Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Corinthians 13:14
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, [be] with you all. Amen.
14. The grace of the Lord ] This is the fullest form of any of the benedictions given by St Paul, and it comes fitly at the end of the harshest of his Epistles. It must be regarded as the overflowing of a loving heart, conscious of the severity of the language the Apostle has been compelled to use, yet deeply penetrated with a sense of its necessity for the well-being of the flock. The benediction is invoked upon all, the slanderers and gainsayers, the seekers after worldly wisdom, the hearkeners to false doctrine, as well as the faithful and obedient disciples. In regard to its form. we may remark that it was the grace or favour of Jesus Christ in condescending to visit us, through which we received the revelation of the love of God, and that it was through that love that we received the gift of the Holy Spirit, to dwell in our hearts by faith, and thus to knit us into one body in Christ. For communion or fellowship (a rendering familiar to us through the Prayer Book, being that of Tyndale and Cranmer) see note on 1Co 1:9. The form of this benediction has always been regarded as a proof of the essential unity and equality of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ – see the note, Rom 16:20. This verse contains what is usually called the apostolic benediction – the form which has been so long, and which is almost so universally used, in dismissing religious assemblies. It is properly a prayer, and it is evident that the optative eie, May the grace, etc., is to be supplied. It is the expression of a desire that the favors here referred to may descend on all for whom they are thus invoked.
And the love of God – May the love of God toward you be manifest. This must refer especially to the Father, as the Son and the Holy Spirit are mentioned in the other members of the sentence. The love of God here referred to is the manifestation of his goodness and favor in the pardon of sin, in the communication of his grace, in the comforts and consolations which he imparts to his people, in all that constitutes an expression of love. The love of God brings salvation; imparts comfort; pardons sin; sanctifies the soul; fills the heart with joy and peace; and Paul here prays that all the blessings which are the fruit of that love may be with them.
And the communion of the Holy Ghost – compare note, 1Co 10:16. The word communion ( koinonia) means properly participation, fellowship, or having anything in common; Act 2:42; Rom 15:26; 1Co 1:9; 1Co 10:16; 2Co 6:14; 2Co 8:4; 2Co 9:13; Gal 2:9; Eph 3:9; 1Jo 1:3. This is also a wish or prayer of the apostle Paul; and the desire is either that they might partake of the views and feelings of the Holy Spirit; that is, that they might have fellowship with him; or that they might all in common partake of the gifts and graces which the Spirit of God imparts. He gives love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith Gal 5:22, as well as miraculous endowments; and Paul prays that these things might be imparted freely to all the church in common, that all might participate in them; all might share them.
Amen – This word is missing, says Clarke, in almost every ms. of any authority. It was however early affixed to the Epistle.
In regard to this closing verse of the Epistle, we may make the following remarks:
(1) It is a prayer; and if it is a prayer addressed to God, it is no less so to the Lord Jesus and to the Holy Spirit. If so, it is right to offer worship to the Lord Jesus and to the Holy Spirit.
(2) There is a distinction in the divine nature; or there is the existence of what is usually termed three persons in the Godhead. If not. why are they mentioned in this manner? If the Lord Jesus is not divine and equal with the Father, why is he mentioned in this connection? How strange it would be for Paul, an inspired man, to pray in the same breath, the grace of a man or an angel and the love of God be with you! And if the Holy Spirit be merely an influence of God or an attribute of God, how strange to pray that the love of God and the participation or fellowship of an influence of God, or an attribute of God might be with them!
(3) The Holy Spirit is a person, or has a distinct personality. He is not an attribute of God, nor a mere divine influence. How could prayer be addressed to an attribute, or an influence? But here, nothing can be plainer than that there were favors which the Holy Spirit, as an intelligent and conscious agent, was expected to bestow. And nothing can be plainer than that they were favors in some sense distinct from those which were conferred by the Lord Jesus, and by the Father. Here is a distinction of some kind as real as that between the Lord Jesus and the Father; here are favors expected from him distinct from those conferred by the Father and the Son; and there is, therefore, here all the proof that there can be, that there is in some respects a distinction between the persons here referred to and that the Holy Spirit is an intelligent, conscious agent.
(4) The Lord Jesus is not inferior to the Father, that is, he has an equality with God. If he were not equal, how could he be mentioned, as he here is, as bestowing favors like God, and especially why is he mentioned first? Would Paul, in invoking blessings, mention the name of a mere man or an angel before that of the eternal God?
(5) The passage, therefore, furnishes a proof of the doctrine of the Trinity that has not yet been answered, and, it is believed, cannot be. On the supposition that there are three persons in the adorable Trinity, united in essence and yet distinct in some respects, all is plain and clear. But on the supposition that, the Lord Jesus is a mere man, an angel, or an archangel, and that the Holy Spirit is an attribute, or an influence from God, how unintelligible, confused, strange does all become! That Paul, in the solemn close of the Epistle, should at the same time invoke blessings from a mere creature, and from God, and from an attribute, surpasses belief. But that he should invoke blessings from him who was the equal with the Father, and from the Father himself, and from the Sacred Spirit sustaining the same rank, and in like manner imparting important blessings, is in accordance with all that we should expect, and makes all harmonious and appropriate.
(6) Nothing could be a more proper close of the Epistle; nothing is a more appropriate close of public worship, than such an invocation. It is a prayer to the ever-blessed God, that all the rich influences which he gives as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may be imparted; that all the benefits which God confers in the interesting relations in which he makes himself known to us may descend and bless us. What more appropriate prayer can be offered at the close of public worship? How seriously should it be pronounced, as a congregration is about to separate, perhaps to come together no more! With what solemnity should all join in it, and how devoutly should all pray, as they thus separate, that these rich and inestimable blessings may rest upon them! With hearts uplifted to God it should be pronounced and heard; and every worshiper should leave the sanctuary deeply feeling that what he most needs as he leaves the place of public worship; as he travels on the journey of life; as he engages in its duties or meets its trials; as he looks at the grave and eternity, is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the blessings which the Holy Spirit imparts in renewing, and sanctifying, and comforting His people. What more appropriate prayer than this for the writer and reader of these notes! May that blessing rest alike upon us, though we may be strangers in the flesh, and may those divine and heavenly influences guide us alike to the same everlasting kingdom of glory.
In regard to the subscription at the end of this Epistle, it may be observed, that it is missing in a great part of the most ancient mss., and is of no authority whatever; see the notes at the end of the Epistle to the Romans, and 1 Corinthians. In this case, however, this subscription is in the main correct, since there is evidence that it was written from Macedonia, and not improbably from Philippi. See the introduction to this Epistle.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
2Co 13:14
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The benediction of the Church
1. If a man has been to visit his friend, and you see him leaving the gate, it is pleasant to notice in his hand a basket of fruit or a bunch of flowers. It would be very embarrassing, however, if the proof of friendship were always an outward gift. If a friend visits us, we place ourselves at his disposal; and if we visit a friend, we are delighted to receive the overflow of his life into our own. Now suppose under the old law a man had offered a lamb in sacrifice to God, and had found that his flocks did not increase according to his hope, and had then said, I will offer Him no more lambs. Might we not next suppose a wise friend saying to him, God has done this to try your love. If you loved God, you would offer Him even the last lamb, feeling that it is better to have the heavenly Friend than to have only His property. God invites us to His presence, and desires that we should have great pleasure in coming to see Him; and it is very certain that if we have come in the true friendly temper, we shall go away, taking something in our hearts, though nothing in our hands. No man that rejoices in Gods grace complains much of Gods providence.
2. Now, when we come to church God entertains us and sends us sway with a benediction. It is the benediction of the Church also; i.e., the Church desires that God may grant its members His blessing, and expresses its faith that He will. We will render the text, May your faith, hope, and love be replenished. We come in different states.
(1). There are persons who come in quest of truth. Suppose, then, in the sacred service something is said which the heart feels is sure. The heart cries out to itself gladly, Whatever is doubtful, that is true. Then the man has received a gift.
(2) There are others that believe, and yet are confounded. Well, suppose a person very tired in body and soul, almost hopeless, and something is said that excites hope. In the springtime the effect of the shower is perceived within a few minutes of its fall; and there is that in the soul a thirst for God that causes the season of drought to be indeed a springtime when once the shower descends. Hope enters this weary breast, and is not hope a gift?
(3) Then there are persons, not without belief or hope, that still yearn for sympathy. Now if the spirit of truth breathe itself forth as love, and the heart is comforted by love, then, too, it has received a gift.
(4) Faith, hope, love! Need we so distinguish them? No. You can never believe a little more, without beginning to hope too, and without feeling the glow of affection. When either of these three become prominent the two others are seen beside it as in shadow; and sometimes they take sisterly hands, and with a common brightness appear as equals. These three states of our spirit are an equivalent expression for the blessing uttered in the words of our text. Let me show this.
I. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
1. Recollect instances in which our Lord showed grace. When He had been speaking amongst His own townspeople they wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth; such sincere and kind words no one had ever heard before. A leper said to Him, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. Jesus touched him; what nature loathes grace can love. On another occasion the only son of his mother was being carried forth to the grave. Jesus laid His hand upon the bier. Was this presumptuous handling? No; this was the hand of grace. The young man arose, and his mother received him by the hand of Gods grace. We remember how our Saviour said, Sin no more, and yet pronounced no word of doom for the sin that had been committed. His life abounded with gracious words, cures, and pardons, that showed the tender, compassionate favour with which He regarded us all in our weakness, sorrow, and sins. This is grace. Through such grace love makes us believe in it.
