these words to admit that he had been commending himself before: he
means that he has been accused already of doing so, and that there are
those at Corinth who, when they hear such passages of this letter as
that which has just preceded, will be ready to repeat the accusation. In
the First Epistle he had found it necessary to vindicate his apostolic
authority, and especially his interest in the Corinthian Church as its
spiritual father (1 Cor. ix. 1-27, iv. 6-21), and obviously his enemies
at Corinth had tried to turn these personal passages against him. They
did so on the principle _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_. "He is commending
himself," they said, "and self-commendation is an argument which
discredits, instead of supporting, a cause." The Apostle had heard of
these malicious speeches, and in this Epistle makes repeated reference
to them (see chaps, v. 12, x. 18, xiii. 6). He entirely agreed with his
opponents that self-praise was no honour. "Not he who commendeth
himself is approved, but he whom the Lord commendeth." But he denied
point-blank that he was commending himself. In distinguishing as he had
done in chap. ii. 14-17 between himself and his colleagues, who spoke
the Word "as of sincerity, as of God, in the sight of God," and "the
many" who corrupted it, nothing was further from his mind than to plead
his cause, as a suspected person, with the Corinthians. Only malignity
could suppose any such thing, and the indignant question with which the
chapter opens tacitly accuses his adversaries of this hateful vice. It
is pitiful to see a great and generous spirit like Paul compelled thus
to stand upon guard, and watch against the possible misconstruction of
every lightest word. What needless pain it inflicts upon him, what
needless humiliation! How it checks all effusion of feeling, and robs
what should be brotherly intercourse of everything that can make it free
and glad! Further on in the Epistle there will be abundant opportunity
of speaking on this subject at greater length; but it is proper to
remark here that a minister's character is the whole capital he has for
carrying on his business, and that nothing can be more cruel and wicked
than to cast suspicion on it without cause. In most other callings a man
may go on, no matter what his character, provided his balance at the
bank is on the right side; but an evangelist or a pastor who has lost
his character has lost everything. It is humiliating to be subject to
suspicion, painful to be silent under it, degrading to speak. At a later
stage Paul was compelled to go further than he goes here; but let the
indignant emotion of this abrupt question remind us that candour is to
be met with candour, and that the suspicious temper which would fain
malign the good eats like a canker the very heart of those who cherish
it.
From the serious tone the Apostle passes suddenly to the ironical. "Or
need we, as do some, epistles of commendation to you or from you?" The
"some" of this verse are probably the same as "the many" of chap. ii.
17. Persons had come to Corinth in the character of Christian
teachers, bringing with them recommendatory letters which secured
their standing when they arrived. An example of what is meant can be
seen in Acts xvii. 27. There we are told that when Apollos, who had
been working in Ephesus, was minded to pass over into Achaia, the
Ephesian brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the disciples to
receive him--that is, they gave him an epistle of commendation, which
secured him recognition and welcome in Corinth. A similar case is
found in Rom. xvi. 1, where the Apostle uses the very word which we
have here: "I commend unto you Phœbe our sister, who is a servant of
the Church that is at Cenchreæ: that ye receive her in the Lord,
worthily of the saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever matter
she may have need of you: for she herself also hath been a succourer
of many, and of mine own self." This was Phœbe's introduction, or
epistle of commendation, to the Church of Rome. The Corinthians were
evidently in the habit both of receiving such letters from other
Churches, and of granting them on their own account; and Paul asks
them ironically if they think he ought to bring one, or when he leaves
them to apply for one. Is _that_ the relation which ought to obtain
between him and them? The "some," to whom he refers, had no doubt come
from Jerusalem: it is they who are referred to in chap. xi. 22 ff. But
it does not follow that their recommendatory letters had been signed
by Peter, James, and John; and just as little that those letters
justified them in their hostility to Paul. No doubt there were
many--many myriads, the Book of Acts says--at Jerusalem, whose
conception of the Gospel was very different from his, and who were
glad to counteract him whenever they could; but there were many also,
including the three who seemed to be pillars, who had a thoroughly
good understanding with him, and who had no responsibility for the
"some" and their doings. The epistles which the "some" brought were
plainly such as the Corinthians themselves could grant, and it is a
complete misinterpretation to suppose that they were a commission
granted by the Twelve for the persecution of Paul.
The giving of recommendatory letters is a subject of considerable
practical interest. When they are merely formal, as in our
certificates of Church membership, they come to mean very little. It
is an unhappy state of affairs perhaps, but no one would take a
certificate of Church membership by itself as a satisfactory
recommendation. And when we go past the merely formal, difficult
questions arise. Many people have an estimate of their own character
and competence, in which it is impossible for others to share, and yet
they apply without misgiving to their friends, and especially to their
minister or their employer, to grant them "epistles of commendation."
