hardly be said to be quite certain, but the general meaning is plain.
God delivered him from the awful death which was impending over him;
he had his hope now firmly set on Him; he was sure that He would
deliver him in the future also.[5] What the danger had been, which had
made so powerful an impression on this hardy soul, we cannot now tell.
It must have been something which happened after the First Epistle was
written, and therefore was not the fighting with wild beasts at
Ephesus, whatever that may have been (1 Cor. xv. 32). It may have been
a serious bodily illness, which had brought him to death's door, and
left him so weak, that still, at every step, he felt it was God's
mercy that was holding him up. It may have been a plot to make away
with him on the part of the many adversaries mentioned in the First
Epistle (xvi. 9)--a plot which had failed, as it were, by a miracle,
but the malignity of which still dogged his steps, and was only
warded off by the constant presence of God. Both these suggestions
require, and would satisfy, the reading, "who delivered us from so
great a death, and _doth deliver_." If, however, we take the reading
of the R.V.--"who delivered us from so great a death, and _will
deliver_; on whom we have set our hope that He will also still deliver
us"--the existence of the danger, at the moment at which Paul writes,
is not necessarily involved; and the danger itself may have been more
of what we might call an accidental character. The imminent peril of
drowning referred to in chap. xi. 25 would meet the case; and the
confidence expressed by Paul with such emphatic reference to the
future will not seem without motive when we consider that he had
several sea voyages in prospect--as those from Corinth to Syria, from
Syria to Rome, and probably from Rome to Spain. So Hofmann interprets
the whole passage: but whether the interpretation be good or bad, it
is elsewhere than in its accidental circumstances that the interest of
the transaction lies for the writer and for us. To Paul it was not
merely a historical but a spiritual experience; not an incident
without meaning, but a divinely ordered discipline; and it is thus
that we must learn to read our own lives if the purpose of God is to
be wrought out in them.
Notice in this connexion, in the eleventh verse, how simply Paul
assumes the spiritual participation of the Corinthians in his
fortunes. It is God indeed who delivers him, but the deliverance is
wrought while they, as well as other Churches, co-operate in
supplication on his behalf. In the strained relations existing between
himself and the Corinthians, the assumption here made so graciously
probably did them more than justice; if there were unsympathetic souls
among them, they must have felt in it a delicate rebuke. What
follows--"that, for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many,
thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf" (R.V.)--simple and
intelligible as it looks in English, is one of the passages which
justify M. Sabatier's remark that Paul is difficult to understand and
impossible to translate. The Revisers seem to have construed τὸ ἐις
ἡμᾶς χάρισμα διὰ πολλῶν together, as if it had been τὸ διὰ π. ε. ἡ.
χάρισμα, the meaning being that the favour bestowed on Paul in his
deliverance from this peril had been bestowed at the intercession of
many. Others get virtually the same meaning by construing τὸ εἰς ἡμᾶς
χάρισμα with ἐκ πολλῶν προςώπων: the inversion is supposed to
emphasise these last words; and as it was, on this view, prayer on the
part of many persons that procured his deliverance, Paul is anxious
that the deliverance itself should be acknowledged by the thanksgiving
of many. It cannot be denied that both these renderings are
grammatically violent, and it seems to me preferable to keep τὸ ἐις
ἡμᾶς χάρισμα by itself, even though ἐκ πολλῶν προςώπων and διὰ πολλῶν
should then reduplicate the same idea with only a slight variation. We
should then render: "in order that, on the part of many persons, the
favour shown to us may be gratefully acknowledged by many on our
behalf." The pleonasm thus resulting strikes one rather as
characteristic of St. Paul's mood in such passages, than as a thing
open to objection.[6] But grammar apart, what really has to be
emphasised here is again the communion of the saints. All the
Churches pray for St. Paul--at least he takes it for granted that they
do; and when he is rescued from danger, his own thanksgiving is
multiplied a thousandfold by the thanksgivings of others on his
behalf. This is the ideal of an evangelist's life; in all its
incidents and emergencies, in all its perils and salvations, it ought
to float in an atmosphere of prayer. Every interposition of God on the
missionary's behalf is then recognised by him as a gift of grace
(χάρισμα)--not, be it understood, a private favour, but a blessing and
a power capacitating him for further service to the Church. Those who
have lived through his straits and his triumphs with him in their
prayers know how true that is.
At this point (ver. 12) the key in which Paul writes begins to change.
