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Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 1:3-5, 9, 12, 19-22
In this chapter we will begin to consider the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity in 2 Corinthians. As we will see, according to this book, the divine dispensing issues in the maturity of life and constitution of ministry.
Second Corinthians is much deeper than 1 Corinthians. For this reason it is more difficult to understand.
The Epistle of 2 Corinthians is more experiential, more subjective, and deeper than the Epistle of 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians, Christ, the Spirit with our spirit, the church, and the gifts are covered as major subjects. In 2 Corinthians, Christ, the Spirit with our spirit, and the church are further developed, but the gifts are not even mentioned. They are replaced in this book by the ministry, which is constituted of and produced and formed by the experiences of the riches of Christ through suffering, consuming pressures, and the killing work of the cross. The second Epistle gives us a pattern, an example, of how the killing of the cross works, how Christ is wrought into our being, and how we become the expression of Christ. These constitute the ministers of Christ and produce the ministry for God’s new covenant.
The first Epistle deals with the gifts; the second speaks about the ministry. The church needs the ministry much more than the gifts. The purpose of the ministry is to minister the Christ whom we have experienced; the gifts are mostly to teach the doctrines concerning Christ. Not the gifts but the ministry produced and formed by the experience of the sufferings, the afflictions, of Christ, is the proof that the apostles are ministers of Christ.
Chapters 1 and 2 of 2 Corinthians unveil a victorious life for maturity and a triumphant ministry for God’s purpose. How can our life in Christ mature? How can a ministry be constituted within us? These questions are answered in 2 Corinthians.
All believers, even the youngest among us, have both life and ministry. However, among many Christians today there is the strong impression that not all believers are ministers. Some may say, “I am not a pastor, a preacher, or a minister. I am a common Christian, and I don’t have any ministry. Yes, I have received the divine life. But you should not say that I have a ministry. I have never studied theology, and I don’t even have a full knowledge of the Bible. How could I have a ministry?” This is a wrong understanding.
As long as we have life, we have a certain function. We may use our physical life as an illustration. Where there is life, there are the functions of life. This is true even of a newborn infant. The life in a baby makes it possible for him to cry, crawl, and eventually walk and speak. In a similar way, we all have received the divine life, a spiritual life, and with this life there is at least some amount of function. Therefore, since we have life, we all can function.
Although we have the divine life, there is the need for this life to mature. There is also the need for a ministry to be constituted within us. Both the maturing of life and the constituting of ministry depend upon the divine dispensing. The divine dispensing causes us to mature, and this dispensing also constitutes us with a divine ability so that we may function with a proper ministry. Therefore, both for our life and our ministry we need the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity.
In the first chapter of 2 Corinthians we have the divine dispensing. Of course, the word dispensing is not used in this book. Nevertheless, as we will see, the dispensing is included in Paul’s word concerning the Father of compassions and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort those who are in every affliction through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
In verse 4 Paul speaks of his affliction, which denotes the suffering of persecution. All genuine Christians suffer persecution. Some have been persecuted by members of their family, their friends, or their neighbors. It is sovereign of the Lord that all genuine Christians suffer persecution. This suffering is an affliction. As Paul was traveling to preach the gospel, he was persecuted to the uttermost. Wherever he went, he was persecuted either by Jews or Gentiles. This suffering of persecution was his affliction.
In verse 3 Paul speaks of God as the Father of compassions and the God of all comfort. The Greek word rendered “compassions” also means “mercies, pity, sympathy.” The word rendered “comfort” has the sense of cheer. Such a title as the Father of compassions and God of all comfort is ascribed here to God because this Epistle is one of comfort and encouragement. First, we must experience the comfort and encouragement of God. Then we will be able to comfort others with the comfort that we have experienced of God.
For many years I did not understand what Paul meant by comfort in this chapter. When we suffer persecution, God comforts us.
In our reading of the Bible, we should not take verses such as 1:3 and 4 for granted, assuming that we understand them. We need to ask ourselves what these verses mean. In particular, we need to ask what it means to say that God comforts us in all our affliction. How does God comfort us when we are suffering because of the name of the Lord Jesus?
I did not have a proper understanding of comfort as described in this chapter until I came to realize that it is related to God’s dispensing. We are comforted by God, encouraged by Him, through His dispensing. God is dispensing Himself into us, and this dispensing is His encouraging, His comforting.
I can testify from experience that the Triune God comforts and encourages us by dispensing Himself into us. During the years of the occupation of China by the invading Japanese army, I was imprisoned by the Japanese on two occasions. The first time was in 1938, when I was in prison for one night; the second was in 1943, when I was held in prison for one month. During my second imprisonment, twice a day I was subjected to a lengthy trial. I was threatened and severely ill-treated, and I was exhausted physically and mentally. Although I had done nothing wrong, I was being persecuted by the Japanese army. I was persecuted simply because I was a preacher who was bringing people to Christ, and the Japanese army did not like such a thing.
Out of fear that I would have contact with others who would spread information, I was kept in solitary confinement whenever I was not being tried. One night, after having suffered for days, as I was praying to the Lord, I said to Him, “Lord, You know I’m here. I’m suffering not because I have done anything wrong, but because of You and Your gospel.” I certainly would not say that I saw or touched the Lord physically. But I can testify that I experienced the Lord’s presence in a remarkable way. It seemed to me that when I told the Lord that I was suffering for Him and His gospel, the atmosphere in the room changed. The Lord’s presence was so real and intimate that I wept before Him. I knew that He was there with me. At that time I did not have the term divine dispensing, a term we have recently begun to use. Nevertheless, I truly experienced the divine dispensing. Through the Lord’s dispensing, I was encouraged, comforted, and cheered. I was deeply at peace.
