2 Corinthians 5:10 - Exposition

We must all appear; rather, for it is necessary that we must all be made manifest; that we must be shown in our real nature and character. The verb is not the same as in Romans 14:10 , which occurs in 2 Corinthians 4:14 . Before the judgment seat of Christ. The special final judgment is represented as taking place before the bema of Christ, although in Romans 14:10 the best reading is "of God" ( Matthew 25:31 , Matthew 25:32 ). St. Paul might naturally use this Roman and Greek idea of the bema, being too familiar with it in his own experience (comp. Acts 12:21 ; Acts 18:12 ; Acts 25:6 ; Romans 14:10 ). The things done in the body; literally, the things ( done ) by the instrumentality of the body . Another reading (which only differs by a single letter from this) is, "the proper things of the body" ( τὰ ἴδια τοῦ σώματος ) ; i.e. the things which belong to it, which it has made its own . St. Paul, always intent on one subject at a time, does not stop to coordinate this law of natural retribution and inexorable Nemesis with that of the "forgiveness of sins" ( 1 Corinthians 5:11 ; Romans 3:25 ), or with the apparently universal hopes which he seems sometimes to express ( Romans 5:17 , Romans 5:18 ; Romans 11:32 ). Omnia exeunt in mysterium . According to that he hath done; rather, with reference to the things he did . The aorist shows that all life will be as it were concentrated to one point. The Pelagians raised questions on this verse about the sinlessness of infants, etc., all of which may be left on one side, as probably nothing was more absolutely distant from the thoughts of St. Paul. Observe that each is to receive the natural issues of what he has done. There is to be an analogy between the sin and the retribution. The latter is but the ripe fruit of the former. We shall be punished by the action of natural laws, not of arbitrary inflictions. We shall reap what we have sown, not harvests of other grain ( Romans 2:5-11 ; Revelation 22:12 ; Galatians 6:7 ). Whether it be good or bad. St. Paul, who always confines himself to one topic at a time, does not here enter on the question of the cutting off of the entailed curse by repentance and forgiveness. He leaves unsolved the antinomy between normal inevitable consequence and free remission.