2. Now we might say, why not place the love of God first? Which is first, the door or the house? If God has a great mansion of love, He must provide a door to it, or we shall never get in. Grace is the door into love. Love is greater than any one of its own acts. There is more in a mothers love than there is in her gentle touch. There is more in the fathers love than there is in his gift to his child on its birthday. In like manner, the love of God is more than any of His acts, more even than His grace–its own chief and most expressive instance; and why are we introduced through the grace into the love, but that we may trust that love and trust it always. So we may apply the Baptists words, He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for He was before me. Grace wins our faith, and then through its trust we have a love of our own which responds to the great general love of God. That which comes after our faith, then, is love, which, though coming after it, is preferred before it, for it was before it.
II. The love of God. Assume, now, that we have faith; what is our state? I have seen a little child perplexed at losing on Hampstead Heath–not a very great and terrible wilderness–her sister, and crying because sister was a few paces off concealed by a bush. So it may be with our feeble heart; for in our times of loneliness we are all children, and we cry out for God, Where is He? Now, the grace of God is His answer to our cry. God says to the lost world, Here I am. When we have found Christ, then we have found God; we have found our Father; we now rest in our faith. But what have we found our Father for? If the child has found its sister or its mother, they will go away together home, and there will be many a happy work of affection then. If a man has found God as his Father through Jesus Christ, then that man is introduced into all the length and breadth of human participation in Divine benefits. The love of God will be bountifully manifested in all that he learns and all that he does. Out of this faith, then, will spring a hope. He cannot be received into union with God without continuing united in such a sense that he will constantly look onward with hope, feeling that all is right, that here and hereafter all necessary instructions and blessings will be given.
III. The communion of the Holy Ghost. If Gods grace in Christ is trusted, and Gods love, so broadly revealed in Christ, is hoped in, then we receive into ourselves a life which leads us on by progression towards all the fulness that is in God. God, through Christ, breathes into us His Spirit; this we receive, not alone, but conjointly one with another. God, through Christ, begins by imparting to our heart faith in His grace, and hope through His grace in all His goodness; and knowing and hoping in that; we abide in His love. Christ gives us His gracious Spirit, and all the onward motions of the leading Spirit are in harmony with the grace of God. The communion of the Holy Ghost is, in other words, the sharing of a common life of sacred love by which we feel brotherhood with one another, and by which we progress onward led by our purified inward motives, and traversing according to our ability the length and breadth of that kingdom of affairs which God has given to exercise and to enrich us. Such is the communion of the Holy Ghost; the fellowship of love, in a hope reposed on God, through faith created and nourished by His grace. (T. T. Lynch.)
The triune blessing
Consider the particular blessing from each person of the Holy Trinity St. Paul desires for the Corinthians.
I. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. By the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ seems meant His goodwill, His gracious favour in practical and perpetual exercise. When St. Paul desired and prayed that the Corinthians might be blessed with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, he meant just this: May all the blessings of Christs incarnation, redemption, and intercession ever be with you Corinthians. The blessing of Divine pardon, of spiritual cleansing, of reconciliation with God; the blessing of union with Christ and thereby union and communion with God; the blessing of progressive sanctification, etc. When the grace of Christ is with a man, it means that all heaven is with that man; that every blessing which is possible and good for a man is granted to him, according to his capacity to receive it. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is mentioned first, because all heavens blessings to man begin with Christs grace, favour, or good will towards man. Christ is mans starting-point in all his relations with God, He being the Mediator between God and man. Unless our Mediator be first graciously disposed towards us, how is it possible to receive any of those blessings from God which are the result of His mediation? By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. Is it not true that by Christ we have access into every grace of God?
II. The love of God. The love of God is the fountain source of the threefold blessing mentioned in the text. All heavenly blessings proceed from the love of God, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. By the love of God in the text is meant, not simply the love of benevolence which God has for all His creatures in common, but what theologians call the love of complacency, which God has for those only who are the living members of the Son of God, who are the brethren of the Lord Jesus Christ, through spiritual union with Him. It is this love of God, the love of the Divine Father for His adopted children, who are the members of His dear Son, that St. Paul desires and prays may be the blessing of the Corinthians. The love of God truly comprehends all blessings. St. Paul might have said, The power of God, the protection of God, the guidance of God, the peace of God, be with you Corinthians; but instead of that he said what comprehends all, The love of God be with you. If the love of God be with us, all is with us that it is possible for man to have from God.
III. The communion of the Holy Ghost. By this is meant the fellowship, the partnership, the companionship of the Holy Ghost, or, in other words, the indwelling and inworking of the Holy Ghost. It is by means of the communion or indwelling and inworking of the Holy Ghost that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is conveyed to us. The Holy Ghost is the Divine Agent or Vicegerent by whom God the Father and God the Son carry on and carry out their Work in man. When St. Paul says to the Corinthians, The communion of the Holy Ghost be with you, it is as though he said, I pray that you Corinthians may always have the Holy Ghost within you as your Divine Guest and Companion, to enlighten you, to strengthen you, to comfort you, to guide you; to fill you with Gods love, and joy, and peace; to form in you a holy character like unto the character of Christ; to fit you for your admission to the heavenly glory of Christ. Such, then, is the triune blessing of the Triune God. Were there not a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, this apostolic blessing would be utterly unintelligible, and its language utterly misleading. Behold in this blessing the blessing of all blessings, in comparison of which all other blessings are absolutely worthless. Let the words of this apostolic blessing be regarded as a reality. When they are being pronounced, let all believe that the blessing they set forth is verily conveyed to all who devoutly receive it. Let them not be listened to in a formal spirit. (H. G. Youard.)
The Divine Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches us how the Infinite God has made Himself known to men. God, as He is in Himself, no man can comprehend.
I. Men have always believed in some power higher and greater than themselves. In old times they peopled the unseen world with innumerable deities, who presided over human affairs. But above all others one deity was supreme–Jupiter, the father of gods and men. Like children who have lost their way from home, they wrestled and prayed and sought to discover a God and Father, to whom they could yield filial obedience. In these later days we have been told that all such efforts are useless. Law, force, order–these are the ultimate discoveries of research; these are the gods of our modern Pantheon. But no such doctrine can ever satisfy the soul that has once begun to long for God. I am sure that my personality cannot be the result of blind law and force. The first cause from whom I come must be, like myself, a person, only infinitely greater. Thus there is nothing mysterious in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, as it relates to the everlasting Father. Rather does it clear up mysteries, by telling us that the laws and forces at work in the world and in ourselves are the operations of that Divine and gracious Father to whom it is our most blessed privilege to yield filial obedience.
II. But we need not only a Divine Father, but a Divine Son. We require the revelation not only of a perfect law and a supreme will, but also the revelation of a perfect and Divine obedience. We know the perfect fatherhood of God; what we want is a perfect sonship to bridge the gulf between us and God, a sonship in which the will of God and the obedience of man shall be blended into one beautiful and blessed life. We want, not only the love of the Father, but the grace of a perfect Son. Must there not be somewhere a perfect Ideal of what man ought to be; and where can this Ideal be found but in the mind of God? But mark how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity comes down to the utmost needs of fallen man. To redeem us from sin the Divine Sonship was clothed in flesh; passed through all the changes of mortal life, from the cradle to the grave. Here, then, towering above the ruins of our race, is the perfect manhood of Jesus Christ. Ever living to make intercession for us is this Divine Son, who has conquered sin and death and hell by patient submission and by filial obedience to the Fathers will.
III. If, then, we are thus brought nigh to the Father through the Son, it must be our highest privilege to hold constant communion with the ever present Spirit of God. (F. W. Walters.)
