Commentary on Second Corinthians (Commentary on the New Testament Book #8)

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Introduction

Dear reader,

Here you have part of a commentary on the whole New Testament, published by Baker Academic both in hardback and as an ebook. The electronic version has been broken into segments for your convenience and affordability, though if you like what you find here you may want to consider the whole at a proportionately lower cost. Whether in whole or in part, the e-version puts my comments at your fingertips on your easily portable Kindle, iPad, smartphone, or similar device.

I’ve written this commentary especially for busy people like you—lay people with jobs and families that take up a lot of time, Bible study leaders, pastors, and all who take the New Testament seriously—that is, people who time-wise and perhaps money-wise can’t afford the luxury of numerous heavyweight, technical commentaries on the individual books making up the section of the Bible we call the New Testament. So technical questions are avoided almost entirely, and the commentary concentrates on what will prove useful for understanding the scriptural text as a basis for your personal life as a Christian, for discussion with others, and for teaching and preaching.

Group discussion, teaching, and preaching all involve speaking aloud, of course, and when the New Testament was written, even private reading was done aloud. Moreover, most authors dictated their material to a writing secretary, and books were ordinarily read aloud to an audience. In this commentary, then, I’ve avoided almost all abbreviations (which don’t come through as such in oral speech) and have freely used contractions that characterize speaking (we’ll, you’re, they’ve, and so on). To indicate emphasis in oral speech, italics also occur fairly often.

You’ll mostly have to make your own practical and devotional applications of the scriptural text. But such applications shouldn’t disregard or violate the meanings intended by the Scripture’s divinely inspired authors and should draw on the richness of those meanings. So I’ve interpreted them in detail. Bold print indicates the text being interpreted. Translations of the original Greek are my own. Because of the interpretations’ close attention to detail, my translations usually, though not always, gravitate to the literal and sometimes produce run-on sentences and other nonstandard, convoluted, and even highly unnatural English. Square brackets enclose intervening clarifications, however, plus words in English that don’t correspond to words in the Greek text but do need supplying to make good sense. (As a language, Greek has a much greater tendency than English does to omit words meant to be supplied mentally.) Seemingly odd word-choices in a translation get justified in the following comments. It needs to be said as well that the very awkwardness of a literal translation often highlights features of the scriptural text obscured, eclipsed, or even contradicted by loose translations and paraphrases.

Literal translation also produces some politically incorrect English. Though brothers often includes sisters, for example, sisters doesn’t include brothers. Similarly, masculine pronouns may include females as well as males, but not vice versa. These pronouns, brothers, and other masculine expressions that on occasion are gender-inclusive correspond to the original, however, and help give a linguistic feel for the male-dominated culture in which the New Testament originated and which its language reflects. Preachers, Bible study leaders, and others should make whatever adjustments they think necessary for contemporary audiences but should not garble the text’s intended meaning.

Out of respect for your abilities so far as English is concerned, I’ve not dumbed down the vocabulary used in translations and interpretations. Like the translations, interpretations are my own. Rather than reading straight through, many of you may consult the interpretation of an individual passage now and then. So I’ve had to engage in a certain amount of repetition. To offset the repetition and keep the material in bounds, I rarely discuss others’ interpretations. But I’ve not neglected to canvass them in my research.

On the theological front, the commentary is unabashedly evangelical, so that my prayers accompany this volume in support of all you who strive for faithfulness to the New Testament as the word of God.

Robert Gundry

Second Corinthians

A good understanding of 2 Corinthians requires the collating of some background information. After writing 1 Corinthians from Ephesus, Paul found it necessary to make a sorrowful visit to Corinth and back, sorrowful because of the strained relations between him and the Corinthian church at the time. Though Luke doesn’t record this visit in Acts, it’s to be inferred from 2 Corinthians 12:14; 13:1–2, where Paul describes his coming visit as the third. Moreover, Paul’s statement in 2:1, "For I decided . . . not to come to you again in sorrow," implies a past sorrowful visit that can hardly be identified with his first and very successful visit to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation through Jesus Christ; and apart from the inferred sorrowful visit in the past, Paul’s coming visit would be only his second, not his third. The past sorrowful visit failed to ease relations with the church. So on his return to Ephesus he wrote a tearful letter to the Corinthians, which at first he regretted having sent (2:4; 7:8). This letter can hardly be identified with 1 Corinthians, for 1 Corinthians exudes censure but not tears. The tearful letter, coming between 1 and 2 Corinthians, hasn’t survived, just as Paul’s letter referred to in 1 Corinthians 5:9–11 and therefore written and sent earlier than 1 Corinthians hasn’t survived. Apparently the now-lost tearful letter commanded the Corinthian church to discipline an obstreperous individual who was leading opposition to Paul (2:5–11). According to 2:12–13; 7:4–16 Titus was returning from Corinth, probably after carrying that letter to Corinth. Meanwhile, knowing Titus would return via Macedonia and Troas (on the northwest corner of Asia Minor) and being anxious to hear from Titus the Corinthians’ reaction, Paul left Ephesus and waited in Troas. When Titus failed to arrive quickly, Paul proceeded to Macedonia, where Titus finally met him and reported the good news that most in the Corinthian church had repented of their rebellion against Paul and had followed his instruction to discipline the leader of opposition to him. So apart from introductory and concluding matter, Paul wrote 2 Corinthians from Macedonia on his third missionary journey (1) to express relief and joy at the favorable response of the majority of Corinthian Christians (chapters 1–7); (2) to stress the collection he wants to gather from them for the Christians in Jerusalem (chapters 8–9 [compare 1 Corinthians 16:1–4]); and (3) to defend his apostolic authority to a still-rebellious minority (chapters 10–13).

