Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Corinthians 1:8
For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:
8. For we would not have you ignorant ] A favourite expression with St Paul. Cf. Rom 1:13; 1Co 10:1 ; 1Co 12:1; 1Th 4:13.
of our trouble which came to us in Asia ] Some have referred these expressions (1) to the tumult at Ephesus, Acts 19. Others have supposed, in consequence of the very strong expressions here, that some other trouble, a grievous sickness perhaps, is referred to, especially as St Paul says in Asia, not in Ephesus. But Dean Stanley’s remark that “here, as elsewhere, we may observe the under-statement of St Paul’s sufferings in the Acts” (see also ch. 2Co 11:24-27 and notes), suggests the inference that the tumult at Ephesus was far more serious than it would appear to be from St Luke’s account. We can hardly suppose that the mere ‘dismissal of the assembly’ by the ‘town-clerk’ entirely appeased the multitude. And it is quite possible, since St Luke’s object in the Acts was rather a vindication of St Paul’s ministry than a glorification of his person, that he omits to mention a determined attempt upon St Paul’s life made by Demetrius and the craftsmen, as afterwards (Act 23:12-15) by the Jews at Jerusalem. For the word translated trouble here and elsewhere, see note on 2Co 1:4.
Asia ] By this is meant Asia Minor. So also Act 2:9. But it seems (see Act 16:6) not to have included the whole peninsula usually known by that name.
pressed ] Literally, weighed down. Gravati, Calvin; greved, Wiclif, whom the other English versions followed till the Rhemish, from which the A. V. appears to have borrowed its pressed. The expression conveys the idea of anxiety, but is not irreconcileable with the notion of a prolonged effort to escape those who thirsted for his life.
out of measure ] Cf. for the same Greek word (though it is variously rendered in English) Rom 7:13; 1Co 12:31; Gal 1:13, and especially ch. 2Co 4:17. Dr Plumptre remarks that the word occurs exclusively in the Epistles of this period of St Paul’s life.
despaired ] This expression confirms the idea of a plot to kill the Apostle. Literally, it means that he was utterly at a loss ( rathlos, Meyer) to know what to do to protect his life. See ch. 2Co 4:8, where the same word occurs.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For we would not have you ignorant – We wish you to be fully informed; see the notes, 1Co 10:1; 1Co 12:1. The object of Paul here is, to give a full explanation of the nature of his trials, to which he had referred in 2Co 1:4. He presumed that the Corinthians would feel a deep interest in him and in his trials; that they would sympathize with him, and would pray that those sufferings, and that this deliverance might be attended with a blessing 2Co 1:11; and perhaps he wished also to conciliate their kindness toward himself by mentioning more at length the nature of the trials which he had been called to endure on account of the Christian religion, of which they were reaping so material benefits.
Of our trouble which came to us in Asia – The term Asia is often used to denote that part of Asia Minor of which Ephesus was the capital; see the note, Act 2:9. There has been considerable diversity of opinion as to the troubles to which Paul here refers. Some have supposed that he refers to the persecutions at Lystra Act 14:6, Act 14:19-20, from which he had been recovered as it were by miracle; but as that happened so long before this, it seems improbable that he should here refer to it. There is every mark of freshness and recentness about this event; and Paul evidently referred to some danger from which he had been lately delivered, and which made a deep impression on his mind when he wrote this Epistle. Semler supposes that he refers to the lying in wait of the Jews for him when he was about to go to Macedonia, mentioned in Act 20:3. Most commentators have supposed that be refers to the disturbances which were made at Ephesus by Demetrius and his friends, mentioned in Acts 19, and by reason of which he was compelled to leave the city.
The only objection to this is, that which is mentioned by Whitby and Macknight, that as Paul did not go into the theater there Act 19:31, he incurred no such risk of his life as to justify the strong expressions mentioned in 2Co 1:9-10. They suppose, therefore, that he refers to the danger to which he was exposed in Ephesus on another occasion, when he was compelled to fight there with wild beasts; see 1Co 15:32. But nearly all these opinions may be reconciled, perhaps, by supposing that he refers to the group of calamities to which he had been exposed in Asia, and from which he had just escaped by going to Macedonia – referring perhaps more particularly to the conflict which he had been compelled to have with the wild beasts there. There was the riot excited by Demetrius Acts 19, in which his life had been endangered, and from which he had just escaped; and there had been the conflict with the wild beasts at Ephesus (see the note, 1Co 15:32), which perhaps had occurred but just before; and there were the plots of the Jews against him Act 20:3, from which, also, he had just been delivered. By these trials, his life had been endangered, perhaps, more than once, and he had been called to look death calmly in the face, and to anticipate the probability that he might soon die. Of these trials; of all these trials, he would not have the Corinthians ignorant; but desired that they should be fully apprized of them, that they might sympathize with him, and that through their prayers they might be turned to his benefit.
That we were pressed out of measure – see Acts 19. We were borne down, or weighed down by calamity ( ebarethemen) exceedingly kath’ huperboles, supereminently. The expression denotes excess, eminence, or intensity. It is one of Pauls common and very strong expressions to denote anything that is intensive or great; see Rom 7:13; Gal 1:13; 2Co 4:17.
Above strength – Beyond our strength. More than in ourselves we were able to bear.
Insomuch that we despaired even of life – Either expecting to be destroyed by the wild beasts with which he had to contend, or to be destroyed by the people. This was one of the instances undoubtedly, to which he refers in 2Co 11:23, where he says he had been in death oft. And this was one of the many cases in which Paul was called on to contemplate death as near. It was doubtless one cause of his fidelity, and of his great success in his work, that he was thus called to regard death as near at hand, and that, to use the somewhat unpoetical, but deeply affecting lines of Baxter, expressing a sentiment which guided all his ministry, and which was one source of his eminent success,
He preachd as though he neer would preach again,
As a dying man to dying men.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 8. Our trouble which came to us in Asia] To what part of his history the apostle refers we know not: some think it is to the Jews lying in wait to kill him, Ac 20:3; others, to the insurrection raised against him by Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen, Ac 19:23; others, to his fighting with beasts at Ephesus, 1Co 15:32, which they understand literally; and others think that there is a reference here to some persecution which is not recorded in any part of the apostle’s history.
We were pressed out of measure, above strength] The original is exceedingly emphatic: ‘ we were weighed down beyond what is credible, even beyond what any natural strength could support. There is no part of St. Paul’s history known to us which can justify these strong expressions, except his being stoned at Lystra; which if not what is here intended, the facts to which he refers are not on record. As Lystra was properly in Asia, unless he mean Asia Minor, and his stoning at Lystra did most evidently destroy his life, so that his being raised was an effect of the miraculous power of God; he might be supposed to refer to this. See Clarke on Ac 14:19, c. But it is very likely that the reference is to some terrible persecution which he had endured some short time before his writing this epistle and with the outlines of which the Corinthians had been acquainted.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
We are at a great loss to determine what these troubles were in Asia, of which the apostle doth here speak. We read of several troubles Paul met with in Asia: it was there he was in danger through the tumult raised by Demetrius, Act 19:23. It was there (at Ephesus) where he fought with beasts after the manner of men, as he told us in the former Epistle, 1Co 15:32. Whoso readeth Act 19:1-41 and Act 20:1-38, will find the largest account we have in Scripture of the troubles Paul met with in Asia. But this Epistle is thought to have been written at a time that will not agree to the time of those troubles; therefore they are thought to have been some troubles of which we have a mention no where else in holy writ.
We were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: whatsoever they were, this text tells us they were very great, and above his natural strength to have borne; some think, above the strength of ordinary Christians, insomuch that if the apostle had not found the more than ordinary assistances of the Spirit of God, he could not have stood under them.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
8, 9. Referring to the imminentrisk of life which he ran in Ephesus (Ac19:23-41) when the whole multitude were wrought up to fury byDemetrius, on the plea of Paul and his associates having assailed thereligion of Diana of Ephesus. The words (2Co1:9), “we had the sentence of death in ourselves,”mean, that he looked upon himself as a man condemned to die[PALEY]. ALFORDthinks the danger at Ephesus was comparatively so slight that itcannot be supposed to be the subject of reference here, withoutexposing the apostle to a charge of cowardice, very unlike hisfearless character; hence, he supposes Paul refers to some deadlysickness which he had suffered under (2Co 1:9;2Co 1:10). But there is littledoubt that, had Paul been found by the mob in the excitement, hewould have been torn in pieces; and probably, besides what Luke inActs records, there were other dangers of an equally distressingkind, such as, “lyings in wait of the Jews” (Ac20:19), his ceaseless foes. They, doubtless, had incited themultitude at Ephesus (Ac 19:9),and were the chief of the “many adversaries” and “[wild]beasts,” which he had to fight with there (1Co 15:32;1Co 16:9). His weak state ofhealth at the time combined with all this to make him regard himselfas all but dead (2Co 11:29;2Co 12:10). What makes mysupposition probable is, that the very cause of his not havingvisited Corinth directly as he had intended, and for which heproceeds to apologize (2Co1:15-23), was, that there might be time to see whether the evilsarising there not only from Greek, but from Jewish disturbersof the Church (2Co 11:29),would be checked by his first Epistle; there not being fully so waswhat entailed on him the need of writing this second Epistle. His notspecifying this here expressly is just what we might expect inthe outset of this letter; towards the close, when he had won theirfavorable hearing by a kindly and firm tone, he gives a more distinctreference to Jewish agitators (2Co11:22).
above strengththat is,ordinary, natural powers of endurance.
despairedas far ashuman help or hope from man was concerned. But in respect to helpfrom God we were “not in despair” (2Co4:8).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble,…. The apostle was very desirous that the Corinthians might be thoroughly acquainted with the trouble that had lately befallen them; partly because it would clearly appear from hence what reason he had to give thanks to God as he had done; and partly, that they might be encouraged to trust in God, when in the utmost extremity; but chiefly in order to remove a charge brought against him by the false apostles; who, because he had promised to come to Corinth, and as yet had not come, accused him of lightness and inconstancy, in as much as he had not kept his promise. Now to show that it was not owing to any such temper and disposition of mind in him, he would have them know, that though he sincerely intended a journey to them, yet was hindered from pursuing it, by a very great affliction which befell him: the place where this sore trouble came upon him, is expressed to be in Asia: some have thought it refers to all the troubles he met with in Asia, for the space of three years, whereby he was detained longer than he expected; but it seems as though some single affliction is here particularly designed: many interpreters have been of opinion, that the tumult raised by Demetrius at Ephesus is here meant, when Paul and his companions were in great danger of their lives, Ac 19:21, but this uproar being but for a day, could not be a reason why, as yet, he had not come to Corinth: it seems rather to be some other very sore affliction, and which lasted longer, that is not recorded in the Acts of the Apostles: the greatness of this trouble is set forth in very strong expressions,
as that we were pressed out of measure. The affliction was as an heavy burden upon them, too heavy to bear; it was exceeding heavy,
‘ , even to an “hyperbole”, beyond expression; and
above strength, that is, above human strength, the strength of nature; and so the Syriac renders it, , “above our strength”; but not above the strength of grace, or that spiritual strength communicated to them, by which they were supported under it: the apostle adds,
insomuch that we despaired even of life; they were at the utmost loss, and in the greatest perplexity how to escape the danger of life; they greatly doubted of it; they saw no probability nor possibility, humanly speaking, of preserving it.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Concerning our affliction ( ). Manuscripts read also for in the Koine (over) often has the idea of (around). Paul has laid down his philosophy of afflictions and now he cites a specific illustration in his own recent experience.
In Asia ( ). Probably in Ephesus, but what it was we do not know whether sickness or peril. We do know that the disciples and the Asiarchs would not allow Paul to face the mob in the amphitheatre gathered by Demetrius (Ac 20:30f.). In Ro 16:4 Paul says that Prisca and Aquila laid down their necks for him, risked their very lives for him. It may have been a later plot to kill Paul that hastened his departure from Ephesus (Ac 20:1). He had a trial so great that “we were weighed down exceedingly beyond our power” (‘ ). Old verb from , weight, , weighty. First aorist passive indicative. See on 1Co 12:31 for ‘ (cf. our hyperbole). It was beyond Paul’s power to endure if left to himself.
Insomuch that we despaired even of life ( ). Usual clause of result with and the infinitive. First aorist passive infinitive , late compound for utter despair (perfective use of and at a complete loss, privative and , way). There seemed no way out.
Of life ( ). Ablative case of the articular infinitive, of living.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
We would not have you ignorant. See on Rom 1:13.
Came to us in Asia. Rev., better, befell. The nature of the trouble is uncertain. The following words seem to indicate inward distress rather than trouble from without, such as he experienced at Ephesus.
Were pressed out of measure [ ] . Rev., better, were weighed down, thus giving the etymological force of the verb, from barov burden. For out of measure, Rev, exceedingly; see on 1Co 2:1.
We despaired [] . Only here and ch. 4 8. From ejx out and out, and ajporew to be without a way of escape. See on did many things, Mr 6:20.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant,” (ou gar thelomen humas agnolin, adelphoi) “Because we will not you all to be ignorant, brethren,” to be “in the dark,” or not knowledgeable – Paul often used the testimonies and lives and sufferings of saints gone before to encourage living ones to keep battling, Heb 11:1-4; Heb 12:1-4.
