2 Corinthians 2:17

The verse before this passage finds Paul at Troas in distress: “I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother” (2 Corinthians 2:13). He went on into Macedonia, where there was conflict around him and where God comforted him (2 Corinthians 7:5–6). In the middle of that account he bursts into praise: “Now thanks be unto God.”

Paul gives thanks while the trouble is still present, because the triumph he speaks of rests on God and on what Christ has done. God is the one acting in the sentence. He “causeth us to triumph”, and he “maketh manifest” the knowledge of Christ. The words “always” and “in every place” cover the anxious days at Troas as fully as the good ones. Paul will say later that his sufficiency is from God (2 Corinthians 3:5–8), and that the treasure is carried in earthen vessels so that the power may be seen to be God’s (2 Corinthians 4:7–12).

The Greek verb behind “causeth us to triumph” is thriambeúō, which means to make an acclamatory procession, and so to conquer or to give victory. It calls up the Roman triumph, a sight that people in Corinth, a major Roman city, would have known at once. When a general won a decisive victory, the Senate granted him a triumph, which was a great parade through the streets of Rome. The general came with his army, with the spoils of war, and with captured enemies, and incense was burned along the route as a sign of victory and of homage to the gods.

In Paul’s picture God is the victorious general, and the victory is Christ’s. On the cross Christ spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). So the triumph is “in Christ”. We share in a victory over sin, death and the powers of darkness that he has already won, and we share in it as a gift, through our union with him by faith. Paul says the same elsewhere: “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37), and “thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57).

There is a paradox in the picture. Those whom God leads in this procession are Christ’s own captives, bought with a price, and they also march as part of the victorious parade, shown to the world as the spoils of his grace.

The incense of the parade gives Paul his next picture. “Savour” is osmḗ, a fragrance or scent. A scent spreads through the air and reaches everyone near it, and Paul says that God spreads the knowledge of himself in that way, “by us in every place”. The apostles are the means, and God is the one who makes it known.

“Knowledge” is gnōsis, knowing. Here it is the knowledge of God as he has shown himself in Christ, which is a knowing of a person and of what he has done as well as of facts about him. In Christ “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). What is made known in every place is Christ himself, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8).

This fragrance is carried by words and by lives together. Jesus told his disciples to let their light shine before men, so that people would see their good works and glorify their Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16). Paul’s picture says the same thing in terms of scent: wherever those who belong to Christ go, something of him goes with them.

In verse 15 the picture deepens. Paul now says “we are” the savour, and he says to whom it rises: “unto God”. The word for God is theós, the common Greek noun for a deity, which here names the one true God. He is the first to receive this fragrance. Paul’s ministry is measured by what God thinks of it, and the response of the hearers comes second.

“Sweet savour” is euōdía, a good scent or pleasing fragrance. The Greek Old Testament uses this word for the pleasing aroma of sacrifices offered to God. When Noah offered burnt offerings after the flood, “the LORD smelled a sweet savour” (Genesis 8:21). The ram burned on the altar was “a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto the LORD” (Exodus 29:18), and so was the burnt offering in the law (Leviticus 1:9). Paul is saying that the lives and preaching of Christ’s servants are an offering God accepts.

The sweetness belongs to Christ. It is a sweet savour “of Christ”, who “hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2). Those who are united to him carry his fragrance, and for his sake what they offer pleases God. Paul speaks in the same way of the gift the Philippians sent him, calling it a sweet-smelling sacrifice, acceptable and well pleasing to God (Philippians 4:18).

Paul names two groups of people. “Saved” is the verb sṓzō, to save, deliver or protect, and “perish” is apóllymi, to destroy fully, to perish or to lose. The same message reaches both groups, and Paul writes of them in the same way elsewhere: “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

The Roman procession shows how one scent can mean two things. To the general, his soldiers and the citizens, the incense was the smell of victory and celebration. To the captives being led to execution at the end of the parade, the same incense was the smell of their coming death. So it is with the gospel.

To those who believe, it is “the savour of life unto life”. “Life” is zōḗ, and here it is the life God gives in Christ. “Life unto life” speaks of a life that begins when a person believes and goes on into eternal life. The gospel is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Romans 1:16). Jesus promised that whoever hears his word and believes the one who sent him has everlasting life (John 5:24), and he called himself the resurrection and the life (John 11:25).

