2 Corinthians 13:1-4 - Homilies By C. Lipscomb

About to visit the Corinthians "the third time." he informs them very distinctly what they had to expect. In the words of the Old Testament Law, he says, "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." The strength of his resolution to punish impenitent offenders is declared—"I will not spare." A crisis was at hand, and he was fully prepared to meet the issue. He refers to the main source of all the trouble, viz. the disparagement of his office as Christ's apostle. Everything had been done by the Judaizers to put contempt on him and his official position The forbearance he had shown, the patience under repeated and aggravated provocation, his deeds of self-denial, Christ's testimony to the greatness of the work alone among them, had all been misconstrued and turned to his injury. Even his infirmities, the defects of personal appearance, his conscientious avoidance of the least worldly art in his ministry, had been used to his disadvantage. Craft, falsehood, malignity, had followed him with persistent steps. Neither his private nor public life had escaped prying eyes and slanderous tongues. A man in feeble health, his strength constantly over taxed, infirmities growing beyond his years as well as with his years, labouring to support himself, and thus making heavy drafts on his bodily powers, he had these ills daily augmented by annoyances and vexations from those who sought to come between him and his Churches. To undo his work was their aim and ambition. They hated him officially, they despised him personally, nor could they rest while he had friends to cheer him on in his labours. What is most noticeable is the utter blindness of these persecutors to the wonderful tokens of God's presence with him. It is to this fact he alludes in the words, "Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me." Remember, it was in this Corinth, where these turbulent spirits were most industrious to overthrow him, that Christ had given the most numerous and remarkable evidences of the favour bestowed on his apostle as the apostle of the Gentiles. "Seek a proof," to our ears sounds most strangely. "Signs and wonders and mighty deeds," and yet "seek a proof of Christ speaking in me"! It is well that there was an antecedent history, a fourfold history but one biography, and that this biography of the Lord Jesus opens to us a full view of man's capacity to disbelieve where Divine manifestations are concerned. "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." So the Lord Jesus had foretold; so St. Paul had realized. And now, in the closing hour of writing this Epistle, the apostle identifies his condition with that of Christ in the days of the flesh. Years before, the great fact had occurred of which these recent facts were no more than exemplifications. Taking upon himself the lowly form of a servant and submitting to every kind of privation and sorrow, putting himself as to his circumstances in extreme contrast with his power and never exercising this power except; under the agency of the Holy Ghost, men treated him, Son of God, Son of man, as one in their hands, over whom and his earthly destiny they had entire control. "He was crucified through weakness." He could have been crucified in no other way. The sole condition under which this event was possible is here stated, viz. weakness. The weakness was assumed voluntarily by him because it was necessary to the work of redemption. "Yet he liveth by the power of God." Even in the grave his body was treated as though men had it under mastery. Roman procurator and Jewish Sanhedrim held it as their own, and stationed a military guard at the sepulchre where his corpse, still their prisoner, lay till the third day ended the mystery of his weakness. Then came the triumph "of the power of God." Authority felt it and was abased. To its degradation it added the infamy of a lie, and to the lie the infamy of a money bribe. Guilt felt it and acknowledged its impending curse in the return of innocent blood as vengeance on its head. Sad as this hour was to St. Paul, his faith was never firmer. Had he not said just before, that if he should have to "bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented," he should accept the humiliation as a holy discipline? "My God will humble me among you." One had gone before him in weakness. But his Leader in trial would be his Leader in triumph. "For we also are weak in him." It is not our weakness. It wears a human look, speaks human words, trembles with human sensibility, sighs with human pathos, yearns for relief with human desires. Nevertheless it is a fact, "we also are weak in him. " The weakness we share is that of the God-Man, the weakness of the Divine incarnation, so that we walk according to our small measure in the footsteps of him who "himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." "But we shall live," not in the resurrection, but in the day when we come to Corinth and vindicate our authority, "we shall live with him by the power of God toward you. " Then, indeed, you who have taunted us as "weak and contemptible," shall see and know that this risen and exalted Christ is Christ in us," the power of God toward you." Do you then "seek a proof of Christ speaking in me"? 1 shall come with "the power of God" and the "proof" shall be given.—L.