We are conscious of a slight discord the instant he speaks about the
testimony of his conscience. Yet the transition is as unforced as any
such transition can be. I may well take for granted, seems to be the
thought in his mind, that you pray for me; I may well ask you to unite
with me in thanks to God for my deliverance; for if there is one thing
I am sure of, and proud of, it is that I have been a loyal minister of
God in the world, and especially to you. Fleshly wisdom has not been
my guide. I have used no worldly policy; I have sought no selfish
ends. In a holiness and sincerity which God bestows, in an element of
crystal transparency, I have led my apostolic life. The world has
never convicted me of anything dark or underhand; and in all the world
none know better than you, among whom I lived longer than elsewhere,
working with my hands, and preaching the Gospel as freely as God
offers it, that I have walked in the light as He is in the light.
This general defence, which is not without its note of defiance,
becomes defined in ver. 13. Plainly charges of insincerity had been
made against Paul, particularly affecting his correspondence, and it
is to these he addresses himself. It is not easy to be outspoken and
conciliatory in the same sentence, to show your indignation to the man
who charges you with double-dealing, and at the same time take him to
your heart; and the Apostle's effort to do all these things at once
has proved embarrassing to himself, and more than embarrassing to his
interpreters. He begins, indeed, lucidly enough. "We write nothing
else to you than what you read." He does not mean that he had no
correspondence with members of the Church except in his public
epistles; but that in these public epistles his meaning was obvious
and on the surface. His style was not, as some had hinted, obscure,
tortuous, elaborately ambiguous, full of loop-holes; he wrote like a
plain man to plain men; he said what he meant, and meant what he said.
Then he qualifies this slightly. "We write nothing to you but what you
read--or in point of fact acknowledge," even apart from our writing.
This seems to me the simplest interpretation of the words ἢ καὶ
ἐπιγινώσκετε; and the simplest construction is then that of Hofmann,
who puts a colon at ἐπιγινώσκετε, and with ἐλπίζω δὲ begins what is
virtually a separate sentence. "And I hope that to the end ye will
acknowledge, as in fact you acknowledged us in part, that we are your
boast, as you also are ours, in the day of the Lord Jesus." Other
possibilities of punctuation and construction are so numerous that it
would be endless to exhibit them; and in the long-run they do not much
affect the sense. What the reader has to seize is that Paul has been
accused of insincerity, especially in his correspondence, and that he
indignantly denies the charge; that, in spite of such accusations, he
can point to at least a partial recognition among the Corinthians of
what he and his fellow-workers really are; and that he hopes their
confidence in him will increase and continue to the end. Should this
bright hope be gratified, then in the day of the Lord Jesus it will be
the boast of the Corinthians that they had the great Apostle Paul as
their spiritual father, and the boast of the Apostle that the
Corinthians were his spiritual children.
A passage like this--and there are many like it in St. Paul--has
something in it humiliating. Is it not a disgrace to human nature that
a man so open, so truthful, so brave, should be put to his defence on
a charge of underhand dealing? Ought not somebody to have been deeply
ashamed, for bringing this shame on the Apostle? Let us be very
careful how we lend motives, especially to men whom we know to be
better than ourselves. There is that in all our hearts which is
hostile to them, and would not be grieved to see them degraded a
little; and it is that, and nothing else, which supplies bad motives
for their good actions, and puts an ambiguous face on their simplest
behaviour. "Deceit," says Solomon, "is in the heart of them that
imagine evil"; it is our own selves that we condemn most surely when
we pass our bad sentence upon others.
The immediate result of imputing motives, and putting a sinister
interpretation on actions, is that mutual confidence is destroyed; and
mutual confidence is the very element and atmosphere in which any
spiritual good can be done. Unless a minister and his congregation
recognise each other as in the main what they profess to be, their
relation is destitute of spiritual reality; it may be an infinite
weariness, or an infinite torment; it can never be a comfort or a
delight on one side or the other. What would a family be, without the
mutual confidence of husband and wife, of parents and children? What
is a state worth, for any of the ideal ends for which a state exists,
if those who represent it to the world have no instinctive sympathy
with the general life, and if the collective conscience regards the
leaders from a distance with dislike or distrust? And what is the
pastoral relation worth, if, instead of mutual cordiality, openness,
readiness to believe and to hope the best, instead of mutual
intercession and thanksgiving, of mutual rejoicing in each other,
there is suspicion, reserve, insinuation, coldness, a grudging
recognition of what it is impossible to deny, a willingness to shake
the head and to make mischief? What an experience of life we see, what
a final appreciation of the best thing, in that utterance of St. John
in extreme age: "Beloved, let us love one another." All that is good
for us, all glory and joy, is summarily comprehended in that.
