2 Corinthians 5

In the body. It is not for what we have done (taking the word in its literal meaning) that we shall be judged, but for what we have willed, in other words, done internally; that is, for the actions of our soul. It is not said that we shall receive according to what we have done with our body, but according to what we shall have done being in the body. But in every case it is the internal action which will be judged, the heart which will be sifted. A. V.

Good or bad. As sin is sin, everywhere and in all forms, the respectable and the threspectable, the same in principle, and, when the appearances are different, the same often in criminality, the world of future retribution must, of course, be a world of strange companionships. We are expressly told, and it seems a matter of reason also to suppose, that the spirits of guilty men will not be assorted there by their tastes, but by their character and demerits. Death is the limit and end of all mere conventionalities. The fictitious assortments of the earthly state never pass that limit. Rank, caste, fashion, disgust, fastidiousness, delicacy of sin—these are able to draw their social lines no longer. Proximity now is held to the stern, impartial principle of inward demerit, that all may receive according to the deeds done in the body. This is the level of adjustment, and there appears to be no other. H. B.—If the government of Jesus Christ over men is to be revealed on that day, it is clear that all men without exception must be judged. So linked, indeed, is the history of each man with that of others; so necessarily is each man’s condition and character affected by that of all who have gone before him, up to his first parents; so truly do all human beings make up one race, one family, from the life of each being more or less connected with that of all, that the knowledge of the real history of even one man almost implies an examination into the real history of the whole human race. N. M.

The Scriptures do not deal much in elaborate descriptions of that great Day of reckoning, or of the sufferings beyond. What they are earnest to have us all know, and feel, and remember, is, that there is a reckoning, and that the justice and love of the Son of God and Son of man will control and guide it. What they would make certain to us is that our everlasting life is in actual peril from our daily temptations, that the Judge is just, and that there can be no change in his judgment. Grounded in these certainties, their one entreaty is, “Be ye ready.” F. D. H.

11. KNOWING therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest 12 unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences. For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have 13 somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart. For whether we 14 be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were 15 all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto them- 16 selves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now hence- 17 forth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: 18 old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of 19 reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not im- puting their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray 21 you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

To be reconciled to God! It is necessarily the first and greatest want of all his intelligent and immortal creatures who are in any way alienated from him. It is, as human history testifies, the vague, but real and imperative, longing of human nature itself, underlying all others more permanent than they. All systems of heathenism, with their sacrifices and penances, their instituted priesthoods, their costly offerings, their destroying pilgrimages, their smoking piles and bloody immolations, are built at the base on this desire: to be reconciled to God! A sense of severance and remoteness from God, a vague impression of responsive repellency and condemnation on his part—this is at the bottom of all the unrest, the fearful apprehension, the dark anticipation, the swayings back and forth of religious opinion, oscillating for ever between skepticism and superstition, which confront us in history. And this each man will find for himself, in his own moral consciousness, as he calmly considers it, or lets it frankly and freely speak. It is, then, the instant suggestion of reason, it is the imperative mandate of prudence, that we should seek in some way at once, and in some sufficient and authorized way, to be “reconciled” to God. It is death to be at war with him! death certain, remediless, perfect, fearful! and, as it is the one infinite evil and mischief to be in any way dissevered from him, so to be in heart affiliated with God, to feel his strength, wisdom, and grace flowing in upon us, and filling our souls as with rivers of peace, every mind must instinctively recognize that as the highest possible attainment of our nature, in which that nature is consummated and crowned, made free of the world, supreme above chance, and ready for immortality! R. S. S.

Is these verses the conclusion is drawn which the earlier verses had introduced—the high and self-denying position of the Christian ministry, and the nature of its work as a reconciliation of man to God. A.

The terror of the Lord. God hates sin as much as his awful threatenings say he does; and they who deny it deny the God of heaven. They deny his holiness, his real abhorrence of sin. They exhibit a false God to the human mind—a God without principle, a God without character. Such a God on the throne of the universe, and every angel would drop his harp, every devil shout in ecstasy. The bands of God’s moral dominion would be broken, the pillars of eternal justice would fall, and heaven fall with them; the fires of hell burst forth unchecked, and rebellion stand triumphant on the ruins. Such is not the God of heaven. N. W. T.

