explains, apparently, why he acts on the principle just stated. "I pray
this prayer for you," he seems to say, "and I am content to pass as a
reprobate, while you do that which is honourable; for I can do nothing
against the truth, but for the truth." What is the connexion of ideas
alluded to by this "for"? Some of the commentators give up the question
in despair; others only remind one of the French pastor who said to some
one who preached on Romans: "Saint Paul est déjà fort difficile et ...
vous veniez après." As far as one can make out, he seems to say: "I act
on this principle because it is the one which furthers the truth, and
therefore is obligatory upon me; I am not able to act on one which would
injure or prejudice the truth." The truth, in this interpretation, would
be synonymous, as it often is in the New Testament, with the Gospel.
Paul is incapable of acting in a way that would check the Gospel, and
its influence over men; he has no choice but to act in its interest; and
therefore he is content to let the Corinthians think what they please of
him, provided his prayer is answered, and they do no evil, but rather
that which is good before God. For this is what the Gospel requires.
"Content," indeed, is not a strong enough word. "We _rejoice_," he says
in ver. 9, "when we are weak, and you are strong: this we also pray for,
even your perfecting." "Perfecting" is perhaps as good a word as can be
got for κατάρτισις: it denotes the putting right of all that is
defective or amiss.
It is in favour of this interpretation of the eighth verse that the
reason seems at first out of proportion to the conclusion. With an
idealist like Paul it is always so. He appeals to the loftiest motives
to influence the lowliest actions,--to faith in the Incarnation, as a
motive to generosity--to faith in the Resurrection Life, as a motive
to patient continuance in well-doing--to faith in the heavenly
citizenship of believers, as a motive to separation from the
licentious. In the same way he appeals here to a universal moral rule
to explain his conduct in a particular case. His principle everywhere
is, not to act in prejudice of (κατά) the Gospel, but in furtherance
of it (ὑπέρ); he has strength available for this last purpose, but
none at all for the former. It is the rule on which every minister of
Christ should always act; and if the line of conduct which it pointed
out sometimes led men to disregard their own reputation, provided the
Gospel was having free course, the very strangeness of such a result
might turn to the furtherance of the truth. It is by-ends that explain
nine-tenths of spiritual inefficiency; singleness of mind like this
would save us our perplexities and our failures alike.
It is because he has an interest like this in the Corinthians that
Paul writes as he has done while absent from Corinth. He does not
wish, when he comes among them, to proceed with severity. The power
the Lord gave him would entitle him to do so; yet he remembers that
this power was given him, as he has remarked already (x. 8), for
building up, and not for casting down. Even casting down with a view
to building up on a better basis was a less natural, if sometimes a
necessary, exercise of it; and he hopes that the severity of his words
will lead, even before his coming, to such voluntary action on the
part of the Church as will spare him severity in deed.
This is practically the end of the letter, and the mind involuntarily
goes back to the beginning. We see now the three great divisions of it
plainly before our eyes. In _the first seven chapters_ Paul writes
under the general impression of the good news Titus has brought from
Corinth. It has made him glad, and he writes gladly. The one case that
he had been concerned about has been disposed of in a way that he can
consider satisfactory; the Church, in the majority of its members, has
acted well in the matter. _The eighth and ninth chapters_ are a
digression: they are concerned solely with the collection for the poor
at Jerusalem, and Paul inserts them where they stand perhaps because
the transition was easy from his joy over the change at Corinth to his
joy over the liberality of the Macedonians. In _chaps, x. 1-xiii._ 10
he evidently writes in a very different strain. The Church, as a
whole, has returned to its allegiance, especially on the moral
question at issue; but there are Jewish interlopers in it, subverting
the Gospel, and reconverting Paul's converts to their own illiberal
faith; and there are also, as it would appear, numbers of sensual
people who have not yet renounced the vilest sins. It is these two
sets of persons who are in view in the last four chapters; and it is
the utter inconsistency of Judaic nationalism on the one hand, and
Corinthian licence on the other, with the spiritual Gospel of the Son
of God, that explains the seventy of his tone. "The truth" is at
stake--the truth for which he has suffered all that he recounts in
chap. xi.--and no vehemence is too passionate for the occasion. Yet
love controls it all, and he speaks severely that he may not have to
act severely; he writes these things that, if possible, he may be
spared the pain of saying them.