2) “Of our trouble,” (huper tes thlipseos hemon) “as regards our affliction or trouble,” Act 19:23, trouble, opposition and persecution that came upon the missionaries with Paul as they labored for the Lord in Ephesus, headquarters of the production – center of the Goddess Diana images.
3) “Which came to us in Asia.” (tes genomenes en te Asia) came (upon) in Asia,” Particularly in Ephesus where Paul tarried teaching, preaching, and disputing with religious enemies of Christ for more than two years, Act 19:8-22; 1Co 15:32; 1Co 16:9.
4) “That we were pressed out of measure, above strength “ (hoti kath’ hyperbole huper dunamin ebarethemen) “That we were burdened excessively, beyond power,” or above strength; Paul, like his Lord, was hounded, harassed, derided and tormented in mind and body by persecutors at Iconium, Act 14:2; Act 14:5; at Lystra where he was stoned, Act 14:19, where he was left for dead.
5) “Inasmuch as we despaired even of life,” (hoste eksaporethenai hemas kai tou zen) “So that we despaired even to live,” 2Co 4:8; then there was the added uprising against Paul at Ephesus, his third major point of persecution in Asia Minor, he despaired of life, about which he later wrote as a door of God’s blessings to carry him back into Eastern Europe to witness, Php_4:13; 2Co 11:23-30.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
8. For I would not have you ignorant He makes mention of the greatness and difficulty of his conflicts, that the glory of victory may thereby the more abundantly appear. Since the time of his sending them the former epistle, he had been exposed to great dangers, and had endured violent assaults. The probability, however, is that he refers here to the history, which Luke relates in Act 19:23, though in that passage he does not so distinctly intimate the extent of the danger. As, however, he states that the whole city was in a tumult, (Act 19:29,) it is easy from this to infer the rest. For we know what is the usual effect of a popular tumult, when it has been once kindled. By this persecution Paul declares he had been oppressed beyond measure, nay more, above strength, that is, so as not to be able to endure the burden. For it is a metaphor taken from persons who give way under the pressure of a heavy load, or from ships that sink from being overladen — not that he had actually fainted, but that he felt that his strength would have failed him, if the Lord had not imparted fresh strength. (238)
So that we were in anxiety even as to life itself — that is, “So that I thought life was gone, or at least I had very little hope of it remaining, as those are wont to feel who are shut up so as to see no way of escape.” Was then so valiant a soldier of Christ, so brave a wrestler, left without strength, so as to look for nothing but death? (239) For he mentions it as the reason of what he had stated — that he despaired of life. I have already observed, that Paul does not measure his strength in connection with help from God, but according to his own personal feeling of his ability. Now there can be no doubt, that all human strength must give way before the fear of death. Farther, it is necessary that even saints themselves should be in danger of an entire failure of strength, that, being put in mind of their own weakness, they may learn, agreeably to what follows, to place their entire dependence on God alone. At the same time I have preferred to explain the word ἐξαπορεῖσθαι, which is made use of by Paul, as denoting a trembling anxiety, rather than render it, as Erasmus has done by the word despair; because he simply means, that he was hemmed in by the greatest difficulties, so that no means of preserving life seemed to remain. (240)
(238) “ Pressed above measure. ( καθ ᾿ ὑπερβολὴν ἐβαρήςθημεν.) The words βάρος and βάρουμαι, are applied sometimes to the enduring of a burden, (Mat 20:12; Gal 6:2,) whether it be a temporal burden or spiritual […] In this place it seemeth to be taken from porters, who have a burden imposed upon them, more than they are able to stand under; or as Chrysostom, from ships which are over much burdened, and so are in danger of being lost. And as if there were not emphasis enough in the word pressed, he addeth another to aggravate it — ( καθ ᾿ ὑπερβολήν) — above measure — Above strength. ( ὑπὲρ δύναμιν.) Chrysostom observeth this differeth from the other. For a burden may be exceeding heavy, yet to some mighty man it may not be above his strength. When Samson (Jud 16:3) carried away the gates of the city Gaza, with the posts and barre upon his shoulders, here was a burden out of measure heavy; no ordinary man could do so; but yet to Samson it was not above his strength. Thus it was with Paul, who may be called a spiritual Samson, for that heavenly might and power which God had endowed him with; he is assaulted with a trouble that was not only hyperbolically weighty, but also above his strength. Paul had no more power to stand under it.” — Burgesse on 2Co 1:0, pp. 269, 270, 278. — Ed.
(239) “ Vn champion si preux et magnanime, perdoit — il courage attendant la mort ?” — “Did a champion so valiant and magnanimous lose heart, looking for nothing but death?”
(240) Εξαπορεῖσθαι properly signifies to be utterly at a stand, not knowing how to proceed. — In Psa 88:8, where David says — I am shut up, and I cannot come forth, the Hebrew words ולא אצא ( velo etse,) are rendered in the Septuagint — καὶ οὐκ ἐξεπορευόμην — and I could not come forth. It is worthy of notice that, in the metre version, the idea expressed by Calvin, as implied in the verb ἐξαπορεῖσθαι, is fully brought out — “find no evasion for me.” — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES
2Co. 1:8.No certainty as to the affliction referred to, whether some outward persecution at Ephesus (query at Ephesus at all?) known to his readers (query that of Rom. 16:4; cf. 1Co. 16:9) (brethren), or such acute distress about the state of things at Corinth as nearly killed him, and at any rate utterly broke down his health and threatened to interrupt his work. [How little the Acts tell of the life of Paul: cf. chaps. 4, 11, 2Co. 7:5.] Notice, mere weighed down exceedingly, closely parallel to the original of 2Co. 4:17.
2Co. 1:9.Little to choose between answer and sentence. [In A.V. and text and margin change places.] We ask ourselves Shall this end in life or in death? Our answer, our sentence upon ourselves, is Death. If we live, it will be a real resurrection by the power of God. Cf. I die daily (1Co. 15:31).
2Co. 1:10.Notice in, will deliver, variant reading for doth deliver. If this be accepted, then the latter clause only reiterates will with an expression of strong hope. The nature of the deliverance is as uncertain to us as is that of the peril. From is almost, out of the hand of.
2Co. 1:11.Cf. for the thought Php. 1:19. See the Corinthians working with and for Paul. Gift.I.e. the deliverance primarily, but not excluding the comfort, or the trust (2Co. 1:9), which had sustained him until deliverance came; and all is grace, a real charism. Persons.Perhaps too technical a translation of what literally means faces; as if we saw a whole company with uplifted eyes and hands, and upturned faces, interceding for Paul. Also 2Co. 4:15; 2Co. 9:12 are parallel in thought.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.2Co. 1:8-11
Death and Deliverance.
I. Unrecorded dangers.
1. What a glimpse of the life of Paul is given here. The Acts gives no Life of St. Paul. It is a chapter in the history of the growing kingdom of God; the things which Jesus went on to do and to teach after He was taken up. [But this lays precarious emphasis on began (Act. 1:1).] Paul, like Peter, is introduced, and dismissed, just when, and just so far as, the exigencies of that history demand. The whole story of the revelation and the historic evolution of the Kingdom is, in Old Testament and New Testament, written historically, and very largely biographically. But the men are secondary, the kingdom is first.
2. What adequate motive other than devotion to a Christ for the actuality of Whose life Paul had abundant evidence, would have carried him through so much? What he had surrendered is well known. What he gained in exchange he is now, and will eternally be, learning in the presence of his Christ. But the immediate return for the exchange was to be in deaths oft, as the climax of all other hardships. Yet through how much the love of Christ will carry a man! For wealth, or honour, or from fear of disgrace, men will do great things and will dare deaths. But to live a life of perpetual, killing hardship and peril, of obloquy and ignominy, of privation, of thankless and unthanked labour,a far more exceeding weight of work and self-denial and shame and danger,the only price with which to purchase such devotion is this: The love of Christ constraineth me.
3. The unrecorded martyrdoms, the unrecorded heroisms, of the Church are suggested. There are martyrdoms of daily life [I die daily] in the workshop, where one man has, with all wisdom and beauty of life, for years stood out a witness for, and a servant of, Christ; in the schoolroom and dormitory,and there are no ingenuities of persecution and torture greater, in their proportion, than those devised by schoolboys and schoolgirls for a Christian confessor in their midst; at the table, where for years the husband has never broken a sullen silence towards his faithful wife except to complain, or sneer, or stab with keen words, because, and only because, she is a Christian; and the like. It is heroic, and has stirred the heart of the very persecutor, to see men, or even tender women, go to the stake with a song or a least a cheerful word, and stand quietly until the spirit escaped away, as in a chariot of fire, out of the midst of the flames which leaped up after it like disappointed hounds baulked of their prey. But the daily burden that presses out of measure until the most cheerful begin to say, This will kill me; the daily racking which tortures all that is finest and most sensitive in the nature; the daily danger which is faced in perilous mission-fields or in unhealthy city slums, as for Christs sake men and women go quietly forth morning after morning to the daily round,this is carried, or borne, or done, without much comment, without indeed much notice. But One Heart knows it and rejoices in it. There is romance enough, heroism enough, martyrdom enough, in many quiet lives to kindle the enthusiasm of a Church or of a world, if it could only be known and read and written as He knows it, for Whom it is undertaken and faced and wrought.
4. He has a record where nothing is unwritten, nothing unrecorded; down to the last detail all is entered up in most perfect completeness; not a name which has borne anything, or been anything, for Him is omitted. So, too, there are
II. Unrecorded deliverances.What a story will some unknown saints have to tell in heaven, of their daily death indeed, but also of their daily deliverances! Not alone such foremost heroes as Paul, but many a hard-pressed, yet triumphant, nobody, in the knowledge and reckoning of even their Christian fellows, will have a story which is really one of perpetual miracle, a perpetual resurrection. Often, literally, as good as dead on all human lines of estimation, taking death into practical, near account every day, in the laying out of plans and the undertaking of work for Christ. Each new morning a new Easter morning, a life renewed as by a real raising up of Gods own hand. Many a burden, many a battle, many a danger, is never known outside the secrecy of the mans own heart; and many a deliverance too. There must, moreover, be many deliverances unrecorded in even the privacy of the mans own knowledge. In each days common life there must be for every man many occasions when danger, and even death, has been very really near, but, just because the deliverance has been so complete, he has passed through all in the happy, secure confidence of ignorance. Every ordinary journey has its peril. Every days duty offers at many points opportunity to death. Men could not bear to think of, or to know, through, and out of, how much they are daily being delivered.
III. Indirect blessing from these experiences.
1. We may narrow 2Co. 1:9 a little, and press its teaching with a particular application. The near prospect of death, if sanctified,
(1) Destroys all trust in ourselves. At that moment the vanity of all human endeavour and resistance to fate, is palpable. If the grace of God be yielded to, all trust in self for salvation may at that moment be destroyed. No lesson harder to learn, or more urgently necessary than this. Fundamental that the man should learn to put all reliance for salvation, not on anything within the circle of his own life and character, but wholly and entirely to make salvation depend upon Christ and His work. Yet not until face to face with eternityand not always even thenis fully seen the unreliableness of everything within the man himselfeverything he has been and has done, or has not been and has not doneas a resting-place for hope of acceptance before God. Thus it
(2) Disposes to trust in God. To whom should we go? One moment more, and the mystery of the future will be a mystery no longer; where men have hitherto been inquiring, and speculating, and hoping or fearing, I shall know. One moment more and the world of which I do know something will have slipped from me, and I shall find myself in a world of which I know nothing. At home here, I shall be a stranger there, in a strange world. I am a sinner, and in one moment more, I shall findwhat? What can I trust to for my leap into the darkness; what can assure me that I shall light on my feet, and on sure ground of rest and peace? When I loose my hold, perforce, of a world of knowledge, and drop into a world which is entirely a matter of faith, what am I to trust to? Nothing, except the promises of God in connection with the work of Christ. Invaluable and secure, or valueless and deceiving, will these in that supreme moment be. Trust in God, or nothing except a huge venture with an eternal risk. Happy if a man, thus shut up to trusting in his God in Christ does trust. But further there is
(3) The hope of resurrection. And this rests securely on the power and declared will of the God who raises the dead. The (declarations of the) Scriptures and the power of God were the two heads of an argument which Christ presented for the consideration of Sadducee doubters or unbelievers (Mat. 22:9). An argumentum ad homines, of course, like the appeal of Paul to Agrippa. The Jew, such a Jew as even Agrippa, could hardly think it i credible that GodGodshould raise the dead (Act. 26:8).
