2 Corinthians 1:23-24

2. Paul’s motive for changing his plan of visit, was a wish not to come to their grief, 2 Corinthians 1:23 to 2 Corinthians 2:4.

St. Paul most earnestly protests that his not coming, as planned, was to spare them, 2 Corinthians 1:23. Not that by the term spare he claims to be lord of their faith; for faith must be free, and by a free faith do they stand; but by severe purifying of their Church he would really aid their joy, 24. But his spare, means, that he determined, even in his own behalf, not to come with an afflicting mission to them. See 2 Corinthians 2:1. This in his own behalf, for if he saddened them, his own sole consolers, he abolished the sole source of his own comfort, 2 Corinthians 2:2. And he wrote the very severities of his first epistle in order that, the severities being finished in the writing, when he should come he would find a purified Church, and no grief, but a common joy, 2. 3. His writing was, indeed, in tears; but his object in writing was not their grief, but a manifestation of his own love in bringing them to purity and rectitude.