Communion human and Divine
The great benediction of the Christian Church never grows old and never becomes monotonous. It is like the sunshine, which rises on us every day of our lives with a fresh beauty; or like our truest friendships, which are for ever new. There is no blessing more continually needed than the communion of the Holy Ghost. We go, then, first to the perpetual and universal facts of human life, for Christianity always uses them and is in harmony with them. And one of the deepest of these facts is mans perpetual need of intercourse and fellowship. A life of solitude is never satisfactory to a truly healthy man. He needs some fellowship. And for his whole satisfaction he needs various fellowships: with those above him, on whom he depends; with those beside him, who are his equals; and with those below him, whom he helps. All three of these relationships furnish the life of a completely furnished man. And the essence of all these fellowships is something internal; it is not external. It is in spirit and sympathy, not in outward occupations. It is communion and not merely contact. This goes so far that, where communion is perfect, where men are in real sympathy with one another, contact or outward intercourse may sometimes be absent. What a man really needs, then, is a true understanding of other men; community of intelligence producing community of sentiment, interest in the same things producing the same feelings. This is communion. And then the second fact is that the communions or fellowship of men are seldom direct, but come about through a medium. They are not the mere liking of men for each other for qualities directly apprehended, but they are the result of a common interest in something which brings the men together and is the occasion by which their sympathy is excited, the atmosphere or element in which their communion lives. Is not this so? Two children in the same family grow up in cordial love for each other; but their love is a love of and in the family. They did not deliberately choose each other for friends, but their hearts were drawn out in the same direction, towards the same father, the same mother, the same home life, and so they met and came to know each other. So two scholars find their element of communion in their common study. Two business men reach each other and become friends through their common business. And two reformers enter into each others life in the indignation or enthusiasm of a common cause. In every case you see the union of men is made through a third term, an element into which both enter, and in which they find each other as they could not without it. This is the way in which men come to be gathered in those groups which make the variety and picturesqueness of human life. Now it is in the application of this same idea that there lies, I think, the key to this phrase, the communion of the Holy Ghost. Once more there is an element, an atmosphere, in which men are brought close together–brought together as they come under no other auspices, in no other way. That element is God. Men meet each other, when they meet in Him, with peculiar confidence, dearness, frankness, and truth. Just as there is a certain character which belongs to the intercourse of men who are met as the pursuers of a common business, and so are met in the communion of that business; and as there is another character which belongs to the intercourse of men who are met as the disciples of a certain study, and so are met in the communion of that study, so there is yet another deeper and completer character which belongs to the fellowship of men who come to have something to do with one another as the servants of God, and so whose communion is the communion of God. And now take one step farther. Who is the Holy Ghost? He is the effectively present Deity. He is God continually in the midst of men and touching their daily lives. He is the God of continual contact with mankind. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost is a continual protest against every constantly recurring tendency to separate God from the current world. Wherever the fellowship and intercourse of men has a peculiar character because it is born of the presence of God among men; wherever mens dealings with each other, or mens value of each other, is coloured with the influence of the truth that we live in a world full of God; wherever our communion with each other takes place through Him, the sacredness and usefulness of what we are to each other resulting from what He is to all of us, then our communion is a communion of the Holy Ghost. I doubt not there is a deeper philosophy in this than we can understand. The Bible truth is that the Holy Ghost is the Lord and Giver of Life. The power of life is the power of unity everywhere. It is the presence of life in these bodies of ours that keeps them from falling to pieces. The moment that life departs dissolution comes. And so life, which is the gift of the Holy Ghost–nay, which is the presence of the Holy Ghost in society or in the soul–is the power of unity in society or in the soul. The society in which there is no presence of a living God drops into anarchy and falls to pieces. The soul in which there is no presence of a living God loses harmony with itself, becomes distracted. Again, our idea finds its illustration in the different characters of different households. Lift the curtain, if you will, from two homes, both of them happy and harmonious, neither of them stained with vice nor disturbed with quarrels. One of them is a household of this world altogether. The domestic relationships are strong and warm. The loves of husband and wife, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters, are all there. They prove themselves in all kind offices. Each helps the other, and there are no jealousies, no strifes. There is the best picture of the communion of the family affection. Now look into the other home. All is the same, but with this difference: that here there is an ever-live, strong, vivid, loving sense of God. As real as father or mother, as real as brother or sister, God is here. No act is ever done out of His presence. He is felt in the education of the children. The children are His gifts. The love of each member of the household for the rest is coloured all through with gratitude to Him. All of that love is deepened because each desires for each sacred and spiritual mercies. All these loves which were there before move on still, but they are all surrounded by and taken up into one great comprehending love; and he who enters in at the door of that converted house hears them all in deepened, richened music, the same strains still, only full of the power of the new atmosphere in which they are played. And so it is with friendship. Two men who have known each other for years become together the servants of Christ. His Spirit comes to them. They begin the new life of which He is the centre and the soul. How their old friendship changes! How it is all the same, and yet how different it is! It opens depths and heights they never dreamed of. Where they used to do so little for each other, now they can do so much. Where they used to touch only on the outside, now their whole natures blend. One of the most valuable changes which come to a human friendship when it is thus deepened into a communion of the Holy Ghost is the assurance of permanence which it acquires. There is always a lurking distrust and suspicion of instability in friendship which has not the deepest basis. No present certainty answers for the future. This must be so to some degree with an affection where each is held to each only by the continuance of personal liking. But when friendship enters into God, and men are bound together through their communion with Him, all the strength of that higher union authenticates and assures the faithfulness and perseverance of the love that is bound up with it. The souls that meet in God may well believe that they shall hold each other as eternally as He holds each and each holds Him. And the same power which insures the perpetuity of friendship must also secure a wider range of sympathy and fellow-feeling among men The more the associations of men come to consist in what is essential, and not in what is merely formal, the larger becomes the circle of a mans fellow-creatures with whom he may have relations of cordial interest. So much of our communion with men is a communion, not of spirit, but of form. We associate with men because we happen to be thrown in with them in the mere circumstances of our lives; because we live in the same circle of society, and so our habits are the same; because we are seeking the same ends of life in the same kind of actions. And very often our sympathies are bounded by the same narrow lines which limit our associations. But the communion of the Spirit, the communion of the Holy Ghost is something deeper, and therefore something wider, than that. Wherever any human soul is loving the God whom we love, feeling His presence, trying to do His will, though it be in forms and ways totally different from ours, the communion of the Holy Ghost brings us into sympathy with Him. There is no influence of the Christian life more ennobling, more delightful than this. It takes you out of the low valley of formal life. It sets you upon the open summit of spiritual sympathy, close to the sun. Thence you look out into unguessed regions of noble thought and living, with which you never dreamed that you had anything to do. But meanwhile is it not a very lofty and inspiring ambition to offer to a man, that the more he knows and loves God the more he shall see the noble and the good in all his brethren? We should like to believe in men so much more than we do! We are almost ready to give up in despair; the meanness, the foulness, the cruelly of humanity crowd on us so. If you will earnestly try by obedience and love to enter into communion with God, these brethren of yours, who are like sealed books with stained covers, shall open to you, and you shall see goodness, nobleness, truth, devotion, all through them. Here is the difference between religious and secular philanthropy. Secular philanthropy loves and helps men directly, for themselves. Religious philanthropy loves and helps men in God. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.)
The apostolic benediction
I. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is mentioned first, not that it stands first in the order of these great blessings; but it is most obvious, most immediate, to the view of a Christian: Jesus Christ naturally came foremost before the apostles mind, as the procurer of all Divine blessings. And grace is mentioned as the peculiar property of Jesus Christ. Grace denotes free and sovereign favour. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The grace of Jesus Christ includes–
1. All that He has done and suffered for the Church. His grace drew Him down from above into our world and nature: Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, etc. All that He endured during His sojourn among men, and especially in Gethsemane and on the Cross, proceeded from His grace; all the peace, hope, confidence, and strength of His people are so many streams that flow from this fountain.
2. All that He still does for His Church. He sits above as its High Priest and Intercessor. He has all power given to Him for the interests of His people, and they receive all that they need out of His fulness. We shall never know, on this side of eternity, the full amount of our obligations to Christ; the manner and extent in which He guards, directs, sanctifies, and comforts His people.
II. The love of God. As the grace of Christ is the meritorious, so the love of the Father is the original cause of all spiritual blessings. The Father is represented in Scripture as originating the salvation of man, as giving and sending His Son. Love is the principle from which all redemption proceeds, and the apostle prays that his brethren might feel themselves the objects of this love. This is dignity, this is felicity, and there is none beside; to be embraced in the arms of the Divine Father as His beloved children! St. John stands astonished at this love, and exclaims, Behold, what manner of love, etc. But let it be remembered that, if we would enjoy the love of God, we must keep His commandments. None of the consolations of Divine love are to be found in union with disobedience.
III. The communion of the Holy Spirit. As the Father originates, and the Son executes, it is the part of the Spirit so to communicate Himself as to change and form His subjects. As Christ purchased all Divine blessings, so the Spirit dispenses the things of Christ. As Christ glorifies the Father, so the Spirit glorifies Christ. He is the Vicegerent and Deputy of Christ, as Christ of the Father, Let it be remembered that a suitable walk is required of those who would enjoy the fellowship of the Spirit. We must be careful not, by resistance, to grieve Him; if we sadden this Comforter, where shall we hope to find comfort? Conclusion:
1. In the text we have a distinct mention of three Divine persons. None will deny that the Father and the Son are Persons; it is reasonable to conclude that the Spirit is also such. Here the grace of Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, could never have been placed in such a close juxtaposition with the love of God, if, as some have supposed, there were an infinite distance between them.
2. The doctrine of the Trinity is not a mere speculative mystery. Each of the Divine Persons has His office in the economy of redemption; and this gives us an idea of the grandeur and dignity of that redemption, in the economy of which there is such a co-operation; the Father devising it, the Son executing, the Spirit applying. How solemn and august the work of preparing a soul for glory, when each person of the Godhead has His own peculiar part in that work to execute. What manner of persons, then, ought we to be? (R. Hole, M. A.)
The threefold benediction
It is remarkable that this, which is one of the two most explicit recognitions of the Holy Trinity, should be in the form of a benediction. The fact is in itself a sermon. It tells us, above all, that the doctrine is not an object of speculation, but a living truth. It recalls us from metaphysics to life. God reveals Himself to us as a trinity of persons: the eternal Father, of whom we are the children; the eternal Son, who brings back to us our lost sonship; the eternal Spirit, by whom we and all things live. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. It is a trinity of benedictions. The love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit, come each of them round us, and enfold us in the wings of blessing. And yet they are not three benedictions, but one. The love and the grace and the fellowship are not different and apart; but one and the same.
I. The apostle begins with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, because that seems to be nearer to us; it is, as it were, the doorway through which we pass to the sense of the love of God. Grace means gift. It was the word which seemed best to sum up that which Jesus Christ did for us, and includes at once redemption, the knowledge of God, and the hope of eternal life. The world had been seeking for redemption, light, and hope; it had struggled with its pain, with its sorrow, with the problem of its disappointment and its failure, and it could not always beat the air in a fruitless battle; and there was coming over man, as the slow mist creeps over the fair landscape in an autumn afternoon, the sense of a supreme despair. And to men came grace, a sure and certain faith that God was in the world, and had not left us to be the struggling but inevitable prey to passion, and darkness, and death.
II. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ was also, and was thereby the love of God. There are many Christian men who lose the conception of fatherhood. They tend to speak of the Almighty, or of Providence, as though He were not a person, but an abstraction. Many think of Him as the Supreme Judge and Ruler, and forget the infinite depths of love. He reveals Himself to us as a Father. He loves us in infinitely greater degree, but in some way like the way in which we love our children. He forgives us when we go back to Him. He helps us on our way when we tend to stumble, He gives us a Fathers arm upon which to lean and a Fathers hand to guide. The love of the Father is like the sun which shines in heaven, it shines upon one field and another; but upon one there is a crop of grain, upon another there is a crop of baleful weeds, the difference lies not in the sunshine but in the preparation of the ground. So it is with human souls. The love of the Father comes to us all, but the blessing of the love comes to us in proportion as we till the soil of our soul. It is dependent so far upon our effort; it comes not to supersede our work but to call it forth and to bless it.
III. And so the love of God becomes the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The eternal Father has not placed His love in some infinitely distant space, to blaze and burn like Sirius in some field of the universe which we can only see in the distance, which touches us with no warmth, which enlightens us with no knowledge, and which only reveals to us the unimaginable vastness of His power. He does not mock us with a panorama of sunlight, and the luxuriant growths that come of sunlight, passing as it were like a vast moving spectacle before our eyes. He comes close to us; He holds communion with us; He touches us with warmth; He enlightens us with His light. Conclusion:
1. The sense of a gift of a Divine Sonship, of the love of a Divine Father, of a Divine communion, are the prismatic colours of one perfect light. If you ask me to translate the text into the language of philosophy; if you tell me that no ray of that Divine light can reach my soul until I have told you of what chemical elements it is composed, I answer, Nay. The sun was shining in the heavens, revealing to the world the infinite beauty of form and colour for untold ages before its rays were analysed by the prism. It was bringing forth verdure by its warmth for untold ages before it was found out that oceans of hydrogen served upon his surface, and that heat like light is a mode of motion. What you and I want, and have, is not the bare truth that there is a sun, but the sense of his warmth. What you and I want, and have, is not an analysis of the idea of God, but the sense that there is a Father who loves us, the sense that there is a God who holds communion with us.
2. I will ask you thus to think of the Trinity to-day. Let the thought of God, as He is revealed to us, be with you not as a dogma, but as an ever present benediction. Let each pray for himself the prayer which the apostle prayed for himself and all the world. It is not a selfish prayer. The benediction of God is like the sunlight which must radiate back again for all upon whom it shines. The love of the Father cannot be in our hearts without shining. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be hid. The fellowship of the Divine Spirit is a sharing in His Divine activity in an unresting and untiring life, always moving because motion and not rest is the essence of His nature. (E. Hatch, D. D.)
The Trinity in unity
I. To lay before you what the Scripture teaches us respecting the doctrine of the Trinity in unity.
1. That there is but one God.
2. That this one God subsists under three relations or, as we commonly say, in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
3. That these three Persons, though in a manner inconceivable by us, are distinct from each other.
4. It is to be observed, in the fourth place, that the Scriptures teach us that each of these three Persons is truly and perfectly Divine.
II. To deduce from it some practical inferences. We infer from this subject–
1. How great is the happiness, how exalted the dignity, and how elevated the hopes of the real Christian.
2. How vain is the religion of those who refuse to admit this essential truth of Christianity.
3. How vain the religion and how fearful the state of those who, while they speculatively admit the doctrine of which we have been speaking, yet practically deny it, and live in the indulgence of worldly and sinful tempers and habits.
4. What abundant ground is there for the consolation of the real penitent!
5. Much of the nature of the Christians duty. Has God revealed Himself as subsisting in three distinct Persons? The Christian is bound to offer his thanksgivings to each of these Persons for the share taken by Him in the economy of redemption.
6. How highly we ought to value those Holy Scriptures, which alone contain a discovery of this inexplicably mysterious yet unspeakably important doctrine! (J. Natt, B. D.)
The Trinity
The inner nature of the Deity is an impenetrable secret, which the human mind cannot explore; and the Trinity is, in one aspect of it, a name for this unfathomable mystery. We therefore freely concede at the outset the difficulties of the subject. To these difficulties those who reject the doctrine urgently appeal. On the basis of them they declare it to be inconceivable and irrational. In regard to this claim I would say that the intellectual difficulties which beset a truth are not necessarily a bar to belief in it. Nor is the credible always limited to the conceivable. The primary question respecting the Trinity is whether there are adequate grounds for belief in it. The essence of the doctrine of the Trinity is, that God exists in a threefold mode of being, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of these is, in the strict sense, Divine, that is, partakes of the nature of Deity. All three of them together constitute the one only God. There is a unity of nature or substance in God, and there is, at the same time, a threefoldness or trinality which represents eternal distinctions in the Divine essence. God is one and God is three, but not, of course, in the same sense. He is one in substance or essence; but there exists within this one essence three persons or subsistences, which are revealed to Us under the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There are many notions of Gods nature which stand in contrast to the Trinitarian idea. One of these is the Unitartan doctrine. On this view God is one and solitary; He is in no sense three There is no room, according to this conception, for interrelations or intercommunion within the nature of the Divine Being. Another contrasted view is the pantheistic. On this view God is at once the One and the All. The universe itself is taken up and lost in God; or, stating the idea from its other side, God is identified with the universe and lost in it. This mode of thought almost necessarily surrenders the personality of God. Still another view is the polytheistic, which admits the existence of many gods, and assigns to them various limitations of nature and function. The great fact which occasioned the development of the doctrine was the incarnation. The claims which Christ made for Himself, and the claims which the New Testament writers make for Him, compel the admission of His eternal pre-existence and His Divine nature (Joh 17:5; Joh 8:58; Joh 1:1; Php 2:6). If Christ is Divine, and yet, at the same time, can speak of the Father in distinction from Himself, these two facts, taken together, give us both the idea of the unity and that of the distinction between Him and God. But a further fact meets us. Christ speaks of the Holy Spirit as distinct both from the Father and from Himself, and yet ascribes to Him Divine prerogatives and powers. He is another Advocate, distinct from Christ (Joh 14:16). He bears witness of Christ (Joh 15:26); and His coming to the disciples is conditioned upon the Saviours departure (Joh 16:7). Personal pronouns are used in referring to the Spirit, and personal activities are constantly ascribed to Him. The doctrines of the deity of Christ, and of the Trinity, cannot be denied except upon grounds which involve the surrender of the historicity and truthfulness of the New Testament. Some persons who have acknowledged that the teaching of Jesus and of the apostles involved the doctrine of the equal Divinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, have avoided the acceptance of the commonly received doctrine of the Trinity by holding that these three terms designate three phases or modes of the Divine self-manifestation, and not essential and eternal distinctions in the nature of God. This is the so-called Sabellian doctrine. It holds to a Trinity of revelation only, a moral as opposed to an immanent Trinity. It is, however, an unsatisfactory explanation of the facts with which it seeks to deal. It does not accord with the New Testament teaching respecting the eternal pre-existence of the Son of God in a form of being distinct from the Father. Moreover, if God is revealed as a Trinity, it is reasonable to suppose that He exists as such. He is revealed as He is. I have already alluded to the objection so often made to the doctrine of the Trinity, that it is inconceivable, and therefore irrational. It is necessary to weigh this objection more carefully. If, when it is said that the Trinity is inconceivable, it is meant that the mind can form no mental picture of it, the statement is quite true. The truth of the Trinity transcends the reach and power of the imagination. But so also do thousands of truths for which the evidence is commonly deemed to be overwhelming, and which are therefore generally accepted among men. We cannot imagine, that is, form any definite mental concept, of the human soul. We cannot picture to ourselves the various faculties or powers of our own mysterious personalities. Our powerlessness to conceive of these things does not overbear the testimony in their behalf. We also accept many inconceivable facts for which the evidence is found outside our own mental life. Such are many of the truths of science. The nature and action of natural forces, and especially the marvellous phenomena of psychical action–such as the influence of mind over body, and of one mind upon another–are utterly beyond the power of the imagination to construe. The truth is, that when we come to reflect upon the matter, we find that the province of the imagination is very restricted. It can never be made, in any sphere of knowledge, the measure of our convictions, or the final test of truth. That we cannot conceive of the Trinity is, therefore, no real evidence against its truth. But when it is said that the Trinity is inconceivable, it is sometimes meant that it is contrary to reason. If the doctrine of the Trinity were that God is one and three in the same sense, it would be absurd, and belief in it would be stultifying. But this is not the doctrine. The truth of the Trinity is not contrary to reason although it is above and beyond reason. What mental law forbids us to believe that there is an external trinality in the one absolute Being? With the acceptance or rejection of the doctrine the evangelical system of theology has commonly stood or fallen. The doctrine of the Deity of Christ, and the significance of His saving work, are involved in the truth of the triune nature of God. The denial of the Trinity on account of its mysteriousness has usually carried with it the denial of some of the most characteristic doctrines of Christianity on account of their mysteriousness. If men are too impatient of mystery to accept the Trinity, they will probably be too much so to believe in the incarnation, the atonement, and related truths. We have always carefully to distinguish between the acceptance of a truth