2 Corinthians 7

Those who do not mourn under their imperfections, and unfeignedly desire and endeavor to be better, were never really good. It is a perfect contradiction for any man to think he is sincere in his choice, and prepared in his affections for the pure glorious felicity in heaven, that does not labor to “cleanse himself from all pollutions of flesh and spirit, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God.” Bates.

2. RECEIVE us; we have wronged no man, we have corrupted no man, we have defrauded 3 no man. I speak not this to condemn you: for I have said before, that ye are in our hearts 4 to die and live with you. Great is my boldness of speech toward you, great is my glorying 5 of you: I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation. For, when 6 we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; 7 without were fightings, within were fears. Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that 8 are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus; and not by his coming only, but by 9 the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, when he told us your earnest desire, 10 your mourning, your fervent mind toward me; so that I rejoiced the more. For though 11 I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that 12 the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. 13 Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye 14 were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. 15 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow 16 of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a 17 godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what 18 indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! 19 In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter. Wherefore, though I 20 wrote unto you, I did it not for his cause that had done the wrong, nor for his cause that 21 suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear unto you. There- 22 fore we were comforted in your comfort: yea, and exceedingly the more joyed we for the 23 joy of Titus, because his spirit was refreshed by you all. For if I have boasted any thing to 24 him of you, I am not ashamed; but as we spake all things to you in truth, even so our 25 boasting, which I made before Titus, is found a truth. And his inward affection is more 26 abundant toward you, whilst he remembereth the obedience of you all, how with fear and 27 trembling ye received him. I rejoice therefore that I have confidence in you in all things.

Godly sorrow is an inward moral force which produces a real transformation of life and conduct. It does not expend itself in the tears, the moans, and the nervous excitements of a barren pietism. As the Scripture saith, “It worketh effectual reformation not to be repented of.” “Fruits meet for repentance,” or a course of life and action congruous with this interior moral change, must surely follow this ingenuous sorrow under the light of a gospel which reveals the fullness of the divine mercy set forth by an all-sufficient atonement. For to the sorrowing heart the gospel reveals free pardon as the gift of God’s munificence; reveals the Divine Spirit as waiting to impart strength; reveals the sympathetic love of angels as waiting to break forth into songs of welcome, that shall hail the converted soul’s accession to the ranks of the redeemed ones. When the heart is touched with healthful grief for sin, these revelations reach its deepest springs of action, and awaken sentiments of love and gratitude which must express themselves in acts of joyous obedience. Deliverance, emancipation, redemption, freedom, salvation—these are the words which fall like heavenly music upon the listening ear, and furnish an adequate supply of motive-power to meet the soul’s most urgent wants. Hague.

The simplest way in which the sorrow of the world works death is seen in the effect of mere regret for worldly loss. There are certain advantages with which we come into the world. Youth, health, friends, and sometimes property. So long as these are continued, we are happy; and because happy, fancy ourselves very grateful to God. But, when these blessings are removed, we count ourselves hardly treated, as if we had been defrauded of a right; rebellious, hard feelings come; then it is you see people become bitter, spiteful, discontented. At every step in the solemn path of life, something must be mourned which will come back no more; the temper that was so smooth becomes rugged and uneven; the benevolence that expanded upon all narrows into an ever-dwindling selfishness—we are alone; and then that death-like loneliness deepens as life goes on. The course of man is downward, and he moves with slow and ever more solitary steps down to the dark silence—the silence of the grave. This is the death of heart; the sorrow of the world has worked death. F. W. R.