ADDRESS AND GREETING

2 Corinthians 1:1–2

1:1–2: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through God’s will, and Timothy, the brother [= the fellow Christian], to God’s church that’s in Corinth along with all the saints that are in the whole of Achaia: ²Grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ. For Paul’s self-designation see the comments on 1 Corinthians 1:1. Here he adds his helper Timothy, whom he’d sent to Corinth at the writing of 1 Corinthians (see 4:17; 16:10–11 of that letter) but who has since returned to Paul. The inclusion of Timothy lends support to what Paul will write, and Paul’s calling him the brother appeals to the Corinthians’ having recently had Timothy in their midst. But "God’s church makes plain that the Corinthians belong to God, not to Paul or Timothy, and that therefore God cares for them. Compared to being God’s, the location of the church in Corinth is incidental. Along with all the saints that are in the whole of Achaia indicates that this letter is to be made available to all the Christians living throughout southern Greece. Though Paul will address topics specific to the church in Corinth, others too need to learn from what he has to say. For grace and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ," see the comments on 1 Peter 1:2; 2 John 3; and 1 Corinthians 1:3.

A THANKSGIVING FOR GOD’S ENCOURAGEMENT AND PROTECTION

2 Corinthians 1:3–11

1:3–5: Praised [be] the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Father characterized by mercies [= acts of mercy], even the God characterized by all encouragement, ⁴who is encouraging us on the occasion of our every affliction so that we can be encouraging those in every affliction [of their own] through the encouragement with which we ourselves are being encouraged by God, ⁵because just as the Christ’s sufferings are flourishing in us, in this way also the encouragement of us is flourishing. God as the Father of believers (1:2) now shifts to God as the God and Father of Jesus Christ, and our shifts from Father (1:2) to Jesus Christ as our Lord. Since Jesus Christ is Lord, God as the Father of him differs from God as the Father of believers. For Jesus Christ’s lordship puts him on the level of deity alongside his Father, whereas God as the Father of believers does nothing of the kind. Our Lord designates Jesus Christ the owner and master of believers and therefore the one to whom they owe obedience and worship. God is his God in that he represents God. So the accent falls here on praise to God for his acts of mercy, which bring encouragement. The we/us/our who are getting encouragement from him include Timothy (1:1) and perhaps others of Paul’s company along with Paul, but not the Corinthians, as the contrast with you/your in following verses makes clear.

"All encouragement is defined by encouraging us on the occasion of our every affliction, and affliction goes back to a Greek word that means—when not used figuratively, as it is here—pressure (compare the English word oppression). The pressure of persecution is particularly in view (compare 1 Corinthians 16:9). No occasion of affliction for the gospel goes unaccompanied by God’s encouragement. So Paul can’t help but praise him. But God’s encouragement of Paul has a larger purpose than Paul’s benefit. It’s that he may be able to encourage similarly afflicted Christians by citing to them God’s ongoing encouragement of him. And the reason Paul can do so is that the flourishing of Christ’s sufferings in him is matched by the flourishing of God’s encouragement of him (just as . . . in this way also"). Despite the flourishing of those sufferings (they come in extraordinary profusion), there’s no shortfall of encouragement. Paul names his own afflictions "the Christ’s sufferings," because when Paul is being afflicted as a Christian, so close is the union between him and Christ that the Christ, who by the Spirit indwells him and whom by the Spirit he indwells, is suffering (compare Acts 9:4–5; 22:7–8; 26:14–15). That is to say, just as Christ suffered individually for Paul (and others, of course) to make salvation possible, so he now suffers unitedly in Paul (and other evangelists) to make salvation available. For without its proclamation and consequent affliction by way of persecution, salvation doesn’t eventuate through hearing with faith (compare Romans 10:13–15; Philippians 3:8–10; Colossians 1:24–29). "The Christ" connotes the corporate Christ: him and those united to him by faith.

1:6–7: And whether we’re being afflicted, [it’s] for your encouragement and salvation. And whether we’re being encouraged, [it’s] for your encouragement, which is effective in the endurance of the same sufferings that we too are suffering. ⁷And our hope for you [is] firm, knowing [as we do] that as you’re sharers [with us] of the sufferings, so too [you’re sharers with us] of the encouragement. Here the Corinthians’ sufferings come to the fore, and the afflictions of Paul as well as the encouragement of him are said to have the purpose and effect of encouraging the Corinthians in their own sufferings for Christ. But how are Paul’s afflictions supposed to encourage them? It would be easy to understand that the apostolic ministry for which he is suffering afflictions brings encouragement to the Corinthians. But the afflictions themselves as a source of encouragement? In what sense? In the sense that they show the Christ to be suffering in Paul’s afflictions (1:5); and if Christ is suffering in Paul’s afflictions, the Corinthians can be sure that the Christ is suffering also in their sufferings. The knowledge of his presence brings encouragement. To the encouragement of the Corinthians Paul adds their salvation, because their sufferings could lead them to apostatize, to lose faith. So this encouragement has the purpose of ensuring endurance—that is, perseverance as opposed to apostasy—for the attainment of final salvation. Paul describes the encouragement as effective in this respect. "The same sufferings that we too are suffering identifies the Corinthians’ sufferings as afflictions for the gospel’s sake, not as the troubles into which all human beings are born (as sparks fly upward" [Job 5:7]). The firmness of Paul’s hope for the Corinthians’ endurance right on to ultimate salvation rests on his knowing that they share his encouragement as well as his sufferings.

1:8–11: For we don’t want you to be ignorant, brothers, regarding our affliction that took place in Asia [a Roman province in western Asia Minor], in that we were burdened excessively, [that is,] above [our] ability [to bear the affliction], so that we despaired even of living. ⁹Instead