upon adequate evidence, and the satisfactory explanation of that truth in itself. If the doctrine of the Trinity is approached directly, and is taken up as a problem for solution, the mind will probably be baffled and repelled. The true method of approach is along the line of those facts of Divine revelation which lead us at length to the heights of this mystery, where we can no longer define and describe, and where thought must acknowledge its bounds and find its resting-place. If it is urged, as it sometimes is, that the doctrine is not taught in the Bible, the answer is, that, while it is not explicitly and formally taught, the elements of truth which compose it, such as the Deity of Christ and the Personality of the Spirit, and the facts which require it, such as the incarnation and atonement, are fundamental factors in all biblical revelation and teaching. It may fairly be said, in the first place, that it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Absolute exists in a mode of being to which finite nature furnishes no adequate analogy. The Deity does not belong to any class of beings whose attributes can be made determining for the conception which we are to entertain of His nature. He stands alone and unique. It cannot be urged that because nature and human life furnish no examples of such a Trinity in Unity as we believe to exist in God, the belief is contrary to reason and experience. It is above and beyond all experience; it may be, in important respects, above and beyond reason, but it is not on that account contrary to it. There are, moreover, some suggestive facts which present themselves to our view in contemplating the universe, with which the idea of the Trinity in God does strikingly accord. We find, for example, that as we ascend the scale of being, life becomes diversified and complex. Not only do we observe this general fact in the world of matter, but in the world of mind as well. The mental life of the lower orders of creation appears very simple. Their souls act in but a few directions and in but a very limited sphere. The mental organisation of man, on the contrary, is very complex and diversified. I lay no stress on the threefoldness of this well-nigh universal analysis of mans mental constitution, nor do I urge the complexity of mental life in the highest form of being which we immediately know as, in any strict sense, an argument for the doctrine of the Trinity. I do, however, claim that it would be according to analogy to expect that in the Supreme Being there should be a manifoldness and complexity of life surpassing those which we find to exist in the highest forms of finite being. Considerations like this which I have presented are not strictly a part of the evidence for the truth of the Trinity; but they do fall into line with that evidence, and serve to confirm it from the side of reason and observation. I turn now to a brief consideration of the argument for the doctrine of the Trinity which is derived from the nature of God as love. We must suppose that there was once a time when this finite world did not exist. If God alone is uncreated and self-existent, then the entire universe, including all men and angels, must have begun to be. Let our thought now travel back to the time when God alone existed. Shall we think of Him as absolutely single and solitary, dwelling in eternal silence and self-contemplation, or as having within Himself the conditions of a social life? Which conception best befits the notion of His inherent perfection? If God is truly the absolute Being, as theists commonly suppose; if He is not dependent upon the world in respect to His own existence and perfection, but has freely created the same–then must His nature be perfect in itself, and in this nature all the conditions of blessedness must be realised. It seems to me that the Trinitarian doctrine of God, which affirms distinctions and relations as eternally existing in His essence, best answers to the idea of His inherent perfection, because it supposes the Divine life to be, by its very nature, social and self-communicating. If this seem an abstract method of presenting the subject, let us approach it by saying that there is an eternal Fatherhood in God. He is not merely the Father of men and of all higher orders of created beings. He did at some point begin to be a Father. The relations of Fatherhood and Sonship which concretely express to us what we count most dear in the nature of God, are eternal and constituent in His very being. It is commonly agreed among Christians that the most perfect description which can be given of the Divine nature is that which is contained in the Scriptural statement–God is love. If this means, not merely that God, as a matter of fact, does love, not merely that He may be or that He has love, but that love is an eternal quality of His moral nature which is absolutely fundamental and constitutive in His being–then it would seem that there must be within His nature itself occasion and scope for the exercise of love, apart from His relations to finite existence. Love is a social attribute, and the conditions and relations which love implies must exist in the very essence of God. In the Trinitarian view of God these conditions have for ever existed in the eternal personal distinctions and reciprocal relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God did not begin to love when He created, nor is His love a mere potentiality which in the silent depths of eternity looks forward to creation for its satisfaction. Love is the very core and essence of Gods moral nature, and as such is ceaselessly active within the internal relations of Deity. Love is eternally in full exercise, since God is love, and love ever found in Gods own perfect being the full fruition and blessedness of its exercise in self-communication and fellowship. We thus see that, despite the difficulties which the Trinitarian doctrine presents to the imagination, it has the great advantage of according with the highest conception which revelation yields us of the moral nature of God. It enables us to maintain that God eternally is what He is revealed to be. The Trinity is a practical truth. High as it is above reason, baffling as it is to the imagination and to thought, it accords with the demands and deliverances of the Christian consciousness. It conserves the truth of Christs essential Divinity and that of the reality and power of the work of the Spirit, which He described as the sequel and completion of His own work. It accords with belief in the incarnation, and makes the redemptive work of Christ a Divine work. All this the Christian consciousness craves and requires. We want to know, not merely that God has sent us a message, not merely that in Jesus He has raised up an exceptionally pure and holy member of the human race, but that in Him God has come to us, and that His work of revelation and redemption is a work of God. Our sense of sin is met and answered only by the knowledge of a Divine Redeemer. Mystery as the Trinity is, it is a mystery which is full of heavenly light. The doctrine of the Trinity conserves the idea of the richness and fulness of the Divine life and love, and of the amplitude of their manifestation. According to its terms, God is revealed to us as our Father, and His eternal nature is shown to be fatherly; Jesus Christ is presented to us as a true incarnation of God in humanity, a Redeemer whose Divine person and work are a veritable revelation of God; and the Holy Spirit is conceived of as an actual Divine agent who dwells and works in human life, influencing and moulding it into the Divine likeness. According to the Trinitarian doctrine, we have to do, in Christianity, with Divine realities. Our religion is not a subjective play of fine ideas, memories, or aspirations. Our religion is intensely supernatural. It is fitted to quicken and foster in our hearts a living sense of God. The forces that provide and complete our salvation are truly Divine. It is God that has wrought for us and in us; our life is ensphered in Deity, and filled with the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. (George B. Stevens, D. D.)
The Trinity a practical truth
1. The distinction between doctrinal and practical exists rather in popular impressions than in reality. Doctrine simply means what is taught: practice what is done. Christian charity, as delivered in 1Co 13:1-13, is a doctrine; as it enlarges souls and sweetens life it is a practice. In general, Christian practice is simply Christian doctrine gone into the life of mankind.
2. The Trinity is the meeting-point of the doctrinal with the practical elements of our faith. For, on the one hand, it represents facts lying far above us, in the inscrutable Being of God; but it also lays the foundation for the personal faith which brings peace to the heart and for the duties which give use and honour to life. The Trinity has just the mysteriousness which belongs to, say, the connection of your mind with your hand, or the growth of a tree from a seed. Much about these things you may well understand; but much more, which you cheerfully accept because it is familiar, is just as completely inexplicable to reason as the Trinity. Yet you may traverse every field and you will find no form of goodness that has not its origin in this Trinity of God–in the parental providence of the Father, the renewing grace of the Son, the sanctifying communion of the Spirit. For the proof, we may look to three different regions of revelation in order:
I. The inspired Scriptures.
1. There is no Divine quality which is not ascribed to each of these Persons. Each is separately declared to be eternal, almighty, perfect in holiness, knowing all things, and worthy to be worshipped. Yet with equal emphasis they are not only, as in the text, associated together, with no suggestion of degrees of rank, but they are explicitly declared to be one in substance, power, and glory.
2. These three are so set before us that the entire Christian system could not be complete or even consistent without them all. Each refers to the others as co-equal Persons–the Father to the Son and the Spirit, the Son to the Spirit and the Father, the Spirit to the Father and the Son.
3. Taking up the Scriptures in their historic order–
(1) The Holy Ghost appears with the Father from first to last. Amidst the miracles of creation He broods upon the face of the waters; holy men spoke as they were moved by Him; it is by His power that the Messiah is miraculously conceived, and that His mission is attested at His baptism. The Spirits more manifest coming forth is at length made ready as the Saviour departs, till, after Pentecost, all the preaching of the apostles, and all the upbuilding of the Church, and all the conversion of the world, are effected by the same Spirit.
(2) With corresponding measure moves the revelation of the Son of Man. In the beginning He was with God, and was God. Not without Him too, says the apostle, the worlds were made. In Eden we foresee Him born of a woman, bruising the serpents head, and atoning for the Fall; known to Job as the Redeemer that shall stand upon the earth; blessing all mankind in Abrahams seed; the Shiloh that should come of the family of Judah; wrestling with Jacob; worshipped as the Jehovah-angel; leading Israel in the burning column; foretold as the everlasting High Priest in the Psalms of David; the Emmanuel, Wonderful, Counsellor and Mighty God, of Isaiahs prediction; The Lord our Righteousness named by Jeremiah; the glorious appearance of a Man on the sapphire throne, before whom Ezekiel fell in adoration; Daniels Messiah who should be cut off, but not for Himself; Haggais Desire of all Nations ; Malachis Sun of Righteousness. He is the theme of the whole Bible, the Bond of living unity between Old Testament and New.
II. The moral constitution and history of man. Outside the Bible there are three different regions for the manifestation of God to man.