2 Corinthians 13:5-10 - Self-examination recommended; supremacy of Divine truth.

Proof of his apostleship had been the demand of the disaffected portion of the Corinthians; "but prove your own selves is St. Paul's exhortation. "Examine not me, but yourselves, whether you are truly in the faith; put yourselves to the proof concerning Christ's presence with you which you seek in me" (Conybeare and Howson). No one can help seeing how natural this advice was to the apostle, and how suitable to these noisy and fault-finding Corinthians. On the one hand, St. Paul was a man whom casual observers could easily misunderstand. His temperament, his habit of introversion, his intense self-consciousness, exposed him to constant misconception. Again, he was a born leader of men. Such a leader as he could not escape a severe probation while acquiring the ascendency to which he was predestined. Leaders who adapt themselves unscrupulously to times and circumstances gain a quick mastery. Leaders that shape contingencies to their high purposes and bring men into sympathy with a lofty ideal in their own souls must have creative genius, and exert it under sharp and continual opposition. To this class of leaders the apostle belonged. Furthermore, his position was unique by reason of the fact that his apostleship necessarily placed him between the two great rival forces of the age, Judaism and Gentilism to show what the Law meant as a Divine institution; to show what Gentile civilization and culture meant as a long existing providence; to harmonize as far as might be the truths in each; in brief, to mediate between their claims as widely organized economies, and put them on common ground as it respected Christianity and its supreme authority, and do away with the distinction of Jew and Gentile as to the conditions of salvation;—this was the most difficult task ever committed to a man. Owing to its intrinsic character, it brought him at every turn in contact with prejudices and passions which justified themselves in the one case by the miracles of Jehovah, in the other by the prescripts of government, and in both by the venerable sanction of ages. What wonder, then, that his career as a public man among public men was specialized quite as much by systematic and vindictive misrepresentation as by a success unequalled in the influence exerted over the thought and morals of the world! On the other hand, look at these young Christian communities, situated often wide apart and unable to strengthen each others' hands, planted in the midst of peoples hostile to their creeds and still more to their virtues, and dependent in most instances on the nurture of a single apostle; look at them in a state hardly more than inchoate, and can we be surprised that they were in some cases the subjects of intestine disturbance, nay, of violent commotion? "Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble," were "called;" but the "weak things of the world," "base things, and things despised," were "chosen," for the most part, as the original materials of that edifice which was to show in its proportions, its symmetry, its permanence, the workmanship of the Hand unseen. The "called" and the "chosen" were eventually to vindicate the wisdom of the call and the choice. Let us not overlook, however, the disadvantages inseparable at the time from the crude elements that constituted the early Churches. Without dwelling on these at length, suffice it to say that they were imperilled by a corrupt Judaism on the one side, and a most corrupt paganism on the other, the agencies and influences of which sought them as a prey to their lust of avarice and ambition. Now, the Church at Corinth was notably in this state of exposure. Gallic, the Proconsul of Achaia, had protected St. Paul against the fury of the Jews, and the Greeks had used the occasion to wreak their vengeance on the Jews. Retaliation was the order of the times. Baffled by a Roman official, insulted and beaten by a mob of Greeks, the Jews were not likely to forget the apostle, and we can imagine with what zest they would enjoy the zeal of the Judaizing emissaries, and how they would diligently foment the efforts made for his disgrace in Corinth. To what extent this was carried by the Jews as a body we can only conjecture. Certain it is, however, that for several years Corinth was the seat of a most active and uncompromising warfare on St. Paul. Once more, and finally, he comes before us in the passage under notice in an attitude unmistakably stern and authoritative. Is Christ in you, be asks the Corinthians, or are ye reprobates? Prove yourselves, apply the test, find out whether or not you are in Jesus Christ and share his spirit, and if you cannot stand the test, know then that you are reprobates. He expresses the hope that they will not find him a reprobate (unapproved or spurious) if they put him to the test of exercising his authority. Yet he trusts that the test of his power will be avoided, and prays that they may "do no evil." If they should act as he prayed they might, then there would be no necessity for him to demonstrate his authority, and, in that happy event, he would appear "unapproved," i.e. not tested as to the display of his power. Welcome such unapproval! It would be in exact conformity to the spirit and end of his apostolic administration, which was in accordance with the truth of the gospel and designed to show forth that truth. What is the test of a great and wise ruler? The test is the uselessness of a punishing power (except in extreme cases and as an ultimate resort), because his subjects govern themselves. Such was the apostle's argument. Nothing against the truth, all for the truth, Christ the Truth; this was the beautiful summation in which he rested. If this should apparently exhibit his weakness, what a glorious weakness it would be! Apostolic judgment made needless by self-government; what could be a grander testimony to the truth and excellence of his work among them? Then, verily, they would be strong. "Perfection" in the order and unity of the Church, "perfection" of individual character, was the object of his prayer, and hence this Epistle. Whoever teaches Christianity as God's truth cannot fail to teach much else besides. These verses are maxims of infinite wisdom. What man in authority, what statesman in the affairs of a nation, what father at the head of a family, what office holder in the Church, if he would bear his faculties so meekly and be thus "clear in his great office," would not be a providence of instruction and helpfulness in the world] Decay of reverence for law begins in decay of reverence for men who administer the law. Unhappily enough, this decline in reverence for law is one of the growing perils of the age. It is peculiar to no form of government. It is spreading everywhere as an atmospheric evil, and threatening like an epidemic to travel roared the globe. Power to build up, not to destroy; this is St. Paul's idea of power divinely bestowed. And accordingly we see what a blessed discipline it was to him personally and officially; and having accomplished this result in his own soul, it is not remarkable that it achieved its ends in this distracted and corrupted Church at Corinth.—L.

