(1)
Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 1:1-11
The book of 2 Corinthians is unique in that it has a very long introduction. This Epistle contains thirteen chapters, and the first one and a half chapters are the introduction. No other book in the Bible has such a long introduction.
The introduction to 2 Corinthians is long because the background of this book is quite complicated. In 1 Corinthians Paul dealt with the Corinthian believers regarding many things. He argued with them and rebuked them. Because of this background, it was necessary for 2 Corinthians to have a lengthy introduction.
This introduction is actually a word of comfort. Paul realized that, because he had disciplined the Corinthians in the first Epistle, he needed to bind up their wounds in this Epistle. The first one and a half chapters of 2 Corinthians are related to this binding up of wounds. What Paul was doing here is similar to the comfort a parent may give to a child after the child has been disciplined. Suppose a child misbehaves and is seriously disciplined by his parents. After the child repents, the parents will spend time to comfort the child. In the first chapter and a half of 2 Corinthians, Paul pours oil into the wounds of the Corinthians, wounds caused by his discipline.
Another reason for this lengthy introduction is that Paul was a very emotional person. He was a person strong in his emotion in a proper way. Although he was restricted by the Spirit when he was rebuking the Corinthian believers, he was still strong. For example, in 1 Corinthians 4:21 he asks, “What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of meekness?” These words indicate that he was strong in his emotion. When Paul was pouring oil into the wounds and binding them up, he exercised his emotion and released it in a very positive way. Thus, he needed a longer time to express his emotion.
Verse 3 reveals Paul’s emotion: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassions and God of all encouragement.” Paul’s reference to affliction, suffering, and encouragement in verses 4 and 5 also indicates that he was emotional. It seems to me that Paul could have condensed these three verses into one sentence and said, “Dear Corinthian brothers, since I have been encouraged by God, I would now encourage you.” But because Paul was very emotional, he wrote in a way that seems repetitious. In verses 6, 7, and 8 he continues to speak of suffering, affliction, and encouragement. Because Paul was emotional, he needed the opportunity to release his emotion positively.
Another reason for this long introduction is that the Corinthians were very complicated. On the one hand, they liked Paul; on the other hand, they were somewhat unhappy with him. He used this long introduction to resolve their complications and calm them down so that they could receive his word.
In this long introduction we can see Paul’s person. I very much love Paul. He can be emotional, sympathetic, and tender. He can also be strong and even tough. He is honest, simple, and sincere. Sometimes he may be polite, but he is never political. I have learned a great deal from Paul. Throughout my life I have learned the most from two persons: the first is Paul; the second is Watchman Nee.
Verse 1 says, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy the brother, to the church of God which is in Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia.” Achaia was located south of Macedonia. A province of the Roman Empire, it formed the major part of today’s Greece. The city of Corinth was in this province. The writers of 2 Corinthians were Paul and Timothy; the receivers were the church of God in Corinth with all the saints in the whole of Achaia.
Paul’s greeting is found in verse 2: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” This greeting is commonly used by Paul in his Epistles.
In verses 3 and 4 Paul says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassions and God of all encouragement; Who encourages us in all our affliction, that we may be able to encourage those who are in every affliction through the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God.” The Greek word rendered compassions also means mercies, pity, sympathy. Encouragement is slightly different from comfort and consolation and has the sense of being cheered. Such a title as the Father of compassions and God of all encouragement is ascribed here to God because this Epistle is one of comfort and encouragement, written by the apostle after he was comforted and encouraged by the repentance of the Corinthian believers.
In verse 4 Paul says that we encourage those in affliction through the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. First we must experience the encouragement of God. Then we shall be able to encourage others with the encouragement we have experienced of God. Hence, we are encouraged so that we may be able to encourage others. This requires experience. When we are experienced, we have the spiritual capital necessary for encouraging others.
If you have never suffered and have never been encouraged by God, you will not be able to encourage others. Your words of encouragement will be empty. You will be like someone writing a check for a large amount of money without having the funds in the bank to back up such a check. You do not have the reality, the experience, the spiritual capital. First we ourselves must suffer for the Lord’s interests and then be comforted and encouraged by God. Then this experience will become the spiritual capital to encourage others. In this way, we are encouraged and then we encourage others.
The first Epistle to the Corinthians was the apostle’s argument, an argument which defeated and subdued the Corinthians, who had been distracted and confused. Now the second Epistle brings them back into the experience of Christ, who was the subject of his argument in the first Epistle. Hence, the second Epistle is more experiential, more subjective, and deeper than the first. In the first, Christ, the Spirit with our spirit, the church, and the gifts are covered as the major subjects. In the second, 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 sufferings, 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 negatively with the gifts; the second speaks positively about the ministry. The church needs the ministry much more than the gifts. The ministry is to minister Christ whom we have experienced; the gifts are just to teach the doctrines concerning Christ. The proof that the apostles are ministers of Christ does not consist in the gifts, but in the ministry produced and formed by the experience of the sufferings of Christ, His afflictions.