1. Nature. In it the one God has a peculiar work, creating. But as we commonly apply the term creating to the originating of things, that process by which He preserves and so ever re-creates nature is named Providence. God is a Creator, and creatorship is the first work of personality in His threefold Being.
2. Christ.
(1) Nature was not enough for mans spiritual education and salvation. He needs a supernatural mediation for the unfolding and ripening of his religious powers, and for rescue when the choice has been wrong and the forces of sin have brought him down. As a conscious soul man has thoughts that the whole natural world cannot interpret, desires that the natural world cannot fill, aspirations that the natural world and even natural religion cannot meet. Nay, it is just when the world does its bravest for us that our supersensual life is most oppressed with the feeling of its insufficiency, and the homesick heart feels out into infinitude for the light that never was on sea or land.
(2) Man is lost till the Son of Man comes forth from the Father. The palace of nature is empty till the King enters.
(a) If it is moral excellence that the world is seeking for, the Second Person of the Trinity not only carries up all ideas of character to their loftiest pitch, by saying, Be ye therefore perfect, but He matches the precept by an actual embodiment.
(b) Is it some vision of self-sacrifice that the higher thought of humanity is feeling for? Then in the same Person God sets up the Cross, planting its foot in the very core of the worlds heart, and binding about it the reverent affections of all ages.
(c) Is the world yearning for reconciliation with God? None less than He, no daysman of baser rank, can make the necessary atonement, at once magnifying the law, and yet the justifier of the sinner. It must be both God and man, the God-man, who redeems. Nature is fair and orderly, for it is the workmanship of God. But can it atone for this lost soul that has gone down under the powers of sin, and is now in the terror and the punishment of a separation from its God? It says, Obey and live. Hast thou, O foolish child, disobeyed? Then be wrecked against our iron necessity; perish amidst our pitiless magnificence! Man sees no cross in nature till the Saviour rears it at Calvary.
3. By the very conditions of the visible Incarnation, however, it must be limited and temporary. For here the Eternal comes into history, and thus is made subject to limitations of time and place. Jesus, the Son of Mary, wears a human body, which must pass from the world. It is expedient for us that He should go away. Hence the third development of the Trinity-mystery. There is a third realm where the one God is also to be revealed–the inner world of the believers heart.
(1) Christ saw the deep necessity for that, and made careful preparation for it in the promise of the Holy Ghost. Like the Eternal Word, that Paraclete has been from the beginning, and was with God, and was God. But now, in the heavenly order, the Spirit shall appear; He shall proceed both from the Father and the Son, for Christ expressly says both, I will send Him, Whom My Father will send. The symbol is shown when Christ breathes on the apostles before His ascension. The august reality is seen when the day of Pentecost is fully come.
(2) Henceforth–
(a) When the weary and heavy-laden heart comes home repenting to the Fathers house, through faith in the Son, it is known to be the Holy Spirit that quickens it.
(b) When the secret mercy of peace tranquillises the sorrow of troubled breasts, it is the same Spirit that is the Comforter.
(c) When a hidden inspiration bears on advancing Christians from one degree of sanctity to another, it is by the same Spirit of the Lord, the Sanctifier of the faithful.
(d) When new tides of consecrated feeling rouse the Church to her aggressive work, it is the coming, again and again, of the same blessed Paraclete.
III. The gospel kingdom or Church of Christ.
1. Just on the eve of Christs departure His accredited apostles are gathered about Him. Now the ambassadors shall be told what is of supreme importance in the work they are to do, and the message they are to bear. He speaks: Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature, teach all nations, baptizing them. But teach them what? Baptize them into whom? This is the last and highest question to be answered. The doctrine ye are to proclaim, the threefold cord with which ye are to bind, the covenant names into which ye are to baptize–hear these: the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. The three names send out their light over Christendom with co-equal, co-eternal, and blended beams. They are one. By the power hid in that truth the world was to be saved: by no other.
2. See then how, in the very terms of the office assigned to His Church, there is an exact correspondence with this fundamental doctrine of the faith.
(1) There is action–Go ye. This answers, on earth and in men, to the creative work of the Godhead. The natural power must work; natural means must be employed.
(2) There is the continued presentation of the fact of redemption, under its due sign and sacrament, coupled with the preaching of the gospel. As the Second Person was the embodying of the Word and redeemed the world, as that Word was made flesh, so the living Word must still go forth, beginning at Jerusalem, to all the earth. The new covenant, superseding that of the elder Testament, is to pledge the blessings of propitiation, gather and bind in one the Catholic family of Christendom, and, by the sanctifying of water to the mystical washing away of sin, bring back clean blood into the disordered heart of the race.
(3) But, finally, that this Christian system should take effect, create a real regeneration, and yield the Lord a bride without spot or wrinkle, the energy of the Spirit must attend it. The Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven, must accompany the preaching. Gods flock must be fed by men whom the Holy Ghost hath made overseers. Conclusion: What is remaining but that in the simplicity of a searching and earnest faith we should put the question to ourselves and to one another: Has this wonderful and blessed doctrine entered in, to bear its gracious fruit in our own lives? (Bp. Huntington.)
And the communion of the Holy Ghost.—
The communion of the Holy Spirit
I fear that our familiarity with these words serves in a great measure to veil their meaning. They become more associated with the closing up of the service than anything else, as is the case with one of the grandest choruses in the Messiah, the Amen Chorus. It is the last in the whole Oratorio, and every one takes it as a signal to begin to depart. Paul is here pouring out his hearts love in the very best wish that he can think of. What do we understand by the communion of the Holy Ghost? What is the meaning of the word communion? I do not know any better way to explain the meaning of that word than is given in the following verses of the Bible (Gal 2:9): When James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship. That is, they took Paul into their communion as a sharer in the concern; they gave him the right hand; he became partner with them in the work. That is the meaning of the word communion. In Luk 5:10, we read that James and John were partners with Simon. You see that it would mean part-ownership in that boat; they would no longer speak of that boat as my boat, but our boat. So, I think, that the best meaning of the word communion is partnership. Thus the text will read: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the partnership of the Holy Ghost be with you all.
I. Partnership with a glorious person. First of all we must realise the personality of the partner; we must grasp the personality of the Holy Ghost by practical experience. Do we know much about this? Hundreds of you could say, I know what the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is. But do you know what is partnership with the Holy Ghost? Partnership implies a partner, and we cannot be long in partnership without knowing the partner. The Holy Ghost is a living personality as much as the Father, whose love we receive; a living personality as much as Jesus, whose grace we delight in, and whose name we adore. It is not an it we have to do with. All the attributes of a Person are His. He has understanding, will, grief and love; for when Paul writes to the Romans, he says (Rom 15:30). How necessary it is we should know His attributes, since we are living in His dispensation. The Old Testament records belong to the dispensation of the Father, and tell of one coming, the Gospels are the record of the dispensation of the Son, and Christ still points on and says, It is expedient that I go away, but I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever. The Lord Jesus Christ has ascended to the Father, He has gone up to Heaven, and is sitting at His Fathers right hand, and it is just because He is there that the Spirit is here. The Spirit came only when Jesus was glorified. God is thus on earth to-day in the Person of the Holy Ghost, and He receives no better treatment now than the Lord Jesus did when He was on earth. He has come to take the same place as Jesus took, and to be as real to you as Jesus was to His disciples. The reason we have so many dull faces in our churches to-day is because the Holy Ghost is not thought of as present, and is not welcomed as a personal, helpful Friend. But the ministry of the Spirit is only a time ministry; this dispensation is not going on for ever. Jesus fulfilled His mission and then He ascended, and I believe that the Holy Spirit will have His ascension, and then Jesus will come to reign. There is a further beautiful meaning in the word communion, namely, a common interest. Thus, you love Christ: so does the Holy Ghost. You love prayer: the Holy Ghost maketh intercession for us. In Rom 8:16, we read, The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit. What beautiful partnership is that! You want to be holy; the Spirit wants you to be holy. If you want Jesus to come, so does the Holy Spirit, You see you have common interests all the way through.
II. Partnership in His glorious work. All that Jesus did, He did in the power of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit, like a dove, had sought, for four thousand years, a heart that would be His resting place, and sought in vain, until He rested on Jesus by the Jordans brink. Then Jesus went forth to His work filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. He cast out demons, He healed the sick, He raised the dead, and, indeed, all that He did, He did in the power of the Holy Spirit. Look at our churches–north, east, south and west? They are trying to carry on their work without the partnership of the Holy Ghost. But it is so difficult, you say, to realise what we cannot see. You have never seen the wind, yet you feel and believe it is there. You have never seen electricity, but put your hands on the handles of the battery, and you start with the shock. And if I am going into partnership with the Holy Ghost, I must believe He is here, though He is not seen by mortal eyes. His Sovereignty I must know as well, and fully yield myself to His direction and control. We read in the Acts that the Holy Ghost forbade the apostles going to Asia to preach the Word. There are diversities of His will, and we need to be entirely in His hands. If we have fellowship with Him, we must be willing to let Him work in us. At times the Holy Spirit has to uproot a man, strip him of all his possessions, of health, wealth, and position before He is made willing and obedient. We must be willing to be just what He wants us to be in this great partnership. (A. G. Brown.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ] All the favour and beneficence that come from and through the Redeemer of the world; as the LORD, the ruler and governor of all things; as JESUS, the Saviour of all men by his passion and death; as Christ, the distributer of all that Divine unction which enlightens, comforts, harmonizes, and purifies the mind. May this most exalted, glorious, and all-sufficient Saviour, be ever with you!
