'I seek not yours, but you.'--2 COR. xii. 14.
Men are usually quick to suspect others of the vices to which they
themselves are prone. It is very hard for one who never does anything
but with an eye to what he can make out of it, to believe that there are
other people actuated by higher motives. So Paul had, over and over
again, to meet the hateful charge of making money out of his
apostleship. It was one of the favourite stones that his opponents in
the Corinthian Church, of whom there were very many, very bitter ones,
flung at him. In this letter he more than once refers to the charge. He
does so with great dignity, and with a very characteristic and delicate
mixture of indignation and tenderness, almost playfulness. Thus, in the
context, he tells these Corinthian grumblers that he must beg their
pardon for not having taken anything of them, and so honoured them. Then
he informs them that he is coming again to see them for the third time,
and that that visit will be marked by the same independence of their
help as the others had been. And then he just lets a glimpse of his
pained heart peep out in the words of my text. 'I seek not yours, but
you.' _There_ speaks a disinterested love which feels obliged, and yet
reluctant, to stoop to say that it _is_ love, and that it _is_
disinterested. Where did Paul learn this passionate desire to possess
these people, and this entire suppression of self in the desire? It was
a spark from a sacred fire, a drop from an infinite ocean, an echo of a
divine voice. The words of my text would never have been Paul's if the
spirit of them had not first been Christ's. I venture to take them in
that aspect, as setting forth Christ's claims upon us, and bearing very
directly on the question of Christian service and of Christian
liberality.