2. The knowledge of others is to be enriched by our experience of deliverance.We would not have you ignorant, etc. And so, too, God would not have them ignorant, and, for the sake of the glory of the God of the deliverance, and for the strengthening of their faith, would have His people communicate their experiences. A widely applicable principle. A reticence on such subjects, partly the result of temperament, and partly a tradition in many sections of the Christian Church, seals the lips of many, whose experience of the ways of God is most extensive, and would be most precious and helpful to other souls. A groundless and not very natural idea that such things are too sacred to speak about, coupled with a dislike, which has its honourable side, to be made the object of attention and to be the subject of ones own talk, robs the Church of much testimony which would be its wealth. It is not a question of speaking of such deliverances before unsympathetic persons, casting pearls before swine, but of imparting them to those who are often in the like perils and trials, and need the same help and encouragements. To such hearers, often hungry for such help as testimony of deliverance would afford, and finding not their smallest difficulty in the thought that they are singular in their own experiences, it is a revelation and an inspiration to hear a fellow Christiancrucifying self, doing violence to habit and temperament, for the sake of glorifying the Deliverer and of helping soulsbreak the silence and tell his story of death and deliverance.
3. A wonderful unity of heart and effort is called out by Pauls experiences (see fuller Homily on 2Co. 1:11). The Pauls always owe much to the unknown pleaders in the Corinths; to those who can only help together by their pleading and supplication. How many deliverances did Paul owe to the fact that in every Church there were some who loved him, and who followed him wherever he went with supplications. How much of such a mans success was by the Divine Eyewhich alone can analyse the intricacies of such a problemtraceable to the many prayers put up for Paul by grateful hearts in his many Churches. Success is a very complex thing in itself, and in the causes which contribute to it. But not the least of these are the prayers of helpers who can only help by prayers. Paul and his work, with its accompaniments of danger, death, deliverance, rises up in a towering eminence in the view of the past of the Churchs history. But it rested upon a broad-spread, and in great part hidden, base, not the least solid stratum of which was laid in the prayers of his many helpers, fellow-wrestlers, with each other and with him, in their prayers for him (Rom. 15:30).
SEPARATE HOMILIES
2Co. 1:10. The God of Deliverance.Psa. 68:28, He that is our God is the God of Salvation. An old note of the God of the Bible; ever true.
I. Our lesson in grammar in Gods school.
1. Can our heart conjugate the verb deliver? Yes. Present: Doth deliver [But query the reading?] Past: Hath delivered. Future tense: Will deliver. God in every case the subject. Whatever lesson we are slow to learn, we have had occasion enough to know this excellently well. He has given us plenty of practice. Yet the future tense does not at all times come very readily to our lips; we stammer at Will deliver. Our slow heart easily forgets Hath delivered. In the story of the goodness of our life, we find it hard to pick out in the sentence, in the incidents of to-day, the present tense with its nominative: God doth deliver. We will ask, as not the least mercy of His hand, a heart quick to pick Him out in the story, and to see His deliverance in every days common, commonplace, safety and help.
2. The difficulty is not all of our own hearts creating. The very completeness of the deliverance in part creates it. We are brought through in such complete safety that we pass through in happy security, entirely ignorant that danger or need of help has been so near and so great. The monotonously ordinary security of a common day is sometimesif only we saw it as He does who accomplishes ita most marvellous deliverance. [Very often, indeed, He spreads a table for His people in the presence of their enemies (Psa. 23:5). He holds these backin their impotent malicewhile His guests eat His banquet of plentiful goodness and mercy. We see them, but banquet in peace, crying, See how He doth deliver.]
3. The Present is so closely linked with Past and Future that the present deliverance cannot be considered alone. It is rooted in the mercy of the past; it projects itself, inserts itself, [mortises itself,] into that of the future. The mercy of to-daydoth deliveris only the newest, latest link of a chain of deliverances which reaches back to my earliest need, and will stretch onward to the latest moment of my lifes necessity. No mercy stands by itself; no deliverance is an isolated piece of goodness. No matter where the musing heart takes hold of the mercies of life, at whatever point it locates the Present Tense, it is led on backward, forward, by links of the closest association. Psa. 59:10 gets quoted with more than a verbal inaccuracy. It is false to the thought to say, The God of my mercies. The Psalmist says, and feels, more justly, of my mercy. Each incident of mercy is so closely linked with what precedes and follows, they follow so closely one upon another, that, in the review, they coalesce into one long mercy (Psa. 40:5). Indeed, to speak humanly, in the grammar of Gods thought there is no present, past, future. We use the words; we distinguish between the times. The deliverances emerge and present themselves to us, in order and temporal succession. But they are by no means separate and independent deliverances. They are incidents in one continuous deliverance. It is only human feeling which says, Awake to help me! (Psa. 59:4). Our God has no need to arouse Himself for each new emergency, to consider how to make at the moment some new provision for the new demand. [As in Creation, so in Grace,and the two are one Work,the Father worketh hitherto (Joh. 5:17); He never takes His hand from the thing He is creating, from the life He is regulating and guiding. There are no briefest pauses in His attention and interest. There is no intermission, even for an instant, in His ceaselessly operative activity to deliver.] Must not be so overpressed as to become fatalism, with its inevitable, unalterable, predetermined order of incidents and persons, in a Christian mans life and course. But he should thankfully remember that the daily new deliverances (in the widest sense) are parts of a lifelong Deliverance, details in the working out of a Purpose to bring His many sons unto glory (Rom. 8:28; Heb. 2:10). [Should be remembered also how centralas in the chapter, Romans 8., so in thought and factis the word good in Rom. 8:28. The mere temporal deliverance, from perplexity, or persecution, or death, is not the main thing in the mind of the God of our Deliverance. These, indeed, are not always granted. [Sometimes the real deliverance is effected rather by His shutting up against us paths, doors, which we begged to be allowed to enter.] Such providential deliverances are given or withheld, according as will best subserve the good, the definition of which is the conforming each son of His family of adopted ones to the image of the Son, the Firstborn amongst many brethren. Such a deliverance from danger as Paul is thinking of, is not an unworthy thing for God to consult for, but its real purpose falls in with His larger plan of gracious working, in Paul and all whom his life may affect and influence, the goal of which is the perfected holiness of His people.] Present, past, future, are our human expression; the factof our deliverance, as of His purpose and love, Who is I AMis a perpetually extended present of grace and power.
II. Pauls confidence rests upon the God who delivers.One lifelong deliverance; because One Mind, One Heart, One God, in all the deliverances of life. For this reason Paul counts upon deliverance; he counts upon Him! The future is as certain as the past, or present, because He may as certainly be reckoned with. He cannot deny Himselfi.e. He cannot at any point be unfaithful to His pledged word in the past, to His proved character in the past, to the precedents He has set in the past. His past acts and deliverances are words from His heart; He has declared in them what manner of God He is, and will be. He cannot turn His back upon the Self of past days, or upon His past principles of action. He can do no other, and can be no other, than His record in the past. Present, Past, Future, therefore, proceed in orderly, secure development. He can so guide and deliver His people to-day that the present shall fit harmoniously on to the past, and prepare the way for the future, with perfect sequence and adaptation; and the future deliverance is a certainty. [Has stamped His own unity upon His work in creation. This truth in modern theories of development is that no new created thing is isolated, a mere new beginning; it is always in close relation to the past; it is the next stage in the unfolding of an Idea upon which the Creator is ceaselessly at work; however modified, the lines of the preceding forms are in it; in its turn it preludes, and suggests, the coming forms. So His own unity is stamped upon the working of His delivering providence. Deliverance follows upon, grows out of, deliverance; deliverance preludes, and leads up to, deliverance. The heart that knows God finds the analogy run very closely; and the argument in it is: One God; the God of my mercy.] [Or, with another natural analogy. Give the astronomer six weeks, six months, six yearsthe longer the betterto make and collate and study observations of a new planet; and he will soon tell you where it may be looked for six years, or sixty, or six hundred years hence. He has found the law of its orbit and its motion. Paul records: Hath delivered, and doth deliver. Not two observations, but many a thousand, are embodied in that; he has found the law of the providence of his God. He says Will deliver with all confidence. He knows where to look for and to find his God.]
I. Well praise Him for all that is past,
II. Well trust Him for all thats to come.
Hymn by J. Hart.
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
2Co. 1:11. Two Features in the Life of Citizens of the Kingdom of God.
I. Circulation in the life of the kingdom of God.The cycle of life begins in, and returns to, prayer. Prayer first wins a Gift; then, the Gift won, and exhibited in its blessed fruits, calls out Praise. Then the-grateful, adoring Church begins the round again: making known its fresh requests once more; again getting the new answer; and then again acknowledging the mercy with new Praise. [Observe how the objective efficacy of Prayer is here assumed; prayer which is petition, and not merely adoration, contemplation, communion, with God, etc. Prayerthe consentaneous prayer of many personsprevails, not only to their own blessing, but to secure for another person, Paul, not merely a spiritual grace, but an actual deliverance from very extreme peril.]
II. Union in the life of the kingdom.The gift is bestowed in answer to the prayers of many; the thanks are given by many; many then help together in praying for the new deliverance.
1. There is solitary prayer which is of the mightiest; there is an offering of thanksgiving, in the holy privacy of the sanctuary within the heart, which is grateful exceedingly to God, but is a holy secret between the heart and Himself. But united prayer has a power all its own; united thanksgiving has a beauty and value all its own. [Cf. the strong figure in Rom. 15:30 : that ye strive [wrestle, agonise] together with me in your prayers for me. As though, not one wrestling Jacob, but a Church every member of which is a wrestling Jacob, had all taken hold of, and were hanging upon, God, with We will not let Thee go.]
2. No Church is strong unless its individual members are strong, for prayer and for work. It is in secret prayer that they learn to pray. But the Church, meeting as such, for prayer and for thanksgiving, has a mighty power. United waiting upon God brought Pentecost; united waiting upon God had secured deliverance for Paul. There is a principle in the Church prayer meeting; a special promise belongs to it (Mat. 18:19).
3. The missionary agents of the Churches, in difficulty and peril, should be remembered in Church prayer, and thanksgiving rendered for their gift and mercy. [
4. All the efficacy of Sympathy is utilised by such united prayer and thanksgiving; the Church does well to have its thanksgiving meetings, as well as its prayer meetings; sluggish hearts are stirred, flagging interest in one is aroused by zeal in another; beginners learn to pray, and learn to discover matter for praise, as they listen to the older and more experienced members.] [Further, remember that this agreeing to ask is very much more than that a given number of persons, all convinced that some certain object of desire is laudable or needful, concur in making request for the same thing. It goes deeper; it is a union of conviction and desire and petition, born of the common presence in each of them of One and the Same Spirit of prayer. They are one in the Body and in the Head. It is the one Mind, Life, Heart, of the Body breathing out its desire through each of the company who agree to ask. (Prayer in the Holy Ghost, Jud. 1:20.)]
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(8) We would not, brethren, have you ignorant.From the generalised language of the previous verses he passes to something more specific. The phrase by which he calls attention to the importance of what he is about to write is characteristic of the Epistles of this period (Rom. 1:13; 1Co. 10:1; 1Co. 12:1; 1Th. 4:13).
Our trouble which came to us in Asia.The allusion may possibly be to the Demetrius tumult of Act. 19:24-41, or to some like time of danger, such as that referred to in 1Co. 15:32. On the other hand, however, he would probably, in that case, have spoken of a definitely localised danger, as he does in the last reference as being in Ephesus. The words in Asia suggest a wider range of suffering, such as we find referred to in the speech to the elders at Miletus (Act. 20:19), and the context leads us to think of bodily illness as well as of perils and anxieties.
We were pressed out of measure.The adverbial phrase is specially characteristic of the Epistles of this period. We find it in the exceedingly sinful of Rom. 7:13; the more excellent (or, transcending) way of 1Co. 12:31; and again in 2Co. 4:17; Gal. 1:13.
Insomuch that we despaired even of life.The language is obviously more vividly descriptive of the collapse of illness than of any peril such as those referred to in the previous Note. St. Paul could hardly have despaired of life during the tumult of Acts 19.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
a. His affliction in Asia, and his purpose to visit them, 2Co 1:8-14 .
8. Have you ignorant St. Paul’s frequent phrase in introducing a new information. Rom 1:13; 1Co 10:1 ; 1Co 12:1; 1Th 4:13, and other passages.
Trouble What this trouble, or rather, affliction, even to despair of life, was, is variously decided by commentators. Some identify it with his danger at Ephesus in Demetrius’s riot; but in that affair he was clearly not allowed to encounter as much danger as he wished. Some refer it to his fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus; but the literal reality of such an event is improbable. We identify it without doubt with the “thorn in the flesh” in 2Co 12:7, where see our note.
Alford, who identifies that “thorn” as sore eyes, nevertheless starts here on the right track: “The expression,” he says, “seems rather to regard a deadly sickness than a persecution.” St. Paul does not say that the trouble was at Ephesus, but in Asia. Assuming that his anxiety about the effect of his epistle on the Corinthians, joined with the excitements of the riot, affected his nervous system before leaving Ephesus, the paroxysm by which life was in despair doubtless took place at Troas.
Pressed out of measure Literally, we were overwhelmingly, above our strength, borne down. He was prostrated by epilepsy, and his life was despaired of. To identifying this trouble as a sickness Meyer objects 1. That 2Co 1:5 speaks of sufferings of Christ; 2. 2Co 1:7 makes the Corinthians partakers; and, 3. Paul speaks in the plural, as if others shared. But, 1. Paul’s being overwhelmed with an almost fatal anxiety for the Corinthian Church was eminently identical with the sufferings of Christ. 2. The Corinthians being partakers can only mean that they had their share in the great mass of sufferings for Christ, not that they nearly died with him in Asia. 3. Paul’s use of the plural is counterbalanced by his use of the singular life, death, sentence of death all of which certainly must be held as individual. 4. We make a fuller break between 2Co 1:7-8 than Meyer, which isolates Paul’s trouble from the sufferings of which the Corinthians were partakers.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘For we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life.’
