the last verse: "Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh
and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." That is the ideal
of the Christian life. There is something to be overcome and put away;
there is something to be wrought out and completed; there is a
spiritual element or atmosphere--the fear of God--in which alone these
tasks can be accomplished. The fear of God is an Old Testament name
for true religion, and even under the New Testament it holds its
place. The Seraphim still veil their faces while they cry "Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord of Hosts," and still we must feel that great awe
descend upon our hearts if we would be partakers of His holiness. It
is this which withers up sin to the root, and enables us to cleanse
ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit. St. Paul includes
himself in his exhortation here: it is one duty, one ideal, which is
set before all. The prompt decisive side of it is represented in
καθαρίσωμεν ("let us cleanse": observe the aorist); its patient
laborious side in ἐπιτελοῦντες ἁγιωσύνην ("carrying holiness to
completion)." Almost everybody in a Christian Church makes a beginning
with this task: we cleanse ourselves from obvious and superficial
defilements; but how few carry the work on into the spirit, how few
carry it on ceaselessly towards perfection. As year after year rolls
by, as the various experiences of his come to us with their lessons
and their discipline from God, as we see the lives of others, here
sinking ever deeper and deeper into the corruptions of the world,
there rising daily nearer and nearer to the perfect holiness which is
their goal, does not this demand assert its power over us? Is it not a
great thing, a worthy thing, that we should set ourselves to purge
away from our whole nature, outward and inward, whatever cannot abide
the holy eye of God; and that we should regard Christian holiness, not
as a subject for casual thoughts once a week, but as the task to be
taken up anew, with unwearying diligence, every day we live? Let us be
in earnest with this, for surely God is in earnest.
(2) Observe now the assumption on which the demand not to be unequally
yoked with unbelievers is based. It is that there are _two_ ethical or
spiritual interests in the world, and that these are fundamentally
inconsistent with each other. This implies that in choosing the one,
the other has to be rejected. But it implies more: it implies that at
bottom there are only two kinds of people in the world--those who
identify themselves with the one of these interests, and those who
identify themselves with the other.
Now, as long as this is kept in an abstract form people do not quarrel
with it. They have no objection to admit that good and evil are the only
spiritual forces in the world, and that they are mutually exclusive. But
many will not admit that there are only two kinds of persons in the
world, answering to these two forces. They would rather say there is
only _one_ kind of persons, in whom these forces are with infinite
varieties and modifications combined. This seems more tolerant, more
humane, more capable of explaining the amazing mixtures and
inconsistencies we see in human lives. But it is not more true. It is a
more penetrating insight which judges that every man--despite his range
of neutrality--would in the last resort choose his side; would, in
short, in a crisis of the proper kind, prove finally that he was not
good _and_ bad, but good _or_ bad. We cannot pretend to judge others,
but sometimes men judge themselves, and always God can judge. And there
is an instinct in those who are perfecting holiness in the fear of God
which tells them, without in the least making them Pharisaical, not only
what things, but what persons--not only what ideas and practices, but
what individual characters--are not to be made friends of. It is no
pride, or scorn, or censoriousness, which speaks thus, but the voice of
all Christian experience. It is recognised at once where the young are
concerned: people are careful of the friends their children make, and a
schoolmaster will dismiss inexorably, not only a bad habit, but a bad
boy, from the school. It ought to be recognised just as easily in
maturity as in childhood: there are men and women, as well as boys and
girls, who distinctly represent evil, and whose society is to be
declined. To protest against them, to repel them, to resent their life
and conduct as morally offensive, is a Christian duty; it is the first
step towards evangelising them.
It is worth noticing in the passage before us how the Apostle, starting
from abstract ideas, descends, as he becomes more urgent, into personal
relations. What fellowship have righteousness and lawlessness? None.