And then the letter, like almost every letter, hastens in disconnected
sentences to its close. "Finally, brethren, farewell." He cannot but
address them affectionately at parting; when the heart recovers from the
heat of indignation, its unchanging love speaks again as before. Some
would render χαίρετε "rejoice," instead of "farewell"; to Paul's
readers, no doubt, it had a friendly sound, but "rejoice" is far too
strong. In all the imperatives that follow there is a reminiscence of
their faults as well as a desire for their good: "be perfected, be
comforted, be of the same mind, live in peace." There was much among
them to rectify, much that was inevitably disheartening to overcome,
much dissension to compose, much friction to allay; but as he prays them
to face these duties he can assure them that the God of love and peace
will be with them. God can be characterised by love and peace; they are
His essential attributes, and He is an inexhaustible source of them, so
that all who make peace and love their aim can count confidently to be
helped by Him. It is, as it were, the first step of obedience to these
precepts--the first condition of obtaining the presence of God which has
just been promised--when the Apostle writes, "Greet one another with a
holy kiss." The kiss was the symbol of Christian brotherhood; in
exchanging it Christians recognised each other as members of one
family. To do this even in form, to do it with solemnity in a public
assembly of the whole Church, was to commit themselves to the
obligations of peace and love which had been so set at naught in their
religious contentions. It is a generous encouragement to them to
recognise each other as children of God when he adds that all the
Christians about him recognise them in that character. "All the saints
salute you." They do so because they are Christians and because you are;
acknowledge each other, as you are all acknowledged from without.
The letter is closed, like all that the Apostle wrote, with a brief
prayer. "The grace of the Lord Jesus [Christ], and the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all." Of all such
prayers it is the fullest in expression, and this has gained for it
pre-eminently the name of the apostolic benediction. It would be too
much to say that the doctrine of the Trinity, as it has been defined
in the creeds, is explicitly to be found here; there is no statement
at all in this place of the relations of Christ, God, and the Holy
Spirit. Still, it is on passages like this that the Trinitarian
doctrine of God is based; or rather it is in passages like this that
we see it beginning to take shape: it is based on the historical fact
of the revelation of God in Christ, and on the experience of the new
divine life which the Church possesses through the Spirit. It is
extraordinary to find men with the New Testament in their hands giving
explanations, speculative or popular, of this doctrine, which stand in
no relation either to the historical Christ or to the experience of
the Church. But these things hang together; and whatever the worth may
be of a Trinitarian doctrine which is not essentially dependent on the
Person of Christ and on the life of His Church, it is certainly not
Christian. The historical original of the doctrine, and the impulse of
experience under which Paul wrote, are suggested even by the order of
the words. A speculative theologian may try to deduce the Triune
nature of God from the borrowed assumption that God is love, or
knowledge, or spirit; but the Apostle has only come to know God as
love through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is this which
reveals God's love and assures us of it; it is this by which God
commends His own love to us. "No man cometh unto _the Father_ but by
_Me_," Jesus said; and this truth, pre-announced by the Lord, is
certified here by the very order in which the Apostle instinctively
puts the sacred names. "The communion of the Holy Spirit" stands last;
it is in this that "the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God"
become the realised possessions of Christian men. The precise force of
"the communion" is open to doubt. If we take the genitive in the same
sense as it bears in the previous clauses, the word will mean "the
fellowship or unity of feeling which is produced by the Spirit." This
is a good sense, but not the only one: what Paul wishes may rather be
the joint participation of them all _in_ the Spirit, and in the gifts
which it confers. But practically the two meanings coincide, and our
minds rest on the comprehensiveness of the blessing invoked on a
Church so mixed, and in many of its members so unworthy. Surely "the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Ghost" were with the man who rises so easily, so
unconstrainedly, after all the tempest and passion of this letter, to
such a height of love and peace. Heaven is open over his head; he is
conscious, as he writes, of the immensities of that love whose breadth
and length and depth and height pass knowledge. In the Son who
revealed it--in God who is its eternal source--in the Spirit through
whom it lives in men--he is conscious of that love and of its
workings; and he prays that in all its aspects, and in all its
virtues, it may be with them all.
_Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
FOOTNOTES:
[111] Although it is supported by commentators like Chrysostom and
Calvin, it is difficult to treat otherwise than as a whim the idea
that Paul's two or three visits to Corinth make _him_ equal to the two
or three witnesses required by the law. So also Godet, who counts the
three thus: (1) a warning by word of mouth during his second visit;
(2) this letter; (3) his actual arrival for the third time.
[112] See _Biblical Essays_, p. 274.
[113] Another interpretation is worth mentioning. "Try _yourselves_, I
say; put _yourselves_ to the proof; _do not leave it for me to do_ when
I come. Why, do you not recognise as to your own selves that Jesus
Christ is among you, so that you have spiritual competence to proceed in
correcting the disorders of the Church?--unless, indeed, ye are
reprobates: which is an impossible supposition. But ἑαυτοὺς certainly
suggests that in the implied contrast Paul is _object_, not _subject_."
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Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been fixed throughout.
Inconsistent hyphenation left as in the original text.