In verse 5 Paul says, “Because even as the sufferings of the Christ abound unto us, so through the Christ our encouragement also abounds.” Here the sufferings are not 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” 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. According to verses 6 and 7, their affliction and encouragement were all for the encouraging of the believers.
Verse 8 says, “For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, as to our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were excessively burdened, beyond our power, so that we despaired even of living.” The word burdened here, the same Greek word as in 5:4, means weighed down, pressed down. Paul was in Asia when he wrote 1 Corinthians. At the time, he and his co-workers were in affliction. The persecution and attack upon them was extremely heavy. They were heavily burdened, burdened beyond their power. They were burdened to such an extent that by their natural power they could not bear it. They even despaired of life. According to their estimate of the situation, they had no hope of living. They were sure that they would die, that they would be killed by the persecutors.
In verse 9 Paul continues, “But we ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not have confidence in ourselves, but in God, Who raises the dead.” Literally, the word sentence means answer, or response. 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.
While they were being persecuted, the apostles wondered what the outcome would be. According to their estimation, they were dying. This was a self-insight which led to a particular vital decision. It caused them to have no confidence in themselves. As far as they were concerned, there was no way out. Their confidence was in God, who raises the dead.
The experience of death ushers us into the experience of resurrection. Resurrection is the very God who resurrects the dead. The working of the cross terminates the self 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. This is further described in 4:7-12.
Toward the end of 1 Corinthians Paul speaks of resurrection. Now at the beginning of 2 Corinthians, Paul brings the believers back to this matter of resurrection. As we shall see, this is related to ministry. Ministry is not a matter of our doing; it is a matter of our living. Both the ministry and the living revealed in this Epistle are of resurrection life.
In 1 Corinthians Paul declares the fact of resurrection. Resurrection should be our daily life; it should be for us the power to overcome sin and death and live in the first day of the week. Now in 2 Corinthians Paul gives a testimony of how the apostles lived in the first day of the week. They had no way to live in the seventh day, no way to live in the old creation. This means that it was not possible for them to live in themselves. They had no confidence in themselves. To have no confidence in ourselves means that there is no longer any way for us to live in the old creation. Because the apostles were living in the first day of the week, their confidence was solely in the God of resurrection, the God who raises the dead. They regarded themselves as already dead. This indicates that Paul not only wrote about resurrection, but that he lived resurrection.
In verse 10 Paul goes on to say, “Who has delivered us out of so great a death, and will deliver; in Whom we have hoped that He will also yet deliver.” The words “will deliver” refer to the immediate future, whereas “will also yet deliver” refers to the future in a more general way. Here Paul does not say that God would deliver them from a great affliction, but out of “so great a death.” God delivered them from a death situation.
Verse 11 says, “You also helping together by petition on our behalf, that for the gift unto us through many, thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf.” The Greek words rendered “helping together” also mean working together. The gift in this verse refers to the grace given (v. 12), the grace that the apostles enjoyed in the experience of resurrection out of death. Literally, persons means faces, implying that thanks are given by those with cheerful countenances.
The gift in verse 11 is very different from the gifts in 1 Corinthians. The gift is the grace of God, and this grace is resurrection life, the resurrected Christ. The resurrected Christ was given to the apostles as grace. This enabled the apostles to enjoy the experience of resurrection out of death.
Paul gives us a testimony of living in resurrection life. The apostles were living in resurrection. God had put them into a particular situation, a situation that was actually death. There was no way for a human being to escape out of such a situation of death or to have the power to overcome it. Only the God of resurrection, the God who is Himself resurrection, could deliver them. He came in to deliver the apostles out of that death situation. That deliverance was an experience of resurrection. God resurrected them out of death, and their experience was an experience of God as resurrection. Furthermore, it was an experience of the resurrected Christ as grace, the gift given to them by God.
In these verses Paul tells the Corinthians how the apostles were encouraged and thus were qualified to encourage others. He then goes on to speak of his experience of the resurrected Christ and of the God of resurrection. Because Paul and his co-workers experienced such a grace, they had the spiritual capacity necessary to encourage others. This kind of experience constituted them ministers of the new covenant, ministers of grace. Therefore, what we have in 2 Corinthians is not gift but ministry. Furthermore, ministry is actually a matter of being constituted of grace through experiences of suffering.
