2 Corinthians

Believers Church Bible Commentary

V. George Shillington

• Publisher: Herald Press
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9780836198126
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblischer Kommentar

V. George Shillington sees this letter as Paul's personal testimony about his ministry of reconciliation among the Corinthian Christians (chapters 1-9) and his ministry in defending the truth of the gospel (chapters 10-13). The thread that ties the two parts together is Paul's conviction on pastoral ministry under the banner of Christ. Paul insists that ministry is to be borne in affliction like that of Christ crucified. In raising the crucified Messiah out of the old creation, God has inaugurated a new creation, in which believers already participate. The only boast allowed is in the Lord, not in one's own achievements or elevated experiences.

Letter of Reconciliation

Right Relationship in Ministry

2 Corinthians 1:1—9:15

OVERVIEW

The apostle Paul makes the claim in this Letter of Reconciliation that Christian ministry is a matter of a person’s right relationship on two indivisible fronts: (1) a right relationship to Jesus Christ, and (2) a right relationship of Christians to each other in an ordered community of life and faith.

The focus is on Paul’s own ministry, particularly in relation to the Corinthians, although not exclusively so. His discourse persistently aims at expounding more broadly a theology of ministry in the age of Jesus Christ that has recently dawned upon the world. One can infer from his expose that Paul has an inkling of an opposing view that has crossed the threshold of the Corinthian community at the time of writing this letter. Proponents of that view see ministry as competitive and self-commending. Paul does not. They seek letters of recommendation from one community to another to authorize their mission and their right to subsistence from the community they serve. To authorize his mission and to sustain him in it, Paul relies entirely on his relationship to God. The others may appeal to Moses as their guiding light in ministry. Paul thinks of Moses merely as a type of present Christian ministry, with Paul and his like-minded comrades as fulfillment of the type (2:16—3:18).

Paul’s primary reason for sending this Letter of Reconciliation (2 Cor. 1-9) is to persuade the Corinthians of a view of ministry consistent with the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Paul is principally concerned that his converts know exactly who is reconciling the world. God does this through Jesus Christ. Paul as apostle does not. Instead, Paul’s gift of ministry from God in Christ acts as the agency of the grace that human beings need to bring them home again to God. In short, Paul views his ministry in the context of right relationships (5:11—6:10; 1:8—2:4).

The rightness of the relationship stems from the character of God. God rescues the sinner, raises the dead, and reconciles the world. God’s unique agent in this massive enterprise of bringing the world home again is none other than the divine Son, the wisdom of God personified in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:24). Those who receive the Spirit of this Christ by faith relate to God in the new way of Christ, relate to each other in community in the same way, and likewise relate to the world with the compassionate love of Christ. In these terms of right relationship, argued this way and that throughout 2 Corinthians 1-9, Paul sees God reconciling the world to himself (4:7—5:5; 5:14-15).

Included in this ministry of right relationship is the appeal to the Corinthians to give of their means to the saints in Jerusalem. The motive for this, or for any other ministry in the name of Jesus Christ, is the indescribable gift of God in the One who became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich (9:15; 8:9).

This leading motif of ministry in the Letter of Reconciliation of 2 Corinthians moves through changes of mood and rhetorical form, yet remains essentially constant through the various textures of the language. Thus, the different sections of the text appear as variations on the theme of Christian ministry.

2 Corinthians 1:1—2:13

Variation 1: Solidarity in Affliction and Joy

OVERVIEW

After the opening salutation, Paul at once thanks the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation for the ministry of consolation given to him. Afflicted on every side to the point of death itself, Paul accepts his suffering in ministry as participation in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ for others (cf. Phil. 3:10). Paul’s affliction serves a similar saving purpose for the Corinthians (and others). But Paul banks on the knowledge that God consoles the afflicted and raises the dead, as witnessed in Jesus resurrected (2 Cor. 1:3-11).

Imagine how the listeners in the Corinthian congregation must have felt as they heard this letter read in their house-church setting. Unlike a congregation today, two thousand years removed from the time of writing, the Corinthians could not treat the implications of Paul’s sentences with passive objectivity. Paul was in their neighborhood and might visit them at any time. They could lose face in his presence. Through him they had come to faith. How should they feel about their relationship to their afflicted apostle? The answer that follows in the notes suggests itself from the way the text reads.

The apostle has put his life on the line for them in the service of God’s salvation of the world. His conscience is clear on this point (1:12). Toward him they should feel sympathy, loyalty, confidence. Paul seems to know they have felt otherwise about him, and thus he writes persuasively. They think he vacillates because he has not visited Corinth as he planned. Not so, says Paul. What you call vacillation between “Yes” and “No” is nothing less than my commitment to the Amen of God’s plan (1:15-22).

