2 Corinthians 13

10. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities. Strength will be poured into our breasts from God, provided only the bars that keep it out are taken down. Only one thing is wanting, that the two bolts—self-will and self-indulgence—be weakened till they give way. Weaken them, then, in every way—by self-reproach, by discipline, by taking up a cross, by doing duties that you dislike to do, by disinterested work for other men—and the blessed energy of the Spirit will flow in. In your weakness God’s strength will be made perfect, and then you will know, with Paul, what it is to glory in tribulations; then you will learn to entertain sickness and sorrow in your houses as the royal ambassadors of the King of Peace. At first Paul called his thorn a messenger of Satan buffeting him. After he found out why it came, he called it a gift, a love token, a sign of heavenly favor from his master. If Satan’s angels are sometimes clothed as angels of light, why not God’s angels in shadows? If it keeps you humble, the thorn is finally woven into the crown of rejoicing. Oh, blessed infirmities, blemishes, ugliness, pain, poor success, mortified ambition, ye are prophets and heralds of salvation, ye are our securities from deeper and more lasting shame! To accept bodily pain, or an insignificant reputation, or a ruined plan, even after having prayed against it, as the veiled minister of mercy, and heartily to give thanks for the scourge—this is to have Christ formed by faith within. F. D. H.

For Christ’s sake. That is the main point. The apostle took pleasure in pain, not as pain, but for Christ’s sake. Sorrow is not naturally sanctifying. It is only in afflictions borne for Christ’s sake—that is, in Christ’s name and with Christ’s spirit—that we can rejoice. He only can rejoice in infirmities, in reproaches, in suffering, who, taking the cup gently, lovingly, humbly into his hand, can drain it to the dregs, and say, as did his Master, “The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” F. W. R.

11. For “am I behind,” read “came I behind.” For “the very chiefest apostles,” read as above (11 : 5), “those over-much apostles.” This is absolutely required here. Paul challenges them to compare him with his rivals among them, and states that in no particular did he come behind them. This could not apply to the Twelve, whom the Corinthians had never seen. A.

12. The grounds of apostleship alleged here are all spiritual; none are external. “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds.” Thus Paul does not graft his right of appeal on any proud, priestly assumption, but on an inward likeness to Christ. Therefore, the true apostolical succession is and must be a spiritual one. He is a true minister who is one from sharing in the spirit of an apostle, not from the ordination and descent from an apostle. F. W. R.

1. This is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. I told you before, and foretel you, as if I were present, the second time; and being absent now I write to them which heretofore have sinned, and to all other, that, if I come again, I will not spare: since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you. For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you. Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates. Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates. For we can do

9 nothing against the truth, but for the truth. For we are glad, when we are weak, and ye are strong: and this also we wish, even your perfection. Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction. Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you. Greet one another with an holy kiss. All the saints salute you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.

THE grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is not merely the center, but the beginning and foundation, of all that Christians are already here below, and shall become in eternity. Only through the grace of the Son men come to the full experience of the Father’s compassion. Therefore the love of God is not mentioned by Paul in the first place, but in the second, and without the addition of the name of Father. This is silently understood, and in the most absolute sense the name of God given inclusively to the Father, because in the Divinity of the Father that of the Son and of the Spirit has its immovable basis. Not before, but only after men have personally understood and experienced the grace of the Lord Jesus, can they be certain of the love of God, in a measure belonging to no one who is not a Christian. How do we continue, nevertheless, in the midst of so much temptation in and around us, in the permanent possession of both? Only in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, which binds the Christian most closely to the Son and the Father, does this become possible, and just this, therefore, forms the crown and cope-stone of the apostolic blessing. Only through the Son do we become children of the Father, and temples of the Holy Ghost. Only through the Holy Ghost do we become partakers of the grace of the Son and the love of the Father. There are, as it were, three distinct circles which issue from the same center, and constantly return to it; a threefold cord of blessing which can not be broken. Van O.

THE last chapter contains a grave declaration of his resolution to come among them, and exhortations and denunciations, grounded on the certainty of that his approaching visit. The final salutation is cut off very short, in accordance with the serious and almost minatory tone of this conclusion; and the letter ends with that benediction in the express name of the Holy Trinity, which has become the accustomed formula of dismissal throughout the ages of the Christian Church.