5. Without, fightings; within, fears. The great trials of faith and patience find themselves represented in miniature in the little crosses, ruggednesses, unpleasant collisions of one day’s walk. Temptations in the heat of conversation to overstate things, or to use acrimonious language, or to throw out (for the sake of amusement) words bordering on the profane—temptations to lose one’s temper, to indulge appetite in eating, to resign one’s self to calls of ease and sloth, or to harbor thoughts of impurity—all this is the miniature crucible, in which day by day the faith and patience of God’s children are tried and approved. There are fightings without and fears within, oppositions, vexations, annoyances, anxieties, apprehensions. It is painful to thwart natural inclinations, as a Christian must do several times in each day; it is called in Scripture “crucifixion of the flesh,” and crucifixion can not but be painful. But comfort thee, faithful soul! the night is coming when, if thou wilt endure patiently at present the fever-fit of passion or excitement, thy anxiety shall have worn off, and the Saviour shall fold thee under his wing, and thou shalt sit down under his shadow with great delight. E. M. G.

To say that doubts and fears are sinful, is not the way to remove them, but to increase them; inasmuch as the sincere soul will fear more and more, by thinking it has more sin to answer for. The very doubts and fears of weak believers evidence that they are in covenant with God, and have already the faith of his own elect, though they want such a degree of it as to make them comfortable in their own consciences. If there was no faith, there would be no doubting; for these two are at once working in the heart, the one opposing the actings of the other; so that my very fears that I have not faith prove that I have it. If doubts are traced to their origin, no culpable unbelief, no consent of the will, can ever be found at the bottom of them, but real faith will always be discovered at their root. For why does the soul doubt? Not because it disbelieves the promises therein contained; but because, seeing its own sin and depravity, and God’s holiness and purity, and not having clear views of the Lord’s method of justifying the ungodly without money and without price, it distresses and perplexes itself with the notion that its great vileness is a bar to the mercy of God. Nature must, in a manner, be reversed, before this great Scriptural truth will be received, viz., that sin, not goodness, qualifies every person for the gospel salvation. The verity of the promises, then, is not questioned by the feeble, doubting Christian; but what he doubts and fears is, that he himself has no interest in them; and so far is Christ from being displeased with such weaklings, that he yearns with a more than common tenderness over them. Hill.

6. He that comforteth “those that are cast down” really shows that he is aware of his servant’s great need. Not through the coming of an angel with radiant wings, but through that of a fellow-laborer with favorable tidings, He raises the cast-down heart from the dust. Van O. 7. So that I rather rejoiced. The Corinthians had given a hearty welcome to Titus, and on receiving the first Epistle had been grieved and sorry for the evil which they had previously connived at. As to the particular case of which the apostle had written, they had subjected the man “who had done the wrong” to a discipline severe yet not inexorable. On hearing these tidings, Paul feels renewed confidence in the Corinthians, and, with his characteristic generosity of temper, tells them so. D. F. 8. The beautiful law is, that in proportion as the repentance increases the grief diminishes. “I rejoice,” says Paul, that “I made you sorry, though it were but for a time.” And few things more signally prove the wisdom of this apostle than his way of dealing with this grief of the Corinthian. He tried no artificial means of intensifying it—did not urge the duty of dwelling upon it, magnifying it, or even of gauging and examining it. So soon as grief had done its work, the apostle was anxious to dry useless tears. A proud remorse does not forgive itself the forfeiture of its own dignity; but it is the very beauty of the penitence which is according to God, that at last the sinner, realizing God’s forgiveness, does learn to forgive himself. What is meant by the publican’s going down to his house justified, but that he felt at peace with himself and God? F.W.R. 9. Sorrow may produce two kinds of reformation, a transient or a permanent one; an alteration in habits which, originating in emotion, will last so long as that emotion continues, and then, after a few fruitless efforts, be given up—a repentance which will be repented of; or again, a permanent change, which will be reversed by no after-thought—a repentance not to be repented of.

10. Godly sorrow.** Sorrowing according to God. God sees sin, not in its consequences, but in itself; a thing infinitely evil, even if the consequences were happiness to the guilty instead of misery. So sorrow, according to God, is to see sin as God sees it. It is not a microscopic self-examination, nor a mourning in which self is ever uppermost; my character gone; the greatness of my sin; the forfeiture of my salvation. The thought of God absorbs all that. And the Christian—gazing not on what he is, but on what he desires to be—dares, even when the recollection of his sin is most vivid and most poignant, to say with Peter, thinking less of himself than of God, “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee.” F. W. R.