We are bound to be generous in these things, but we are bound also to
be honest. The rule which ought to guide us, especially in all that
belongs to the Church and its work, is the interest of the cause, and
not of the worker. To flatter is to do a wrong, not only to the person
flattered, but to the cause in which you are trying to employ him.
There is no more ludicrous reading in the world than a bundle of
certificates, or testimonials, as they are called. As a rule, they
certify nothing but the total absence of judgment and conscience in
the people who have granted them. If you do not know whether a person
is qualified for any given situation or not, you do not need to say
anything about it. If you know he is not, and he asks you to say that
he is, no personal consideration must keep you from kindly but firmly
declining. I am not preaching suspicion, or reserve, or anything
ungenerous, but justice and truth. It is wicked to betray a great
interest by bespeaking it for incompetent hands; it is cruel to put
any one into a place for which he is unfit. Where you are confident
that the man and the work will be well matched, be as generous as you
please; but never forget that the work is to be considered in the
first place, and the man only in the second.
Paul has been serious, and ironical, in the first verse; in ver. 2 he
becomes serious again, and remains so. "_You_," he says, answering his
ironical question, "_you_ are our epistle." Epistle, of course, is to
be taken in the sense of the preceding verse. "_You_ are the
commendatory letter which _I_ show, when I am asked for my
credentials." But to whom does he show it? In the first instance, to
the captious Corinthians themselves. The tone of chap. ix. in the
First Epistle is struck here again: "Wherever I may need
recommendations, it is certainly not at Corinth." "If I be not an
apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you: the seal of mine
apostleship are ye in the Lord." Had they been a Christian community
when he first visited them, they might have asked who he was; but they
owed their Christianity to him; he was their father in Christ; to put
him to the question in this superior, suspicious style was unnatural,
unfilial ingratitude. They themselves were the living evidence of the
very thing which they threw doubt upon--the apostleship of Paul.
This bold utterance may well excite misgivings in those who preach
constantly, yet see no result of their work. It is common to disparage
success, the success of visible acknowledged conversions, of bad men
openly renouncing badness, bearing witness against themselves, and
embracing a new life. It is common to glorify the ministry which works
on, patient and uncomplaining, in one monotonous round, ever sowing, but
never reaping, ever casting the net, but never drawing in the fish, ever
marking time, but never advancing. Paul frankly and repeatedly appeals
to his success in evangelistic work as the final and sufficient proof
that God had called him, and had given him authority as an apostle; and
search as we will, we shall not find any test so good and unequivocal as
this success. Paul had seen the Lord; he was qualified to be a witness
of the Resurrection; but these, at the very most, were his own affair,
till the witness he bore had proved its power in the hearts and
consciences of others. How to provide, to train, and to test the men who
are to be the ministers of the Christian Church is a matter of the very
utmost consequence, to which sufficient attention has not yet been
given. Congregations which choose their own pastor are often compelled
to take a man quite untried, and to judge him more or less on
superficial grounds. They can easily find out whether he is a competent
scholar; they can see for themselves what are his gifts of speech, his
virtues or defects of manner; they can get such an impression as
sensible people always get, by seeing and hearing a man, of the general
earnestness or lack of earnestness in his character. But often they feel
that more is wanted. It is not exactly more in the way of character; the
members of a Church have no right to expect that their minister will be
a truer Christian than they themselves are. A special inquisition into
his conversion, or his religious experience, is mere hypocrisy; if the
Church is not sufficiently in earnest to guard herself against insincere
members, she must take the risk of insincere ministers. What is wanted
is what the Apostle indicates here--that intimation of God's concurrence
which is given through success in evangelistic work. No other intimation
of God's concurrence is infallible--no call by a congregation, no
ordination by a presbytery or by a bishop. Theological education is
easily provided, and easily tested; but it will not be so easy to
introduce the reforms which are needed in this direction. Great masses
of Christian people, however, are becoming alive to the necessity for
them; and when the pressure is more strongly felt, the way for action
will be discovered. Only those who can appeal to what they have done in
the Gospel can be known to have the qualifications of Gospel ministers;
and in due time the fact will be frankly recognised.
The conversion and new life of the Corinthians were Paul's certificate
as an apostle. They were a certificate known, he says, and read by all
men. Often there is a certain awkwardness in the presenting of
credentials. It embarrasses a man when he has to put his hand into his
breast pocket, and take out his character, and submit it for
inspection. Paul was saved this embarrassment. There was a fine
unsought publicity about his testimonials. Everybody knew what the
Corinthians had been, everybody knew what they were; and the man to
whom the change was due needed no other recommendation to a Christian
society. Whoever looked at them saw plainly that they were an epistle
of Christ; the mind of Christ could be read upon them, and it had been
written by the intervention of Paul's hand. This is an interesting
though a well-worn conception of the Christian character. Every life
has a meaning, we say; every face is a record; but the text goes
further. The life of the Christian is an epistle; it has not only a
meaning, but an address; it is a message from Christ to the world. Is
Christ's message to men legible on our lives? When those who are
without look at us, do they see the hand of Christ quite unmistakably?