2 Corinthians 13:11-14 - Parting tenderness.

If ever great principles of government were subjected to the severest of ordeals, it was in the instance which has been under review. It ever personal qualities and official prerogatives were inextricably mixed in pending issues, and those issues diffused over a vast surface, it was in this affair at Corinth. If ever the chief actor in the interest of tranquillity and social purity had to fight a battle absolutely single handed and alone, it was St. Paul's fortune in this struggle to save a community from degradation and destruction. We have seen what he endured when endurance was probably harder than at any period of his life. What aids he summoned in these critical hours, what recourse he had to the past, what account he gave of the "thorn in the flesh" and its uses in his work, we have seen in the progress of this interesting section of his career. Most of all, we have seen how the man and the apostle, the tentmaker and the preacher, the liberal Jew and the sagacious Christian, were most happily interblended in the rarest harmony and unity while doing the work of pacification and reformation. And now that he comes before us. in the last expression of himself as to this weighty controversy, it is ennobling to see how finely poised he is, and what anxiety he has "lest, being present," he should be compelled against all his prayers and hopes "to use sharpness according to the power which the Lord had given him." That miraculous gift was his as the apostle of Christ, but it was for "edification, and not to destruction." At the cost of personal humiliation, he would be "glad" if the Corinthians were "strong," and he "weak." How like his Master he was! "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" Had he waved his hand, Jerusalem would have been darkened by the wings of gathering angels for his rescue; but he was to be crucified in "weakness" that the "power of God" might be the more gloriously manifested in his resurrection. Power denied in one of its uses, to be more signally displayed in another and higher use, was the lesson St. Paul had learned of his dying Lord. "I am crucified with Christ," said he on a subsequent occasion; but he shares that crucifixion word in one of its most painful forms by withholding the exertion of authority to punish his enemies till all other means had been exhausted. He preached Christ "the Wisdom of God," no less than Christ "the Power of God." Under circumstances of extreme hazard, reputation and influence and future success trembling in the balance, flesh and blood supplying clamorous reasons for a self-asserting course and the swift riddance of a most vexatious trouble, he abides with heroic fortitude by Christian principle in its demands for self-crucifixion, and makes everything yield to magnanimity in his ardent desire for the "perfection" of the Church at Corinth. All this is admirable as a mere matter of congruity in respect to the laws of art. But it leaves the domain of art and rises to a realm infinitely more exalted when he comes before us "apparelled in celestial light," and completes the impression of one

"Whose high endeavours are an inward light,

That makes the path before him always bright."