Persuade men. We should expect that this loving Lord and Master, who knows so well what is in man, would present not a part but all of the grand motives that constrain men to newness of life, to repentance and faith, to the conquest of self, and the glory of goodness; and therefore that he would sometimes take away the veil from the misery and horror that belong to the second death; that he would bid his servants sometimes call men to “flee from the wrath to come,” and by “the terrors of the Lord”—of the Lord—to persuade men; that he would show that God has not forgotten to be just, because he has not forgotten to be gracious, but that he governs the world by law—blessed and righteous law—which is “the mother of our peace and joy,” just as truly now as before the gospel pity and redemption came. So He came, testifying of the judgment to come, of the sifting and separating, and shutting doors, and sundering of soul from soul, and opening of the house of torment, and punishment everlasting. Let us at least receive our Master’s words as they stand. And, since we must all stand before his judgment-seat, he has told us beforehand, so that, repenting and believing, we might stand there with joy—not with grief—to pass from it to the right hand, and not the left, of the Son of man in his glory, our Shepherd and our King. F. D. H.

To speak efficaciously of the holiness and justice of Almighty God and of its future consequences—to speak in modesty, tenderness, and power of the approaching doom of the impenitent—must be left to those whose spirits have had much communion with the dread majesty on high. As the punishment of sin springs by an ineffable harmony from the first principles of the Divine Nature, and infringes not at all upon benevolence, so must he who would rightly speak of that punishment have attained to a far more intimate perception of the coincidence of holiness and love than language can convey, or that can be made the subject of communication between man and man. As often as we set foot upon the region which sin has replenished with terrors, we have need of all the strength we can derive from the very firmest convictions. Fatal to his influence as reprover of sin must be a lurking skepticism in the breast of the public teacher. No care will avail to conceal the inward misgiving of the mind. The tongue of the speaker will falter, and the reserve, the indecision, the vagueness of his manner, or, still more, his artificial vehemence, will betray the secret of his doubts; and the infection of these doubts will pass into the heart of the hearer, and will serve to harden each transgressor in his impenitence. Not less necessary to the minister of truth is an unaffected, sensitive compassion toward his fellow-men—a compassion of that efficient kind which nothing has ever produced in the world but the gospel. The servant of heaven can execute his commission only so far as he gains access to the human heart; and there is no other path of access, no other law of affinity, no sympathy, but that of love. The compassions of man have a special property, which imparts pathos and persuasion to the awful announcement of God’s displeasure against sin. The end of all reproof is mercy. If there were no redemption at hand, it were idle or cruel to talk of judgment. But the reprover is the very same as the herald of peace, and must draw his arguments, whether of terror or entreaty, from his own blended conviction of the certainty of the future punishment, and the reality of the means of escape. I. T.

12. The false teachers gloried “in appearance,” in outward demonstration, such as eloquence, or they prided themselves in a superabundance of spiritual gifts. Paul says that the true apostolic credentials are those of the heart; and accordingly the proofs he had given were his truth, his sufferings, his persuasiveness, his simplicity, his boldness, and his life as being an image of Christ’s. F. W. R.

14. “The love of Christ” should have been expressed “Christ’s love.” It is not our love to

Christ, but His to us which is spoken of. “The love of Christ” may mean this, but is ambiguous. “Then all were dead” should be “then all died.” It does not follow, because one dies for another, that that other was dead, but it does follow that that other died by substitution, virtually died, inasmuch as one died for him. And thus we all died in Christ’s death for us. A.—Under the law the great argument for obedience was God’s sovereignty: “Thus and thus ye shall do”; “I am the Lord.” Now, the argument is gratitude—God’s love—God’s love in Christ. “The love of Christ constraineth us.” Paul often persuades by that motive, “Be God’s servants for Christ’s sake.” T. M.—It is not our limited and weak love to God which gives us confidence, which casts out all fear, which begets hope, that maketh not ashamed, and which is the constraining power of our life; it is God’s love to us which dwells in us, the infinite and eternal love of the Father through the self-sacrifice of the Son, revealed and imparted by the coequal Spirit. A. S.