1. The third time.** This would of course imply that he had visited them twice before. But only one previous visit has been related, viz., that first one, during which he wrote the Epistles to the Thessalonians. Before his next recorded visit, viz., that mentioned in Acts 20:1, 2, both the Epistles to the Corinthians had been written. He wrote the first from Ephesus, at a time when he intended to stay there till Pentecost (1 Cor. 16:8); he wrote the second from Macedonia, at a time when he had recently left Asia (2 Cor. 9:1-4; 1:8; 2:12), after being there in danger of his life. All this agrees with the history of his sojourn in Ephesus related in Acts 19, and with his journey through Macedonia, related Acts 20:1, 2. We infer then that he must have gone over from Ephesus to Corinth at some time early in those three years of his Ephesian visit. Nor need we be in the least degree surprised that this journey is not recorded in the Acts. Long and important journeys are dismissed in a few words, or even altogether omitted, as that to Arabia, mentioned Gal. 1:17, and that in Syria and Cilicia, Gal. 1:21. Ephesus and Corinth were the usual points of transit to and from Asia and Europe, and a journey across and back might present very little for the sacred historian to dwell upon. A.

4. He was crucified through weakness; such was the extremity of his weakness that he died under der it; he made no use of his divine strength, but gave himself to his enemies, to be by them crucified and slain; his crucifixion was the exhibition of weakness, not of strength; yet he was raised again from the dead by power, the power of God; in the extremity of his weakness, power came in from another quarter. God raised him up, and highly exalted him. And as in his cross we see this combination of weakness and strength—personal weakness and divine strength—so we see the same in ourselves. We are men utterly without power in ourselves, yet we have the power of God working in us and for us. Bonar.

5. The earnest force of this examination should fix on the points named by the apostle: “whether ye be in the faith,” whether “Jesus Christ be in you.” Let, then, the self-examiner’s earnest inquisition be directed to this great point—“whether” he “be in the faith”; whether he is decidedly more than a cold, assenting believer in the Christian doctrines. That a man may be, and yet at the same time be in—vitally and actively in—a spirit opposite to all these heavenly truths. But—in the faith? so in it as to be powerfully withdrawn and withheld from the spirit and dominion of the world? encircled, separated, guarded? So in it as to have a habitual prevailing order of views, feelings, motives, preferences, purposes, created and animated by it? So in it as to be in a cordial and zealous league with its faithful adherents? The other form of expression for the same thing is, “that Jesus Christ is in you.” He may be in the thoughts as a commanding object of contemplation. He may be in the affections—the object of love and of reverence. He may be in the conscience as an authority. He may, in short, be established in the soul—in vital interest, in exclusive reliance, and in hope—as its sole and all-sufficient and almighty Redeemer. Thus he shall be in the soul as an indwelling presence, without which it were lifeless and hopeless; by which it is alive to God, and looks forward to eternal felicity. Now, whether this be in some good measure the case is matter preëminently for self-examination. J. F.

The scriptural philosophy of Christian experience is very beautiful. If you would either excite or test the presence of any emotion in the heart, you must bring before the understanding the truth which tends to excite and call forth that emotion. You can never by mere act of your own will call these emotions into play. While the gospel religion is a religion of the heart, and lays all stress on the affections, it never assumes that sinners, by a mere volition, can make themselves love Christ and the Spirit and the Father. But it tells you the wonderful story of Christ’s generous acts, and of the Spirit’s kind movings, and of the Father’s yearning compassion, that, as you listen, the affections of love shall be awakened in the heart. S. R.—The contemplation of ourselves, if it be not unceasingly purified by the contemplation of Jesus Christ, readily becomes egotistical. If not subordinated to the contemplation of Jesus Christ, it leads us step by step to our own righteousness, to salvation by works, and thence to pride if we forget ourselves, or to listlessness and despondency if we see ourselves as we are; so that, at last, the noble principle which salvation by grace should have placed in our hearts, that principle whose place can not be supplied, and out of which there is nought but falsehood, deceit, and rebellion—that principle, slowly undermined by self and curiosity, fades from our creed, which is then like an old tree standing with its bark after the wood and pith have wasted away. A. V.

