Verse 24
24. My love Notwithstanding my rebukes.
With… all Notwithstanding your schisms and partisanships against me.
In Christ Jesus Who is the unity of us all in spite of the factions that divide you, and the distance that separates us.
Amen A Hebrew word, now adopted through the New Testament Greek into all the languages of Christendom. Its original Hebrew meaning was firm; hence, faithful, true; and hence, as a responsive or closing formula, so is it, or so be it. Our Lord’s commencing formula, verily, verily, was in the Greek, amen, amen. Our Lord himself, in Revelation 3:14, is called the Amen, the faithful and true Witness. How important the response amen was held to be by the rabbins appears from our note to 1 Corinthians 14:16. The apostle doubtless himself affixed this word to the epistle, and we doubt not that when this epistle was read in the Corinthian Church, the people silenced the murmurs of the factious leaders by re-echoing to the amen of their beloved founder-apostle a response, (in the words of Jerome,) “like the voice of the falling waters or the rolling thunders.” Hence, when the gentle Timothy addressed them in Paul’s great name, so clear was the unanimity, in spite of some few recusants, that Titus was able to report to Paul at Philippi that the Corinthian Church was “ Amen, faithful and true.”
Dear reader, when the Lord cometh to the final analysis and judgment of the world, may our record on the page of the Divine Memory declare that we, too, have been “faithful and true.” Such, in closing this book, amid weakness and tears, is our humble prayer. Amen and Amen.
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