What communion has light with darkness? None. What concord has Christ
with Belial? Here the persons come in who are the heads, or
representatives, of the opposing moral interests, and it is only now
that we feel the completeness of the antagonism. The interest of
holiness is gathered up in Christ; the interest of evil in the great
adversary; and they have nothing in common. And so with the believer and
the unbeliever. Of course there is ground on which they can meet: the
same sun shines on them, the same soil supports them, they breathe the
same air. But in all that is indicated by those two names--believer and
unbeliever--they stand quite apart; and the distinction thus indicated
reaches deeper than any bond of union. It is not denied that the
unbeliever may have much that is admirable about him; but for the
believer the one supremely important thing in the world is that which
the unbeliever denies, and therefore the more he is in earnest the less
can he afford the unbeliever's friendship. We need all the help we can
get to fight the good fight of faith, and to perfect holiness in the
fear of God; and a friend whose silence numbs faith, or whose words
trouble it, is a friend no earnest Christian dare keep. Words like these
would not seem so hard if the common faith of Christians were felt to
be a real bond of union among them, and if the recoil from the
unbelieving world were seen to be the action of the whole Christian
society, the instinct of self-preservation in the new Christian life.
But, at whatever risk of seeming harsh, it must be repeated that there
has never been a state of affairs in the world in which the commandment
had no meaning, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate"; nor an
obedience to this commandment which did not involve separation from
persons as well as from principles.
(3) But what bulks most largely in the passage is the series of divine
promises which are to inspire and sustain obedience. The separations
which an earnest Christian life requires are not without their
compensation; to leave the world is to be welcomed by God. It is
probable that the pernicious association which the writer had
immediately in view was association with the heathen in their worship,
or at least in their sacrificial feasts. At all events it is the
inconsistency of this with the worship of the true God that forms the
climax of his expostulation--What agreement hath a temple of God with
idols? and it is to this, again, that the encouraging promises are
attached. "_We_," says the Apostle, "are a temple of the living God."
This carries with it all that he has claimed: for a temple means a house
in which God dwells, and God can only dwell in a holy place. Pagans and
Jews alike recognised the sanctity of their temples: nothing was guarded
more jealously; nothing, if violated, was more promptly and terribly
avenged. Paul had seen the day when he gave his vote to shed the blood
of a man who had spoken disrespectfully of the Temple at Jerusalem, and
the day was coming when he himself was to run the risk of his life on
the mere suspicion that he had taken a pagan into the holy place. He
expects Christians to be as much in earnest as Jews to keep the sanctity
of God's house inviolate; and now, he says, that house are we: it is
ourselves we have to keep unspotted from the world.
We are God's temple in accordance with the central promise of the old
covenant: as God said, "I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I
will be their God, and they shall be My people." The original of this
is Lev. xxvi. 11, 12. The Apostle, as has been observed already, takes
the Old Testament words in a New Testament sense: as they stand here
in Second Corinthians they mean something much more intimate and
profound than in their old place in Leviticus. But even there, he
tells us, they are a promise to us. What God speaks, He speaks to His
people, and speaks once for all. And if the divine presence in the
camp of Israel--a presence represented by the Ark and its tent--was to
consecrate that nation to Jehovah, and inspire them with zeal to keep
the camp clean, that nothing might offend the eyes of His glory, how
much more ought those whom God has visited in His Son, those in whom
He dwells through His Spirit, to cleanse themselves from every
defilement, and make their souls fit for His habitation? After
repeating the charge to come out and be separate, the writer heaps up
new promises, in which the letter and the spirit of various Old
Testament passages are freely combined.[60] The principal one seems to
be 2 Sam. vii., which contains the promises originally made to
Solomon. At ver. 14 of that chapter we have the idea of the paternal
and filial relation, and at ver. 8 the speaker is described in the
LXX., as here, as the Lord Almighty. But passages like Jer. xxxi. 1,
9, also doubtless floated through the writer's mind, and it is the
substance, not the form, which is the main thing. The very freedom
with which they are reproduced shows us how thoroughly the writer is
at home, and how confident he is that he is making the right and
natural application of these ancient promises.
