1:12 Paul here introduces the theme of boasting, which occurs more often in 2 Corinthians than in any other book in the Bible. The Greek root occurs fifty-nine times in the NT, with twenty-nine of these being found in this epistle. The word is a window into the Corinthian dysfunction Paul is engaging and agonizing over. The Corinthians have allowed a worldly, fleshly mindset to seep into their community and their own hearts. They revere human strength, human cleverness, human slickness. In this they are simply giving vent to what is normal and natural to all fallen people. They are boasting in—celebrating, drawing strength from—human impressiveness. Throughout the letter Paul exposes the folly of such fleshly boasting. But he does so not by denying all boasting wholesale but by turning our natural boastful tendencies upside down.

Here in verse 12 he claims as his boast the testimony of his conscience that his and his friends’ conduct was guileless. They acted according to “simplicity and godly sincerity.”6 This is integrity, but it also goes deeper. Paul acted “not by earthly [lit., “fleshly”] wisdom.” The innate proclivity to function—even in ministry—in accord with the world’s strategies, absorbed and admired by the Corinthians, had been self-consciously resisted by Paul. Rather, his labors were “by the grace of God.” Paul speaks here not of saving, forgiving grace but of grace that empowers Christian ministry (cf. 1 Cor. 15:10). Specifically, he speaks of God’s grace because this is precisely what is required in order to live fruitfully if one is not going to work out of innate human resources. Where human ingenuities and self-generated strategies end, grace begins. The two are mutually exclusive.

1:13–14 This text is a bit cryptic on first reading. On reflection, however, it fits seamlessly into the letter’s overarching motif of the way the gospel confounds the world’s priorities and innate values.

Paul is saying that in this letter (now his fourth to them, we remember) he is not shifting strategies. His messaging has been consistent. He is not fickle in his travel plans (vv. 15–18); he is not fickle in his message (vv. 13–14). The present letter is the natural continuation of what Paul has been saying to the Corinthians all along. And yet, at the same time—and this is the deepest point of the verse—Paul expresses “hope” that they “will fully understand.” In the phrase “will fully” Paul uses the Greek word telos, meaning end or goal or outcome, which when paired with the preposition used here (heōs) means “to the end” or “through to final completion.” Paul is not changing his message; rather, the Corinthians have not grasped fully (through to its final logical conclusion) what it means to operate “by the grace of God” rather than “by earthly wisdom” (v. 12). They see part of gospel truth. But they have not penetrated to the deep realities of the way the gospel inverts our intuitive ways of thinking. Paul is confident, however (in line with the typical Pauline usage of “hope” as confidence and not mere wishful thinking), that the Corinthians will indeed blossom into fullness of understanding in due time.

That Paul has in mind partial understanding in the present time is made explicit in verse 14. The Corinthians did indeed “partially understand us.” What did they “partially understand” (v. 14) but have yet to “fully understand” (v. 13)? They have only begun to grasp that on the final day of judgment true Christians will boast in something outside of them, not in something inside of them.

Paul speaks of the “day of our Lord Jesus” in one other place (1 Cor. 1:8) and both there and here uses the preposition heōs tied to the noun telos, speaking of the final day, the time of Christ’s return in triumph. Though Paul does not say much about Christ’s return in 2 Corinthians, the event never strays far from his mind, as is evident from the pervasive reference to it throughout his letters (1 Cor. 4:5; 15:20–28; Phil. 3:20–21; Col. 3:3–4; 1 Thess. 1:10; 2:19; 3:13; 4:13–18; 5:1–11, 23; 2 Thess. 1:5–10; 2:1–2, 8; 1 Tim. 6:13–16; 2 Tim. 4:1; Titus 2:11–14). And what, according to 2 Corinthians 1:14, will happen on this great day? “You will boast of us as we will boast of you.” The source of boasting will not be self. Paul will boast in the Corinthians, and the Corinthians in Paul. This is the text on which Jonathan Edwards preached his famous “Farewell Sermon” in 1750 after being voted out of his congregation by a negative-to-positive vote ratio of ten to one. Edwards reminded them that they would meet again one day, and that there is a special bond between a spiritual father and his spiritual children.7 They are to “boast” in each other. The Christian’s truest satisfaction, deepest consolation—authentic Christianity—is in the well-being of the other. Once more, in accord with the macrotheme of the letter, Paul upends the innate selfward boasting of the flesh and the world.

