2 Corinthians
Overview
The letters of 1–2 Timothy and Titus are known as the Pastoral Epistles because they are written to individual pastors with counsel for their pastoral work. But 2 Corinthians could equally be known as a pastoral epistle—written by a pastor about his own pastoral work.
The unfiltered pathos and tumultuous emotions of 2 Corinthians set it apart from every other book of the Bible. One can hardly be blamed for wondering while reading it, “Am I reading the Bible here?” This book exchanges the carefully unfolding depths of a letter such as Romans for the ricocheting emotions and personal upheaval that unfolds in 2 Corinthians. The letter is richly theological but not systematic. It is written with tears in the eyes. This is Paul the pastor more than Paul the professor.
The letter falls roughly into three parts: Paul’s defense of his ministry (chs. 1–7); his exhortation toward financial generosity (chs. 8–9); and his closing critique of his opponents (chs. 10–13). There is, however, a uniting theme: strength in weakness. Pain and incapacity are the strange and secret ingredients to spiritual power. Though we will provide a more mechanical outline at the end of the Introduction, one could capture this macrotheme through the following outline. (These also form the Section Overview headings throughout the commentary.) The key point to note is the repetition of the word “through” as opposed to “after.”
I. The Apostle: Gospel Ministry Explained (1:1–7:16)
A. Greeting (1:1–2)
B. Comfort through Affliction (1:3–11)
C. Grace through Simplicity (1:12–22)
D. Joy through Pain (1:23–2:4)
E. Forgiveness through Folly (2:5–11)
F. Victory through Captivity (2:12–17)
G. Sufficiency through Insufficiency (3:1–6)
H. Transformation through Beholding (3:7–18)
I. Ministry through Self-Renunciation (4:1–6)
J. Life through Death (4:7–18)
K. Dwelling through Homelessness (5:1–10)
L. Sinlessness through Sinfulness (5:11–21)
M. Blessing through Suffering (6:1–13)
N. Welcoming through Separation (6:14–7:1)
O. Joy through Grief (7:2–16)
II. The Audience: Generous Money Handling Exhorted (8:1–9:15)
A. Abundance through Poverty (8:1–24)
B. Reaping through Giving (9:1–15)
III. The Agitators: Gain-Seeking Measurement Exposed (10:1–13:14)
A. Commendation through Denigration (10:1–18)
B. Exaltation through Humbling (11:1–15)
C. Confidence through Hardship (11:16–33)
D. Apostolic Power through Weakness (12:1–10)
E. Superiority through Inferiority (12:11–21)
F. Restoration through Testing (13:1–10)
G. Final Greetings (13:11–14)
Author
In accord with ancient epistolary custom, the letter’s opening line identifies the author, here named “Paul.” Paul grew up in Tarsus as a Diaspora Jew, eminent among his kinsmen for his close adherence to the Jewish faith (Acts 22:3; Gal. 1:14; Phil. 3:4–6). If anyone was ever a faithful Jew, it was Paul. Indeed, he persecuted those who preached Jesus as the longed-for Messiah, arguing that the true Jewish Messiah could never be treated with such contempt or shame. And so the living Christ confronted him and softened his heart and rearranged his understanding of how the Messiah would accomplish his purpose (Acts 9:1–19).
And the very transformation Paul himself needed to undergo—learning that it is through contempt and shame that God advances the work of the gospel—Paul himself now is seeking to press home to the Corinthians.
Date and Occasion
Dating and reconstructing the background of books of the Bible is a worthy exercise, but its importance should not be overdrawn. To the degree that historical backgrounds illuminate the meaning and significance of a text, such backgrounds are salutary to learn. But it is the text, not what is behind the text, that is the Christian’s central concern.
Acts 18 relates Paul’s first visit to Corinth, during his second missionary journey, a visit of eighteen months (Acts 18:11). Paul originally sought to persuade Jews of the gospel, but these attempts were largely frustrated (Acts 18:6, 12–17). He proceeded to bring the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 18:7). The fear among the Corinthians that Paul confesses in 1 Corinthians 2:3 links up with the Lord’s reassuring words to Paul in Acts 18:9 (“Do not be afraid.”) and indeed with the general tenor throughout 2 Corinthians, as Paul defends the validity of his ministry despite its outward unimpressiveness.
The letter of 2 Corinthians is likely Paul’s fourth letter to the church at Corinth, 1 Corinthians being the second (cf. 1 Cor. 5:9). In 2 Corinthians 2:1–4 and 7:8, Paul describes a painful letter that he wrote to Corinth, which would have been the third letter to Corinth, a letter now lost to history. Paul likely wrote 2 Corinthians from Macedonia (northern Greece) about one year after writing 1 Corinthians. This was during his third missionary journey (cf. Acts 20:1–3), probably AD 55 or 56 as he visited various churches in Macedonia. He was now on his way to Corinth, however, and had sent ahead a delegation of Titus and a few other respected believers to prepare for his arrival (2 Cor. 8:16–24).