The last words of the text--"the day of the Lord Jesus"--recall a very
similar passage in 1 Thess. ii. 19: "What is our hope, or joy, or crown
of rejoicing--is it not even ye--before our Lord Jesus at His coming?"
In both cases our minds are lifted to that great presence in which St.
Paul habitually lived; and as we stand there our disagreements sink into
their true proportions; our judgments of each other are seen in their
true colours. No one will rejoice then that he has made evil out of
good, that he has cunningly perverted simple actions, that he has
discovered the infirmities of preachers, or set the saints at variance;
the joy will be for those who have loved and trusted each other, who
have borne each other's faults and laboured for their healing, who have
believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things, rather than
be parted from each other by any failure of love. The mutual confidence
of Christian ministers and Christian people will then, after all its
trials, have its exceeding great reward.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Notice the perfect ἐσχήκαμεν. We _had_ this experience, and in its
fruit--a newer and deeper faith in God--we _have_ it still. It is a
permanent possession in this happy form. The same idea is expressed in
the pft. ἠλπίκαμεν, ver. 10.
[5] The doubtful words here are καὶ ῥύεται in ver. 10 of the Received
Text, from D^C, E, F, G, K, etc. ("_and doth deliver_," in the
Authorised Version). They are not found in A, D, Syr., Chrys., while the
most authoritative MSS., א, B, C, P, have καὶ ῥύσεται ("and _will_
deliver," of the Revised Version). Most editors take the last reading,
as best attested; but on internal grounds two of the most recent and
acute interpreters, Schmiedel and Heinrici, prefer the Received Text.
The present tense ("_doth_ deliver") presupposes that the danger to
which Paul had been exposed in some form or in some sense continued. If
this were the case, of course it could not have been, as Hofmann
supposes, the shipwreck in which the Apostle spent a night and a day in
the deep. Otherwise this would be a plausible and tempting supposition.
[6] To render διὰ πολλῶν _prolixe_, copiously, is at least precarious;
and to take πρόσωπα as "faces" ("that from many faces upturned in
prayer to God"), though lexically admissible, seems on all other
grounds out of place.
III
_THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION_
"And in this confidence I was minded to come before unto you, that
ye might have a second benefit; and by you to pass into Macedonia,
and again from Macedonia to come unto you, and of you to be set
forward on my journey unto Judæa. When I therefore was thus minded,
did I show fickleness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose
according to the flesh, that with me there should be the yea yea and
the nay nay? But as God is faithful, our word toward you is not yea
and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among
you by us, _even_ by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not yea and
nay, but in Him is yea. For how many soever be the promises of God,
in Him is the yea: wherefore also through Him is the Amen, unto the
glory of God through us."--2 COR. i. 15-20 (R.V.).
The emphatic words in the first sentence are "in this confidence." All
the Apostle's plans for visiting Corinth, both in general and in their
details, depended upon the maintenance of a good understanding between
himself and the Church; and the very prominence here given to this
condition is a tacit accusation of those whose conduct had destroyed
his confidence. When he intimated his intention of visiting them,
according to the programme of vv. 15 and 16, he had felt sure of a
friendly welcome, and of the cordial recognition of his apostolic
authority; it was only when that assurance was taken away from him by
news of what was being said and done at Corinth, that he had changed
his plan. He had originally intended to go from Ephesus to Corinth,
then from Corinth north into Macedonia, then back to Corinth again,
and thence, with the assistance of the Corinthians, or their convoy
for part of the way, to Jerusalem. Had this purpose been carried out,
he would of course have been twice in Corinth, and it is to this that
most scholars refer the words "a second benefit,"[7] or rather
"grace." This reference, indeed, is not quite certain; and it cannot
be proved, though it is made more probable, by using πρότερον and
δευτέραν to interpret each other. It remains possible that when Paul
said, "I was minded to come before unto you, that ye might have a
second benefit," he was thinking of his original visit as the first,
and of this purposed one as the second, "grace." This reading of his
words has commended itself to scholars like Calvin, Bengel, and
Heinrici. Whichever of these interpretations be correct, the Apostle
had abandoned his purpose of going from Ephesus to Macedonia _viâ_
Corinth, and had intimated in the First Epistle (chap. xvi. 5) his
intention of reaching Corinth _viâ_ Macedonia. This change of purpose
is not sufficient to explain what follows. Unless there had been at
Corinth a great deal of bad feeling, it would have passed without
remark, as a thing which had no doubt good reasons, though the
Corinthians were ignorant of them; at the very most, it would have
called forth expressions of disappointment and regret. They would have
been sorry that the benefit (χάρις), the token of Divine favour which
was always bestowed when the Apostle came "in the fulness of the
blessing of Christ," and "longing to impart some spiritual gift," had
been delayed; but they would have acquiesced as in any other natural
disappointment. But this was not what took place. They used the
Apostle's change of purpose to assail his character. They charged him
with "lightness," with worthless levity. They called him a
weathercock, a Yes and No man, who said now one thing and now the
opposite, who said both at once and with equal emphasis, who had his
own interests in view in his fickleness, and whose word, to speak
plainly, could never be depended upon.