Paul now goes on to illustrate this by telling the Corinthians about his more recent difficult experiences. He will not hide from them the fact of his weakness and suffering. It is part of God’s saving activity. In his activities in Asia he and his fellow-workers had been constantly afflicted and heavily weighed down, almost beyond endurance. It had been outside their control (beyond our power), and it had reached such a stage that he and his compatriots had despaired even of life.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Illustration: Example of the Father’s Comfort: Paul’s Sufferings and Consolation In order to illustrate the comfort that only the Heavenly Father can bring to those who suffer, Paul gives the Corinthians in 2Co 1:8-11 an example of one of his most stressful experiences as a servant of Christ and the divine comfort that certainly followed. After Paul sets the theme of the second epistle of Corinthians in 2Co 1:2-7 by telling them the purpose of their sufferings and consolations in Christ, he then gives them perhaps his greatest example of a hardship that he endured for their sake on the mission field in the following passage of 2Co 1:8-11.
At the time Paul wrote 2 Corinthians he felt pressure on all sides. This was a difficult time in Paul’s missionary journeys. He had just escaped the city of Ephesus with his life. The Corinthian church had been in revolt up until recently, which occasioned this second epistle to them. Judaizers were bringing “another gospel” to the churches of Galatia. He describes himself as being “pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that he despaired even of life.” Never had he felt so helpless and dependent upon God for strength and divine intervention. However, his victory came through his “sentence of death,” a decision that many Christians make. It is a decision that moves a child of God from the natural into the supernatural. It is such an attitude of selfless sacrifice that ushered in an abundance of divine revelations and heavenly consolation, as Paul will refer to in 2Co 12:1-10.
In the natural it appeared as if Paul and his co-workers were going to be killed unless there was a divine intervention (2Co 1:8). As a result they had to make the decision to obey the Lord and preach the Gospel even if it cost them their lives, for their hope was in the resurrection of the saints and not in this life (2Co 1:9). Then Paul declares that God did faithfully intervene and delivered them, and that he will continue to deliver them (2Co 1:10). We find this same situation taking place when the three Hebrew children were thrown into the fiery furnace (Dan 3:1-30). They, too, made the decision to obey the Lord even if it cost them their lives. God miraculously delivered them also. This verse illustrates Rev 12:11.
Rev 12:11, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death .”
Illustration – I cannot think of a better example of hardship and suffering for Christ Jesus during modern times than Arthur Blessitt who has carried a wooden cross into every nation on earth. There was one day when he was walking through Central America that a group of military soldiers surrounded his mobile trailer and demanded that he step out so that they could execute him. At that time, Mrs. Jan Crouch tells of how God woke her up in the middle of the night and impressed upon her to pray for Arthur Blessitt. Since he felt that he was going to die, he reached into his trailer to grab some Bibles and hand them out while being shot. To his surprise, when he turned around every soldier was lying on the ground. God wrought a miracle in that region as word spread that God had visited them that night in His power to knock down those soldiers. [51] We see how Blessitt had the sentence of death in his life and how Jan Crouch was moved to pray and intercede for his deliverance. This is an example of what Paul is talking about in 2Co 1:8-11.
[51] Arthur Blessitt, interviewed by Matthew Crouch, Behind the Scenes, on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California, 2008), television program.
2Co 1:8 For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:
2Co 1:8
The ASV reads, “that we despaired even of life.”
Rotherham
The NIV reads, “so that we despaired even of life.”
The RSV reads, “that we despaired of life itself.”
The YLT reads, “so that we despaired even of life.”
2Co 1:9 But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:
2Co 1:10 2Co 1:10
2Co 1:11 Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf.
2Co 1:11
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Paul’s recent peril:
v. 8. For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, in so much that we despaired even of life;
v. 9. but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, which raiseth the dead;
v. 10. who delivered us from so great a death and doth deliver; in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us;
v. 11. ye also helping together by prayer for us that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf. Paul here recounts a bit of personal history, concerning which he does not want the Corinthian Christians to remain in ignorance; he frankly shares his troubles with them, assured in advance of their prayerful sympathy. He had withstood the many adversaries in Ephesus, 1Co 16:9, he had escaped the enmity of the Jews, Act 19:9. But the storm broke in the insurrection raised against him by Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen, Act 19:23. It was an affliction without parallel in his history: Beyond measure, beyond power we were weighed down, oppressed, distressed. The persecution was an exceedingly great load of affliction, and it went beyond all power of human endurance, it caused the great hero in faith to despair even of life, he saw no way by which his life could be saved.
He now repeats the same idea in positive form: Not only saw we no method by which our lives could be saved, but we ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves; Paul had the conviction that the time had come when he must die, and an inglorious death at that: there seemed to be no way of escape. The language is so unusual in the case of Paul that many commentators have insisted that a most extraordinary peril must have befallen him. But his case was merely the normal experience of the average Christian, in whose life periods of heroic faith and confidence alternate with times of deepest distress, as we see in the Psalms. “For Paul had also experienced manifold perils and troubles, had also been saved from them in various ways; sometimes he shows himself to have a great and mighty courage that he fears nothing. There his heart is full of joy and he would have all to rejoice and be comforted with him. But on the other hand, he says 2Co 1:8-9: We were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life; also: We had the sentence of death in ourselves. But that was done, he says, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. What is that, dear Paul? Why art thou not happy and full of comfort? Why dost thou not cheer the others? Shall Paul, that great apostle, be humbled to that extent that he would rather die than live? He that was just full of the Holy Spirit now appears to be entirely without spirit.”
The object of God in permitting such peril and distress to befall the apostle is clearly stated: That we should not place our trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead. The gravity of Paul’s situation in the peril at Ephesus was so great as to impress upon him the utter uselessness of putting his trust anywhere but in God, who alone has power over life and death. Since He has the power to raise from the dead, to bring the dead back to life, much sooner is He able to close the gates of death before the dying. To Him, therefore, Paul also gives all honor in this case: Who delivered us out of so great a death, and does deliver, toward whom we have set our hope that he will still deliver. The picture drawn by Paul is that of a powerful tearing away from a danger to which he had been exposed, an emergence from its teeth or jaws through the almighty power of the Lord. This confidence he has, in this direction his trusting hope is directed. At the same time he trusts in the intercessions of the Corinthian brethren: While you also help together on our behalf by your supplication. Their urgent pleading would prove a great help for him in his position at all times; he would receive strength for his work. In the midst of afflictions the communion of prayer prospers, and for that reason the very sufferings of Paul were a cause of benefit to the brethren: That from many persons, literally, faces (upturned to God in a prayer of thanksgiving), for the gift bestowed upon us, thanks may be given through many on our behalf. The gift of grace, namely, the deliverance of the apostle, the preservation of his life, caused the sincere thanksgiving of the many people that had united in supplication for his life, this result agreeing exactly with the object of the Lord, for by His hearing of prayer God intends to provoke the grateful praises of the believers.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
2Co 1:8. Our troublein Asia. Some have thought that this may refer to the persecution at Lystra, where St. Paul’s danger had been extreme, and he had been recovered by miracle, Act 14:19-20. But as that happened so long before the visit to Corinth, in which he planted the Church there, Act 18:1 it seems more probable that he either refers to some opposition which he met with in his journey through Galatia and Phrygia, Act 18:23 of which no particular account has reached us, or, rather, to the tumult raised against him at Ephesus, by Demetrius, Act 19:29-30.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
2Co 1:8 . . . . .] See on Rom 1:13 ; Rom 11:25 ; 1Co 12:1 ; 1Th 4:13 .
.] regarding ( de ) the affliction , concerning the same. See Bernhardy, p. 244; Khner, II. 547, 2.
] as in 1Co 16:19 . What particular affliction is meant, and at what place it happened, we do not know. The readers, who must have known it, may have learnt it from Titus or otherwise. Perhaps it was the , 1Co 16:9 , who had prepared for him the extraordinary trial. The tumult of Demetrius in Ephesus, Act 19:23 ff. (Theodoret, Calvin, Estius, Cornelius a Lapide, Michaelis, Vater, Schrader, Olshausen, Osiander, Ewald, and others), is not to be thought of, since Paul was not in personal danger there, Act 19:30 , and immediately after the tumult set out on his journey to Greece, Act 20:1 . Heumann, Emmerling, Rckert, Bisping, suggest a severe illness . Against this it may be urged that, according to 2Co 1:5 , it must have been a (for the special experience must be held as included under the general one previously spoken of), as well as that Paul speaks in the plural . Both grounds tell at the same time against Hofmann, who thinks of the shipwreck, 2Co 11:25 , to which, in fact, . , 2Co 1:8 , is not suitable, even if we ventured to make a mere stranding on the coast out of the incident. Besides, the reading , 2Co 1:10 , militates against thi.
. . . .] that we were burdened to the uttermost beyond strength , a statement of that which, in regard to the affliction mentioned, is not to be withheld from the readers. defines the degree of . . See Fritzsche, Diss. I. p. 1 f. (“ut calamitates vires meas egregie superarent”). The view which regards the two expressions as co-ordinate (Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, Estius, and many, including Flatt, Rckert, Osiander, Hofmann): so heavy that it went beyond our ability , would place alongside of each other the objective greatness of the suffering and its disproportion to the subjectivity (see de Wette): still the position of ., as well as the want of a before , is more favourable to the view which takes . . . together ; and this is also confirmed by the subjectivity of the following . . . . The suffering made itself palpable to him as a (1Co 10:13 ). Rckert, moreover, has no ground for thinking that . is inappropriately used of persecutions, attempts to murder, and the like, and that is also opposed to it. , , and are used of all troubles by which we feel ourselves burdened. See the passages from Homer in Duncan, Lex ., ed. Rost, p. 202; comp. Plat. Crit. p. 43 C; Soph. Trach. 151; Theocr. xvii. 61, and expressions like , , , , and the lik.
. . . .] so that we became quite perplexed even ( ) in regard to life , placed in the highest perplexity even with regard to the preservation of our life, strengthens the simple verb, iv. 8. Polyb. i. 62. 1, iii. 47. 9, 48. 4. The genitive ( ) is the usual case in Greek with , in the sense of having lack of something; seldom is it found in the sense of being perplexed about something (Dem. 1380, 4; Plat. Conv . p. 193 E).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
2Co 1:8-11 . Out of his own (and Timothy’s) experience of suffering and comfort, Paul now informs his readers of something special which had lately befallen the two in Asia. The fact in itself he assumes as known to them, but he desires to bring to their knowledge the consoling help of God in it. There is nothing to indicate a reference to an utterance of the church (Hofmann) concerning the event.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
(8) For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: (9) But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: (10) Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us; (11) Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf.
The imagination can hardly conceive, to what distresses, and exercises, the first Preachers of the Gospel were exposed in those times of the Apostles. Paul hath given some account of it, in a future Chapter (2Co 11:23 ). But, what I particularly beg the Reader to remark, is the blessed view the Apostle had upon the occasion, when he saith, that he and his companions had the sentence of death in themselves, that their sole confidence might be in the Lord. He doth not mean God’s sentence of death, or the sentence of any court of judicature. But their own views of death were such at the time, that they had death so full in prospect, that there seemed, speaking after the manner of men, as if there was no way to escape.
And, how graciously the Apostle ascribes their deliverance to the Lord. And how confidently, in past experience, doth he speak of the sure expectation of future deliverances. He counts the past, and the present, as pledges of all to come. The Lord hath delivered: he doth deliver; and he will deliver. Reader! it is very blessed, when faith, from past proofs of God’s faithfulness, finds strength for all future emergencies. Hath God in Christ been faithful to every generation of his people, and shall he not prove so to me? Shall he cease to be Jehovah now? Nay, have I not proved his Covenant-love, and truth, all the way along, to the present hour; and shall I, towards the close of my warfare, begin to question it? Oh! how blessed it is, when a child of God can so live by faith, and cleave to Jesus, when all comforts in flesh and blood, seem to be sinking under the feet.
The Apostle while looking solely to the Lord, doth not despise, but rather invite, the prayer of faithful men. He knew that the Lord had commanded the Church to seek, by prayer the mercies they needed. Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them, Eze 36:37 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
8 For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:
Ver. 8. For we would not, &c. ] It is of great use to know the sufferings that others have sustained before us. The primitive Christians kept catalogues of their martyrs. Dr Taylor the martyr at his death gave his son Thomas a Latin book, containing the sayings and sufferings of the old martyrs, collected by himself. In the English seminaries beyond seas, they have at dinner time their martyrology read, that is, the legend of our English traitors.
We despaired even of life ] God is often better to us than our hopes; he reserves usually his holy hand for a dead lift, he comes in the nick of time, and our extremity is his opportunity. See Trapp on “ Luk 18:8 “
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
8 .] see var. read.