To those who refuse it, it is “the savour of death unto death”. “Death” is thánatos, and here it means chiefly spiritual death, separation from God. “Death unto death” describes a person already dead in this sense whose refusal of the gospel confirms that state and leads on to final condemnation. Jesus said that the word he had spoken would judge the one who rejects him at the last day (John 12:48). When some in Antioch put the word of God from them, Paul and Barnabas told them they had judged themselves unworthy of everlasting life (Acts 13:46).

All of this follows from who Christ is. He said that he came to bring division (Luke 12:51) and that he came into the world for judgment (John 9:39). He is the light, and the light shows what is in a person: whoever believes in him is free of condemnation, while those who love darkness turn away from the light because their deeds are evil (John 3:18–21). Peter says that Christ is precious to those who believe and a stone of stumbling to those who are disobedient to the word (1 Peter 2:7–8). The gospel leaves nobody where it found him.

Paul’s question is a confession of how great the task is. “Sufficient” is hikanós, which means enough, competent or fit. A message that ends in life or death for every hearer is too heavy for any person’s own strength, wisdom or skill in speaking, and Paul feels that weight.

He answers the question himself in the next chapter (2 Corinthians 3), where he writes that “our sufficiency is of God”, who has made us able ministers of the new testament, a ministry of the Spirit, who gives life. So the question is asked in humility and answered in confidence. God makes his servants fit for the work he gives them, and the results are his.

Paul’s last sentence explains how he can carry such a ministry at all. He sets himself apart from “many, which corrupt the word of God”. The verb is kapēleúō, to retail, and by implication to adulterate. It is the word for a huckster or peddler, the kind of merchant who watered down his wine to sell more of it. Teachers had come to Corinth who worked against Paul’s authority, and they behaved like the travelling sophists of the day, charging fees and shaping their message for popularity or profit. To corrupt the word of God is to treat it as goods for sale and to thin it out for the seller’s gain. Scripture had long warned about such people. The LORD said through Jeremiah, “he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully” (Jeremiah 23:28), and Jesus said that false prophets would be known by their fruits (Matthew 7:15–20).

Against this Paul sets four marks of his own speaking.

• “As of sincerity.” Eilikríneia means clearness, and so purity. The word is sometimes linked with the idea of being judged by sunlight, like a thing held up to the light and found to have nothing hidden in it. Paul’s message is unmixed and his motives are open. He had already appealed to his conscience on this point, saying that he had lived among the Corinthians “in simplicity and godly sincerity” (2 Corinthians 1:12), and he returns to it when he says he has renounced “the hidden things of dishonesty” (2 Corinthians 4:1–6).
• “As of God.” His message comes from God, and he speaks as one whom God has sent. He told the Galatians that the gospel he preached came to him by the revelation of Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:11–12). Peter gives the same rule to everyone who speaks in the church: “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God” (1 Peter 4:11).
• “In the sight of God.” Katenṓpion means directly in front of. Paul speaks with God looking on, so that every word and every motive lies open before him.
• “Speak we in Christ.” “In Christ” is en Christō. Paul speaks out of his union with Christ, who is the source, the content and the power of what he says. This is how Paul describes his whole life: “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). It is also how he describes the church, which grows up into Christ by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15–16).

This verse also helps those who listen. The Bereans were commended because they “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). A message and its messenger are tested by faithfulness to God’s word and by purity of motive, and charm and popularity prove nothing either way.

Everything Paul claims for his speaking is true first and fully of Jesus. He is the Word, who was with God and was God (John 1:1), and who was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He spoke “as of God” because he is God the Son, the one who has declared the Father (John 1:18) and who is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). He spoke in sincerity, for he came down from heaven to do the will of him that sent him (John 6:38). He spoke in the sight of God, for he said, “he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29). When Paul says he speaks “in Christ”, he means that his own ministry draws its truth and its authority from that perfect ministry of his Lord.

This passage gives a troubled servant of God a reason for thanks that holds on a bad day. Paul wrote it with the memory of Troas still fresh, and the word he chose was “always”. The victory is Christ’s, already won, and God leads his people in it whether or not they feel victorious.

It also frees us from measuring our witness by how people respond. The fragrance of Christ rises first to God, and he is pleased with it for the sake of his Son. Some who meet it will find life, and some will turn from it, as they turned from Jesus himself. Our part is to carry it faithfully, and the outcome rests with God.

And it shows us a God who makes his servants sufficient. Paul’s question about who is equal to these things is one any honest Christian asks, and God’s answer is that the sufficiency comes from him. He asks for his word to be spoken as it is, unmixed, by people who know that he is watching and who speak from their life in Christ.