And the love of God] GOD, your Maker, in that infinite love which induced him to create the world, and form man in his own image and in his own likeness, that he might be capable of knowing, loving, and enjoying him for ever; and God in the fullest manifestations of that love which caused him to give his only begotten Son, to the end that they who believe on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. May this God of love, and this love of God, be ever with you!
And the communion of the Holy Ghost] May that Holy Spirit, that Divine and eternal energy which proceeds from the Father and the Son; that heavenly fire that gives light and life, that purifies and refines, sublimes and exalts, comforts and invigorates, make you all partakers with himself!
, which we translate fellowship and communion, signifies properly participation; having things in common; partaking with each other. This points out the astonishing privileges of true believers: they have communion with God’s Spirit; share in all its gifts and graces; walk in its light; through him they have the fullest confidence that they are of God, that he is their father and friend, and has blotted out all their iniquities: this they know by the Spirit which he has given them. And is it possible that a man shall be a partaker with the Holy Ghost, and not know it! that he shall be full of light and love, and not know it! that he shall have the spirit of adoption, by which he can cry, Abba! Father! and yet know nothing of his relationship to God, but by inference from indirect proofs! In a word, that he shall have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost with him, and all the while know nothing certain of the grace, as to his portion in it; feel nothing warming from the love, as to its part in him; and nothing energetic from the communion, as to his participation in the gifts and graces of this Divine energy! This is all as absurd as it is impossible. Every genuine Christian, who maintains a close walk with God, may have as full an evidence of his acceptance with God as he has of his own existence. And the doctrine that explains away this privilege, or softens it down to nothing, by making the most gracious and safe state consistent with innumerable doubts and fears and general uncertainty, is not of God. It is a spurious gospel, which, under the show of a voluntary humility, not only lowers, but almost annihilates, the standard of Christianity.
This text, as well as that, Mt 3:16-17, and that other, Mt 28:19, strongly marks the doctrine of the holy TRINITY. See the note on this latter text. And had not the apostle been convinced that there was a personality in this ever-blessed and undivided Trinity, he could not have expressed himself thus. And had not our Lord intended to be understood in this way, he would not have given such a commission to his apostles, to baptize the nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The doctrine is the teaching of God, let men make of it what they please. And the genuine Church of God have ever received and understood it in this way.
Amen.] This word is wanting, as usual, in almost every MS. of authority. Amen seems to have been anciently added at the conclusion of books, exactly as we add the word, finis, both merely signifying the end.
As to the inscription, it is wanting, either in whole or in part, in almost all the ancient MSS. The principal forms in which it exists are the following:-
To the Corinthians, the second.
–The second to the Corinthians is completed.
–The second to the Corinthians is finished.
–To the Corinthians, the second, written from Philippi.
–Written from Philippi by Titus.
–Written from Philippi by Titus and Luke.
–By Titus, Barnabas, and Luke.
–The Second Epistle to the Corinthians was written from Philippi of Macedonia, and sent by Titus, SYRIAC.
–The End of the Epistle. It was written from the city of Philippi by Titus and Luke. Praise be to God for ever, ARABIC.
-In the VULGATE there is no subscription; nor in the ETHIOPIC.
–Written in Philippi of Macedonia, and sent by Titus and Luke, COPTIC.
–The Second Epistle to the Corinthians is ended; which was written from Philippi of Macedonia, by Titus and Luke, SYR. PHILOX.
It has been often remarked that no dependence can be placed on many of the subscriptions to the sacred books, which are found in MSS. and versions, because those subscriptions were not written by the authors of those books, but were afterwards added by the transcribers or copiers, who followed either tradition or their own judgment. It is generally allowed that this second epistle was written from Macedonia; and probably from the city of Philippi, in that province. See the introduction and preface to this epistle.
Finished the correction for a new edition, Dec. 13th, 1831. A. C.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The free love of our Lord Jesus Christ, shown in the application of his redemption; that grace which floweth from him as the Fountain of grace, or cometh by him as the Mediator between God and man; the actual love of God; that good-will by which God the Father embraceth creatures in Christ, and for his sake; and all the gracious communications of the Holy Spirit of God, (by which he strengtheneth, quickeneth, or comforteth the souls of Gods people),
be with you all. Whether you value me or not, I heartily wish you well, and all the best things. In this text is an eminent proof of the Trinity, all the Persons being distinctly named in it (as in the commission about baptism). The apostle calleth the Father, God; the Son, Lord: he attributeth love to the Father; (moved by which he sent his only begotten Son into the world, Joh 3:16); grace to the Son, who loved us freely, and died for the fellowship or
communion of the Holy Ghost, by whom the Father and Son communicate their love and grace to the saints.
Amen is here used as a particle of wishing or desiring the thing before mentioned; it is the same with: Let it so be. Whether added by the apostle, or subjoined by the church of Corinth, upon the reading this Epistle among them, (as some think), is not material.
The second (epistle) to the Corinthians was written from Philippi, ( a city) of Macedonia, by Titus and Lucas.
If the subscriptions to the apostolical Epistles were parts of the text and holy writ, we have it here determined, who that other brother was, mentioned 2Co 8:22, sent along with Titus to carry this letter, and the benevolence of the churches of Macedonia. But it is observed, that even in this subscription there is a certain evidence, that the subscriptions of the Epistles are no part of canonical writ; for in some Greek copies it is said to be sent by Paul and Timothy; whereas Paul was the writer of it, not the messenger, and in Macedonia when it was sent; and Timothy is joined with him in the writing, 2Co 1:1.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
14. The benediction which provesthe doctrine of the Divine Trinity in unity. “The grace ofChrist” comes first, for it is only by it we come to “thelove of God” the Father (Joh14:6). The variety in the order of Persons proves that “inthis Trinity none is afore or after other” [AthanasianCreed].
communionjointfellowship, or participation, in the same Holy Ghost, which joins inone catholic Church, His temple, both Jews and Gentiles. Whoever has”the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,” has also “thegrace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and “the love of God”;and vice versa. For the three are inseparable, as the three Personsof the Trinity itself [CHRYSOSTOM].The doctrine of the Trinity was not revealed clearly and fully tillChrist came, and the whole scheme of our redemption was manifested inHim, and we know the Holy Three in One more in their relations tous (as set forth summarily in this benediction), than in theirmutual relations to one another (De29:29).
Amenomitted in theoldest manuscripts. Probably added subsequently for the exigencies ofpublic joint worship.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ…. Meaning either the love of Christ; see 2Co 8:9 which is the same with that of his Father’s, is as early, and of the same nature, being a love of complacency and delight; and which, as it is without beginning, will be without end. This is the ground and foundation of all he has done and underwent for his people; of his becoming their surety; of his incarnation, obedience, sufferings, and death in their room and stead; an interest in which, though they always have, yet they have not always an abiding sense of it with them, which is what the apostle here prays for: or else by the grace of Christ is meant the fulness of grace that is in him as Mediator; which is desired to be with the saints as the object of their trust and dependence; to be strong in, draw living water with joy out of, receive and derive daily from; not forsake it, and hew out broken cisterns, but continually apply to, and make use of it, as the fountain of gardens, the well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon; to be with them as a supply to their wants, to furnish them with every thing they stand in need of, and to enable them to do his will and work: or else the redeeming grace of Christ is particularly designed, and the intent of the petition is, that they might see their interest in it, and in all the branches of it; as that they were redeemed by his blood from sin, law, and wrath, had all their sins expiated and forgiven through his sacrifice, and were justified from all things by his righteousness.
And the love of God; the Father, as the Arabic version adds very justly, as to the sense, though it is not in the text; meaning the love of God to his people, which is eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, free and undeserved, special and peculiar, is dispensed in a sovereign way, is unchangeable, abides for ever, is the source and spring of all the blessings both of grace and glory. Now when this is entreated to be with all the saints, it does not suppose that it is ever from them, or that it can be taken away from them, but whereas they may be without a comfortable sense of it, and a view of interest in it, the apostle prays, that in this respect it might be with them; that they might be directed into it, have it shed abroad in their hearts, and they be rooted and grounded in it, and comprehend for themselves the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of it.
And the communion of the Holy Ghost; either a larger communication of the gifts and graces of the Spirit of God, called “the supply of the Spirit”, Php 1:19 necessary to carry on the good work of grace, and perform it to the end; or else that communion and fellowship which the Spirit of God leads the saints into with the Father, by shedding abroad his love in their hearts, and with the Son, by taking of the things of Christ, and showing them to them; and also that nearness which the spirits of believers have with the Spirit of God, when he witnesses to their spirits that they are the children of God, becomes the earnest of the inheritance in their hearts, and seals them up unto the day of redemption: all which is requested by the apostle, to
be, says he,
with you all; or “with your company”, or “congregations”, as the Arabic version reads it, with all the saints; for their interest in the love of the Father, in the grace of the Son, and in the favour of the Spirit, is the same, whatever different sense and apprehensions they may have thereof. This passage contains no inconsiderable proof of a trinity of persons in the Godhead, to whom distinct things are here ascribed, and of them asked, equal objects of prayer and worship. “Amen” is by way of assent and confirmation, and as expressive of faith in the petitions, and of earnest desire to have them fulfilled. According to the subscription at the end of this epistle, it was written by the apostle when he was at Philippi, a city of Macedonia, and transcribed by Titus and Lucas, and by them sent or carried to the Corinthians; which seems to be agreeable to what is suggested in the epistle itself, though these subscriptions are not to he depended upon. The Syriac version only mentions Luke; and some copies read, by Titus, Barnabas, and Luke.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The grace, etc. The most complete benediction of the Pauline epistles. In most of the epistles the introductory benedictions are confined to grace and peace. In the pastoral epistles mercy is added. In the closing benedictions uniformly grace. ===Gal1
CHAPTER I
1 – 5. The usual form of salutation is expanded by additions which answer to the occasion of the letter, and foreshadow its principal thoughts.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,” (he charis tou kuriou lesou Christou) “The grace of (emanating out of) the Lord Jesus Christ,” Rom 16:24; Paul always ended his letters with a prayer that the grace of the God that called, saved, and used him might be on all his correspondents.
