2 Corinthians 3:5

In Paul’s day a traveller arriving in a city where he was unknown often carried a letter of commendation, in Latin litterae commendaticiae. Someone known and trusted wrote it to vouch for the bearer’s character, credentials and errand, so that he would be received with trust and given hospitality. Merchants carried such letters, and so did anyone who came on behalf of an organisation or an authority. Paul’s phrase “epistles of commendation” names this custom exactly. Epistolḗ is the ordinary word for a letter or written message, and systatikós means introductory or recommendatory, so together they mean letters written to recommend the one who carries them.

“Some others” at Corinth had arrived with letters like these. They were probably the rival teachers Paul later calls false apostles, and their letters may have come from influential people in Jerusalem or elsewhere. They used them to set themselves above Paul, whose only credentials were the gospel he preached and what it had done among the Corinthians.

The verb “commend”, synistáō, means to set together, and so to introduce someone favourably or to show what he is. “Do we begin again to commend ourselves?” looks back over the first two chapters, where Paul explained his change of travel plans and his painful letter and appealed to “the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity” he had lived among them (2 Corinthians 1:12). He has just described his work as God always causing him to triumph in Christ (2 Corinthians 2:14). “Begin again” suggests that the charge of self-praise had been made before, or that Paul expects some to hear all this as one more round of boasting.

The question runs both ways: letters “to you” and letters “from you”. Paul needs a letter neither to introduce him at Corinth nor to carry from Corinth to another church. His apostleship came from God, as the letter’s first words say (2 Corinthians 1:1), and he could write to the Galatians that he was an apostle “not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father” (Galatians 1:1). The proof of his calling stood in front of the Corinthians in their own church. Jesus gave the same test for any teacher: “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20).

Verse 2 answers the question at once: “Ye are our epistle.” The word is epistolḗ again. The people of the church at Corinth, who came to faith through Paul’s preaching and whose lives God changed, are the letter of recommendation Paul carries with him. A changed life speaks for the ministry that brought the gospel to it more plainly than any document could.

The letter is “written in our hearts”. The verb engráphō means to inscribe or write in, and Strong’s gives “to engrave”. Kardía, the heart, is the seat of thought, feeling and will, the whole inner person. Paul carries the Corinthians in his own heart. They were his joy and the fruit of his labour, and his ministry among them was a matter of deep affection. This is the first of two mentions of hearts as the place where the letter is written, and in verse 3 the hearts are where the Spirit writes.

It is also “known and read of all men”. Ginṓskō means to know, come to know, perceive or understand, and most often it simply means to have knowledge of a thing. Anaginṓskō is the verb to read, from “know again”, said of written letters. A paper letter is opened by the person it is addressed to, while this one lies open to everyone, believers and unbelievers alike. Whatever people saw in the church at Corinth told them what the gospel had done there.

Jesus said the same of all his disciples. They are “the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), and he told them, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Paul saw the same thing happen at Thessalonica, where others spread the news of how the believers “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven” (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10).

Verse 3 tells us who wrote the letter and what it was written with. The Corinthians are “manifestly declared”, plainly shown for all to see, to be “the epistle of Christ”. The letter is from Christ. He is its author, and the lives of these believers carry his message.

Paul’s part was to deliver it: “ministered by us”. The verb diakonéō means to serve, wait upon, care for or minister, and it comes from diákonos, a servant. Paul and his fellow workers served as the means by which Christ’s letter came into being at Corinth, and the work itself was Christ’s.

The letter is “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God”. Ink is what men write with. The Spirit of the living God gives life, and what he writes is a living change in a person. So the living God writes living letters.

“And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward.” The “And”, dé, simply joins this to what came before. “Such”, toioûtos, points back to the confidence Paul has just expressed, that the Corinthians are Christ’s letter written by the Spirit. “Trust”, pepoíthēsis, means confidence or settled trust. Paul uses the same word elsewhere of his confidence toward the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:15) and of confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:4), and here he tells us where his own confidence comes from. “Have we”, échō, means to have, hold or possess, and Paul speaks of a confidence that he and his fellow workers hold now.

Two short phrases give its source and its direction. “Through Christ” uses diá, through or by means of. Christ is the one through whom this confidence reaches Paul at all, just as it is “through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Ephesians 2:18). “To God-ward” is prós with theós, toward God. Prós is a preposition of direction, and it can also mean at, by or with. So Paul’s confidence looks to God and stands before him. God is its source and its goal, and Paul could hold it in God’s presence without shame.

Every believer comes to God the same way. Because of Christ we may “come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), “for all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20), and our hope rests on “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

Verse 5 makes sure that the confidence of verse 4 is understood as confidence in God. “Sufficient”, hikanós, means competent, adequate, fit or enough. “Sufficiency”, hikanótēs, is the noun from it and means ability or competence. Paul uses the adjective for what he and his companions are of themselves, and the noun for what God gives them. Of themselves they are unfit even “to think any thing”. The verb logízomai means to count, reckon or consider, so Paul is unable even to reckon any part of the work as his own.

The phrase “of ourselves” comes twice, with heautōn, “ourselves”, and then the verse ends “of God”. The preposition ek means “from” or “out of” and marks where a thing comes from, and the KJV’s “of” stands for it. All of Paul’s fitness for the ministry comes out of God.

Corinth was a city that prized fine speaking and human wisdom. Paul’s opponents probably boasted of their own gifts and found fault with his plain speech. Paul answers by pointing away from every human ability to God. He says the same at the close of the letter, where the Lord told him, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness,” and Paul could say, “when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). In his first letter he had shown them that God chose the weak and foolish things of the world so that “he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:18–31). Jesus put it in a sentence: “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). And Paul knew the other side of it: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13).

Jesus himself is the clearest picture of what Paul says here. His Father commended him from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). He pointed to his own works as his witness: “the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me” (John 10:25). He is “the Apostle and High Priest of our profession” (Hebrews 3:1). Before any believer became a letter, Christ was the Word made flesh, God’s own message to us, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Believers become his letters through union with him, as Christ is formed in them (Galatians 4:19).

The Spirit who writes on the heart is the Spirit Christ gives. John tells us that “the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39), and Peter announced at Pentecost that the exalted Christ, “having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this” (Acts 2:33). Christ is “the mediator of the new testament” (Hebrews 9:15) and “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). What the law on stone could only demand, God did by sending his Son, “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:3–4).

In his life on earth the Son himself said, “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30), and in him all fulness dwells (Colossians 1:19). He is the one who makes his servants sufficient for the work (2 Corinthians 3:5–6). Our standing before God is to “be found in him” with the righteousness that is of God by faith (Philippians 3:7–9), for Christ “of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

These verses show us a God who writes on human hearts. He wrote his law once on stone with his own finger, and now by his Spirit he writes it within his people, so that changed lives become a letter from Christ that anyone can read. That letter is the best commendation any servant of God could carry, and it belongs to God from first to last.

They also show where the confidence of God’s servants rests. Paul could face his critics calmly because his fitness for the work came from God through Christ. The same is true for every believer who serves in any way. The strength is God’s, the fruit is God’s, and so the glory is God’s, and that frees us to work gladly and to leave the results with him.