Verses 1-24
"The God of All Comfort"
Paul had promised to go a second time to Corinth, but he did not go; so there were people in the Church who said that he was afraid to go, and that he would never come. Paul always wanted a great deal of room, and there were always some people who begrudged him the space which belonged to him by natural and Divine right. Some did not understand him; a few did not care for him; a sprinkling of people may be said to have been almost dead against him. This was the chance of the last little pact: Where is he? said they. With well-assumed innocence they inquired of the Paulites where their master was: said they, Has he come to Corinth? did he arrive last night? are you expecting him to-day? And thus with quite a new spite for no spite can be so stinging as pseudo-Christian spite they reminded the followers of the greatest man that ever lived in Christ's Church that a promise had not been fulfilled. What would some people do, if there were no mischief to be done? How could they find any employment, if all possibility of wrongdoing were taken away from them? They would have nothing to speak about, if you deprived them of their slander; they would be dumb dogs, if they had not to snarl at some majesty. The Apostle had heard of all this. He writes this second letter to the Corinth Church at many sittings. We shall make great mistakes in reading the epistles if we think they were all written so as to catch the first post. The Apostle knew nothing about posts and times. When he had a letter to write he took months to do it, and he did not always ask his amanuensis where he left off last. It was a great royal soul that rolled on after a law of its own; hence the abruptness, the so-called incoherence, the sharp contrast and conflict of Paul's rhetorical style. Apollos was smooth; he rolled on like a stream of oil: Paul was rugged, often unconnected, and sometimes utterly without a copulative so as to connect the one with the other; yet all the while there was in it, not a literal, but a vital consistency.
He is very solemn in this introduction. He never excelled himself that master of noble words he never excelled himself so much as in 2 Corinthians 1:4 . He is thanking God for "all comfort," and he describes God as, "Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." Mark the rhythm, the liquid plash, of this sacred ennobling music. We have often commented upon the word "comfort"as used by the Apostle Paul, and as used by other New Testament writers. "Comfort" does not mean, in their sense and use of the term, mere pacification, lulling, the creation of a species of moral and spiritual atrophy: the comfort of God is the encouragement of God, the stimulus of the most High applied to the human mind and the human heart. When God vivifies us he comforts us; instead of putting his fingers upon our eyelids and drawing them down over tired eyes and saying, Now sleep a long sleep, he sometimes gives us such an access of life that we cannot lie one moment longer; we spring forth as men who have a battle to fight and a victory to bring home. That access of life is the comfort of God, as well as that added sleep, that extra hour of slumber which is a tender benediction. Why was the Apostle comforted, vivified, or encouraged? That he should be able to comfort them which are in trouble. Why does God give us money? To make use of it for the good of others. Why does God make a man very strong? That he may save a man who is very weak, by carrying his burden for him an hour or two now and then, so as to give the man some sense of holiday. Why does the Lord make one man very penetrating in mind, very complete in judgment, very serene and profound in counsel? Not that he may say, Behold me! but that he may sit in the gate and dispense the bounty of his soul to those who need all manner of aid, all ministries of love.
The Apostle has a long passage to his point, but he comes to it in the eighth verse, there saying in effect: Now ye Corinthians, hear me: you have misunderstood this delay in my appearance altogether: there is one circumstance of which you have never heard; you do not know that in Asia I was as nearly dead a a man could be not to be in his grave: "For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life"; I was in Asia hanging by the last thread; you never heard of that; now you have heard of it you will perhaps be larger and truer in your judgment of my movements: this is the first time I have really communicated this fact to my friends, but in Asia I was nearly dead; I was given up; men of medical knowledge could do no more for me; nurse and friend said it was all over. Now he praises God, in the tenth verse, in these terms, "Who delivered us from so great a death." That word "great" is a qualifying term of course, but it is a term which refers not so much to quantity "great" as to quality "great," and therefore it might be rendered, "Who delivered us from so terrible a death," a most deathly death, death in its ghastliest form. Why, saith the Apostle, this was a resurrection ( 2Co 1:9 ) "that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead;" saying in effect, I was dead; to all human intents and purposes, I was an extinct man: thus is the resurrection proved and tested in my own instance. Thus the Apostle always softened argument by experience, and substantiated reasoning by referring to something which he himself had personally gone through. Paul could have no doubt about resurrection after that Asian trouble. If it became a mere argument in words, he might have some difficulty in getting words large enough and fine enough to fit so vast and delicate a subject, but if it came to the large language of consciousness, what a man's own soul has known, Paul has no difficulty whatever about the possibility and actuality of the resurrection.
Yet that delicacy, that large refinement, that supreme gentle-manliness, in the old rich sense of the word, so characteristic of Paul, comes into play in 2 Corinthians 1:11 . He would have the Corinthians made out to be really the helpers or allies of God in this great resurrectional act, saying, "Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf." The argument is this: As you prayed for me in all things, not knowing the particulars, so you may now on hearing the particulars turn up your faces, that is the literal signification of this image, "many persons," many upturned faces, may throw back heaven's light upon itself, that so there may be a great sacrifice of thanksgiving. The Apostle told the Corinthians that he was under the impression that they were always praying for him. It may have been delicate satire, it may have been one of those characteristic ironies which make Paul's style so varied and so surprising: but he always gave men credit for doing what they ought to have done, and thus made a tremendous thrust upon their consciences; as who should say, You have always been liberal, you have always been kind, I have never been one hour out of your thoughts. And the people said, That is the opinion he has been forming about us! what a false judgment I may he never know! For months together we never thought of him, and we have let the flowers wither in the garden rather than send him one little nosegay, and the poor deluded soul has been under the impression that all the time we were thinking about him. O Paul, thou wast many men in one!
