Verse 3
3. The italic phrase interpolated by our translators, forasmuch as ye are, seems unnecessary.
Manifestly declared Rather, being manifested, referring to ye in the previous verse. They were known and read by the world as being conspicuously Christ’s commendatory letter of St. Paul, their founder, to the world. This is a beautiful enlargement of the figure of an epistle, in previous verse.
Epistle of Christ As Christ is real author of the Church, so he is real furnisher of the epistle; and thus does Christ authenticate his apostolic mission by the most powerful of credentials. Let those pseudo-Christians meet that.
Ministered by us The Church was made by Christ under the human ministry of the apostle. He flings in this phrase to remind them that Christ’s epistle inures to the honour of his ministry. This living epistle of Christ is written not, as the credentials of the emissaries from Jerusalem were, with ink. The figure, as pushed by the lively fancy of our apostle, becomes very delicately subtile. The names of members may be written on the Church register with ink; but Christ writes, with the Spirit; the Christian being himself the inscription; and he writes this live inscription on the Christian’s own heart. And St. Paul supplements the figure by adding that this living inscription is written, not, like the decalogue, in tables of stone, as the Judaizers may be figured as an inscription to be written; but, like true sons of a gospel of the heart, in fleshly tables of the heart.
Be the first to react on this!
