Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Corinthians · About this commentary
Not to Come Again in Sorrow
2 Corinthians 1:23-2:4
23 But I call God for a witness to my soul, that to spare you, I didn’t come to Corinth. · WEB
The real reason for the changed plan is mercy, and it comes with a disclaimer of authority that a letter defending authority did not have to make.
The explanation finally arrives, under oath: I call God for a witness to my soul, that to spare you, I didn't come to Corinth.
Staying away was the kindness. A visit at that moment would have had to deal with the offense while feeling ran high, and the absence bought time for something to change — which, by chapter 7, it had 2 Corinthians 7:9.
Then verse 24, which is the most restrained sentence in the letter: we don't control your faith, but are fellow workers with you for your joy. For you stand firm in faith.
A man thirteen chapters deep in defending his apostolic standing pauses to say what that standing does not include. He disclaims jurisdiction over their believing — the one area where a religious authority is most tempted to claim it — and substitutes two words: fellow workers, which levels the relationship, and joy, which names the aim. And the last clause concedes that they are already standing, so there is nothing here for him to prop up.
Verse 1 of chapter 2 restates the decision from the inside: I would not come to you again in sorrow. The word again does the work. There was an earlier visit that went that way, and he is not willing to repeat it.
Verse 2 then closes a loop that has no exit: if I make you grieve, then who will make me glad but he who is made to grieve by me? The only people who could cheer him are the people he would have had to wound. A confrontational visit would have destroyed the source of his own consolation, so the choice was not between firmness and weakness but between two kinds of loss.
And verse 4 describes the letter he sent instead, without protecting himself: out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears. Three words for distress in one clause.
Its purpose is then stated in a way that separates effect from intent: not that you should be made to grieve, but that you might know the love that I have so abundantly for you. The grief was foreseen and was not the object. What the letter was for was to make an affection visible that had stopped being obvious.
settled What this mark means