Separate yourselves, for you are God's temple: separate yourselves,
and you will be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, and He will
be your Father. _Hæc una ratio instar mille esse debet._ The
friendship of the world, as James reminds us, is enmity with God; it
is the consoling side of the same truth that separation from the world
means friendship with God. It does not mean solitude, but a more
blessed society; not renunciation of love, but admission to the only
love which satisfies the soul, because that for which the soul was
made. The Puritanism of the New Testament is no harsh, repellent
thing, which eradicates the affections, and makes life bleak and
barren; it is the condition under which the heart is opened to the
love of God, and filled with all comfort and joy in obedience. With
Him on our side--with the promise of His indwelling Spirit to sanctify
us, of His fatherly kindness to enrich and protect us--shall we not
obey the exhortation to come out and be separate, to cleanse ourselves
from all that defiles, to perfect holiness in His fear?
FOOTNOTES:
[59] An ingenious defence of the place of these verses has been made
by Godet in his Introduction to St. Paul's Epistles. At chap. vi. 10
the Apostle suddenly stops, amazed, as it were, at himself and at what
the Spirit has just dictated to him. His heart swells, and he longs to
embrace the thankless Church to which he writes. What _can_ be the
cause of its ingratitude? It is this. He has inexorably exacted from
them a sacrifice claimed by their Christian profession--abstinence
from banquets, etc., in idol temples (1 Cor. x.). But he has had no
choice; the promises God makes to His sons and daughters are made on
condition of such separation. Hence the entreaty in vii. 2 f., "Make
room for me in your hearts: I have not deserved ill of any one by what
I have done."--_Introduction_, p. 381.
[60] So freely that Ewald thinks the words from κἀγὼ εἰσδέξομαι onward
are a quotation from some unknown source: as, _e.g._, Eph. v. 14.
XIX
_REPENTANCE UNTO LIFE_
"Open your hearts to us: we wronged no man, we corrupted no man, we
took advantage of no man. I say it not to condemn _you_: for I have
said before, that ye are in our hearts to die together and live
together. Great is my boldness of speech toward you, great is my
glorying on your behalf: I am filled with comfort, I overflow with
joy in an our affliction.
"For even when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no relief,
but _we were_ afflicted on every side; without _were_ fightings,
within _were_ fears. Nevertheless He that comforteth the lowly,
_even_ God, comforted us by the coming of Titus; and not by his
coming only, but also by the comfort wherewith he was comforted in
you, while he told us your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me;
so that I rejoiced yet more. For though I made you sorry with my
epistle, I do not regret it, though I did regret; for I see that
that epistle made you sorry, though but for a season. Now I rejoice,
not that ye were made sorry, but that ye were made sorry unto
repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly sort, that ye might
suffer loss by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance
unto salvation, _a repentance_ which bringeth no regret: but the
sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold, this selfsame thing,
that ye were made sorry after a godly sort, what earnest care it
wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what
indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what longing, yea, what zeal, yea,
what avenging! In everything ye approved yourselves to be pure in
the matter. So although I wrote unto you, _I wrote_ not for his
cause that did the wrong, nor for his cause that suffered the wrong,
but that your earnest care for us might be made manifest unto you in
the sight of God. Therefore we have been comforted: and in our
comfort we joyed the more exceedingly for the joy of Titus, because
his spirit hath been refreshed by you all. For if in anything I have
gloried to him on your behalf, I was not put to shame; but as we
spake all things to you in truth, so our glorying also, which I made
before Titus, was found to be truth. And his inward affection is
more abundantly toward you, whilst he remembereth the obedience of
you all, how with fear and trembling ye received him. I rejoice that
in everything I am of good courage concerning you."--2 COR. vii.
2-16 (R.V.).