Repentance. The simple meaning of this word, which was so familiar to the lips of the first preachers of the gospel, is “a change of mind.” Whensoever the term metanoia, which was usually employed by the apostles to designate this change, fell upon the ear of a Greek, it was always understood to denote some kind of conversion. His idea of the nature of the change intended would be naturally modified by the connection in which the word occurred; but whensoever it was used by a Christian teacher, in connection with the startling narrative of his master’s life, death, and resurrection, it always denoted such a change in one’s habits of thought, feeling, and conduct, as constituted a necessary preparation for the heartfelt reception of Christ as the true Teacher, the only Saviour, and the rightful Sovereign of the soul. Hague.

Not to be repented of. Coming to Christ is the crown of repentance. It is the only kind of repentance that really gives rest and peace. It is the only repentance that stills the tumult of the soul, and makes repenting sweet instead of bitter. We must endeavor, not merely to see that we have done wrong—much grievous wrong—but to come to Christ himself to be forgiven. We must think of him as of one who deeply loved us, who still yearns after our love, whom we have not thought of as we ought. We have done wrong, but let all other wrong be swallowed up in the thought of the pain that we have given, that we are giving, to the soul of the most loving Friend of ours that ever lived. That only will give us rest. All other repentance is hard work; wearisome, cheerless; at the best it gives a sort of relief from pain. But coming to Christ gives real joy to the heart and life. F. T.

The sorrow of the world worketh death.

There is a sorrow for past transgressions which proves no more in our favor than a fever in the brain or a whirlwind in the air. No holy effects follow it; it may break our hearts, but it will never subdue them. No gracious dispositions produce it: a troubled conscience, a dread of shame, a fear of punishment—these are its sources. Death is its end. C. B.—It is the principal distress of extreme bodily hunger, that the organs of digestion begin themselves to be gnawed and digested, in place of the food on which the digestive power is accustomed to spend its energy. Remorse, in the same way, is a moral hunger of the soul. It is the bitter wail of a famished immortality. It is your conscience lashing your perverse will; your defrauded, hungry love weeping its dry, pitchy tears on the desert your evil life has made for it. It is your whole spiritual nature famished by sin, muttering wrathfully, and growling like a caged lion at the bars which shut him up to himself. And as bodily hunger sometimes causes the starving man to see devils in his ravings, so this hunger of remorse fills the soul with angry demons and ministers of vengeance, waiting to execute judgment. Sleep vanishes not seldom, or comes only in dreams that scare the sleeper. The day lags heavily, and the man carries a load of selfish regret and worldly sorrow that worketh death. H. B.

11,12. The criminal had undergone public shame and public humiliation; his had been private grief, and many searchings of heart; and all this had not only taught him a lesson which never could be forgotten, and strengthened him by terrible discipline against future weakness, but also had set up for the Corinthians a higher standard, and vindicated the purity of Christian life and the dignity of the Christian Church. This was the pain, and these were its results. Seeing these results, Paul steadily contemplated the necessary suffering. Let us now infer from this a great truth—the misfortune of non-detection. They who have done wrong congratulate themselves upon not being found out. A sin undetected is the soil out of which fresh sins will grow. The worst misfortune that can happen is to sin and to escape detection: shame and sorrow do God’s work, as nothing else can do it. F. W. R.

11. What indignation, desire?** A heart that becomes soft beneath the cross of Christ, how earnest, burning, pure, are the tears it weeps! For the sufferings which the Holy One of God endured on account of our sins, teach us in what light they are regarded by God, and open up the deepest fountains of our sorrow. Sorrow without Christ is death. But to repent at the cross of Christ, that is resurrection, that is life. There is pleasure in every pang into which the thought of love enters, and therefore in every such pang there is strength. One love de-

serves another! cries the soul, when she has dried her weeping eyes, and goes forth and works. And the work which she then has done, it was for her Lord, and from love to him that she did it. A. T.