Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Corinthians · About this commentary
That Satan Gain No Advantage
2 Corinthians 2:9-11
9 For to this end I also wrote, that I might know the proof of you, whether you are obedient in all things. · WEB
The scheme being guarded against is not the original sin but the refusal to end the punishment for it.
Verse 9 states what the severe letter was testing: that I might know the proof of you, whether you are obedient in all things.
The test was not whether they would punish the offender. It was obedience in all things — which, given what verses 7 and 8 have just asked for, now includes forgiving him. A congregation can pass the first half of a test and fail the second, and the letter is arriving at the point where the harder half begins.
Verse 10 then ties Paul's own position to theirs, in that order: I also forgive whomever you forgive anything. He follows rather than leads. The one man with grounds to withhold agrees in advance to whatever they decide, and he adds where the decision is made — in the presence of Christ.
And the motive is for your sakes, not the offender's. Their standing is what is at stake in whether they can release someone.
Then verse 11 names the danger, and it is the sharpest sentence in the chapter: that no advantage may be gained over us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
The expected sentence would have located the adversary's interest in the sin. This one locates it in the aftermath. A church holding a repentant man at arm's length is described as handing over ground — and the word for advantage suggests being outmaneuvered, taken by a tactic rather than overpowered.
So the scheme has two ends and only one is obvious. Getting a man to fall is the first; keeping the fall permanent by way of the congregation's own severity is the second, and the second does not look like a temptation at all. It looks like standards.
And the plural in over us includes everyone in the room. Not the offender alone, and not Paul alone — the loss would be shared, which is why the schemes are described as something they should already be able to recognize.
settled What this mark means