Paul had reason for such caution. Apparently the visit to Corinth promised in 1 Corinthians 16:5 proved deeply painful to Paul (2 Cor. 2:1). In an effort to calm the waters, Paul had to this point refrained from coming back to Corinth (1:23), instead sending the painful letter with Titus. Happily, though this letter was hard for the Corinthians to receive, Titus brought back joyful news of widespread Corinthian penitence (7:6–7). But Paul’s opponents, the sarcastically labeled “super-apostles” (11:5), had apparently doubled down and were doing their best to sideline Paul and promote their own, more outwardly impressive, ministry. Paul was preparing for one more visit. For this, 2 Corinthians paves the way.
Genre and Literary Features
The book of 2 Corinthians is a letter (“epistle”), joining twelve other letters traditionally understood to be written by Paul as part of the NT. The letter’s epistolary nature is clear in its opening, as it identifies the writer and the recipients and gives an opening blessing (rather than an opening thanksgiving). The closing, too, with its benediction, reflects first-century epistolary style.
That 2 Corinthians is a letter requires that it be read a certain way, namely, as a communication from an individual (or small group of individuals; in this case, Paul includes “Timothy our brother”; 1:1) to a specific individual or group of people (in this case, the church in Corinth, in southern Greece).1 Unlike other biblical genres such as Gospel or Apocalypse, which are generally written for a broader audience, epistles have the added interpretive challenge of requiring one at points to deduce what problems the letter writer is addressing.
The most striking literary feature of 2 Corinthians is its unusual amount of self-referentiality. Paul repeatedly reflects on his own actions and even his own motivations with raw honesty and at times a tone of exasperation (e.g., 7:2–4; 11:1, 16–21). This personal defense fits a certain kind of Roman literary style (apologia pro vita sua) in which an individual vindicates the integrity or significance of his actions in writing.2
Theology of 2 Corinthians
This letter is quite different from 1 Corinthians, in which a series of presenting issues are answered in linear fashion. It is also different from a letter such as Romans, which is the most ordered and structurally deliberate of Paul’s letters. Yet 2 Corinthians is no less theological, even if the letter is more meandering as it unfolds. Against a broader backdrop of inaugurated eschatology (cf. Relationship to the Rest of the Bible and to Christ), four themes in particular bear mentioning.
Strength through Weakness
Strength through weakness is the basic theme of the book. While this is not a typical category of systematic theology, its significance to this letter as a whole requires its mention here. Throughout the letter Paul looks at every aspect of theology through the upending gospel in which God brings life through death and strength through weakness.
The Holy Spirit
We may think of 1 Corinthians as the foremost letter on the Spirit, and rightly so. But 2 Corinthians greatly deepens our understanding of the Holy Spirit. If 1 Corinthians teaches us the “what” of the Spirit, 2 Corinthians shows us the “when” of the Spirit—that is, the Holy Spirit as one of the primary realities reflecting the dawning of the new-creation age (3:3, 6, 8). The coming of the Spirit tells us where we are in human history. The Spirit is the “guarantee” or “down payment” of our salvation, the initial installment assuring final consummation and fulfillment (5:5). We also receive rich teaching on the nature of authentic sanctification as the work of the Spirit (3:17–18).
Reconciliation
The second half of chapter 5 is the key text in all the Bible (cf. also Rom. 5:10) on what it means to be reconciled to God. If justification depicts salvation legally, and adoption filially, and sanctification ritually, reconciliation depicts salvation relationally. Two estranged friends are restored. It is God who initiates the reconciliation; he reconciles us to himself. And he does this through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ. Reconciliation opens up to us the gracious heart of the triune God.
Heaven
Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5:1–10 what awaits the believer in Christ, and he opens chapter 12 by recounting his own experience of being “caught up to the third heaven” (12:2). In both passages our understanding of the afterlife is filled out.
Relationship to the Rest of the Bible and to Christ
The pervasive underlying structure of 2 Corinthians is the new age that has dawned in the resurrection of Christ. Paul’s burden throughout the letter is to reveal what true ministry looks like in the age of the gospel. In short: the Messiah himself lived and was killed in weakness and ignominy as what is despised in the world. And those who are united to this Christ who was “crucified in weakness” (13:4) follow in his pattern of weakness unto strength and death unto life. But this is more than merely a counterintuitive principle. It is ministry that accords with where we now are in redemptive history. The latter days have dawned.