15. Shall we think that faith will leave him who by it has received Christ to be as unconcerned as a stock or stone, or that its utmost excellency is to provoke the soul to a lip-labor, and to give Christ a few fair words for his pains and grace? No, no; the love of Christ to us constraineth us thus to judge that it is but reasonable since he gave his all for us that we should give our some for him. Bun.—To gaze on the great Sufferer must be for all hearts that are not utterly hard and dull to learn a higher unselfishness, a lowlier humility, a severer standard of Christian life. Jesus Christ did not die upon the cross that we might lead a self-seeking life, whether by indulging our lower appetites, or by wasting intellectual power upon subjects which, however gratifying to ourselves, achieve nothing for the honor of God or for the good of men. Only when we devote ourselves according to our measure to God’s glory, and to the enlightening or cheering or supporting our brethren, do we enter into the practical spirit of our Lord’s death. Self-renouncement is the temper of which his death was the highest expression. H. P. L.—His cross teaches us, not that each one is to be looking out for a selfish salvation, but that self is to be forgotten in hearty consecration to Him, and in free service to our brethren. It carries us clear of the belittling notions of escaping hell as a punishment or earning heaven as a reward. It makes the lofty sentiment of gratitude the mainspring of piety, faith the pure inspiration of righteousness, love the sacred secret of beneficence. F. D. H.

16. Though He was “of the seed of David,” by genealogy a Jew, that he might be the Messiah (“for salvation is of the Jews”), now that he is “declared to be the Son of God with power,” and

“appears in the presence of God for us,” henceforth we know him as a Jew no more. He is of no nation, for “he died for all.” The world is redeemed. The Christ of God was “a ransom for all.” All nations are equal. “In him let the Gentiles trust.” T. B.—“If I go not away,” said the Saviour before he ascended, “the Spirit can not come”; if he be away, then, the Spirit is in the Church; the absence of the one is the presence of the other. Let me rather say that there is no absence, no distance, no departure, no separation! Christ Himself is one with his own Spirit, and with him templed in the heart of his mystic body. As Paul declares, we “know him no longer after the flesh”—we know him not by sensible perception or miraculous vision, but by a deeper, a better, an inward and abiding sense. W. A. B.

17. In Christ a new creature. When it is said that in Emmanuel God is with us, it is meant that his very nature is wrought into our nature, if in faith we receive Him, and ours into His. F. D. H.—Wherever the birth is, the life will more or less follow, and wherever the new life shows itself, the new birth must in some way have preceded it. Repentance is the look which such a man casts backward, contrition is the turning of his eye within, and the setting of his life upon a new basis, or what is termed sanctification, is his aim as he looks forward. Humility, and self-distrust, and dependence on God, and endeavor after an obedience not of the letter but of the spirit, and not of fear but gratitude, will be some of the features which mark this life. Ker.

18. Reconciled us to himself. It is by personal faith in his Son; a faith which each is competent to exercise; a faith which hath in it submission and sympathy; which leads us to devote ourselves entirely to Christ, and which carries us spontaneously into all such actions as we know will be dear and beautiful to him. This is the power, this the act, by which, through Christ, we are “reconciled to God.” We are thenceforth, whether we ourselves are at once and fully aware of it or not—from that moment onward, if the faith has been a real one, the submission complete, we are the friends, the children of God; his children and heirs; partakers of his favor, and expectants of his home! R. S. S.