In what is frequently understood by self-examination, there is something mistaken or deceitful, which needs to be carefully resisted. In the first place, it is a kind of artificial state, in which the soul is drawn off from its objects and works, and its calls of love and sacrifice, to engage itself in acts of self-inspection. The will is called off to be questioned, when of course it is out of that engagement where it otherwise would be found. So one falls to examining his affections, when of course his mind is introverted, and called off from God and Christ, where only right affections have their object and rest. And the result not seldom is accordingly, that persons who become thoroughly bent down upon this matter of examining their affections, are doomed to see them wither in the process. The wonder then is, that the more faithful they are—and surely they mean to be faithful—the darker they become. H. B.—In nine cases of ten the first question will be, What is your feeling? not, What are you standing on? not whether a holy Christ has your loyal and unflinching obedience; not how far you are practically pledged to a righteous Master—which are certainly the chief matters now, as they were in the days and the preaching of the apostles—but rather whether the sensibilities are lively and the devout emotions enthusiastic. Religious feeling is one of the fruits of the Spirit—one of them; it has much to do in kindling and sustaining religious exertion. But feeling is the most irregular element in our composition, and it so far depends on outward conditions that it makes one of the least trustworthy tests of the actual frame of a Christian soul before God. Feeling belongs to the passive part of our nature; principle to the active part. Feeling depends on a sensitive surface; principle on depths of moral purity. Feeling changes with temperament, with states of health and nerves, with a thousand fickle external influences; principle is independent of all physical or alterable circumstances, moves straight on through all moods and climates, sails by fixed stars, and is the same secure and glorious thing through all the shifting seasons, though the mountains of prosperity were torn up and cast into the sea. F. D. H.

It is by a displacement of truth that Christians painfully engage themselves in weighing, measuring every feeling within them, analyzing and noting it in order to grow in grace, applying to themselves the machinery which the word provides for detecting and exposing hypocrisy, when they would be better employed in believing the simple promises and doing the revealed duties—going out of themselves and concentrating their thoughts on the Saviour, whose righteousness covers and whose Spirit instructs in the way of peace. J. Hall.—True religion is all comprised in two precepts, Look into yourself to see your own vileness, Look out of yourself to CHRIST. Little enough health, comfort, peace, and satisfaction shall we derive from the first of these precepts unless we constantly couple with it the second. Live not too much with thyself in the close chamber of spiritual anatomy. Doubt and disquietude, and subtle metaphysical difficulties, and over-canvassing of motives, will be the least mischief resulting from such a system. The knowledge and deep consciousness of thy dark guilt is only valuable as a background on which to paint more vividly to thy mind’s eye the rainbow colors of the love of Jesus. Walk abroad ever and anon, and expatiate freely in the sunlight of God’s grace and love in Christ. E. M. G.

You will never “brighten your evidences” by polishing at them. To polish the mirror ever so assiduously does not secure the image of the sun on its surface. The only way to do that is to carry the poor bit of glass out into the sunshine. It will shine then, never fear. It is weary work to labor at self-improvement with the hope of drawing from our own characters evidences that we are the sons of God. To have the heart filled with the light of Christ’s love to us is the only way to have the whole being full of light. A. M.—There are states of the soul when, instead of dwelling on his experience, the disciple’s first need is to forget it altogether, to let the thoughts, jaded with this chafing in the prison-house of consciousness, spring away into healthful liberty, from deploring what self has left undone, to center a grateful praise on what Christ has done. Faith bids these groaning hearts not to toil for ever in the dungeon; but to swing the door wide open, and let the light of the Father’s face shine down into the breast. For, as a searching writer has said, “After we are in peace and power, self-analysis is instructive, humbling, and bracing; but while we are cold and dead, it is a poisonous thing, like a draught of quinine while the ague fit is on.” F. D. H.