1:15–16 “Because I was sure of this . . .” In this phrase Paul uses the same word (Gk. pepoithēsis, “trust, confidence”) elsewhere in this letter translated “confidence” (3:4; 8:22; 10:2; in 9:4 and 11:17 we see its synonym hypostasis: “substance, confidence, assurance”). As a shrewd and gentle shepherd in his pastoral care for the Corinthians, Paul expresses his confidence in their continued growth in understanding the way the gospel relocates the ground of one’s boasting (1:14). Paul wished to reinforce and confirm this growth in the Corinthians by traveling through Corinth on his way to Macedonia (v. 16).

Paul says this visit would have been a “second experience of grace”—or more literally, a “second grace.” Paul had opened the letter with the greeting “Grace to you” (1:2), and he will close it with a benediction that “grace . . . be with you” (13:14). This very letter represents the “second experience of grace” that the Corinthians would have had if Paul had visited in line with his original travel plans. Where apostolic preaching is—whether in person or by letter—there grace is. Paul does something similar in his opening to his letter to the Romans when he says that he longed “to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you” (Rom. 1:11). The word used there for “spiritual gift” (Gk. charisma) shares the same root as the word for “grace” (charis) here in 2 Corinthians 1:15. The gift in both cases is shared remembrance in and celebration of the gospel, for which an epistle is substituting.

Paul then makes explicit his original plans (v. 16): he wanted to visit Corinth on his way north to Macedonia and then visit them again on his return to Judea.

1:17 This verse makes clear that Paul evidently did not follow through on these original travel plans, for he defends himself against any fickleness on his part.

Paul expresses one reality three ways in this verse:

(1)  vacillating

(2)  making plans according to the flesh

(3)  saying yes and no at the same time

In all three he is getting at the same reality—namely, being one thing on the outside and another on the inside.

First, the turn of phrase that the ESV translates as “vacillating” means to function under indecisive equivocation or even with levity. Paul is saying that he was not speaking lightly, in a facile, noncommittal way. His plans were not flippant. He was not letting his mouth run out ahead of his actual intentions just to say what the Corinthians wanted to hear. He meant what he said. But he had been unable to follow through for various grave and circumstantial reasons.

Such flippancy would have been equivalent, second, to making “plans according to the flesh.” “Flesh” here is the Greek word sarx, which recalls the notion of wisdom that is “earthly” in 1:12, using sarkikos, “fleshly,” the adjectival form of sarx. The term sarx in Pauline theology generally has as its opposite the Spirit. Paul means here that his plans were not made according to glib or pretentious human superficialities of motive (cf. comments on 5:16; 10:2). Rather, he was sincerely intending to spend time in Corinth for the sake of their spiritual well-being.

Third, he was not saying yes and no at the same time. Frivolous human assertions often say yes when the heart really means no. Paul did no such thing. He was the same all the way through. He was one person. He was not deceiving the Corinthians.

1:18 Paul puts his integrity on the level of God’s own faithfulness. “Faithful” is the first word in the Greek sentence, fronted probably for emphasis (“Faithful is God . . .”). Paul’s sincerity is as certain as the very faithfulness of God. But Paul is saying something even deeper than this. God’s faithfulness is the explanation for Paul’s integrity. Woodenly, the text reads something like “And faithful is God, that/because our word which was to you is not yes and no.” Paul is tying the integrity of his apostolic communication of the gospel to the integrity of God himself, and probably even identifying God’s faithfulness as the sustaining power of his own sincerity and integrity.