When I was in prison, I experienced the dispensing of the Lord into my being. That dispensing was His comforting. Therefore, I can testify that this comforting, this encouraging, is not a mere doctrine. The real encouragement is the dispensing of the divine riches into our being. Through that experience I eventually came to realize that the Lord’s comforting is actually the dispensing of Himself into us to become our inward sustenance and support.
The divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity can be compared to the flow of electricity from the power plant into our homes. As the current of electricity flows, the appliances in our homes receive the power for their operation. As the appliances operate, they continually receive the flowing, the dispensing, of electrical power into them. This is an illustration of the dispensing of the riches of the Triune God into us.
As indicated by the record in 2 Corinthians, while Paul and his co-workers were suffering for the sake of the gospel, the Triune God was dispensing Himself into them, and this dispensing became their comfort and encouragement. Furthermore, through their experience of being encouraged through the divine dispensing, they had the riches with which to comfort others. This was the reason Paul could say that they were “able to comfort those who are in every affliction through the comforting with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (1:4). Their comforting of others was also a matter of dispensing. As the apostles were comforting the saints, they were dispensing into them the riches of the Triune God that they themselves were enjoying.
In 1:5 Paul goes on to say, “Even as the sufferings of the Christ abound unto us, so through the Christ our comfort also abounds.” The sufferings here are not the sufferings for Christ but Christ’s own sufferings as shared by His disciples (Matt. 20:22; Phil. 3:10; Col. 1:24; 1 Pet. 4:13). The Christ in 2 Corinthians 1:5 is a designation of the condition of Christ, not a name (Darby). Here it refers to the suffering Christ, who suffered afflictions for His Body according to God’s will. The apostles participated in the sufferings of such a Christ, and through such a Christ they received encouragement.
In 1:3-5 Paul seems to be saying, “We were in affliction, but the God of all comfort comforted us by dispensing Himself into us. Now we have the means to comfort others. Because we have experienced the divine riches, we can dispense the Triune God into others who are suffering for the Lord’s sake. We enjoy the divine dispensing, and we also dispense into you the divine riches for your comfort and encouragement. If we enjoy this dispensing, we will also be able to dispense the riches into others who are suffering.”
It is by the divine dispensing of the divine riches that the believers, including the apostles, grow toward maturity. Furthermore, it is by this dispensing that we are constituted of the divine essence in our ministry. The result is that we become victorious in life and triumphant in ministry.
In 1:9 Paul says, “Indeed we ourselves had the response of death in ourselves, that we should not base our confidence on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” When the apostles were under the pressure of affliction, despairing even of life, they may have asked themselves what the issue of their suffering would be. The answer, or response, was death.
The experience of death ushers us into the experience of resurrection. Resurrection is actually the very God who resurrects the dead. The working of the cross terminates the self so that we may experience God in resurrection. The experience of the cross always issues in the enjoyment of the God of resurrection. Such experience produces and forms the ministry (vv. 4-6). This is further described in 4:7-12.
In 1:12 Paul says, “Our boasting is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in singleness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and more abundantly toward you.” This verse indicates that we must have a pure conscience (2 Tim. 1:3), a conscience without offense (Acts 24:16), to bear testimony to what we are and do.
In 2 Corinthians 1:12 Paul speaks of the sincerity of God. This is a divine virtue, a virtue of what God is. To conduct ourselves in such a virtue means to experience God Himself. Hence, it equals the grace of God mentioned later in this verse.
Fleshly wisdom denotes human wisdom in the flesh. This equals us, just as the grace of God equals God Himself. The grace of God is God for our enjoyment.
In 1:19 and 20 Paul speaks concerning the unchanging Christ with God’s promises in Him: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you through us, through me and Silvanus and Timothy, did not become yes and no, but our word has become yes in Him. For as many promises of God as there are, in Him is the Yes; therefore also through Him is the Amen to God, for glory through us to God.” For gives the reason for what is mentioned in the preceding verse. God is faithful, never changing, especially in His promises concerning Christ, so that the word the apostles preached concerning Christ is likewise never changing, because the very Christ whom God promised in His faithful word and whom they preached in their gospel did not become yes and no, but in Him is the Yes. Since the Christ whom they preached according to God’s promises did not become yes and no, the word that they preached concerning Him was not yes and no. Not only their preaching but also their living was according to what Christ is. They preached Christ and lived Him. They were not men of yes and no but men who were the same as Christ.
Again in verse 20 For gives the reason for what is mentioned in the preceding verse. Christ, whom the faithful God promised and whom the sincere apostles preached, did not become yes and no; that is, He did not change. The reason Christ did not change is that in Him is the Yes of all the promises of God, and through Him is the apostles’ and the believers’ Amen to God for His glory.
In verse 20 Paul says that Christ is the Yes. Christ is the Yes, the incarnate answer, the fulfillment of all the promises of God to us.
The Amen in verse 20 is the Amen given by us through Christ to God (see 1 Cor. 14:16). Christ is the Yes, and we say Amen to this Yes before God. This is for the glory of God. When we say Amen before God to the fact that Christ is the Yes, the fulfillment, of all the promises of God, this is a glory to God through us.
The us in verse 20 refers not only to the apostles, who preached Christ according to God’s promises, but also to the believers, who received Christ according to the apostles’ preaching. Through both there is glory for God when they say Amen to Christ as the great Yes of all God’s promises.
