2 Corinthians

The letter opens by blessing “the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort” (1:3), and the word paraklēsis stands in every verse from there to 1:7. This comfort comes in the trouble, not after it, and it is given to be passed on: God “comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble” (1:4). In Asia Paul had “the sentence of death in ourselves,” so that he would trust “in God which raiseth the dead” (1:9). The word returns when the news from Corinth arrives: “God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus” (7:6). The comfort reached Paul through the repentance of the church he had grieved.

The law came with glory, though it was “the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones” (3:7); Moses’ face shone, and he veiled it. The ministry of the Spirit has more glory, because it remains (3:11). In Christ the veil is taken away, and believers are “changed into the same image from glory to glory” (3:18). The Fathers read “the letter killeth” (3:6) two ways. Origen took it of how Scripture is read, which fits the veil “in the reading of the old testament” (3:14): The letter means what is material and the spirit what is intellectual, which we also call spiritual. Augustine took it of the law without grace, which fits the “tables of stone” (3:3): How does the Spirit give life? By causing the letter to be fulfilled, so that it may not kill.

Paul calls the collection a grace, the word he uses for God’s favour in Christ. It begins as “the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia,” who gave out of “a great trial of affliction” and “deep poverty” (8:1–2), and Titus is sent to “finish in you the same grace also” (8:6). Its pattern is Christ: “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (8:9). Paul gives no command (8:8), for “God loveth a cheerful giver” (9:7), and the manna sets the measure: “he that had gathered little had no lack” (8:15; Exodus 16:18). The whole ends in thanksgiving: “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” (9:15).

Others at Corinth gloried after the flesh (11:18). When Paul is driven to boast, he glories “of the things which concern mine infirmities” (11:30). After he was caught up into paradise he was given “a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me” (12:7). The text does not say what it was. Severian of Gabala records one answer, Many people think this was some kind of headache, and Paul speaks elsewhere of an “infirmity of the flesh” (Galatians 4:13). Severian and Theodoret took it of persecution: By ‘messenger of Satan’ Paul means the insults, attacks and riots which he had to face. Paul asked three times for it to go. The answer was grace, not removal: “my strength is made perfect in weakness” (12:9), “for when I am weak, then am I strong” (12:10).