Yet the faithfulness of God is seen not only in Paul’s sincerity of ministry but also in God’s own actions in his Son, who came as the fulfillment of all God’s promises. This is where Paul’s argument now turns.

1:19–20 At this point the apostle makes a shift. He continues to defend his sincerity of motive in how he has dealt with the Corinthians, but he now plants that sincerity of motive not in God’s faithfulness generally but specifically in Jesus Christ.

Paul calls Christ the “Son of God” at various key points in his letters (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:9; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 4:13), though perhaps not as often as one might expect. Given the context, in which Paul asserts Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promises, he likely has in mind Christ’s role as the great Davidic son anticipated throughout the OT. Particularly significant are the divine promises to David in 2 Samuel 7 that God would raise up the “offspring” (2 Sam. 7:12) of David and give him a permanent “kingdom” (2 Sam. 7:13), along with God’s declaration, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (2 Sam. 7:14). This filial motif is carried through the Psalms, with Psalm 2 being especially formative in the apostles’ understanding of Jesus’ sonship.

How did the Son of God come to be present in the Corinthians (the preposition translated “among” is the same one used to speak of being “in” Christ; e.g., 2 Cor. 2:14)? Not by paraded example, not by acts of kindness, not even by written letter such as Paul is now writing to them—but by oral proclamation. The text woodenly reads that Christ is in/among the Corinthians “through what was preached by us”—that is, preaching was the means by which Christ came to Corinth, but preaching was not the original source. The proclamation came through Paul and his comrades. This is perhaps why Paul uses the passive (“was preached”). It came from a source higher up still—from heaven, from God himself. As Paul will say later of his ministry, “All this is from God” (2 Cor. 5:18).

Paul then makes what is perhaps, on first reading, a strange remark. The proclaimed Christ “was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes.” What Paul is getting at is that the very integrity of God has been publicly vindicated in the explosion onto the scene of world history of God’s great “Yes” in the person of his Son. God has not declared “Maybe” to sinners. He has said “Yes!” to them, wholeheartedly and unreservedly. All the snowballing anticipations throughout the OT of a coming redeemer have been decisively and irreversibly clinched in the outwardly unimpressive carpenter from Nazareth (cf. Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:39, 46; Rom. 1:2–3; 9:4–5; 15:8).

We know this mindfulness of the OT is the point here because Paul goes on in the next verse to ground what he has just said in 2 Corinthians 1:19 (note the connecting “For” that opens v. 20), and he does so by connecting Christ’s great “Yes” to the “promises of God” (v. 20). And not some of God’s promises: “All the promises of God find their Yes in him.” Literally, “As many as are the promises of God, in him [is] the Yes.” Whatever God has pledged, in Christ it is completed. Whatever God has said he will do, in Christ he has done it. Jesus Christ is flesh-and-blood proof that God is faithful, that is, true to his word.

Consequently, “It is through [Christ] that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” The verb (“we utter”) must be supplied here, as there is none in Greek. “Amen,” a simple transliteration of the Greek amēn, often concludes prayers both in Scripture and in modern worship. Here, however, given the context and the close proximity of repeated uses of “Yes,” the “Amen” refers more broadly to the Christian community’s affirmative response to what God has done in Christ. God in Christ has given his decisive “Yes”; the Corinthians have joined Paul in answering “Amen.” In verses 18–20, then, Paul is accomplishing several purposes: defending his own integrity, reminding the Corinthians of God’s integrity and faithfulness, identifying Christ as the proof of that faithfulness, and associating his own ministry’s integrity with God’s. And all this, Paul reminds us in his typical way, is finally for God’s glory.

1:21–22 Paul has spoken of Christ’s establishment through preaching (v. 19), and also the establishment of God’s promises through Christ (v. 20). Now he turns to speak of his own establishment through the Spirit, along with the Corinthians’ (and by logical extension all believers’). Once again, then, Paul expresses his solidarity with the Corinthians and the divine causation of that solidarity.