In this fine passage St. Paul completes, as far as it lay upon his
side to do so, his reconciliation with the Corinthians. It concludes
the first great division of his Second Epistle, and henceforth we hear
no more of the sinner censured so severely in the First (chap.
v.),[61] or of the troubles which arose in the Church over the
disciplinary treatment of his sin. The end of a quarrel between
friends is like the passing away of a storm; the elements are meant to
be at peace with each other, and nature never looks so lovely as in
the clear shining after rain. The effusion of feeling in this passage,
so affectionate and unreserved; the sense that the storm-clouds have
no more than left the sky, yet that fair weather has begun, make it
conspicuously beautiful even in the writings of St. Paul.
He begins by resuming the appeal interrupted at chap. vi. 13. He has
charged the Corinthians with being straitened in their own affections:
distrust and calumny have narrowed their souls, nay, shut them against
him altogether. "Receive us," he exclaims here--_i.e._, open your
hearts to us. "You have no cause to be reserved: we wronged no man,
ruined no man, took advantage of no man." Such charges had doubtless
been made against him. The point of the last is clear from chap. xii.
16-18: he had been accused of making money out of his apostolic work
among them. The other words are less precise, especially the one
rendered "corrupted" (ἐφθείραμεν), which should perhaps be rather
explained, as in 1 Cor. iii. 17, "destroyed." Paul has not wronged or
ruined any one in Corinth. Of course, his Gospel made serious demands
upon people: it insisted on readiness to make sacrifices, and on
actual sacrifice besides; it proceeded with extreme severity against
sinners like the incestuous man; it entailed obligations, as we shall
presently hear, to help the poor even of distant lands; and then, as
still, such claims might easily be resented as ruinous or unjust. St.
Paul simply denies the charge. He does not retort it; it is not his
object to condemn those whom he loves so utterly. He has told them
already that they are in his heart to die together and to live
together (vi. 11); and when this is so, there is no place for
recrimination or bandying of reproaches. He is full of confidence in
them;[62] he can freely make his boast of them. He has had affliction
enough, but over it all he has been filled with consolation; even as
he writes, his joy overflows (observe the present: ὑπερπερισσεύομαι).
That word--"ye are in our hearts to die together and to live
together"--is the key to all that follows. It has suffered much at the
hands of grammarians, for whom it has undeniable perplexities; but
vehement emotion may be permitted to be in some degree inarticulate, and
we can always feel, even if we cannot demonstrate, what it means. "Your
image in my heart accompanies me in death and life,"[63] is as nearly as
possible what the Apostle says; and if the order of the words is
unusual--for "life" would naturally stand first--that may be due to the
fact, so largely represented in chap. iv., that his life was a series of
deadly perils, and of ever-renewed deliverances from them, a daily dying
and a daily resurrection, through all the vicissitudes of which the
Corinthians never lost their place in his heart. More artificial
interpretations only obscure the intensity of that love which united the
Apostle to his converts. It is levelled here, unconsciously no doubt,
but all the more impressively, with the love which God in Christ Jesus
our Lord bears to His redeemed. "I am persuaded," St. Paul writes to the
Romans, "that neither death nor life can separate us from that." "You
may be assured," he writes here to the Corinthians, "that neither death
nor life can separate you from my love." The reference of death and life
is of course different, but the strength of conviction and of emotion is
the same in both cases. St. Paul's heart is pledged irrevocably and
irreversibly to the Church. In the deep feeling that he is theirs, he
has an assurance that they also are his. The love with which he loves
them is bound to prevail; nay, it has prevailed, and he can hardly find
words to express his joy. _En qualiter affectos esse omnes Pastores
conveniat_ (Calvin).
The next three verses carry us back to chap. ii. 12 ff., and resume
the story which was interrupted there at ver. 14. The sudden
thanksgiving of that passage--so eager and impetuous that it left the
writer no time to tell what he was thankful for--is explained here.
Titus, whom he had expected to see in Troas, arrived at length,
probably at Philippi, and brought with him the most cheering news.