It is generally supposed that the tribulation here spoken of was the danger into which Paul was brought by the tumult at Ephesus, related in Act 19 . This opinion has been recently defended by Neander, Wieseler, and Dr. Davidson, but impugned by De Wette, on the grounds, (1) that can hardly refer to Ephesus, which Paul generally names , 1Co 15:32 ; 1Co 16:8 ; (2) that he was not in danger of his life in this tumult. The first ground is hardly tenable: there would be an appropriateness in here, as he has in his mind an apologetic account of the reasons which hindered him from leaving those parts and coming to them. I own, however, that the strong expressions here used do not seem to me to find their justification in any thing which we know of that tumult or its consequences. I am unable to assign any other event as in the Apostle’s mind: but the expressions seem rather to regard a deadly sickness , than a persecution: see below, 2Co 1:9-10 .
. signifies the greatness of the affliction itself, objectively considered: ., the relation of it to our power of endurance, subjectively.
.] So that we utterly despaired even of life . Such an expression surely would not be used of a tumult, where life would have been the first thing in danger, if Paul had been at all mixed up in it, but to some wearing and tedious suffering, inducing despondency in minor matters, which even reached the hope of life itself.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
2Co 1:8-11 . HIS RECENT PERIL. 2Co 1:8 . . . .: for we would not have you ignorant, brethren, about (for with gen. in this sense, cf. chap. 2Co 8:23 , 2Co 12:8 , 2Th 2:1 ) our affliction which happened in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life . Having spoken in general terms of the Divine comfort in times of trouble, he goes on to mention his own particular case, the “affliction which befel him in Asia”. What was this? Asia almost certainly means Ephesus , where he had lately been exposed to many adversaries (1Co 15:32 ; 1Co 16:9 ). We naturally think of the tumult recorded in Act 19:23 ff.; but the language here used is so strong that he must have been exposed to something worse than a temporary riot. He was “weighed down beyond his power” ( , a phrase which he never uses elsewhere, and which is specially remarkable from the pen of one who always gloried in the Divine granted to him, of which he said , Phi 4:13 ); he “despaired of life,” and yet he describes in this very Epistle (2Co 4:8 ) his general attitude in tribulation as “perplexed, yet not despairing”. Nor have we knowledge of any persecution at Ephesus so violent as to justify such language, though no doubt the allusion may be to something of the kind. Whatever the “affliction” was, the Corinthians were acquainted with it, for St. Paul does not enter into details, but mentions it only to inform them of its gravity, and to assure them of his trust in his ultimate deliverance. On the whole, it seems most likely that the reference is to grievous bodily sickness, which brought the Apostle down to the gates of death (see 2Co 1:9 , and cf. chap. 2Co 4:10 and 2Co 12:7 ff.). Such an affliction would be truly ; and it would be necessary to contemplate its recurrence (2Co 1:10 ). St. Paul in this Epistle, with unusual frequency, uses the plural when speaking of himself; sometimes this can be explained by the fact that Timothy was associated with him in the writing of the letter (2Co 1:1 ), but in other passages ( e.g. , 2Co 1:10 , 2Co 5:13 ; 2Co 5:16 , 2Co 10:7 ; 2Co 10:11 ; 2Co 10:15 , 2Co 11:21 ) such an explanation will not suit the context, which demands the individual application of the pronoun.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: 2Co 1:8-11
8For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; 9indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; 10who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us, 11you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.
2Co 1:8 “we do not want you to be unaware, brethren” Paul uses this phrase often to introduce either new information or a conclusion (cf. Rom 1:13; Rom 11:25; 1Co 10:1; 1Co 12:1; 2Co 1:8; 1Th 4:13).
“our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively” It is uncertain exactly what Paul refers to by this intense phrase.
1. the riot caused by Demetrius in Act 19:23-41
2. “fighting wild beasts at Ephesus” of 1Co 15:32
3. an imprisonment, possibly with a death sentence (cf. 2Co 1:9-10)
4. some type of physical illness
Whatever it was, it was a life-or-death experience for Paul (cf. 2Co 1:8-10) and apparently the church in Corinth had heard about it because Paul does not feel the need to identify it.
For “excessively” (huperbol) see Special Topic: Paul’s Use of Huper Compounds at 1Co 2:1.
2Co 1:9 “we had the sentence of death within ourselves” This is a strange statement. First, the word “sentence” is used only here in all ancient Greek writing, only later does it mean “death sentence” (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 2 14:10:6). Paul does not seem to be referring to a judicial decree, but to a personal sense of his impending death. This forced him and his companions to throw themselves totally on God’s help, compassion, and power.
The verb is perfect active indicative. Some have seen this as a way of referring to a disease which Paul and his mission companion encountered, which had continuing results. However, it can be interpreted as an aorist, the same form as in 2Co 2:13.
All of this adds up to make this phrase quite ambiguous with many different interpretations. Although the exact physical circumstances are uncertain, Paul’s spiritual meaning is clear-suffering helps believers trust more fully and completely in God, in Christ!
“we would not trust in ourselves” As 2Co 1:4 expresses the first purpose of Christian suffering, this verse expresses the second purpose. This same truth can be seen in Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (cf. 2Co 12:7-9). In the spiritual realm human weakness accompanied with faith releases the power of God.
“God who raises the dead” Is Paul thinking of
1. OT examples of people God brought back to physical life ( cf. 1Ki 17:17-22; 2Ki 4:32-37)
2. OT theological statements (cf. Deu 32:39; 1Sa 2:6; 2Ki 5:7)
3. his discussion of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15
2Co 1:10 “He on whom we have set our hope” The pronoun refers to God the Father (cf. 2Co 1:9; 1Ti 4:10). What a wonderful descriptive title for God. Paul coins powerful, wonderful, descriptive titles for God often (See full list at 2Co 1:3), such as
1. “the Father of mercies” (cf. 2Co 1:3)
2. “God of all comfort” (cf. 2Co 1:3)
3. “unto Him who is able” (cf. Rom 16:25; Eph 3:20)
The verb is a perfect active indicative, which implies a past completed act with abiding results (cf. 1Co 15:19; 1Ti 5:5; 1Ti 6:17).
“deliver” This term is used three times in 2Co 1:10. This follows the OT sense of physical, social, emotional, spiritual deliverance. Paul used this term several times (cf. Rom 7:24; Rom 11:26; Rom 15:31; 2Co 1:10; Col 1:13; 1Th 1:10; 2Th 3:2; 2Ti 3:11; 2Ti 4:17-18). He really thought that he was going to die at Ephesus (cf. 2Co 1:8-10).
NASB”from so great a peril of death”
NKJV”from so great a death”
NRSV”from so deadly a peril”
TEV”from such terrible dangers of death”
NJB”from such a death”
There is a Greek manuscript variant between the singular “so great a death” (i.e., MSS , A, B, C, D, F, G) and the plural (i.e., MS P46 and the Syriac translation, as well as the Greek text used by Origen, Basil, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Jerome, and Augustine). The plural (cf. TEV) is the most unusual and the most ancient. This plural may be seen in Paul’s list of problems he faced internally and externally in 2Co 4:8-12; 2Co 6:3-10; 2Co 11:23-29. The UBS4 gives the plural a “B” rating (almost certain).
2Co 1:11
NASB”joining in helping us through your prayers”
NKJV”helping together in prayer for us”
NRSV”join in helping us by your prayers”
TEV”help us by means of your prayers for us”
NJB”your prayers for us will contribute to this”
Several scholars believe this grammatical construction (Murry J. Harris in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 10, p. 322) is used in a conditional sense (The Anchor Bible, vol. 32A, p. 115). If believers do not pray, somehow the Sovereign God has chosen not to act (cf. Jas 4:2). This shows the benefits of intercessory prayer (cf. Eph 6:18-20). Paul felt that the prayers of Christians linked with God’s graciousness saved him from death and it continued to protect and deliver him. Paul’s deliverance by God would be acknowledged and praised by many who would be blessed by Paul’s ongoing ministry.
“persons” This is literally “face” (i.e., prospon) Paul uses this term often in 2 Corinthians (cf. 2Co 2:10; 2Co 3:7 [twice],13,18; 2Co 4:6; 2Co 5:12; 2Co 8:24; 2Co 10:1; 2Co 10:7; 2Co 11:20). It may be an OT allusion to the standard physical position of Jewish prayer with head lifted, which exactly fits this context.
Paul uses this term in several senses in 2 Corinthians:
1. for persons, 2Co 1:11; 2Co 2:10; 2Co 4:6
2. for the face of a person, 2Co 3:7 (twice), 2 Cor. 13,18; 2Co 10:1; 2Co 10:7; 2Co 11:20
3. metaphor for before in the sense of “in front of” (i.e., position, not time), 2Co 8:24
4. metaphor for outward appearance (cf. NRSV), 2Co 5:12
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
would not = do not wish (Greek. thelo. App-102.) you to be.
not. Greek ou. App-105.
ignorant. Greek agnoeo. See Rom 1:13. The sixth occurance of this expression.
of. The texts read “concerning”, Greek. peri. App-104.
to us, The texts omit,
pressed = weighed down. Greek. bareo, Elsewhere, 2Co 6:4. Mat 26:43 (heavy). Mar 14:40. Luk 9:32, 1Ti 5:16 (charged),
out of measure. Literally according to (Greek. kata. App-104.) excellence (Greek. hyperbole) or excess. This phrase is used five times. See 2Co 4:17. Rom 7:13. 1Co 12:31. Gal 1:1, Gal 1:13.
above. Greek. huper. App-104.
strength = power. Greek. dunamis. App-172.
insomuch = so.
despaired. Greek. exaporeomai. Only here and 2Co 4:8. The reference may be to the riot at Ephesus (Act 19:23-34), where his life would have been in danger, but for the counsel of his friends (2Co 1:31; but the following verses rather indicate some dangerous sickness. Both may have been in the apostle’s mind,
life. Greek. zao. Compare App-170.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
8.] see var. read.
It is generally supposed that the tribulation here spoken of was the danger into which Paul was brought by the tumult at Ephesus, related in Acts 19. This opinion has been recently defended by Neander, Wieseler, and Dr. Davidson, but impugned by De Wette, on the grounds, (1) that can hardly refer to Ephesus, which Paul generally names, 1Co 15:32; 1Co 16:8; (2) that he was not in danger of his life in this tumult. The first ground is hardly tenable: there would be an appropriateness in here, as he has in his mind an apologetic account of the reasons which hindered him from leaving those parts and coming to them. I own, however, that the strong expressions here used do not seem to me to find their justification in any thing which we know of that tumult or its consequences. I am unable to assign any other event as in the Apostles mind: but the expressions seem rather to regard a deadly sickness, than a persecution: see below, 2Co 1:9-10.
. signifies the greatness of the affliction itself, objectively considered: ., the relation of it to our power of endurance, subjectively.
.] So that we utterly despaired even of life. Such an expression surely would not be used of a tumult, where life would have been the first thing in danger, if Paul had been at all mixed up in it,-but to some wearing and tedious suffering, inducing despondency in minor matters, which even reached the hope of life itself.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
2Co 1:8. , in Asia) 1Co 15:32, note. The Corinthians were not ignorant of that affliction, which had befallen him in Asia: but Paul now declares its magnitude and its advantageous result. [The whole epistle presents a journal of his travels; but most excellent precepts are interwoven with the narrative of them.-V. g.]- ) above ordinary strength.-, that we despaired) He affirms here, what he denies in another respect, 2Co 4:8; for he is speaking here of human, there of Divine assistance.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
2Co 1:8
2Co 1:8
For we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which befell us in Asia,-Between the writing of the first epistle and this one, Paul had undergone a terrible onslaught made on him at Ephesus by the devotees of the goddess Diana, led by Demetrius, the silversmith. (Act 19:23-41).
[The hostility of Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen, prompted as it was by selfish interests, and the ease with which the mob was collected are enough to account for the deadly peril to which reference is here made. And we can well conceive it prompting some immediate and desperate and well-planned attempt to kill Paul. That Paul felt the danger is proved by his sudden departure (Act 20:1) from Ephesus; whereas, a short time earlier, the number of his adversaries had been a reason for his remaining in Ephesus until after Pentecost had prevailed against him (1Co 16:8-9).]
that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life:-He saw no way of escape from death, so in his own mind, he was doomed to death. The danger was so great that he despaired of life.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Threefold Deliverance
2Co 1:8-20
For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us; ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf. For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward. For we write none other things unto you, than what ye read or acknowledge; and I trust ye shall acknowledge even to the end; as also ye have acknowledged us in part, that we are your rejoicing, even as ye also are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus. And in this confidence I was minded to come unto you before, that ye might have a second benefit; and to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto you, and of you to be brought on my way toward Judaea. When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea yea, and nay nay? But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. (vv. 8-20)
Before continuing the exposition of this book it may be well to give a brief outline of its contents. In chapters 1-7 the apostle dwells in large measure on the trials, the character, and the training of the servant of Christ, and the result of his ministry. He uses himself largely as an example in order to bring these things home to us.