The responsibility for the change of plan has already, in the emphatic
ταύτῃ τῇ πεποιθήσει, been indirectly transferred to his accusers; but
the Apostle stoops to answer them quite straightforwardly. His answer is
indeed a challenge: "When I cherished that first wish to visit you,
_was_ I--dare you say I was--guilty of the levity with which you charge
me? Or--to enlarge the question, and, seeing that my whole character is
attacked, to bring my character as a whole into the discussion--the
things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me
there should be the yea yea and the nay nay?" Am I, he seems to say, in
my character and conduct, like a shifty, unprincipled politician--a man
who has no convictions, or no conscience about his convictions--a man
who is guided, not by any higher spirit dwelling in him, but solely by
considerations of selfish interest? Do I say things out of mere
compliment, not meaning them? When I make promises, or announce
intentions, is it always with the tacit reservation that they may be
cancelled if they turn out inconvenient? Do you suppose that I
_purposely_ represent myself (ἵνα ᾖ παρ' ἐμοί) as a man who affirms and
denies, makes promises and breaks them, has Yes yes and No no dwelling
side by side in his soul?[8] You know me far better than to suppose any
such thing. All my communications with you have been inconsistent with
such a view of my character. As God is faithful, our word to you is not
Yes and No. It is not incoherent, or equivocal, or self-contradictory.
It is entirely truthful and self-consistent.
In this eighteenth verse the Apostle's mind is reaching out already to
what he is going to make his real defence, and ὁ λόγος ἡμῶν ("our word")
therefore carries a double weight. It covers at once whatever he had
said to them about the proposed journey, and whatever he had said in his
evangelistic ministry at Corinth. It is this latter sense of it that is
continued in ver. 19: "For the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was
preached among you by us, by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not Yes
and No, but in him Yes has found place. For how many soever are the
promises of God, in Him is the Yes." Let us notice first the
argumentative force of this. Paul is engaged in vindicating his
character, and especially in maintaining his truthfulness and sincerity.
How does he do so here? His unspoken assumption is, that character is
determined by the main interest of life; that the work to which a man
gives his soul will react upon the soul, changing it into its own
likeness. As the dyer's hand is subdued to the element it works in, so
was the whole being of Paul--such is the argument--subdued to the
element in which he wrought, conformed to it, impregnated by it. And
what was that element? It was the Gospel concerning God's Son, Jesus
Christ. Was there any dubiety about what that was? any equivocal mixture
of Yes and No there? Far from it. Paul was so certain of what it was
that he repeatedly and solemnly anathematised man or angel who should
venture to qualify, let alone deny it. There is no mixture of Yes and No
in Christ. As the Apostle says elsewhere (Rom. xv. 8), Jesus Christ was
a minister of the circumcision "_in the interest of the truth of God,
with a view to the confirmation of the promises_." However many the
promises might be, in Him a mighty affirmation, a mighty fulfilment, was
given of every one. The ministry of the Gospel has this, then, as its
very subject, its constant preoccupation, its highest glory--the
absolute faithfulness of God. Who would venture to assert that Paul, or
that anybody,[9] could catch the trick of equivocation in such a
service? Who does not see that such a service must needs create true
men?