Returning to the personal side of the question, he said, "For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to youward": we have heard the rumours, we understand what is going on in slanderous circles about my not coming to Corinth, but our rejoicing is this, that the conscience says, they are wrong and you are right; they do not know what they are talking about, but your conduct is founded upon solid and just reasoning: that is where we stand. "In simplicity," in a single folio, or, as it were, one open sheet, so that every one can see the four corners and all that is written between. That is simplicity, the opposite of duplicity, which is the doubled sheet, so that you cannot tell what is written upon it without turning it over, as if by some stroke of cunning, as if quietly, so that nobody might suspect the action. Simplicity is an open hand, duplicity is a clenched fist: Paul always acted the part of an open-handed gentleman. "And godly sincerity," literally, the sincerity of God: either a Greek or a Hebrew expression, as you please; if a Hebrew expression, how simple, for the Hebrew has no superlative. The English says, Good, better, best: but the Hebrew cannot take that course. If the Hebrew would describe a beautiful garden, it says, A garden of God: if a noble forest, the Hebrew would say, These are trees of God, meaning the finest, grandest, shaggiest old kings that ever adorned the mountain side. So the Apostle says, "that sincerity of God," a new grammar, requiring the very highest term in thought to express the very highest quality in character. "Not with fleshly wisdom:" we are not so much statesmen as God's-men; we are not merely acute, we are spiritually enlightened; we are not only sagacious, we have the gift of the Spirit, which is a gift of discernment: do not credit us with cleverness, credit us and credit God with inspiration.
He makes this more clear in the thirteenth verse: "For we write none other things unto you, than what ye read or acknowledge." That is to say, we do not write in an unnatural sense; when a child reads my word a child knows my meaning. Paul does not need any moral glossary in order to explain what he has been talking about. When he says, Yes, he means yes; Nay, nay; there is an end of him. "We write none other things unto you than what ye read," in its plain, simple, natural, straightforward sense, "or acknowledge" have knowledge of: we have not a private verbal mint in which we coin words of ecclesiastical meaning and pass these amongst people, so that we may have a commerce of our own; we use our mother's speech in our mother's sense. That is apostolic sincerity. "Sincerity" itself is a pictorial word. It is the act of the wary chapman who, having somewhat to sell or buy, holds it to the sun. That is sincerity, transparency; that which the sun goes through and through without discovering speck or flaw. This was the man whom certain nameless Corinthians were slandering, and saying that he had talked of coming to Corinth but he knew better than to come. Many persons were bold in Paul's absence. Many persons go to the Zoological Gardens who are religiously thankful for the bars of iron. Oh, the boldness of these people! What makes them bold? The bars. Remove the bars where are they? So many people were exceedingly critical and bold and even denunciatory in the absence of Paul who were not at home when he arrived on the spot. Paul never needed to strike any man twice. When he erects himself and says, "But as God is true, our word toward you" was true, he shows what Christianity does for a man when it has free course and is glorified in his nature. There are heroic moments in which earnest souls link themselves to God and say, We stand or fall together. These moments make us men; these moments make immortality possible. To live under this sense of truth, to know that through and through we are true in every particle and jot and iota, to know that our meaning is after the pattern of God's sincerity, that is the supreme joy of Christian life. Paul will not have yea, yea, nay, nay, and yea and nay mixed up together, as if he were trying to pronounce both the words in one hot breath. He will have each word pronounced distinctly. Paul believed in moral articulation; no jumbling of syllables in this mighty rhetoric. Paul was an honest man. When he said Yes, he said it subject to an inscrutable Providence, I may be killed, 1 may be drawn to death in the wilds of Asia, I may be subject to contingencies which do not come within human calculation. Every man's yes must be subject to these possibilities, but when he says, Yes, his soul must mean it. Why? Because the Christian is of the same quality as Christ himself, for the Son of God Jesus Christ was not yea and nay; Christ did not walk on both sides of the road, Christ was not hail-fellow-well-met with people who told lies and made a convenience of language: Christ was the eternal Yes, or the eternal No. Paul says, We belong to Christ; because, therefore, we belong to Christ we cannot palter with language. Thus Paul was more than a merely metaphysical theologian. Paul brought his theology down into his morality, into his conduct, into his daily speech; Paul's words were sacraments. All this is worth dwelling upon, because it shows what Jesus Christ does for every man who really trusts him, loves him, obeys him. This is what Christianity would do in the world. It would put an end to all ambiguity, to all ambidextrousness, so that a man shall not be as clever with the left hand as he is with the right. Christianity does not make conjurors, Christianity makes honest men. When Jesus said, "Let your Yea be yea, and your Nay be nay," he revolutionised the world. If this could be brought about in the simplicity and fulness of its meaning, the world would be at peace for evermore. Yet how a simple a thing to say! The Preacher on the Mount said to us to-day, Let your Yea be yea, and your Nay be nay; such commonplace did that man talk, though robed as rabbi and speaking ex cathedra , the mountain being his chair. You are wrong. If Jesus Christ had never said one word more, he would have revolutionised the whole construction of society. When you say Yes, mean yes; when you say No, mean no; do not becloud a subject with words; do not be having one word on the tongue and another word in the heart; be sincere, transparent, through-and-through men. That is what Jesus Christ himself said. The Apostle, having partaken of that quality by the grace of God, is annoyed when he hears it is possible for some vagabonds even in Corinth that most drunken, dissolute, disorderly church that ever existed to suspect his sincerity. He falls back on the same thread of argument even in his sublime statement of the doctrine of the resurrection; he says, "If Christ be not risen from the dead, then we are liars." And we cannot conceive of the possibility of any man thinking that the Apostles were liars. May we live on these lofty mountains! They are the first to catch the sunlight.
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