Nothing in the apostle's life more became him than the tenderness in the parting words of this Epistle. "Finally, brethren, farewell." There have been throes of spirit during the birth of this Epistle, moments of vehemence, outbursts of indignation and menace; but they are over now. The sun sets in a sky that the storm has purified, and the last beams glide through an atmosphere of holy stillness. "Be perfect," or, be perfected, making up what ye lack; "be of good comfort," taking encouragement and hope from your trials that God would overrule them for your happiness; "be of one mind," by suppressing all selfishness and partisanship and cultivating unity of interest; "live in peace," so that your outward life bears witness to the fact that ye have "one mind." So shall the "God of love and peace be with you." Let not the sign of your union in Christ as members of his Church be forgotten, and, accordingly, "greet one another with a holy kiss." Macedonian brethren salute you. And now, acknowledging with profoundest reverence the Holy Trinity, "in place of his own salutation, he gives us finally that precious benediction which has acquired such a liturgical use in every age and in every part of the Christian world" (Lunge). Grace, love, communion, —these three, and each blessing and all the blessedness forevery one, friends and enemies, since they are, in this touching moment, "brethren" to his heart. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ" in the fulness of his mediatorial office, "the love of God" the Father revealed through that grace, and the "communion of the Holy Ghost" as the effect of the "grace" and the "love" in their fellowship with God and one another, "be with you all. Amen."

It pleased God to make St. Paul his own historian during the memorable period to which this Epistle belongs. No one was competent to this task, not even St. Luke, with all his skill and insight as a writer, and his close relations to the apostle The inner life of the author was to be set forth with a force and vividness never equalled in sacred literature; and we were to have a section, and a most important section, of the New Testament as a Scripture of a private soul. For, indeed, the Holy Spirit would not limit the wonders of inspiration to the narration of outward events. Great as those events were in the midst of changes going on in the Roman empire, "the mingling and confusion of races, languages, and conditions," of which Dean Milman gives so eloquent a description ('Latin Christianity'), and vast as was the influence of the gospel in slowly transforming that "heterogeneous mass of a corrupted social system" by "instilling feelings of humanity," and giving "dignity to minds prostrated by years, almost centuries, of degrading despotism," it yet was vital to the purpose of the written Word that we should have the record of a human soul in the most typical period of its perplexity and conflict, and under just such circumstances as identified it most nearly with the sharpest trials of manly intelligence and courage. It is St. Luke who describes the one class of occurrences. Only a St. Paul was qualified for the other; and in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians he does this most interesting work. At no point are we left in dimness or obscurity as to what he felt and purposed. Every moment, as the eye follows his path, we see the end to which his steps are tending. "Faint, yet pursuing," often thwarted, often thrown back, often sorely embarrassed, without the lights of past experience, without the helps of brother apostles, alone and unbefriended, he had to solve those problems of Church order and discipline which involved all the future administrative policy of Christian communities. Throughout the struggle we accompany him. We know what he thought, and why. We mark his wisdom, earnestness, and fidelity. In the variety of his moods, in exaltation and depression, in the alternate predominance of very unlike states of consciousness, we find him the same man as to his ruling principle and aim, the same when he threatens and beseeches, the same when he unmasks "false apostles," that he is in prayers for peace and brotherhood. It was a most energetic and exciting portion of his career. But the man's heart is the chief interest as illustrative of the cardinal doctrines of grace. True, we have invaluable contributions to theological truth, expositions of rare profundity and insight, contrasts between the Law and the gospel never surpassed in this favourite department of his intellectual work, references to the body that throw a new light on its relations to mind, and directions as to practical benevolence which cover the whole range, in this particular, of Christian obligation. Yet these are enhanced in value by the fact that the spirit of an intense living personality is ever present. We lose nothing of the logic and philosophy, nothing of the force in the historical allusions, nothing of the charm of metaphor and similitude. At the same time there runs through everything the subtle influence of an individual soul, so that the strength which throbs in doctrinal arguments is from a heart all alive with sensibility. "Men," says Foster ('First Essay on a Man's writing Memoirs of Himself'), "carry their minds as for the most part they carry their watches, content to be ignorant of the constitution and action within, and attentive only to the little exterior circle of things to which the passions, like indexes, are pointing." Not so St. Paul. Temperament, disease, special circumstances in his position, made him in an unusual degree a self-observing man. In this Epistle we have the richest fruits of his self-knowledge. Most of all, we see the meaning of that discipline of affliction by means of which the life of Christ in the soul is perfected. And we see, too, how our private history is far more than a personal concern, and widens out in connections no one could have foreseen. "A thorn in the flesh" becomes a part of St. Paul's public character; incidents that historians and philosophers and poets would have passed by as of little meaning, take on a most impressive significance, and endear an Epistle, great on other grounds and great as a work of art, to the struggling and sorrowing heart of every Christian.—L.