about the righteous “who are generous and lend freely.” So he gets that right, but he changes the pronouns to he and his:

⁹ They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor,
    their righteousness endures forever.

So now according to Paul our generosity is God’s generosity, our abundance comes from his abundance, and that is why we “abound in every good work.” It is metaphysical reality that grounds our reality, which is comforting because in and of ourselves we are nothing and have nothing, literally. He confirms his version of this verse with his next one:

¹⁰ Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.

Our responsibility, in this case to be generous, is always bound up in God’s provision, and it’s a provision of doing the right thing, righteousness. That’s why Christianity “works,” that lives of lived righteousness bear the fruit of righteousness, or as we’ll see in Galatians, the fruit of the Spirit. It works not because of us but because of God! The result, as Paul says, is “thanksgiving to God,” and “glorifying God.” What an incredible privilege and blessing it is that the good things he enables us to do bring him the gratitude he is rightfully due. This all comes from God’s “surpassing grace” he’s given us, then Paul exclaims this to end his exhortation:

¹⁵ Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Words are incapable of describing this gift of him enabling us, and allowing us, to participate in his very nature, the heart of which is giving, best exemplified, of course, by the cross.

2 Corinthians 8 – God’s Grace and the Call to Generosity

Paul spends the entire next two chapters talking about the Corinthians and giving. In this chapter he discussed gifts from them he will be taking to the church in Jerusalem that he first mentioned in I Cor. 16:1-4. Before I discuss a few details in the chapter, I want to mention how radical a notion charitable giving was in the ancient world before Jesus birthed Christianity. Pagan Greeks and Romans had no notion of the concept, at all, because their religion didn’t require it or have any examples by which to encourage it. Caring for others not family was not only not important, the idea would have been strange to them. Then Jesus came, and changed that, radically. Today people think charity just is, that it came out of nowhere, if they bother to wonder where it came from at all. Paul gives us the ultimate rationale for giving:

⁹ For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

Paul uses the word grace four times in this chapter, which is that rationale, primarily the unmerited favor given to us in Christ, his death and resurrection for us. That is why we give. No wonder people in the pagan society of the time didn’t do charitable giving; what reason would they have to give! Grace was a completely foreign concept to them. For Christians, by contrast, what reason have we not to give!

This grace was also given to us by example. Jesus was a carpenter by trade, so in that time he would have been middle class, neither rich or poor. In what way was a both? By referring to his full title Paul is likely referring to the pre-incarnate Son of God, who made everything, and thus owned everything. I guess you could call that rich. Then God became a man, and you can’t get any more poor than that! The contrast is infinite. And he did that for us, that we might become rich, with true riches that do not spoil. And because the source of our giving is eternal and unmerited, Paul can then relativize giving:

¹² For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have.

This teaching of course came directly from Jesus, so the heart not the amount is the thing. We don’t give because we have to give, but because we want to give, and if we don’t want to give we don’t know Jesus, who he is or what he’s done for us. If we do, giving naturally overflows; we’re even excited to give. He’ll get even more specific about that in the next chapter. Then he says something that needs to be carefully interpreted:

¹³ Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. ¹⁴ At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need, so that there may be equality, ¹⁵ as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.”

See, lefty Christians (an oxymoron if ever there was one!) say, Paul was a socialist! He was all about equality. He basically says equality is the goal. Maybe, but what does he actually mean? We don’t just take words in the Bible to mean what we want them to mean. I’ve heard it said that the text without context is pretext. The quote gives us some context, the reference coming from Exodus 16 and the story of the manna and Quail in the desert. You can see that the true context isn’t equality of result, but the meeting of needs, some had more, some had less. The real context, however, is trusting the Lord. Whatever our material status, we give in trusting the Lord to meet our needs, and the needs of those to whom we give.

Also, nowhere in Paul’s letters does he ever say the rich should not be rich, or give away all their riches, or that being poor is a good and noble thing. If poverty was so great, why would they have to take a collection to alleviate it? Money for Paul, and Christian ethics in general, is not a measure of worth, but a tool to bless ourselves, those we care about and are responsible for, and others in need. That can be those in material or physical need, our church needs, or the needs of spreading the gospel. Money and wealth bring responsibility, and build and reveal character. And as Paul says to the philosophers on Mars Hill in Acts 17, he gives all life and breath and everything else. That pretty much covers it all! Everything is a gift! So we can now give out of our abundance even if that is abundantly small. No wonder Christianity transformed the world.

2 Corinthians 7 – Perfecting Holiness Out of Reverence for God

Chapter 7 starts with the capstone of his exhortation to the Corinthians, then the rest of the chapter is an intimate portrait into the relationship Paul has with the Corinthian Christians. First the exhortation:

Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

Of course this being the rigorously logical Apostle Paul, there is another therefore; things always logically follow from what Paul has previously established in his argument. The promises he’s referring to most likely refers back to the conditional nature of our relationship to God. He told them not to be yoked together with unbelievers because they have nothing in common with them. If they separate themselves from them, then God will be their Father and he their children. So because God will be our God, and we his people, then this should be our goal, our passion, setting ourselves apart (holiness) for God.

When reading about the conditional nature of our relationship to God we must understand what that means with a proper biblical hermeneutic. That is, we interpret Scripture only in light of Scripture, and the entire scope of redemptive history. The imperative, the command, is always and only seen in light of the indicative, “a verb form or set of verb forms that represents the denoted act or state as an objective fact.” The fact is that God himself has established us in relationship to him first, and only then do we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Got did not give the Israelites the law before he rescued them from slavery, but after. We don’t obey to merit the relationship, the relationship is merited first by Christ, then we live in it. Paul at the end of chapter 7 uses the most intimate form of relationship known to mankind, a Father and his children. Anyone who has hurt someone they really love knows that is never the goal. Our relationship to God in Christ is now such that we long to please him, to love him, to revere him, to purify ourselves for him. The dynamic is no longer one of fear, but passion for the one who loved us first.