Instead of visiting the Corinthians as planned, Paul has decided rather to send a letter written out of much distress and with many tears. The letter (now lost, except for the reference here and in 2 Cor. 7) censured the congregation for allowing one of its members to cause offense, presumably to Paul. After leaving Corinth offended, Paul writes the “letter of tears” as a substitute for his personal presence. His motive in writing the letter of tears is to save the members undue pain, as God is his witness (1:23). And the Corinthians have responded positively to Paul’s appeal in the letter. They have disciplined the offender. Then by the time Paul writes this present Letter of Reconciliation (1-9), he asks the congregation to forgive the offender in the name of Christ, as Paul himself has forgiven him (2:1-11).

This variation on the theme of Paul’s ministry ends with a brief note from the memory of his journey to Macedonia to meet Titus, who had news about the Corinthians’ state of mind toward Paul (2:12-13; 7:5-16). Mention of Macedonia, where Paul had ministered effectively, sets his mind to thinking on another variation on the theme of his ministry in the name of Christ.

OUTLINE

The Salutation, 1:1-2

Thanksgiving: The Afflicted Consoled, 1:3-7

The Sentence of Death and the Witness of Conscience, 1:8-14

God’s Unequivocal “Yes,” 1:15-22

Heart Truth: As God Is My Witness, 1:23—2:4

An Offender Forgiven, 2:5-11

Looking for Titus in Macedonia, 2:12-13

The Salutation

2 Corinthians 1:1-2

PREVIEW

Characteristic of the letter-form in Mediterranean society, 2 Corinthians opens with the standard three-part salutation: sender, receiver, and greeting. While these three are standard, they are not uniform in the letters of the time. Nor are they uniform in Paul’s letters. For example, in some letters Paul does not designate himself “apostle” in the salutation (Phil. 1-2; 1 and 2 Thess.; Philem.). In opening 2 Corinthians, however, Paul does so designate himself because his status as apostle has come under fire at Corinth. This letter confirms his apostolic ministry according to the will of God (1:1).

In short, the salutation corresponds largely to the substance of the body of the letter, and thus it deserves due consideration. Paul has crafted the terms of each salutation in line with his experience of Jesus Christ on the one hand, and included particular terms in line with the character of his argument on the other.

OUTLINE

Senders Designated, 1:1a

Receivers Designated, 1:1b

A Pauline Greeting, 1:2

EXPLANATORY NOTES

Senders Designated 1:1a

Paul consistently uses the single given name of Paul to identify himself (cf. Acts 9; 13:9). The title, apostle of Christ Jesus, however, is critical in this salutation. In the society of Paul’s time, an apostle was one commissioned to carry a message from a superior, a trusted ambassador. According to Luke-Acts, the term apostolos (“a person commissioned by a superior”) took on special meaning as referring to the twelve disciples who knew Jesus in the flesh, who were witnesses at the first Easter, and whom Jesus commissioned with the liberating word of the gospel (Luke 6:13; Acts 1:2, 25). These were “apostles” of the first order. They occupied a primary position in the earliest church. Paul could not claim to be one of them, despite his claim to have seen the resurrected Lord (1 Cor. 9:1). The primacy of Paul’s apostleship has been called into question at Corinth, for reasons not completely known. The two Corinthian letters in the NT bear testimony to the problem Paul is facing.

His answer in 1 Corinthians is that the resurrected Christ appeared to him as “one untimely born” (1 Cor. 15:8-9); that he is “the least of the apostles,” but an apostle just the same; in Galatians, that God revealed his Son to him and placed a call upon his life to bring the gospel to the Gentiles (Gal. 1:15-17). Paul accepts the responsibility under God (not under human authority) of bringing the news of God’s salvation in Christ crucified and raised to the Gentile world, and woe is he if he does not preach the gospel (1 Cor. 9:16)! His apostolic call and ministry thus are by the will of God. In this letter he rests his case for ministry in Corinth—and in the world—on this belief and understanding. Interestingly, the term “apostle” does not come up again in the Letter of Reconciliation, and only once in the Letter of Defense at 2 Corinthians 12:12. But the character of his apostolic ministry is argued variously throughout both The Letter of Reconciliation and the Letter of Defense.

Timothy, known to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 16:1 Of.), is cited as cosender of the letter, and designated brother, a family metaphor, instituted probably before Paul, for a kindred spirit relationship in the community of faith in Christ. From the designation brother (rather than apostle), the inference is that Paul does not regard Timothy to have the same apostolic status as himself.