19. The Redeemer’s work took its peculiar form as much to meet the feelings of the human heart as to meet the requirements of God’s justice and truth. Our feelings toward God are naturally those of distrust and opposition, and that simply because we are sinners; and these feelings must be mastered before we can be saved; and they must be mastered by an unequivocal, overwhelming demonstration of love; and we have it in the cross, for there “God is in Christ, reconciling man unto Himself.” E. M.—Christ crucified is voluntarily devoted and accursed. He is paying the penalty which sin inevitably merits. He is reconciling sinful man to a holy, loving, but offended God. The truth which underlies and illuminates the apostolical language is the truth of our Saviour’s Godhead. “It is,” says Hooker, “the Son of God condemned, the Son of God, and no other person, crucified; which only one point of Christian belief, the infinite worth of the Son of God, is the very ground of all things believed concerning life and salvation, by that which Christ either did or suffered as man in our behalf.” H. P. L.—God in Christ reaches down to help, save us; only asking that we, by love and faith to the Saviour, and corresponding or outflowing faithful moral effort, will let ourselves be saved. The gospel is an offer from above us. It is a divine interposition of deliverance embodied in a Divine Redeemer. If Christ were only man, he could not mediate between man and God. If he were only God, he could not mediate between God and man. Here is the eternal, inherent necessity of the mystery of the Incarnation, reaching back before Abraham was, into the bosom of the Everlasting Father, and there deriving the purchase-power to lift humanity to heaven. The vital point of the whole Christian system is the inspiring contact it establishes between the life of God and the life of man by a mediating Christ; a Christ qualified to mediate by bringing over the forces of the almighty Spirit to reinvigorate the wasted spirituality of the race, to restore and comfort the individual soul that will receive him. F. D. H.

20. The gospel may be described in two sentences: GOD IS RECONCILED, FOR MAN IS REDEEMED. God is reconciled, not because sin is made light of or forgotten, but because it has been expiated at an infinite cost in the person of his only-begotten Son. The gospel is the good news of the reconciliation to all men everywhere; and the men who are commissioned to declare it to their fellows convey the word of reconciliation, praying men in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God. A. W. T.—It was Christ’s work to reconcile God to man. That is done, and done for ever. “By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” So far, then, as we represent anything besides this as necessary, so far do we frustrate it, and turn the Christian ministry into a sacrificial priesthood. We are doing as did the Galatians of old. Therefore the whole work of the Christian ministry consists in declaring God as reconciled to man, and in beseeching with every variety of illustration, and every degree of earnestness, men to become reconciled to God. F. W. R.

This is the marvel, that peace has been made by

God himself, though justly offended, yet beseeching us. “For we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us.” What is this? Has He been outraged, and yet does He beseech us? Yes, for he is God, and therefore he beseeches us as a benignant Father. And see what happens; the Son of Him that beseeches us—not a man, not an angel, nor an archangel, nor a servant of any kind, is the Mediator Chrys.—God is suppliant to his creature. He who agonized beneath created hands—still, in the perpetuated spirit of that miraculous love, as it were protracts his own humiliation, and beseeches the beings he has made to make him happy by making themselves blessed. It is his highest glory to conciliate divine omnipotence with the unimpaired freedom of man, that “his people” should be “willing in the day of his power.” His offer is universal, for he would be absolved before heaven and earth when that offer is despised. W. A. B.

21. Made sin for us.** As we stand in spirit by the side of the sleeping disciples, and watch their suffering Lord; as we hear him cry from the cross, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? we feel we are entering into the communion of a deeper and more mysterious sorrow than the world has ever known, which becomes bright, with an awful meaning then, and only then, when we recognize in it the reality of a Divine sacrifice for the sins of the world; the offering up of Him, who “though He knew no sin, yet was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Tulloch.—How was Christ made sin? There is no other explanation conceivable than that of saying that the sin of the world was imputed to Him, or, which amounts to the same thing, that the word sin is here, as elsewhere, equivalent to sin-offering: Christ was made a sin-offering for us. This sin-offering turns away that wrath of God which had thrown sinners to an infinite distance from him. It is called a propitiation: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins.” E. M. G.

Made the righteousness of God in him. What is ours passes over to him; what is his passes over to us. We become righteousness! As if, from the moment that we believe God’s testimony to the righteous one and his work, we and righteousness become one and the same thing. So completely are we justified, and lifted up into the same righteous level or standing which the righteous one himself occupies in the sight of God. Thus are we “complete in him,” “found in him,” recognized as one with him in righteousness, and entitled to possess all he possesses. Bonar.

19-21. This is one of the happiest summaries on record of the gospel; of the true character of the ministry; and of the manner in which this min-

istry should be exercised. Precious gospel! a reconciling God in Christ. Solemn ministry! ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us. Touching discharge of our high function! pleading

with men, for Christ’s sake, to be reconciled to him, against whom they have rebelled, but who yet seeks to cover them, through faith in the Crucified, with the rich robe of his own perfect righteousness. J. S. S.