In chapters 8-9 we have the second division of this epistle, in which the apostle deals with a question that comes home to every one of us, our money. In other words, the subject is, The Grace of Giving. Giving is a grace. The natural man wants to get rather than to give. Here and there we run across generous folk who, even in their unconverted days, get a certain satisfaction out of giving to others, but most of us like to get, to receive rather than to distribute. But when Christ works in the soul, giving to those in need and for the furtherance of the work of the Lord becomes the joy of life. And so we speak of the Grace of Giving, and this subject is taken up very fully in these chapters.
In chapters 10-12, the third division of the epistle, we have Pauls vindication of his own apostleship. There were those dogging his steps, moving in and out among his converts, reflecting upon his ministry and calling in question his apostolic authority. And so he found it necessary, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, to insist upon the fact that he was actually an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. Chapter 13 is the conclusion.
This gives us the outline of the epistle, and with this before us we turn to consider the verses of the second section of this first chapter. Here we read of the troubles, the difficulties, the perplexities that Paul and his fellow laborers were going through, but he shows that God has a wonderful purpose in permitting all these things. It is hard for us to realize, but it is true that God can do far more with a broken man than with a man who seems strong in his own strength and power. And so He permits trouble to come upon His people, and even upon His chosen vessels, in order that they may be humble and broken in spirit before Him.
Our Lord Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Mat 5:3). We naturally admire a man of strength and initiative, a man who has a great deal of self-confidence and self-esteem. It was our great President Theodore Roosevelt who said, I hate a meek man. I am sure he did not realize the implication that might be taken from that statement, for that would imply hatred of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we know he never meant. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls (Mat 11:29). We do not come naturally by meekness. In the prophecy of Zephaniah we are admonished to seek meekness (2:3), as though it is a very rare jewel of character which is found only by careful searching. It is not like us to seek meekness; as a rule we are naturally so proud, we are so haughty, so wickedly conceited, so self-occupied. Because of these very things if God is going to use us in His service, He has to permit us to go through experiences which will humble and break us.
We are told how Goldsmidt sat listening to Jenny Lind as she charmed thousands by her wonderful voice. Someone asked the great music critic, What do you think of her? Isnt she marvelous?
Well, he said, she is wonderful; she needs just one thing; she needs to have her heart broken. If her heart were broken, she would be the greatest singer in the world.
Afterward, you remember, he won her heart and then broke it by his unkind-ness, and after that there was a depth of tenderness, there was something to her singing that stirred people as nothing else had ever done in the past. So it is with preachers of the Word of God. If they stand apart from the troubles that others are going through, they will have no real message for the hearts of men. It is the man who in some measure at least is like his Master, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, who is able to minister to a brokenhearted, suffering, distressed people. And so the apostle Paul learned to glory in tribulation and to thank God for distresses because they only fitted him the better to be a servant of Him of whom it is written, In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them (Isa 63:9).
Listen again to these words, For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life. When that great raging crowd gathered about him, howling for his life, and would have trampled him beneath their feet, and he saw nothing but a martyrs death before him, nevertheless Paul says, We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. Paul could face that howling mob and say, It is all right if they tear us to pieces, if they tear us limb from limb. If they utterly destroy this mortal body, it means nothing to us. We have already taken the place of death with Christ, we have already said that we are dead to the world, to its favor, and to its follies, and now if they make that actually true by destroying these bodies, it is all right. We have the sentence of death in ourselves, we are men devoted to death, men who have made a rendezvous with death for Jesus sake. Our trust is in Him who raiseth the dead, even the living God. It is only as a man knows the power of Christ working within him that he is able to speak like this, and to live it out, but this is what has enabled the people of God to triumph all down through the centuries. Again and again the Devil has stirred up hatred against Christs servants, and the martyrs are numbered by the thousands and tens of thousands, but Satan has been foiled every time that he has tried to hinder the work of the Lord by persecution. Still the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The gospel flourishes in times of tribulation.
The churchs worst times are not times of suffering, of martyrdom. The churchs most dangerous periods are those when she is enjoying the patronage of the world. The church is never in such grave danger as when the world is fawning upon it, when worldlings look upon it with favor. Our Lord Jesus warned His disciples of the danger when all men spake well of them. When people are persecuted for Christs sake, when they have to go through affliction and troubles and sorrows, that is the time they draw nearer to the Lord. You remember the old fable in our schoolbooks, how the sun and the wind were trying to see which was the stronger. The traveler went on his way and each tried to see which could get him to take his overcoat off first. The wind blew and blew, but the traveler wrapped his coat about him more securely. And then the sun beamed upon the man and he began to perspire, and off went the coat. It is when worldly prosperity shines upon the church that off goes the robe of righteous behavior. But when the wintry blasts of trouble and persecution break upon it, then the church wraps itself all the more closely in the garment of salvation. Paul knew that tribulation was for blessing. God uses broken men, and if men will not humble themselves before Him in order to make them vessels to carry His testimony to others, He will give them experiences to break them.
Then, observe, the apostle found that despite the persecution God came in at the right moment with a threefold deliverance. In verse 10 we read: Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us. We can apply this to the question of our salvation. Actually the apostle is speaking of deliverance from trial and distress here on the earth. God has delivered, and as we continue our service God does deliver, and as we look forward to the future He will yet deliver. This is faiths confidence in our gracious God and Father.
But we may apply it spiritually. Our salvation, in a spiritual sense, is threefold, and we may read it: Who saved us from so great a death, and doth save: in whom we trust that He will yet save us. When we came to Him as poor lost sinners, He saved us from the judgment due to our sins. How great a death was that from which we were delivered. And day by day as we go through this scene He doth deliver us. He delivers from the power of sin, from the strength of our own natures. He delivers from temptation; He, always with the temptation, makes a way [of] escape, that ye may be able to bear it (1Co 10:13). And one of these days, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him, our salvation will be completed. And so we look on to that time when He shall yet deliver, when He will fully and completely save us. We have often put it like this: He has saved us from the judgment due to sin and from the guilt of sin; He does save us from the power of sin; by and by He will save us from the very presence of sin, giving us our glorified bodies when we will no longer have the least tendency to evil of any kind.
Soon well pass this desert dreary,
Soon well bid farewell to pain;
Nevermore be sad or weary,
Never, never sin again.
What a deliverance that will be! When we will never have to bow the knee again to say, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others, when we will never have to wipe away tears of penitence, for throughout endless ages we shall be free from the presence of sin in the joy of everlasting communion with our blessed Lord. That will be our complete deliverance, but meantime, as we are going on, we tread the pilgrim way, and need daily deliverance.
There are certain things that God has ordained to be of assistance along the way. One of them is mentioned in the eleventh verse: Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf. Pray one for another. Those of us trying to preach the Word, seeking to do public service for the Lord Jesus Christ, will never know until we get home to heaven how much we are indebted for sustaining grace to the prayers of Gods hidden ones. My heart always rejoices when anyone writes or says to me, I am praying for you, for I need to be prayed for. I am so forgetful about prayer myself; so many times when I should be praying I am busy at something else, and often if there is any power at all in my messages I know it is because somebody at home or in the audience is praying for me. One owes so much to the prayers of Gods beloved people. Was there ever such a man of God as the apostle Paul in all the centuries since? And yet how dependent he was upon the prayers of believers. Go through his epistles and you will find again and again the exhortation, Brethren, pray for us. Time spent in praying for the servants of God is not a waste of time or breath. Prayer accomplishes things for God, and God will do in answer to prayer what He will not do apart from prayer.
And so the apostle says, Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf. That is, we go out to preach the Word and God uses it in blessing, but we know it is not of ourselves; there are many persons backing us up, and praying and bearing up our ministry before God.
But now the man who would count on the sustaining power of the Spirit of God in the hour of trial, and the man who has a right to ask the saints of God to pray for him, is the man who can say what Paul said, in verse 12: For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our [behavior] in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward. What a statement this is! Think of being able to turn to a group among whom he has ministered and say, We have sought to be right; we have not given ourselves to any mere oratorical clap-trap when we have stood up to preach the Word, but we have done it in simplicity and godly sincerity, in genuineness in the sight of God. Is it not strange that we can be so particular as to how we appear in the sight of men, and yet can be so unreal in the presence of God? Think of even trying to preach the Word and, as far as man can see, putting ones whole soul into the effort to glorify Christ, and yet have hidden in the heart only the desire for the applause of men.
Paul could say, Our own conscience bears witness to the fact that we have tried to be real in the presence of God. And as we have ministered the Word we have sought to be honest with God as well as with man, not with fleshly wisdom, not depending upon the things that will reach the mere natural man and please and satisfy his craving for eloquence or excitement, but as acting in the fear of God we have had our behavior in the world. We have lived what we preached. We have not taught people to be honest and then been dishonest ourselves. We have not called on people to be humble when we ourselves were proud. We have not exhorted others to be self-denying while we were grasping and covetous. We have not told people that they ought to be unworldly while we ourselves were going after the pleasures and follies of the world. There is something here to search our hearts, something to lead us into the presence of God in self-judgment. Would to God we could say what Paul says, We have had our behavior in the world in all integrity.
For we write none other things unto you, than what ye read or acknowledge; and I trust ye shall acknowledge even to the end. He knew that they were glad to recognize the fact that they had been blessed through him, but on the other hand they were being misled by people coming in and seeking to turn them away from their first confidence in this man of God.
We are your rejoicing, even as ye also are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus. When by and by we stand at the judgment seat of Christ, it will all be revealed. We led you to Christ, you went on with God, and so brought joy to us. But on the other hand, he knew that they were being estranged by little gossipy things that were being said by enemies of the truth, trying to alienate the hearts of the Corinthians from Paul, and so in the last part of this section he has to justify himself.
He first tells them that he meant to come to them. He had never gotten there, and some evil people had taken that up and said, Dont you see, he never meant to go; he is afraid to go. He writes pretty strong letters when he is away from you, his writing is strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible. He doesnt dare face you about these things. He just says he will go and then when it comes to doing it, he says, I will not go. But Paul declares that his purpose was to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto you, and of you to be brought on my way toward Judaea. Corinth was a port, and he had to go from Corinth up to Macedonia, and while he had intended taking that trip certain circumstances had obliged him to take another route. Then he says, When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea yea, and nay nay? In other words, did I have no real purpose?
Thus they wanted to accuse the apostle of lightness and carnality even in making appointments. He says, As God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. It was not that he was careless or light or frivolous about it, but he was not able to carry out his plans because of certain providential happenings. Paul was a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He did not say one thing and mean another. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. See how he links others with himself. There is something truly fine about a man who can always recognize the greatness of other folk. Here Paul links with him Silvanus and Timotheus. He says, We really intended to carry this out, but we could not.
For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. God never undertakes to do something He cannot carry out. When He makes a promise, He will always carry it through. He has never made a promise to us that He will ever have to explain away afterwards. He will never say, I meant to do that, but circumstances would not permit. We have to make confessions like that from time to time, but God never fails to keep His promises. He is able to perform every one, and Christ is the Amen to every promise of God.
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
2. Pauls Experience and Explanations.
CHAPTER 1:8-24
1. His Experience. (2Co 1:8-14)
2. His Explanations. (2Co 1:15-24)
The Apostle speaks, first of all, of the trouble he had when he was pressed out of measure (or weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power), in so much that he despaired of his life. What experience did he mean? The question cannot be positively answered. It may have been the trouble in Ephesus (Act 19:1-41) to which he refers in 1Co 15:32, If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts in Ephesus . Others think that it was some severe attack of sickness or a powerful assault upon his life from some other source. Whatever it was, he had been in such a peril that he almost lost his life.
But we had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead: who delivered us from so great a death and doth deliver; in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us.
It was all permitted to come upon him for his own good. He learned by it his own utter helplessness; it destroyed in him all self-reliance; he had to cast himself upon God, whose power and faithfulness as a deliverer were blessedly manifested in this experience. It showed him his nothingness and Gods power in deliverance. Every true believer will welcome any affliction or tribulation which produces such precious results. In the tenth verse, he groups together the fact of Gods deliverance past, present and future. Who delivered us from so great a death. This undoubtedly refers to the danger he was exposed to and out of which He had been delivered, but it may also be applied in a more general way. We are as believers delivered from so great a death, that is, eternal death. Then there is a present deliverance who doth deliver. These are the trials and testings in the way, in which the believer learns anew that He is the God of our salvation.
Salvation through a work wrought already for eternity is the daily lesson of a growing faith. Sickness, privation and trouble Of any kind are, with outward persecution, permitted as occasions of sustaining and delivering love. Grace knows how to deliver even from those snares in which our own folly or carelessness may have entangled our feet. (Pridham.)
And the Apostle expressed his confidence in a future deliverance. He who has delivered His people, saved them by Grace, who constantly delivers and keeps, will do so in the future till the final great deliverance comes and all His redeemed people will be gathered home.