Receivers Designated 1:1b

The receivers of the letter lived in the environs of Corinth, the influential Greek capitol of Achaia, situated on the busy harbor of Cenchreae. The believers addressed in the salutation probably met in the houses of certain members of the group located in various parts of the city and the surrounding area. The houses had to be large enough to accommodate a significant number of people, perhaps as many as thirty in each house. The owners were doubtless the well-to-do members. Paul refers collectively to all the saints of the region as the church of God, singular. They are all saints, set apart from their old way of life by the grace of God.

This designation of the readers ties in with Paul’s concern in this letter for communion in the Spirit. The various groups have but one identity and one allegiance: they are a people called out of the old order of society to belong to God through Christ. Implicit in Paul’s designation is a call for the Corinthians’ singular loyalty to the God who rescued them from the peril of the world through the apostolic ministry of Paul. Paul will show that these two, God’s grace and Paul’s ministry, are correlatives. They go together.

A Pauline Greeting 1:2

Grace was a common word in the Greek-speaking culture in which Paul lived. The term meant good-will, favor, gracious act. A benefit or gift from a deity was also seen as a grace in that society. Paul employed the term in his salutations for the good gift of God revealed in the person and action of Christ. This is the grace he wishes for his readers.

Peace in Paul’s formula may have its roots in the Jewish greeting shalom. Both terms, grace and peace, speak of divine well-being made available from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul’s use of Father here for God, doubtless drawn from his Scriptures, and more so from his Jewish liturgy, is his distinctive way of naming God as the source of Christian life.

THE TEXT IN BIBLICAL CONTEXT

The content of the salutation of 2 Corinthians is essentially the same as that of 1 Corinthians, except for the personal name Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians and Timothy in 2 Corinthians. One suspects the reason for the close similarity between the two salutations: the issues are the same in both letters. Paul’s status as an apostle of Christ Jesus remains in question at the time of writing the Letter of Reconciliation, and the moral and spiritual condition of the Corinthians also persists. The principal factor for Paul in dealing with both issues is the will of God that makes all of the Corinthians saints and makes Paul an apostle. Together Paul and they live under the grace and peace of the same God who delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt and exile in Babylon, and Jesus from the grip of death.

The two-part wish in the greeting, coined by Paul, appears in every one of his letters at the opening and often at the close (cf. E. Martin: 31-32). Later leaders of the church used the form more elaborately in their encyclical epistles to the churches.

THE TEXT IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

It is somewhat surprising that believers, especially those of Anabaptist persuasion, have not made more of Paul’s consistent peace-wish in his opening and closing greeting to his churches. Dirk Philips does cite 2 Corinthians 1:2 in his own greeting in the “Three Admonitions, No. 1.” He grounds his admonitions on Christian love and grace, but he does not draw out the significance of Paul’s deliberate formulation of grace and peace in his correspondence with his new communities.

Recently, however, in a book sponsored by the Institute of Mennonite Studies, Ulrich Mauser highlights well the significance of peace in Paul’s greetings:

The address of Paul’s letters…has the power of a blessing in which the apostle communicates a message whose origin is from God…. The letter, whatever it may contain, is ultimately brought about by a divine act of re-creation in which the enmity between God and human beings is overcome, and it imparts a blessing in which the restoration to a life of filial trust and obedience is initiated and nourished. (108)

Modern Christians living in a culture built on competition and in some respects enmity, need to remind themselves repeatedly why Paul incorporated the term peace (well-being, harmony, life) into his greeting. Could it be that Paul’s experience of the suffering-death of Jesus Christ brought the meaning of peace to life for him in a new way? Apostleship and sainthood, or any other titles of position and role in the church, mean little apart from grace and peace from God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving: The Afflicted Consoled

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

PREVIEW

The thanksgiving section, which generally follows the salutation in first-century letters, launches the theme of 2 Corinthians 1-9. The thanksgiving extends to verse 7. Verse 8 then bridges the thought of the thanksgiving to Paul’s testimony to his ministry among the Corinthians. Some commentators believe the thanksgiving includes verses 8-11, since prayers and thanksgiving are mentioned in 11 (Barrett, 1973:56ff.; Furnish, 1984:108ff.; Hughes: 9-24). Verse 11, however, is not Paul’s thanksgiving for benefits but his hope that many others will have occasion to give thanks in the future. The language of 1:8-11 o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations and Cross-References
• Series Foreword
• Author’s Preface
• Introduction to 2 Corinthians
• Letter of Reconciliation
• Letter of Defense
• Outline of 2 Corinthians
• Essays
• Map of the New Testament World
• Bibliography
• Selected Resources
• Index of Ancient Sources
• The Author