Paul was sadly in need of it. His flesh had no rest: the use of the
perfect (ἔσχηκεν) almost conveys the feeling that he began to write
whenever he got the news, so that up to this moment the strain had
continued. The fights without were probably assaults upon himself, or
the Churches, of the nature of persecution; the fears within, his
anxieties about the state of morals, or of Gospel truth, in the
Christian communities. Outworn and depressed, burdened both in body
and mind (cf. the expressions in ii. 13 and vii. 5), he was suddenly
lifted on high by the arrival and the news of Titus. Here again, as in
ii. 14, he ascribes all to God. It was He whose very nature it is to
comfort the lowly who so graciously comforted him. Titus apparently
had gone himself with a sad and apprehensive heart to Corinth; he had
been away longer than he had anticipated, and in the interval St.
Paul's anxiety had risen to anguish; but in Corinth his reception had
been unexpectedly favourable, and when he returned he was able to
console his master with a consolation which had already gladdened his
own heart. Paul was not only comforted, his sorrow was turned into
joy, as he listened to Titus telling of the longing of the Corinthians
to see him, of their mourning over the pain they had given him by
their tolerance for such irregularities as that of the incestuous man
or the unknown insulter of the Apostle, and of their eagerness to
satisfy him and maintain his authority. The word "your" (ὑμῶν) in ver.
7 has a certain emphasis which suggests a contrast. Before Titus went
to Corinth, it was Paul who had been anxious to see _them_, who had
mourned over their immoral laxity, who had been passionately
interested in vindicating the character of the Church he had founded;
now it is _they_ who are full of longing to see _him_, of grief, and
of moral earnestness; and it is this which explains his joy. The
conflict between the powers of good in one great and passionate soul,
and the powers of evil in a lax and fickle community, has ended in
favour of the good; Paul's vehemence has prevailed against Corinthian
indifference, and made it vehement also in all good affections, and he
rejoices now in the joy of his Lord.
Then comes the most delicate part of this reconciliation (vv. 8-12).
It is a good rule in making up disputes to let bygones be bygones, as
far as possible; there may be a little spark hidden here and there
under what seem dead ashes, and there is no gain in raking up the
ashes, and giving the spark a chance to blaze again. But this is a
good rule only because we are bad men, and because reconciliation is
seldom allowed to have its perfect work. We feel, and say, after we
have quarrelled with a person and been reconciled, that it can never
be the same again. But this ought not to be so; and if we were perfect
in love, or ardent in love at all, it would not be so. If we were in
one another's hearts, to die together and to live together, we should
retrace the past together in the very act of being reconciled; and all
its misunderstandings and bitterness and badness, instead of lying
hidden in us as matter of recrimination for some other day when we are
tempted, would add to the sincerity, the tenderness, and the
spirituality of our love. The Apostle sets us an example here, of the
rarest and most difficult virtue, when he goes back upon the story of
his relations with the Corinthians, and makes the bitter stock yield
sweet and wholesome fruit.[64]
The whole result is in his mind when he writes, "Although I made you
sorry with the letter, I do not regret it." The letter is, on the
simplest hypothesis, the First Epistle; and though no one would
willingly speak to his friends as Paul in some parts of that Epistle
speaks to the Corinthians, he cannot pretend that he wishes it
unwritten. "Although I did regret it," he goes on, "now I rejoice." He
regretted it, we must understand, before Titus came back from Corinth.
In that melancholy interval, all he saw was that the letter made them
sorry; it was bound to do so, even if it should only be temporarily;
but his heart smote him for making them sorry at all. It vexed him to
vex them. No doubt this is the plain truth he is telling them, and it
is hard to see why it should have been regarded as inconsistent with
his apostolic inspiration. He did not cease to have a living soul
because he was inspired; and if in his despondency it crossed his mind
to say, "That letter will only grieve them," he must have said in the
same instant, "I wish I had never written it." But both impulses were
momentary only; he has heard now the whole effect of his letter, and
rejoices that he wrote it. Not, of course, that they were made
sorry--no one could rejoice for that--but that they were made sorry to
repentance. "For ye were made sorry according to God, that in nothing
ye might suffer loss on our part. For sorrow according to God worketh
repentance unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret. But
the sorrow of the world worketh death."