Does it ever occur to anybody that there is something in our life
which is not of the world, but which is a message to the world from
Christ? Did you ever, startled by the unusual brightness of a true
Christian's life, ask as it were involuntarily, "Whose image and
superscription is this?" and feel as you asked it that these features,
these characters, could only have been traced by one hand, and that
they proclaimed to all the grace and power of Jesus Christ? Christ
wishes so to write upon us that men may see what He does for man. He
wishes to engrave His image on our nature, that all spectators may
feel that it has a message for them, and may crave the same favour. A
congregation which is not in its very existence and in all its works
and ways a legible epistle, an unmistakable message from Christ to
man, does not answer to this New Testament ideal.
Paul claims no part here but that of Christ's instrument. The Lord, so
to speak, dictated the letter, and he wrote it. The contents of it
were prescribed by Christ, and through the Apostle's ministry became
visible and legible in the Corinthians. More important is it to notice
with what the writing was done: "not with ink," says St. Paul, "but
with the Spirit of the living God." At first sight this contrast seems
formal and fantastic; nobody, we think, could ever dream of making
either of these things do the work of the other, so that it seems
perfectly gratuitous in Paul to say, "not with ink, but with the
Spirit." Yet ink is sometimes made to bear a great deal of
responsibility. The characters of the τινὲς ("some") in ver. i, were
only written in ink; they had nothing, Paul implies, to recommend them
but these documents in black and white. That was hardly sufficient to
guarantee their authority, or their competence as ministers in the
Christian dispensation. But do not Churches yet accept their ministers
with the same inadequate testimonials? A distinguished career at the
University, or in the Divinity Schools, proves that a man can write
with ink, under favourable circumstances; it does not prove more than
that; it does not prove that he will be spiritually effective, and
everything else is irrelevant. I do not say this to disparage the
professional training of ministers; on the contrary, the standard of
training ought to be higher than it is in all the Churches: I only
wish to insist that nothing which can be represented in ink, no
learning, no literary gifts, no critical acquaintance with the
Scriptures even, can write upon human nature the Epistle of Christ. To
do that needs "the Spirit of the living God." We feel, the moment we
come upon those words, that the Apostle is anticipating; he has in
view already the contrast he is going to develop between the old
dispensation and the new, and the irresistible inward power by which
the new is characterised. Others might boast of qualifications to
preach which could be certified in due documentary form, but he
carried in him wherever he went a power which was its own witness, and
which overruled and dispensed with every other. Let all of us who
teach or preach concentrate our interest here. It is in "the Spirit of
the living God," not in any acquirements of our own, still less in any
recommendations of others, that our serviceableness as ministers of
Christ lies. We cannot write His epistle without it. We cannot see,
let us be as diligent and indefatigable in our work as we please, the
image of Christ gradually come out in those to whom we minister.
Parents, teachers, preachers, this is the one thing needful for us
all. "Tarry," said Jesus to the first evangelists, "tarry in the city
of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high"; it is of no
use to begin without that.
This idea of the "epistle" has taken such a hold of the Apostle's
mind, and he finds it so suggestive whichever way he turns it, that he
really tries to say too much about it in one sentence. The crowding of
his ideas is confusing. One learned critic enumerates three points in
which the figure becomes inconsistent with itself, and another can
only defend the Apostle by saying that this figurative letter might
well have qualities which would be self-contradictory in a real one.
This kind of criticism smells a little of ink, and the only real
difficulty in the sentence has never misled any one who read it with
sympathy. It is this--that St. Paul speaks of the letter as written in
two different places. "Ye are our epistle," he says at the beginning,
"written _in our hearts_"; but at the end he says, "written not on
tables of stone, but on tables that are hearts of flesh"--meaning
evidently _on the hearts of the Corinthians_. Of course this last is
the sense which coheres with the figure. Paul's ministry wrote the
Epistle of Christ upon the Corinthians, or, if we prefer it, wrought
such a change in their hearts that they became an epistle of Christ,
an epistle to which he appealed in proof of his apostolic calling. In
expressing himself as he does about this, he is again anticipating the
coming contrast of Law and Gospel. Nobody would think of writing a
_letter_ on tables of stone, and he only says "not on stone tables"
because he has in his mind the difference between the Mosaic and the
Christian dispensation. It is quite out of place to refer to Ezek. xi.