But while the Apostle trusted in God for all this, as all true believers do, he also recognized the value of the prayers of others. Gods children can be fellow-helpers in prayer for the servants of God helping together by prayer for us. Prayer is therefore a very important part of true ministry in the body of Christ. And what had been bestowed upon him, would lead many to praise God in giving thanks on his behalf. He was rejoicing in the testimony of his own conscience, that in holiness (not simplicity as in the authorized version) and sincerity before God he had acted in the world and more abundantly towards them. (The word rejoicing is glorying or boasting. As mentioned in the introduction this word is found thirty-one times in this epistle.) Only partly had they recognized him. He mentions the day of our Lord Jesus. In that day the Corinthian saints would be the Apostles glorying, and the Apostle was their glorying. The day of the Lord Jesus is not the Old Testament day of God. The day of the Lord will bring the visible manifestation of the Lord in great power and glory. Judgment for this earth follows as well as mercy in bringing righteousness, peace and the Kingdom. The day of the lord Jesus is for the Saints of God and is celebrated not on earth but in glory. Often the Apostle refers to that blessed coming day when the Saints shall be gathered home. As a doctrine it is impressed continually on the memory of the church, while as a moral power it is a constant endeavor of the Spirit to bring it to bear directly on the daily walk of the believer, both as a regulator of conscience, an argument of patience, and an efficient stimulant of all true spiritual affection (Rom 13:12-13; 1Pe 1:7; 1Jn 3:1-3).
His explanations follow. He intended to come to them long before this. His plan was to pass by them into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto them, so that they might bring him on his way toward Judea. He had not done so. They might accuse him therefore of having failed. The word lightness in 2Co 1:17 means fickleness. Was he fickle-minded? Was it merely the lightness and fickleness, a changing yea, yea, followed by nay, nay? He had stayed away from Corinth for other reasons; it was to spare them that he did not go there. Therefore, it was not fickleness on his part at all.
He did not purpose according to the flesh. What he earnestly desired was from love for them, and all his plans were under the guidance of the Lord. But as God is true, our word toward you is not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in Him is yea. For whatever may be the promises of God, in Him is the yea, wherefore also through Him is the amen, unto the glory of God through us. They had been suspicious of him and his motives, and now after having denied the false charge of being fickle-minded he reminds them of his preaching among them which was not yea and nay. He turns from the accusations against him, to what he had preached. The positive doctrines of the Gospel had molded his character and controlled all his motives. He and his companions, Silvanus and Timotheus, had preached among them the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and the blessed truths of salvation and redemption which center in Him and flow forth from His Person. And the preaching of the Son of God has no doubt and uncertainty in it; it is the declaration of positive and final Truth. Men doubt and are fickle-minded about the Person of Christ and the Gospel in our days, but Gods Word speaks in positive terms, which do not permit any uncertainty whatever. It is a wonderfully deep statement that all the promises of God, whatever they may be, are in Christ–in Him is the yea and through Him the amen likewise. All promises are made to Christ and are in Him and those who trust in Christ share them in Him. All came by Him, all is in Him, all will be accomplished through Him. Whatever promises there had been on Gods part, the yea was in Him, and the amen in Him. God has established–deposited, so to speak–the fulfillment of all His promises in the Person of Christ. Life, glory, righteousness, pardon, the gift of the Spirit, all is in Him: it is in Him that all is true–yea and amen. We cannot have the effect of any promise whatsoever apart from Him. But this is not all: we, believers, are the objects of these counsels of God. They are to the glory of God by us.(Synopsis.)
But how can we participate in it, if all is in Christ? Here is the blessed answer. God Himself establishes the believer in Christ, in whom all the promises subsist, so that the true Christian securely possesses in Him all that is promised. We have it all through God in Christ and can enjoy it in Him. And furthermore, God hath anointed us. We possess in Christ the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are sealed by that Spirit; God has put His seal upon us. And finally the Spirit also is in us the earnest of that which we shall possess with Christ in the coming day of His glory. In whom ye also, after that Ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also believing, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of an inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory (Eph 1:13-14).
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
of our: 2Co 4:7-12, Act 19:23-35, 1Co 15:32, 1Co 16:9
insomuch: 1Co 4:8, 1Sa 20:3, 1Sa 27:1
Reciprocal: Gen 22:14 – In Gen 32:7 – greatly Exo 3:2 – bush burned Exo 18:4 – delivered Jdg 15:18 – and fall 1Sa 23:26 – away 1Sa 30:6 – was greatly 2Ch 20:12 – we have Job 5:19 – deliver thee Psa 4:1 – thou Psa 55:4 – My Psa 56:3 – General Psa 94:17 – Unless Psa 107:6 – he delivered Pro 24:16 – a just Ecc 2:20 – General Isa 33:18 – heart Isa 40:31 – renew Isa 50:10 – let Jer 1:8 – for I am Lam 3:54 – I said Dan 3:23 – fell Dan 6:27 – delivereth Joh 5:7 – I have Act 4:24 – they Act 12:11 – and hath Act 16:6 – Asia Act 19:41 – he dismissed Act 23:11 – the Lord Act 26:17 – Delivering Act 26:22 – obtained Act 27:44 – that Rom 1:13 – General Rom 7:24 – who 1Co 4:9 – I 1Co 12:1 – I would not 2Co 4:8 – troubled 2Co 6:5 – in tumults 2Co 6:9 – behold 2Co 11:26 – in perils by the 1Th 4:13 – I would 2Th 3:2 – delivered 2Ti 3:11 – Persecutions 1Pe 1:1 – Asia
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2Co 1:8. The apostle has been making general references only to his difficulties, but now he makes a more direct mention of them. He names Asia, but the specific place in that district where they occurred was Ephesus, where he “fought with beasts” (1Co 15:32).
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
2Co 1:8. For I would not have you ignorant concerning our trouble which befell us in Asia. Proconsular Asia is meantthe western part of Asia Minor, embracing Mysia, etc. The reference here is probably not to the rush that was made in Ephesus upon the apostles party in consequence of the success of his preaching (Act 19:24), but rather to that complication of dangers to which he alludes so feelingly in his address to the elders of Ephesus (Act 20:19),that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life. The apostle seems to labour under the difficulty of finding words to express what he felt at the time referred to. That it was some severe illness is the opinion of some excellent critics; but this seems quite alien from the strain of the passage. What with the lying in wait of the Jews, plotting his death wherever he went, he seems never to have felt secure of his life for a day, and at times to have given up hope of escape.
Ver, 9. Yea, we ourselves have had the answer (not sentence) of death within ourselves. The thought seems to be, Looking up, to discern what God might mean by this, and asking ourselves whither all was tending, the answer seemed to be, Thou art now to die for the name of the Lord Jesus. No wonder that under a continuance of this impression his strength got worn down, and he was at times ready to sink under the pressure. The noblest natures are not superior to this, and specially men of such keen sensibilities as our apostle. But it drove him to the one Source of courage and strength to hold on,that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. The reference is not specifically to the final resurrection, but to the great general principle on which Abraham acted when he that had received the promises offered up his only son, of whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure (Heb 11:17-19), and see Rom 4:19-20.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Observe here, 1. That it is of no small benefit and advantage, but of excellent use to us, to know what are the troubles and afflictions which do befall the servants of God for righteousness’ sake: We would not have you ignorant of our trouble.
Observe, 2. How pressing the troubles and afflictions were which this apostle underwent: they were out of measure, above strength, and even to the despairing of life.
Thence note, That God may, and sometimes does, exercise his servants with such extreme and pressing trials, that all their own natural strength is unable to support them under them, or carry them through them: We were pressed above strength, and despaired even of life.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
God Delivered Paul
Paul knew God had delivered him and believed He would continue to deliver him until his purpose was accomplished. Such great evidence of God’s power caused Paul to trust God to deliver him from all enemies. The Corinthians had helped Paul during the times of trial by praying for him. Paul’s deliverance was granted, in part, by the prayers of many brethren. So, Paul says all should pray to God specifically thanking Him for that deliverance ( 2Co 1:10-11 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
2Co 1:8-11. For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant As if he had said, We speak thus concerning the sufferings wherewith God is pleased to exercise his people, because we have lately experienced them in a large measure: of our trouble which came to us in Asia It is probable that the apostle here refers either to some opposition which he met with in his journey through Galatia and Phrygia, (Act 18:23,) of which no particular account has reached us; or to the tumult excited by Demetrius, as is related Act 19:23-41. It may be said, perhaps, that it does not appear from the history that any danger threatened Pauls life in the uproar at Ephesus, so imminent as that from which he here represents himself to have been delivered. This matter, it is true, is not stated by the historian in form; but the personal danger of the apostle we cannot doubt must have been extreme, when the whole city was filled with confusion; when the populace had seized his companions; when, in the distraction of his mind, he insisted on coming forth among them; when the Christians, who were about him, would not suffer him; when his friends, certain of the chief of Asia, sent to him, desiring that he would not adventure himself into the tumult; when, lastly, he was obliged to quit immediately the place and the country; and, when the tumult was ceased, to depart into Macedonia. Nothing could be more expressive of the circumstances in which the history describes him to have been at the time when the epistle purports to have been written, than the verses under consideration. It is the calm recollection of a mind emerged from the confusion of instant danger. It is that devotion and solemnity of thought which follows a recent deliverance. There is just enough of particularity in the passage to show that it is to be referred to the tumult at Ephesus. Paley. That we were pressed out of measure The Corinthians knew before that he had been in trouble. He now declares the greatness and the fruit of it; above strength Above the ordinary strength of a Christian, even of an apostle; insomuch that we despaired even of life Ourselves, and were looked upon by others as dead men. We had the sentence of death in ourselves That is, not only did others apprehend this concerning us, but we ourselves did indeed think that the appointed end of our life and ministry was come. That we should not trust in ourselves That, for the future, we should put no confidence in our own wisdom or power to elude the designs of our enemies, nor merely regard human probabilities; but in the greatest and most extreme dangers should learn to repose a cheerful confidence in the power and providence of that God who, at his own pleasure, raiseth the dead by his almighty word; who delivered us from so great a death As then threatened us; and doth still deliver In the various dangers with which we are continually surrounded. In whom we trust that he will yet deliver us From every evil, and preserve us to his heavenly kingdom. Ye also As well as other churches; helping by prayer for us From this we learn, that the most eminent saints may be assisted and benefited by the prayers of persons much inferior to them in station and piety; which is a great encouragement to us to pray for one another, and a reason for our desiring each others prayers. That for the gift Namely, my deliverance; bestowed by the means of many persons praying for it, thanks may be given by many on our behalf Since nothing can be more reasonable than that mercies obtained by prayer should be acknowledged in praise.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
For we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life:
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
HIS VERDICT IN FAVOR OF DEATH
2Co 1:8-11.
8. For we do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which occurred in Asia, that we were burthened above our power, so that we despaired even of life.
9. But we had the answer of death in ourselves, in order that we may not have confidence in ourselves, but in God, who delivered us from so great a death and will deliver. Exegetes are much at sea in reference to what this affliction was, as it is not specified. The presumption is that it was an exceedingly severe spell of sickness, which utterly prostrated and brought him to the very verge of death, when the last vestige of hope took its flight and God said to him, Will you die or will you live? He decided, I will die, thus taking it as his choice to depart from labor to rest. The English does not clearly bring out this fact, which is the great, salient point in the matter. It is believed that this is the terrible ordeal alluded to (1Co 15:32), where he says that he fought with the wild beasts at Ephesus, symbolizing the awful disease that preyed on him by the figure of a wild beast, as the law did not allow them to cast a Roman citizen to a wild beast.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 8
Asia; that province of Asia Minor of which Ephesus was the capital. See 1 Peter 1:1, where it is enumerated with the other provinces.–Pressed, by the violent hostility of enemies.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
1:8 {5} For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we {e} despaired even of life:
(5) He witnesses that he is not ashamed of his afflictions, and further that he desires also to have all men know the greatness of them, and also his delivery from them, although it is not yet perfect.
(e) I did not know at all what to do, neither did I see by man’s help which way to save my life.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. Thanksgiving for deliverance 1:8-11
Paul’s thanksgiving continues, but its focus shifts from the reason for thanksgiving to details of the situation that provided the occasion for it.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
We cannot identify certainly the precise affliction to which Paul referred. This text and others in the New Testament do not give us enough information. The fact that Paul did not explain exactly what caused his affliction is significant. Evidently he wanted the Corinthians and us to focus on the intensity of the affliction as he felt it. This is what he emphasized here rather than the specific cause of his suffering. He spoke of his affliction as though the Corinthians knew about it, so probably they had more information about it than we do.
Commentators have conjectured what the specific problem may have been and have come up with many different possibilities. Perhaps Paul referred to fighting wild beasts at Ephesus, the uproar at Ephesus instigated by Demetrius, or a later outbreak of hostility against Paul at Ephesus. He may have had in mind various unspecified trials and plots against Paul’s life, a succession of persecutions in Asia, or an attempt to lynch Paul. Perhaps he referred to shipwreck followed by a night and a day in the sea, anxiety over the state of the Corinthian church, a deadly sickness, or Paul’s thorn in the flesh. [Note: See Hughes, pp. 17-18, for evaluation of some of these theories.] What we can say certainly about Paul’s affliction is that the Corinthians failed to appreciate its intensity.
"Hence Paul writes to tell them not what it was, but how it had oppressed him beyond endurance." [Note: Ibid., p. 16.]
It occurred in the Roman province of Asia (the western part of modern Turkey), and it would have been a fatal affliction had God not intervened. Furthermore it was a suffering "of Christ" (2Co 1:5), connected somehow with Paul’s ministry to the Corinthians (2Co 1:6).
