Introduction to 2 Corinthians

Title and authorship

The letter names Paul in its first word and never stops speaking in the first person. It is the most personal thing he wrote, and the reason is that his standing with this congregation had collapsed and he is trying to recover it without pretending the damage did not happen.

Timothy is joined to the greeting 2 Corinthians 1:1, and Titus carries the traffic between Paul and Corinth — named in eight verses, more than in any other letter of Paul's 2 Corinthians 2:13 2 Corinthians 7:6 2 Corinthians 8:6 2 Corinthians 12:18.

The letter answers people rather than ideas. Someone has arrived in Corinth with letters of commendation 2 Corinthians 3:1, claiming a standing Paul lacks; he calls them false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as Christ's apostles 2 Corinthians 11:13, while conceding nothing about their credentials except that he is not at all behind the very best apostles 2 Corinthians 11:5.

Three parts are visible, and the seams are sharp.

Chapters 1 to 7 defend a ministry: why he changed his travel plans, what the new covenant is, and why a body that keeps failing is the right container for it. Chapters 8 and 9 are about money — a single sustained appeal for a collection. Chapters 10 to 13 change tone so completely that many readers have taken them for a separate letter: the irony hardens, and Paul argues his case by listing his humiliations.

Nothing in the text settles whether the last four chapters were written at the same sitting. What can be observed is that the vocabulary carries across the seam. The verb for boasting appears in 17 verses and 14 of them fall in chapters 10 to 12; the noun for weakness appears five times and every one is in the last three chapters. Whatever produced the change of tone, the letter's argument arrives at its point there.

Date

The letter dates itself by a journey rather than a calendar. Paul is in Macedonia — he came into Macedonia and found that our flesh had no relief 2 Corinthians 7:5, he reports what the grace of God which has been given in the assemblies of Macedonia 2 Corinthians 8:1, and he worries about arriving there with Macedonians in tow 2 Corinthians 9:4. Macedonia is named in seven verses.

Behind him lie two things the letter keeps returning to. A visit that went badly, which he will not repeat as it was — that I would not come to you again in sorrow 2 Corinthians 2:1. And a letter written out of much affliction and anguish of heart... with many tears 2 Corinthians 2:4, whose effect he was afraid of until Titus brought word 2 Corinthians 7:8.

Ahead of him lies a third visit, announced twice: this is the third time I am ready to come to you 2 Corinthians 12:14, and this is the third time I am coming to you 2 Corinthians 13:1. So the letter sits between a second visit that wounded both sides and a third that has not happened.

The collection for Jerusalem is in progress and running late — begun a year ago 2 Corinthians 8:10 2 Corinthians 9:2 and still not finished, which is why two chapters are spent on it.

That places the letter after the first Corinthian letter, which had already mentioned the collection and a planned route through Macedonia 1 Corinthians 16:1–5. A tighter date would rest on reconstruction. What matters for reading it is the position: written on the road, to a congregation that has partly come back to him and partly not.

Backgrounds

Corinth was a commercial city rebuilt as a Roman colony, and the letter's problems are the problems of a confident, competitive town.

The charge against Paul is that he does not look like what he claims to be. It is quoted: his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech is despised 2 Corinthians 10:10. In a culture that graded public speakers, a man who wrote better than he performed was a man who could be dismissed.

The rivals traded on exactly that. They came with written credentials, took payment, and made claims Paul then parodies — if he brings you into bondage, if he devours you, if he takes you captive, if he exalts himself, or if he strikes you on the face 2 Corinthians 11:20. He had refused support from Corinth and taken it from Macedonia instead 2 Corinthians 11:9, and that refusal was read as evidence he was not a real apostle rather than as generosity.

Money is a live nerve throughout. The collection chapters have to be careful: Paul sends a delegation partly so that nobody can suspect the handling of the funds — avoiding this, that any man should blame us concerning this abundance 2 Corinthians 8:20.

And there is a personal history in the congregation. Someone had caused an injury, been disciplined, and now needs restoring, with the risk running the other way — that he may be swallowed up with his excessive sorrow 2 Corinthians 2:7.