At times in the letter this subterranean structure surfaces, especially through the first half of the letter. The argument of chapters 3 to 6, in particular, remains opaque without an interpretive lens of inaugurated eschatology. The dawn of the “new covenant” (3:6) is the fulfillment of ancient prophecy (Jer. 31:31–34), in which the Holy Spirit is poured out indiscriminately on all believers (2 Cor. 3:6) and the face of God is now, in Christ, seen (3:18–4:6). The old covenant had a certain glory (3:7–11), but Moses could not look upon the face of God and live (Ex. 33:23). The great turning of the ages has quietly erupted in Jesus Christ.
Paul’s ministry of reconciliation is itself the manifestation of the dawning new age. Paul moves from “new covenant” (2 Cor. 3:6) to “new creation” (5:17) in explaining what the reconciling gospel effects. Anyone who is reconciled to God has been swept up into the new creation, the restoration of Eden, that is longed for all throughout the OT. Unbelievers remain rooted in the old age even though the new age has begun to spring up all around them in anyone united to Christ.
The erupting new creation is again explicitly announced in 6:2, as Paul says that “the day of salvation” anticipated in Isaiah 49 has come. Second Corinthians 6 goes on to announce that believers are themselves the temple of God as they are united to Christ, the one whom the tabernacle and temple foreshadowed (6:14–18).
Throughout the letter, then, Paul defends his ministry and commends the gospel in accord with the new creational realities that have broken in on human history.
Preaching from 2 Corinthians
If any book of the Bible was ever meant for the preacher no less than the congregation, it was 2 Corinthians. This epistle takes the honest preacher down into the heart of his ambitions, probing what kind of ministry he longs to cultivate. Why is he preaching? Is his preaching really all about him? Does he preach Christ, all the while subtly communicating that he is the one really on display?
As for Paul, he is clear: “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord” (4:5). He is not commending himself (3:1; 5:12). He has died to self-exaltation. The old Paul, the Paul who assessed spiritual significance “according to the flesh” (5:16), has been extinguished. The flesh loves to preach out of strength and eloquence, out of an impressiveness that leaves the congregation with high esteem for the preacher. Preaching that accords with the dawning new age forsakes such empty ambition and instead embraces personal weakness as an opportunity to make Christ and Christ alone the wonder and glory of the preaching event.
And the congregation must follow the preacher down into the death of self and the corresponding resurrection life. The life of every believer is a life in which God manifests his strength in our weakness. A sermon series on 2 Corinthians will look somewhat different in every distinct context. But every sermon series on 2 Corinthians must centralize this great and upside-down theme of the power of God in our weakness, the life of Christ flowing through our mortality, the comfort of the Holy Spirit being mediated through our pain.
A weak preacher heralding a strong Christ to weak people is the supreme calling of anyone who opens 2 Corinthians to his people.
Interpretive Challenges
Many readers of the Bible, and indeed many scholars, will testify that 2 Corinthians is the most challenging of Paul’s letters. Why?
First, this letter is the most emotionally and relationally volatile of the apostle’s epistles. Paul makes little effort to filter the rawness of his pain and his longing for the Christians in Corinth to abandon once and for all their inveterate attraction to a ministry that is impressive according to worldly standards. This is especially apparent in some extended sections of the letter, such as 1:23–2:4; 7:2–16; and 11:1–11. We are reminded that the Bible is not an arid theological text. God’s Word comes to us clothed in the garb of actual relationships and the messiness that such relationships, even among Christians, endure. Paul’s urgent and insistent love is instructive for us and coaches us in Christian leadership and friendships.
Second, like listening to a spouse talk on the phone, we are hearing only one side of the conversation in reading a letter such as 2 Corinthians. This requires that we use deductive reasoning to discern what Paul is engaging. This is a worthy pursuit, and even necessary to a degree, if we are to understand 2 Corinthians. At the same time, we can easily get out of balance if we become overly speculative as to what Paul is responding to or of what exactly he is being accused. God has seen fit to give us 2 Corinthians and not any other related correspondence (other than 1 Corinthians). As evangelicals, we believe that God’s Word is sufficient. He has given us all that we need. So we receive this letter, difficult as it is to understand at points, with a determination to hear it and not what we think it is reacting to.
Third, the tone changes seemingly abruptly at points in 2 Corinthians. Transitioning from 7:1 to 7:2, for example, the letter suddenly becomes intensely personal and autobiographical. When we begin chapter 10, Paul appears to suddenly become harsh, and one wonders how his upbraiding of the Corinthians in the final four chapters fits with his earlier expressions of confidence (e.g., 7:4). Some commentators conclude that 2 Corinthians must be two or more letters stitched together and presented as one. But we need not resort to such measures to understand the letter. Paul is hurt by the Corinthians, and the letter from start to finish is filled with pathos. Is it any wonder that his tone and even mood changes throughout? This letter is inspired and without error; but Paul is still human. Who of us has not had a letter or email or phone call in which a different tone surfaced at different points in the communication?