"Whatever this thlipsis [affliction] may have been, he hints that it was far worse than what the Corinthians had to endure." [Note: Plummer, p. 17.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Chapter 2
FAITH BORN OF DESPAIR.
2Co 1:8-14 (R.V)
PAUL seems to have felt that the thanksgiving with which he opens this letter to the Corinthians was so peculiar as to require explanation. It was not his way to burst upon his readers thus with his private experiences either of joy or sorrow; and though he had good reason for what he did-in that abundance of the heart out of which the mouth speaks, in his desire to conciliate the good-will of the Corinthians for a much-tried man, and in his faith in the real communion of the saints-he instinctively stops here a moment to vindicate what he has done. He does not wish them to be ignorant of an experience which has been so much to him, and ought to have the liveliest interest for them.
Evidently they knew that he had been in trouble, but they had no sufficient idea of the extremity to which he had been reduced. We were weighed down, he writes, in excess, beyond our power; the trial that came upon us was one not measured to mans strength. We despaired even of life. Nay, we have had the answer of death in ourselves. When we looked about us, when we faced our circumstances, and asked ourselves whether death or life was to be the end of this, we could only answer, Death. We were like men under sentence; it was only a question of a little sooner or a little later, when the fatal stroke should fall.
The Apostle, who has a divine gift for interpreting experience and reading its lessons, tells us why he and his friends had to pass such a terrible time. It was that they might trust, not in themselves, but in God who raises the dead. It is natural, he implies, for us to trust in ourselves. It is so natural, and so confirmed by the habits of a lifetime, that no ordinary difficulties or perplexities avail to break us of it. It takes all God can do to root up our self-confidence. He must reduce us to despair; lie must bring us to such an extremity that the one voice we have in our hearts, the one voice that cries to us wherever we look round for help, is Death, death, death. It is out of this despair that the superhuman hope is born. It is out of this abject helplessness that the soul learns to look up with new trust to God.
It is a melancholy reflection upon human nature that we have, as the Apostle expresses it elsewhere, to be “shut up” to all the mercies of God. If we could evade them, notwithstanding their freeness and their worth, we would. How do most of us attain to any faith in Providence? Is it not by proving, through numberless experiments, that it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps? Is it not by coming, again and again, to the limit of our resources, and being compelled to feel that unless there is a wisdom and a love at work on our behalf, immeasurably wiser and more benignant than our own, life is a moral chaos? How, above all, do we come to any faith in redemption? to any abiding trust in Jesus Christ as the Savior of our souls? Is it not by this same way of despair? Is it not by the profound consciousness that in ourselves there is no answer to the question, How shall man be just with God? and that the answer must be sought in Him? Is it not by failure, by defeat, by deep disappointments, by ominous forebodings hardening into the awful certainty that we cannot with our own resources make ourselves good men-is it not by experiences like these that we are led to the Cross? This principle has many other illustrations in human life, and every one of them is something to our discredit. They all mean that only desperation opens our eyes to Gods love. We do not heartily own Him as the author of life and health, unless He has raised us from sickness after the doctor had given us up. We do not acknowledge His paternal guidance of our life, unless in some sudden peril, or some impending disaster, He provides an unexpected deliverance. We do not confess that salvation is of the Lord, till our very soul has been convinced that in it there dwells no good thing. Happy are those who are taught, even by despair, to set their hope in God; and who, when they learn this lesson once, learn it, like St. Paul, once for all (see note on above). Faith and hope like those which burn through this Epistle were well worth purchasing, even at such a price; they were blessings so valuable that the love of God did not shrink from reducing Paul to despair that he might be compelled to grasp them. Let us believe when such trials come into our lives-when we are weighed down exceedingly, beyond our strength, and are in darkness without light, in a valley of the shadow of death with no outlet-that God is not dealing with us cruelly or at random, but shutting us up to an experience of His love which we have hitherto declined. “After two days will He revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live before Him.”
The Apostle describes the God on whom he learned to hope as “God who raises the dead.” He himself had been as good as dead, and his deliverance was as good as a resurrection. The phrase, however, seems to be the Apostles equivalent for omnipotence: when he thinks of the utmost that God can do, he expresses it thus. Sometimes the application of it is merely physical; {e.g., Rom 4:17} sometimes it is spiritual as well. Thus in Eph 1:19 ff. the possibilities of the Christian life are measured by this-that that power is at work in believers with which God wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places. Is not that power sufficient to do for the weakest and most desperate of men far more than all he needs? Yet it is his need, somehow, when brought home to him in despair, that opens his eyes to this omnipotent saving power.
The text of the words in which Paul tells of his deliverance can hardly be said to be quite certain, but the general meaning is plain. God delivered him from the awful death which was impending over him; he had his hope now firmly set on Him; he was sure that He would deliver him in the future also. What the danger had been, which had made so powerful an impression on this hardy soul, we cannot now tell. It must have been something which happened after the First Epistle was written, and therefore was not the fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus, whatever that may have been. {1Co 15:32} It may have been a serious bodily illness, which had brought him to deaths door, and left him so weak, that still, at every step, he felt it was Gods mercy that was holding him up. It may have been a plot to make away with him on the part of the many adversaries mentioned in the First Epistle {1Co 16:9} -a plot which had failed, as it were, by a miracle, but the malignity of which still dogged his steps, and was only warded off by the constant presence of God. Both these suggestions require, and would satisfy, the reading, “who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver.” If, however, we take the reading of the R.V-“who delivered us from so great a death, and will deliver; on whom we have set our hope that He will also still deliver us”-the existence of the danger, at the moment at which Paul writes, is not necessarily involved; and the danger itself may have been more of what we might call an accidental character. The imminent peril of drowning referred 2Co 11:25 would meet the case; and the confidence expressed by Paul with such emphatic reference to the future will not seem without motive when we consider that he had several sea voyages in prospect-as those from Corinth to Syria, from Syria to Rome, and probably from Rome to Spain. So Hofmann interprets the whole passage: but whether the interpretation be good or bad, it is elsewhere than in its accidental circumstances that the interest of the transaction lies for the writer and for us. To Paul it was not merely a historical but a spiritual experience; not an incident without meaning, but a divinely ordered discipline; and it is thus that we must learn to read our own lives if the purpose of God is to be wrought out in them.
Notice in this connection, in the eleventh verse, how simply Paul assumes the spiritual participation of the Corinthians in his fortunes. It is God indeed who delivers him, but the deliverance is wrought while they, as well as other Churches, co-operate in supplication on his behalf. In the strained relations existing between himself and the Corinthians, the assumption here made so graciously probably did them more than justice; if there were unsympathetic souls among them, they must have felt in it a delicate rebuke. What follows-“that, for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many, thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf” (R.V)-simple and intelligible as it looks in English, is one of the passages which justify M. Sabatiers remark that Paul is difficult to understand and impossible to translate. The Revisers seem to have construed together, as if it had been . . . , the meaning being that the favor bestowed on Paul in his deliverance from this peril had been bestowed at the intercession of many. Others get virtually the same meaning by construing with : the inversion is supposed to emphasize these last words; and as it was, on this view, prayer on the part of many persons that procured his deliverance, Paul is anxious that the deliverance itself should be acknowledged by the thanksgiving of many. It cannot be denied that both these renderings are grammatically violent, and it seems to me preferable to keep by itself, even though and should then reduplicate the same idea with only a slight variation. We should then render: “in order that, on the part of many persons, the favor shown to us may be gratefully acknowledged by many on our behalf.” The pleonasm thus resulting strikes one rather as characteristic of St. Pauls mood in such passages, than as a thing open to objection. But grammar apart, what really has to be emphasized here is again the communion of the saints. All the Churches pray for St. Paul-at least he takes it for granted that they do; and when he is rescued from danger, his own thanksgiving is multiplied a thousandfold by the thanksgivings of others on his behalf. This is the ideal of an evangelists life; in all its incidents and emergencies, in all its perils and salvations, it ought to float in an atmosphere of prayer. Every interposition of God on the missionarys behalf is then recognized by him as a gift of grace ()-not, be it understood, a private favor, but a blessing and a power capacitating him for further service to the Church. Those who have lived through his straits and his triumphs with him in their prayers know how true that is.
At this point (2Co 1:12) the key in which Paul writes begins to change. We are conscious of a slight discord the instant he speaks about the testimony of his conscience. Yet the transition is as unforced as any such transition can be. I may well take for granted, seems to be the thought in his mind, that you pray for me; I may well ask you to unite with me in thanks to God for my deliverance; for if there is one thing I am sure of, and proud of, it is that I have been a loyal minister of God in the world, and especially to you. Fleshly wisdom has not been my guide. I have used no worldly policy; I have sought no selfish ends. In a holiness and sincerity which God bestows, in an element of crystal transparency, I have led my apostolic life. The world has never convicted me of anything dark or underhand; and in all the world none know better than you, among whom I lived longer than elsewhere, working with my hands, and preaching the Gospel as freely as God offers it, that I have walked in the light as He is in the light.
This general defense, which is not without its note of defiance, becomes defined in verse 13 {2Co 1:13}. Plainly charges of insincerity had been made against Paul, particularly affecting his correspondence, and it is to these he addresses himself. It is not easy to be outspoken and conciliatory in the same sentence, to show your indignation to the man who charges you with double-dealing, and at the same time take him to your heart; and the Apostles effort to do all these things at once has proved embarrassing to himself, and more than embarrassing to his interpreters. He begins, indeed, lucidly enough. “We write nothing else to you than what you read.” He does not mean that he had no correspondence with members of the Church except in his public epistles; but that in these public epistles his meaning was obvious and on the surface. His style was not, as some had hinted, obscure, tortuous, elaborately ambiguous, full of loopholes; he wrote like a plain man to plain men; he said what he meant, and meant what he said. Then he- qualifies this slightly. “We write nothing to you but what you read-or in point of fact acknowledge,” even apart from our writing. This seems to me the simplest interpretation of the words ; and the simplest construction is then that of Hofmann, who puts a colon at , and with begins what is virtually a separate sentence. “And I hope that to the end ye will acknowledge, as in fact you acknowledged us in part, that we are your boast, as you also are ours, in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Other possibilities of punctuation and construction are so numerous that it would be endless to exhibit them; and in the long-run they do not much affect the sense. What the reader has to seize is that Paul has been accused of insincerity, especially in his correspondence, and that he indignantly denies the charge; that, in spite of such accusations, he can point to at least a partial recognition among the Corinthians of what he and his fellow-workers really are; and that he hopes their confidence in him will increase and continue to the end. Should this bright hope be gratified, then in the day of the Lord Jesus it will be the boast of the Corinthians that they had the great Apostle Paul as their spiritual father, and the boast of the Apostle that the Corinthians were his spiritual children.
A passage like this-and there are many like it in St. Paul-has something in it humiliating. Is it not a disgrace to human nature that a man so open, so truthful, so brave, should be put to his defense on a charge of underhand dealing? Ought not somebody to have been deeply ashamed, for bringing this shame on the Apostle? Let us be very careful how we lend motives, especially to men whom we know to be better than ourselves. There is that in all our hearts which is hostile to them, and would not be grieved to see them degraded a little; and it is that, and nothing else, which supplies bad motives for their good actions, and puts an ambiguous face on their simplest behavior. “Deceit,” says Solomon, “is in the heart of them that imagine evil”; it is our own selves that we condemn most surely when we pass our bad sentence upon others.
The immediate result of imputing motives, and putting a sinister interpretation on actions, is that mutual confidence is destroyed; and mutual confidence is the very element and atmosphere in which any spiritual good can be done. Unless a minister and his congregation recognize each other as in the main what they profess to be, their relation is destitute of spiritual reality; it may be an infinite weariness, or an infinite torment; it can never be a comfort or a delight on one side or the other. What would a family be, without the mutual confidence of husband and wife, of parents and children? What is a state worth, for any of the ideal ends for which a state exists, if those who represent it to the world have no instinctive sympathy with the general life, and if the collective conscience regards the leaders from a distance with dislike or distrust? And what is the pastoral relation worth, if, instead of mutual cordiality, openness, readiness to believe and to hope the best, instead of mutual intercession and thanksgiving, of mutual rejoicing in each other, there is suspicion, reserve, insinuation, coldness, a grudging recognition of what it is impossible to deny, a willingness to shake the head and to make mischief? What an experience of life we see, what a final appreciation of the best thing, in that utterance of St. John in extreme age: “Beloved, let us love one another.” All that is good for us, all glory and joy, is summarily comprehended in that.
The last words of the text-“the day of the Lord Jesus”-recall a very similar passage in 1Th 2:19 : “What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing-is it not even ye-before our Lord Jesus at His coming?” In both cases our minds are lifted to that great presence in which St. Paul habitually lived; and as we stand there our disagreements sink into their true proportions; our judgments of each other are seen in their true colors. No one will rejoice then that he has made evil out of good, that he has cunningly perverted simple actions, that he has discovered the infirmities of preachers, or set the saints at variance; the joy will be for those who have loved and trusted each other, who have borne each others faults and labored for their healing, who have believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things, rather than be parted from each other by any failure of love. The mutual confidence of Christian ministers and Christian people will then, after all its trials, have its exceeding great reward.