We may be false to the moving of the Holy Spirit by a diseased inspection of our own minds in the act of communion with God. Self-examination is a suitable preliminary or after-thought to prayer, but is no part of it. Devotion is most thoroughly objective, in respect of the motives which induce its presence. It is won into exercise by attractions from without, not forced into being by internal commotions. It is an outgoing, not a seething of sensibility. The suppliant looks upward and around beyond himself; and devout affections grow in intensity with the distance which he penetrates, as the eye grows keen with far seeing. The Spirit invites to no other than such expansive devotion. We are never more like Christ than in prayers of intercession. In the most lofty devotion we become unconscious of self. Have you never observed how entirely devoid is the Lord’s Prayer of any material which can tempt to this subtle self-inspection in the act of devotion? It is full of an outflowing of thought and of emotion toward great objects of desire, great necessities, and great perils. “After this manner, therefore, pray ye.” A. P.

Christ is in you. Who shall dare pollute the body that Christ has honored by his adoption? Who shall dare stain the soul that Christ glorifies with his presence? We Christians dwell in Christ, and Christ in us; this is our world, we ask none else; this is the substance of our hope here, as it is to be the substance of our heaven hereafter. Heed then, earnestly heed, your high calling in Christ Jesus. Glory in it, for angels can not match it! Guard it, live in it, for it is the source and principle of your immortality! Remember, with trembling joy remember, that Christ, in all the power and majesty of the Godhead, “is in you, if ye be not reprobates”; “for ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God and they shall be my people!” W. A. B.

11-14. Nothing remains but a concluding counsel, salutations, and benediction. These form a sweet and graceful close, all the more welcome after the keen and indignant tone of some of the previous sentences. D. F.

14. A spiritual and cordial trinitarian faith we affirm to be the basis of the only virtue which deserves the name—a serious, reverential, happy, and affectionate devotion of the whole nature to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christian virtue is the habit, the motive, and the act of the soul meditating upon “the love of God,” and “the grace of the Lord Jesus,” and enjoying “the communion of the Holy Spirit.” I. T.—This grace of Christ leads into the love of God, and this love is central in benediction. In this home and rest of the human spirit believers are kept by the communion of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, this closes and perfects the blessing, “The communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all.” D. F.

The doctrine of the Trinity is that doctrine that showeth us the love of God the Father in giving his Son, the love of God the Son in giving himself, and the love of the Lord the Spirit in his work of regenerating us, that we may be made able to lay hold of the love of the Father by his Son, and so enjoy eternal life by grace. The Father’s grace saveth no man without the grace of the Son, neither do the Father and the Son save any without the grace of the Spirit; for as the Father loves, the Son must die, and the Spirit must sanctify, or no soul must be saved. But yet, as these three do put forth grace jointly and truly in the salvation of a sinner, so they put it forth after a diverse manner. The Father designs us for heaven, the Son redeems from sin and death, and the Spirit makes us meet for heaven, by his revealing Christ and applying Christ to our souls, by shedding the love of God abroad in our hearts, by sanctifying our souls and taking possession of us as an earnest of our possession in heaven. Bua.—The Apostolic Benediction, used so generally for all centuries since Christ’s ascension, is a prayer to each person of the Divine Trinity for the maintenance and expansion of that sway of Christ over the nations, by means of Christ’s churches. Here the work of the Atoner stands first; the parental love of the Divine Father follows in the second place; and to the third place is assigned the energy of the Divine Spirit, as maintaining the unity and brotherhood of the Church, cementing and assimilating the body of Christ, and rendering it aggressive and victorious in its influence over the world by a power of transmutation and assimilation shed forth upon them. And the Apostolical Benediction, sounded in so many tongues of the earth and through so many centuries, over such myriads on myriads of assembled Christians, reminds the

whole sacramental host in whose name it is that they set up their banners; and bids them ever, in their plans and supplications, to remember that, as they are bought in one blood, and are the called of one Father, they need to receive, and cherish, and implore one Spirit. By Him shall ultimately all earth’s discords be hushed. To “grieve” that Spirit of holiness and love is to rend Christ’s mystic body. To “quench” that Spirit of light, truth, and life, is to install falsehood in the chair of verity, to bequeath despair to the world, and to work suicide as against the Church.