19, xxxvi. 26, and to drag in the contrast between hard and tender
hearts. What Paul means is that the Epistle of Christ is not written
on dead matter, but on human nature, and that too at its finest and
deepest. When we remember the sense of depth and inwardness which
attaches to the heart in Scripture, it is not forcing the words to
find in them the suggestion that the Gospel works no merely outward
change. It is not written on the surface, but in the soul. The Spirit
of the living God finds access for itself to the secret places of the
human spirit; the most hidden recesses of our nature are open to it,
and the very heart is made new. To be able to write _there_ for
Christ, to point not to anything dead, but to living men and women,
not to anything superficial, but to a change that has reached the very
core of man's being, and works its way out from thence, is the
testimonial which guarantees the evangelist; it is the divine
attestation that he is in the true apostolical succession.[23]
What, then, does Paul mean by the other clause, "ye are our epistle,
written on _our_ hearts?" I do not think we can get much more than an
emotional certainty about this expression. When a man has been an
intensely interested spectator, still more an intensely interested
actor, in any great affair, he might say afterwards that the whole
thing and all its circumstances were engraved upon his heart. I
imagine that is what St. Paul means here. The conversion of the
Corinthians made them an epistle of Christ; in making them believers
through St. Paul's ministry, Christ wrote on _their_ hearts what was
really an epistle to the world; and the whole transaction, in which
Paul's feelings had been deeply engaged, stood written on _his_ heart
for ever. Interpretations that go beyond this do not seem to me to be
justified by the words. Thus Heinrici and Meyer say, "We have in our
own consciousness the certainty of being recommended to you by
yourselves and to others by you"; and they elucidate this by saying,
"The Apostle's _own good consciousness_ was, as it were, _the tablet_
on which this living epistle of the Corinthians stood, and _that_ had
to be left unassailed even by the most malevolent." A sense so
pragmatical and pedantic, even if one can grasp it at all, is surely
out of place, and many readers will fail to discover it in the text.
What the words do convey is the warm love of the Apostle, who had
exercised his ministry among the Corinthians with all the passion of
his nature, and who still bore on his ardent heart the fresh
impression of his work and its results.
Amid all these details let us take care not to lose the one great
lesson of the passage. Christian people owe a testimony to Christ. His
name has been pronounced over them, and all who look at them ought to
see His nature. We should discern in the heart and in the behaviour of
Christians the handwriting, let us say the characters, not of avarice,
of suspicion, of envy, of lust, of falsehood, of pride, but of Christ.
It is to us He has committed Himself; we are the certification to men
of what He does for man; His character is in our care. The true
epistles of Christ to the world are not those which are expounded in
pulpits; they are not even the gospels in which Christ Himself lives
and moves before us; they are living men and women, on the tables of
whose hearts the Spirit of the living God, ministered by a true
evangelist, has engraved the likeness of Christ Himself. It is not the
written Word on which Christianity ultimately depends; it is not the
sacraments, nor so-called necessary institutions: it is this inward,
spiritual, Divine writing which is the guarantee of all else.
FOOTNOTE:
[23] The true reading of the last words in ver. 3 is doubtful. The
Received Text has ἐν πλαξὶ καρδίας σαρκίναις. This is as old as
Irenæus and Origen, and is found in many versions. Almost all MSS.
give the reading which is translated in the Revised Version: ἐν πλαξὶ
καρδίαις σαρκίναις(א, A, B, C, D, etc.); and this is adopted by most
of the purely critical editors. Some, however, and many exegetes,
suspect a primitive error, affecting all MSS. and versions. Schmiedel
would omit καρδίαις or καρδίας, as a marginal note, suggested by Prov.
vii. 3, Jer. xvii. 1; Westcott and Hort, on the other hand, think that
πλαξὶ may be a primitive interpolation. No certainty is possible; but
considering Old Testament usage, one would expect Paul to write ἐν
πλαξὶ καρδίας almost unconsciously.
IX
_THE TWO COVENANTS_
"And such confidence have we through Christ to God-ward: not that
we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from
ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; who also made us
sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but
of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
But if the ministration of death, written, _and_ engraven on
stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not
look stedfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face;
which _glory_ was passing away: how shall not rather the
ministration of the spirit be with glory? For if the ministration
of condemnation is glory, much rather doth the ministration of
righteousness exceed in glory. For verily that which hath been
made glorious hath not been made glorious in this respect, by
reason of the glory that surpasseth. For if that which passeth
away _was_ with glory, much more that which remaineth _is_ in
glory."--2 COR. iii. 4-11 (R.V.).
The confidence referred to in the opening of this passage is that
which underlies the triumphant sentences at the end of the second
chapter. The tone of those sentences was open to misinterpretation,
and Paul guards himself against this on two sides. To begin with, his
motive in so expressing himself was quite pure: he had no thought of
commending himself to the Corinthians. And, again, the ground of his
confidence was not in himself. The courage which he had to speak as he
did he had through Jesus Christ, and that, too, in relation to God. It
was virtually confidence in God, and therefore inspired by God.