Against all of it the letter sets a physical record of what the ministry had actually cost: imprisonments, thirty-nine lashes five times, three beatings with rods, a stoning, three shipwrecks, and a night and a day in open water 2 Corinthians 11:23–25. The list is offered as the credential the rivals could not match.

Theology and purpose

The letter's argument is one idea worked out on every subject it touches: God's power is delivered through what looks like failure, and it is delivered no other way.

That is stated as a principle in a single sentence — my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness 2 Corinthians 12:9 — and everything else in the letter is a case of it.

It opens with comfort, and the word arrives in a cluster: the noun for consolation falls in ten verses and five of them are 1:3 through 1:7, packed tighter than anywhere else Paul wrote. The logic set out there governs the rest: comfort received is not for keeping, but so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction 2 Corinthians 1:4. Suffering is described as the qualification.

Then the same shape in four more images. A ministry of the new covenant that kills nothing and gives life, set against a glory that had to be veiled because it was fading 2 Corinthians 3:6–13. Treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves 2 Corinthians 4:7 — the container chosen for being breakable. A body described as a tent being taken down while a building waits 2 Corinthians 5:1. And an office described in the most undignified terms available: ambassadors on behalf of Christ, whose message is be reconciled to God 2 Corinthians 5:20.

The hinge of the whole letter is one verse about an exchange: for him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God 2 Corinthians 5:21. Two transfers in one sentence, in opposite directions, neither of them earned.

The money chapters apply the same principle to cash, and they do it with one word. Charis — grace — falls in 18 verses across the letter, and 10 of them are in chapters 8 and 9. It carries the Macedonians' generosity, the collection itself, the thanks for it, and Christ's own impoverishment: though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor 2 Corinthians 8:9. Giving is not treated as a duty attached to the gospel but as the same motion the gospel is.

And the last chapters make the argument autobiographical. Paul refuses to compete on strength, boasts of the things that disqualify him, and reports a thorn he asked three times to have removed and was refused 2 Corinthians 12:7–8. The refusal is the answer. A man arguing that power comes through weakness could not be permitted to be strong.

Additional notes

Note — the veil of chapter 3, and what is said to fade. The comparison is not between a bad covenant and a good one. Both are given glory, and the glory of the first is conceded: Israel could not look steadfastly on the face of Moses for the glory of his face 2 Corinthians 3:7. What is said about it is that it was passing away, and that the veil existed so the fading would not be watched 2 Corinthians 3:13. The contrast is between something that arrived with an end built into it and something that does not. And the veil is then relocated from Moses' face to the reader's mind — their minds were hardened — with one condition for its removal: whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away 2 Corinthians 3:16.

Note — the body, the tent, and being away from it. Chapter 5 is Paul's fullest statement about dying, and it is built on a building metaphor: if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God 2 Corinthians 5:1. What he wants is stated exactly, and it is not disembodiment — not that we desire to be unclothed, but that we desire to be clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life 2 Corinthians 5:4. Nakedness is the thing he shrinks from; the hope is for more covering rather than less. Then at home in the body is set against at home with the Lord 2 Corinthians 5:8, and the preference is stated without any timetable attached to it. What the passage does supply is a judgment where each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done 2 Corinthians 5:10 — an accounting that presupposes the body rather than dispensing with it.

Note — the man caught up, and the thorn. Paul tells the story of the revelation in the third person and twice refuses to say whether it was bodily: whether in the body, I don't know, or whether out of the body, I don't know; God knows 2 Corinthians 12:2. He declines the one detail every reader wants, having introduced it as something he will not build on: I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord only to arrive at the thorn.

What the thorn was is not disclosed. It is called a thorn in the flesh and a messenger of Satan to torment me, and its stated purpose is given twice in the same verse — that I should not be exalted excessively 2 Corinthians 12:7. Both descriptions stand together: the affliction is attributed to an enemy and assigned a purpose by God, and the text does not resolve the two into one agent. Guessing the ailment adds nothing the argument uses; the argument uses only that it stayed after three requests.

Outline

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