Four blessings are listed for those who have said “Amen” to Christ as the fulfillment of all God’s promises. The first is the umbrella blessing and the latter three are various manifestations of that first fundamental blessing:

(1)  Divine establishment (v. 21)

(2)  Divine anointing (v. 21)

(3)  Divine sealing (v. 22)

(4)  Divine down payment (v. 22)

The cumulative effect of all of these is to affirm the security of the Corinthians and Paul in Christ. Jesus Christ is not a mere addition to their lives or beliefs. They are not simply considering the claims of Christ in some detached way. Rather, they have been swept up irreversibly into the life of the new age. Here, as he will elsewhere in the letter, Paul appeals to eschatological realities in reminding and reassuring the Corinthians of who they now are.

The overarching blessing is that God “establishes us with you in Christ.” The point is: it is God who does this. What is this verb “establishes” (Gk. bebaioō)? The root is used only one other time in 2 Corinthians, back in 1:7, where the adjectival form (bebaios) is used to speak of Paul’s hope for the Corinthians’ being “unshaken.” The active voice of the verb in 1:21, where God does the “establishing,” has its parallel in Colossians 2:7, where the passive voice is used to refer to the Colossians’ being “established.” The word means to put a matter beyond all doubt. Referring to a person, it means that a given status has been solidified, ratified.

The next three blessings unpack this first blessing. How are believers established in Christ? First, they are anointed. (The Greek word here [chriō] is the root from which we get the noun “Christ,” meaning “anointed one.”) Today we might speak of a gifted speaker as particularly “anointed,” but this is to trivialize the richness of the biblical meaning of this term. Anointing in the NT means not specially skilled but divinely consecrated. And Paul is explicit that it is all believers and not only some gifted leaders who are “anointed.” To be anointed is to be set apart by God for special service to him. In the OT it was generally priests or kings who were anointed (or, less often, prophets). Here it is all believers. Implicit in such anointing is the divine provision of the gifts requisite for carrying out such callings (cf. 1 Corinthians 12).

The next blessing is sealing. This is not a matter of everyday familiarity to us today as it was in the first century, when a letter was commonly secured with a seal identifying its sender. Not only letters were sealed; the same Greek verb is used in Matthew 27:66 of the stone sealing Jesus’ tomb. The point is firm confirmation. We have been marked by God, identified as his, and secured. We belong to him. We are safe.

Finally, God’s Spirit dwells in our hearts as a “guarantee” (Gk. arrabōn) or, as the ESV footnote alternatively offers, a “down payment” (also 2 Cor. 5:5). Ephesians 1:13–14 speaks of being “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the [arrabōn] of our inheritance,” reinforcing close association of sealing and the Spirit here in 2 Corinthians 1:22. A Christian is sealed only in conjunction with receiving the Spirit. To be sealed is to receive the Spirit; one cannot have the one without the other. When Paul says we have received the Spirit “in our hearts,” he refers not to our emotional or affective life narrowly understood but, as the “heart” is used in both the OT and the NT, to the central operating system of human existence, the animating core of our deepest desires and impulses. He means that by his Spirit God has begun to renovate the deepest recesses of who we are and what we want.

But the Spirit is not just a transforming power. The presence of the Spirit signifies something far greater and broader: the dawning of the new age.8 In referring to the Spirit as a “guarantee” or “down payment”—that is, an earnest, a pledge, an initial deposit—Paul is tapping into the language and categories of inaugurated eschatology. The Spirit is not only a down payment now in the individual believer’s life, ensuring final salvation hereafter. More fundamentally, the gift of the Spirit is the preeminent sign of the dawning eschaton (Joel 2:28–32), signaling the descent of the latter days. To receive the Spirit as a down payment signals not only a what regarding a Christian’s renewed existence but also a when regarding the time in history in which one is now located. We will see the reality of the dawning new age throughout 2 Corinthians.9