In the next handful of verses Paul affirms the emotional bond he’s established with the Corinthians, and asks them to reciprocate the feeling. It was a complicated relationship, but Paul’s life among them left no doubt in his own mind that his love and care for them is genuine. He next refers to the sorrow his letter caused. This is not I Corinthians, but a letter in between. He told him in 2:1 that he had decided to not “make another painful visit” to them, so he sent Titus with a letter that was obviously stern, but Titus returned with good news that they accepted Paul’s rebuke. He was sorry he hurt them, but happy because their sorrow led them to repentance. He then makes an important distinction:

¹⁰ Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

Repentance is fundamental to the Christian life, and life in the kingdom Christ established on earth as it is in heaven. The first words of John the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The first words of Jesus: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Peter ended the first sermon at Pentecost with these words:  “Repent and be baptized, every one of you . . .” Worldly sorrow is just feeling bad, a focus on us that changes nothing, while repentance is oriented toward God and is a changing of the heart and mind toward his will. The former leads to wallowing and eventually to death, literal and spiritual, while the latter releases us from our absorption with self, to love and serve God, which is salvation, now and forever!

He spends the rest of the chapter affirming that their response to his letter was everything he could have hoped for, and that he has “complete confidence” in them. Titus who brought the letter returns with a very encouraging report, not only of their earnestness to take Paul’s rebuke and teaching seriously, but their obedience. Apostolic authority seems to have been well understood, and we have that same authority in our canon of Scripture, which is why one of the five solas of the Reformation was sola Scriptura. It commands our obedience as well.

2 Corinthians 6:1- Paul’s Life of Suffering, and his Credibility with the Corinthians

Paul has just explained their ministry of reconciliation, and as “God’s fellow workers” with them he next urges them “not to receive God’s grace in vain.” He then quotes from Isaiah 49 about the time of his favor and the day of salvation, and he declares that time is now! Can God’s favor actually be resisted? Maybe from a purely human perspective we can say yes because we can’t see into the spiritual dynamic going on in the human heart. Just the very proclamation of the gospel is God’s grace extended to the human race, but if we look at the verse in Isaiah prior to the one Paul quotes we’ll see that the context is Israel whom God has chosen, and the covenant he’s made with their Redeemer. To those whom God has chosen, his people, grace is an incentive to work! To seek, to strive, to serve, to love. When we consider the unmerited favor, grace, God has bestowed upon us in Christ, how can we not be compelled to live out that grace, unmerited favor toward others! Those who resist in fact can’t receive it.

They have not, he said, put any obstacle in the Corinthians way, and he then lays out why they can’t find fault with his ministry. (You can tell throughout his letters that he had quite the contentious relationship with these people.) I am going to quote the entire paragraph (in our Bibles, as there were no paragraphs in ancient Greek) of the arduous and often painful life Paul lived for the gospel because it is so poetically powerful:

⁴ Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; ⁵ in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; ⁶ in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; ⁷ in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; ⁸ through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; ⁹ known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; ¹⁰ sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Knowing these things about Paul it would be impossible for them to question his sincerity. The man gave everything that can be given for his ministry of the gospel to them. We notice that he uses his suffering as evidence for him being a servant of God. We don’t often use suffering as a resume enhancer. And he does say “we” because the message is from he and Timothy, so he wasn’t the only one suffering for the message, but he was the tip of the spear, the pioneer, so he got the arrows first. That last phrase is especially powerful because Paul renounced every earthly thing for Jesus’ sake, and in doing so considered he possessed all those things anyway. It’s the paradox of true freedom, that in not holding fast to the things of this earth we actually have a better, truer grasp of them. He follows this by asking them to open their hearts to them because they are withholding their affection from them. He wants them, like he speaks to his children, to open wide their hearts. His feeling for them is obvious, and he just asks for some affection in return. I have a feeling that Paul may not have been the easiest person to love in that way.

He then turns on a dime, exhorting them not to be “yoked together with unbelievers.” This was obviously yet another problem with the Corinthian church. He doesn’t define exactly what this means, but the concept comes from Deuteronomy 22:10: “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.” The context of the verse before and after is not mixing two unlike things, and Paul asks several rhetorical questions, contrasting opposites: righteousness and wickedness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial (i.e., Satan), believer and unbeliever, the temple of God and idols. These things have nothing in common with one another. They are wholly unlike each other, opposites in every way. Clearly marriage is a most obvious way that believers should not be yoked together with unbelievers, but since he doesn’t specify he clearly means in other contexts as well.

He asserts again as he did in I Corinthians that we are the temple of the living God, and there the context was sexual immorality and prostitutes. But any yoking, sexual or not, that influences us away from the things of God makes it unequal. He quotes numerous Old Testament passages to make the point that God’s presence is what distinguishes God’s people from all others, and that they are to “come out from them and be separate,” and to “touch no unclean thing.” If they do that God will receive them, and he will be their Father, and they his sons and daughters. This is all very stark, separatist even, meaning that we could interpret Paul as saying that believers and unbelievers should never associate. That’s exactly what many Christians over the millennia took from Paul, but that is not what he means.

I think a good analogy is the people of Israel and the pagan land they entered in Canaan. If you look at the history of the people if Israel, almost from the very beginning God was warning them not to allow these heathens to influence them, and draw them away from him, their God, but they constantly did it. It was why first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians destroyed Israel and Judah, and drove them from the land. So we are unequally yoked with others by definition when we are influenced away from God by them. The Corinthian Christians obviously had problems acting like the pagan world around them, and Paul warns them to stop it!