To this argument there is, for the natural man, a ready answer. It by
no means follows, he will say, that because the Gospel is devoid of
ambiguity or inconsistency, equivocation and insincerity must be
unknown to its preachers. A man may proclaim the true Gospel and in
his other dealings be far from a true man. Experience justifies this
reply; and yet it does not invalidate Paul's argument. That argument
is good for the case in which it is applied. It might be _repeated_ by
a hypocrite, but no hypocrite could ever have _invented_ it. It bears,
indeed, a striking because an unintentional testimony to the height at
which Paul habitually lived, and to his unqualified identification of
himself with his apostolic calling. If a man has ten interests in
life, more or less divergent, he may have as many inconsistencies in
his behaviour; but if he has said with St. Paul, "This one thing I
do," and if the one thing which absorbs his very soul is an unceasing
testimony to the truth and faithfulness of God, then it is utterly
incredible that he should be a false and faithless man. The work which
claims him for its own with this absolute authority will seal him with
its own greatness, its own simplicity and truth. He will not use
levity. The things which he purposes, he will not purpose according to
the flesh. He will not be guided by considerations perpetually
varying, except in the point of being all alike selfish. He will not
be a Yes and No man, whom nobody can trust.
The argumentative force of the passage being admitted, its doctrinal
import deserves attention. The Gospel--which is identified with God's
Son, Jesus Christ--is here described as a mighty affirmation. It is
not Yes and No, a message full of inconsistencies, or ambiguities, a
proclamation the sense of which no one can ever be sure he has
grasped. In it (ἐν αὐτῷ means "in Christ") the everlasting Yea has
found place. The perfect tense (γέγονεν) means that this grand
affirmation has come to us, and is with us, for good and all. What it
was and continued to be in Paul's time, it is to this day. It is in
this positive, definite, unmistakable character that the strength of
the Gospel lies. What a man cannot know, cannot seize, cannot tell, he
cannot preach. The refutation of popular errors, even in theology, is
not gospel; the criticism of traditional theories, even about
Scripture, is not gospel; the intellectual "economy," with which a
clever man in a dubious position uses language about the Bible or its
doctrines which to the simple means Yes, and to the subtle qualifies
the Yes enormously, is not gospel. There is no strength in any of
these things. Dealing in them does not make character simple, sincere,
massive, Christian. When they stamp themselves on the soul, the result
is not one to which we could make the appeal which Paul makes here. If
we have any gospel at all, it is because there are things which stand
for us above all doubts, truths so sure that we cannot question them,
so absolute that we cannot qualify them, so much our life that to
tamper with them is to touch our very heart. Nobody has any right to
preach who has not mighty affirmations to make concerning God's Son,
Jesus Christ--affirmations in which there is no ambiguity, and which
no questioning can reach.
In the Apostle's mind a particular turn is given to this thought by
its connexion with the Old Testament. In Christ, he says, the Yes has
been realised; for how many soever are the promises of God, in Him is
the Yes. The mode of expression is rather peculiar, but the meaning is
quite plain. Is there a single word of good, Paul asks, that God has
ever spoken concerning man? Then that word is reaffirmed, it is
confirmed, it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It is no longer a word,
but an actual gift to men, which they may take hold of and possess. Of
course when Paul says "how many soever are the promises," he is
thinking of the Old Testament. It was there the promises stood in
God's name; and hence he tells us in this passage that Christ is the
fulfilment of the Old Testament; in Him God has kept His word given to
the fathers. All that the holy men of old were bidden to hope for, as
the Spirit spoke through them in many parts and in many ways, is given
to the world at last: he who has God's Son, Jesus Christ, has all God
has promised, and all He can give.
There are two opposite ways of looking at the Old Testament with which
this apostolic teaching is inconsistent, and which, by anticipation,
it condemns.
There is the opinion of those who say that God's promises to His
people in the Old Testament have not been fulfilled, and never will
be. That is the opinion held by many among the modern Jews, who have
renounced all that was most characteristic in the religion of their
fathers, and attenuated it into the merest deistical film of a creed.
It is the opinion also of many who study the Bible as a piece of
literary antiquity, but get to no perception of the life which is in
it, or of the organic connexion between the Old Testament and the New.
What the Apostle says of his countrymen in his own time is true of
both these classes--when they read the Scriptures, there is a veil
upon their hearts. The Old Testament promises have been fulfilled,
every one of them. Let a man be taught what they mean, not as dead
letters in an ancient scroll, but as present words of the living God;
and then let him look to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and see whether
there is not in Him the mighty, the perpetual confirmation of them
all. We smile sometimes at what seems the whimsical way in which the
early Christians, who had not yet a New Testament, found Christ
everywhere in the Old; but though it may be possible to err in detail
in this pursuit, it is not possible to err on the whole. The Old
Testament is gathered up, every living word of it, in Him; we are
misunderstanding it if we take it otherwise.