Outline
I. Opening Greeting (1:1–2)
II. Paul’s Defense of His Ministry (1:3–7:16)
A. The Paradoxical Nature of True Gospel Ministry Introduced (1:3–11)
1. Comfort in Affliction (1:3–7)
2. Deliverance from Affliction (1:8–11)
B. Paul’s Defense of His Travel Itinerary and Ministry (1:12–2:17)
1. True Boasting (1:12–14)
2. True Intention (1:15–18)
3. The Grounds of Paul’s Claims (1:19–22)
4. Paul’s Painful Actions (1:23–2:2)
5. Paul’s Painful Writing (2:3–4)
6. The Corinthians and the Sinner’s Comfort (2:5–8)
7. Paul and the Sinner’s Forgiveness (2:9–11)
8. The Apparent Failure of Gospel Ministry (2:12–13)
9. The Actual Success of Gospel Ministry (2:14–17)
C. Paul’s Ministry as a Ministry of True Glory (3:1–4:6)
1. Paul’s Sufficiency Attested by the Corinthians (3:1–3)
2. Paul’s Sufficiency Attested by the Spirit (3:4–6)
3. Two Glories (3:7–11)
4. Two Veils (3:12–18)
5. Gospel Ministry (4:1–2)
6. The Reason for Unbelief (4:3–4)
7. The Reason for Belief (4:5–6)
D. Paul’s Ministry as a Ministry of True Life (4:7–5:10)
1. Life through Death: Looking In (4:7–12)
2. Life through Death: Looking Out (4:13–15)
3. Life through Death: Looking Ahead (4:16–18)
4. Longing for Our Future Body (5:1–5)
5. Longing for Our Future with Christ (5:6–10)
E. The Ministry of Reconciliation (5:11–6:13)
1. Persuading Others with Integrity (5:11–13)
2. Persuading Others in Light of the Climax of History (5:14–17)
3. Persuading Others to Be Reconciled to God (5:18–21)
4. The Time in History of Paul’s Ministry (6:1–2)
5. The Defining Marks of Paul’s Ministry (6:3–10)
6. The Urged Response to Paul’s Ministry (6:11–13)
F. The Results of a Reconciled Life (6:14–7:1)
1. The Charge to Be Separate (6:14a)
2. The Reasons to Be Separate (6:14b–18)
3. The Charge to Be Separate Reiterated (7:1)
G. Paul’s Joy in the Corinthians (7:2–16)
1. Paul’s Joy in the Corinthians’ Friendship (7:2–7)
2. Paul’s Joy in the Corinthians’ Redemptive Grief (7:8–13a)
3. Paul’s Joy in the Corinthians’ Welcome of Titus (7:13b–16)
III. The Paradox of Flourishing through Generosity (8:1–9:15)
A. The Macedonian Example of Giving (8:1–5)
B. The Corinthian Appeal for Giving (8:6–7)
C. Motives for Giving (8:8–15)
D. The Coming Delegation to Collect the Giving (8:16–24)
E. Further Explanation of the Delegation (9:1–5)
F. Further Reasons for the Corinthians to Be Generous (9:6–14)
G. Concluding Thanksgiving (9:15)
IV. Paul’s Final Impassioned Appeal to See the Paradox of True Ministry (10:1–13:14)
A. True Ministry Is Not What It Seems (10:1–11:15)
1. Paul’s Presence versus Absence (10:1–11)
2. Commended by the Lord, Not Others (10:12–18)
3. Pastoral Love and True Devotion to Christ (11:1–6)
4. Pastoral Love and Financial Support (11:7–11)
5. Pastoral Love and False Teachers (11:12–15)
B. Paul’s Paradoxical Boasting (11:16–33)
1. The Setup for Paul’s Boasting (11:16–21)
2. The Content of Paul’s Boasting (11:22–28)
3. The Conclusion to Paul’s Boasting (11:29–33)
C. The Climax of the Letter (12:1–10)
1. Paul’s Heavenly Experience (12:1–6)
2. God’s Divine Purpose (12:7–10)
D. Concluding Summary Remarks (12:11–13:14)
1. Paul’s Relationship to the Super-apostles (12:11–13)
2. Paul’s Relationship to the Corinthians (12:14–18)
3. Paul’s Relationship to God (12:19–21)
4. Warning to the Impenitent (13:1–4)
5. Warning to the Penitent (13:5–10)
6. Final Greetings (13:11–14)