2) “And the love of God,” (kai he agape tou theou) “and the high holy love of (emanating out of) God,” through Jesus Christ, 2Co 5:14-15; Joh 3:14-16.
3) “And the communion of the Holy Ghost,” (kai he koinonia tou hagiou pneumatos) “and the fellowship of (emanating out of) the Holy Spirit,” the third person of the Godhead, completes a triple benediction similar to Num 6:23-26; Php_2:11; 1Jn 4:11, active communication, Rom 8:26.
4) “Be with you all, Amen,” (meta panton humon) “be with you all,” or all of you.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
14. The grace of the Lord Jesus. He closes the Epistle with a prayer, which contains three clauses, in which the sum of our salvation consists. In the first place, he desires for them the grace of Christ; secondly, the love of God; and, thirdly, the communion of the Spirit The term grace does not here mean unmerited favor, but is taken by metonymy, to denote the whole benefit of redemption. The order, however, may appear to be here inverted, because the love of God is placed second, while it is the source of that grace, and hence it is first in order. I answer, that the arrangement of terms in the Scriptures is not always so very exact; but, at the same time, this order, too, corresponds with the common form of doctrine, which is contained in the Scriptures — that
when we were enemies to God, we were reconciled by the death of his Son, (Rom 5:10,)
though the Scripture is wont to speak of this in two ways. For it sometimes declares what I have quoted from Paul — that there was enmity between us and God, before we were reconciled through Christ. On the other hand, we hear what John says — that
God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, etc. (Joh 3:16.)
The statements are apparently opposite; but it is easy to reconcile them; because in the one case we look to God, and in the other to ourselves. For God, viewed in himself, loved us before the creation of the world, and redeemed us for no other reason than this — because he loved us. As for us, on the other hand, as we see in ourselves nothing but occasion of wrath, that is, sin, we cannot apprehend any love of God towards us without a Mediator. Hence it is that, with respect to us, the beginning of love is from the grace of Christ. According to the former view of the matter, Paul would have expressed himself improperly, had he put the love of God before the grace of Christ, or, in other words, the cause before the effect; but according to the latter, it were a suitable arrangement to begin with the grace of Christ, which was the procuring cause of God’s adopting us into the number of his sons, and honoring us with his love, whom previously he regarded with hatred and abhorrence on account of sin.
The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is added, because it is only under his guidance, that we come to possess Christ, and all his benefits. He seems, however, at the same time, to allude to the diversity of gifts, of which he had made mention elsewhere, (2Co 12:11😉 because God does not give the Spirit to every one in a detached way, but distributes to each according to the measure of grace, that the members of the Church, by mutually participating, one with another, may cherish unity.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(14) The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ . . .It is not without a special significance that the Epistle which has been, almost to the very close, the most agitated and stormy of all that came from St. Pauls pen, should end with a benediction which, as being fuller than any other found in the New Testament, was adopted from a very early period in the liturgies of many Eastern churches, such as Antioch, Csarea, and Jerusalem (Palmer, Origines. Liturg. i. 251). It may be noted that it did not gain its present position in the Prayer Book of the Church of England till the version of A.D. 1662, not having appeared at all till A.D. 1559, and then only at the close of the Litany.
The order of the names of the three Divine Persons is itself significant. Commonly, the name of the Father precedes that of the Son, as, e.g., in 2Co. 1:2; Rom. 1:7; 1Co. 1:3. Here the order is inverted, as though in the Apostles thoughts there was no difference or inequality between them, the question of priority being determined by the sequence of thought, and not by any essential distinction. To those who trace that sequence here there will seem sufficient reason for the order which we actually find. St. Paul had spoken of the comfort brought to his own soul by the words which he heard in vision from the lips of the Lord Jesus, My grace is sufficient for thee (2Co. 12:9). He had spoken of that grace as showing itself in self-abnegation for the sake of man (2Co. 8:9). What more natural than that the first wish of his heart for those who were dear to him should be that that grace might be with them, working on them and assimilating them to itself? But the favour, or grace, which thus flowed through Christ was derived from a yet higher source. It was the love of God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself (2Co. 5:18-20), the love of the Eternal Father that was thus manifested in the grace of the Son. Could he separate those divine acts from that of Him whom he knew at once as the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ? (Rom. 8:9-14; 1Co. 2:11; 1Co. 6:11; Gal. 4:6.) Was it not through their participation, their fellowship in that Spirit (the phrase meets us again in Php. 2:1) shedding down the love of God in their hearts (Rom. 5:5) that the grace of Christ and the love of the Father were translated from the region of abstract thoughts or mere empty words into the realities of a living experience?[60]
[60] The note, added by some unknown transcriber, though having no shadow of authority, is, probably, in this instance, as has been shown in the Notes on 2Co. 8:16-22, a legitimate inference from the data furnished by the Epistle.
And so the Epistle ends, not, we may imagine, if we may once picture to ourselves the actual genesis of the letter, without a certain sense of relief and of repose. It had been a hard and difficult task to dictate it. The act of dictation had been broken by the pauses of strong emotion or physical exhaustion. The Apostle had had to say things that went against the grain, of which he could not feel absolutely sure that they were the right things to say. (See Note on 2Co. 11:17.) And now all is done. He can look forward to coming to the Corinthian Church, not with a rod, but in love and in the spirit of meekness (1Co. 4:21). What the actual result of that visit was we do not know in detail, but there are at least no traces of disappointment in the tone of the Epistle to the Romans, which was written during that visit. He has been welcomed with a generous hospitality (Rom. 16:23). He has not been dis-appointed in the collection for the saints (Rom. 15:26) either in Macedonia or Achaia. If we trace a reminiscence of past conflicts in the warning against those who cause divisions (Rom. 16:18), it is rather with the calmness of one who looks back on a past danger than with the bitterness of the actual struggle.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
14. The benediction, flowing in sacred beauty from the mind of St. Paul. Like the baptismal sentence of our Lord, it implanted the impress of the Holy Trinity on the mind of the early Church. It proceeds in the order of Christian life. First, grace from Christ, bringing justification; second, love from God as to an adopted child; then the witness and the abiding impartation of the Spirit. Such is the blessed climax of our gospel inheritance.
All No exclusion, no decreed reprobation. A universal atonement, a universal love, a universal sanctification, a conditional universal salvation, breathe forth from the universal gospel.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion (fellowship) of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.’
The letter comes to an end with this fullest of ascriptions, not paralleled in full elsewhere. As elsewhere in the Corinthian letters Paul brings together the three members of the Godhead (2Co 1:18-22; 1Co 6:11; 1Co 12:5-7). It is suggestive of the fact that this is deliberate in view of their divided state. Paul seek the overall activity of the Godhead in working among the Corinthians. It is not that Paul thinks that this will be more effective, but that he hopes that it will more fully impress the Corinthians.
We note that ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’ comes first. This is not because of priority but because He is the personal Saviour. The whole of the letter from the beginning has concerned salvation and deliverance in Christ ( 2Co 1:5-6 ; 2Co 1:10; 2Co 2:14-16; 2Co 4:11; 2Co 5:14-21; 2Co 10:5; 2Co 11:2; 2Co 13:5). For the titles and their order contrast 2Co 1:2 and see on that verse for the significance of all three titles of Christ. Thus his concern is that the saving, unmerited, active love of Christ be always with the Corinthians, bringing about their true salvation. This will necessarily produce grace within their own hearts.
‘The love of God’, coming from the God of love (2Co 13:11). As John puts it, ‘we love because He first loved us’ (1Jn 4:19). Thus does Paul desire that God’s active love be revealed towards them, resulting in their themselves being infused with it.
‘And the communion (fellowship) of the Holy Spirit.’ In line with the previous two phrases this would primarily mean that he wishes the Holy Spirit’s ‘sharing in common’ with Christians to be with them, as He comes to them as their Helper and Encourager, that is that they might know His active work in them in true oneness with Him, bringing about love, spiritual awareness, and unity among them as they are His one Temple (2Co 6:16).
But as with the other phrases there is probably the twofold meaning so that we can also see it as referring the unity between believers that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit brings about.
We will close with the question that must affect us all. What did happen when Paul arrived in Corinth? We can never, of course, be sure but there are grounds for thinking that it was not too stressful.
For example Paul wrote Romans during his three months stay in Corinth (Act 20:2-3, 56-57 AD), and in it there is no indication that there were problems in Corinth that he could not cope with. Moreover he did proceed with his plans to evangelise unreached areas, which he would surely not have done if the Corinthian church still required his in depth attention (compare 2Co 10:14-16).
Paul also wrote to the Romans that the Corinthians “were pleased” to complete their collection for the Jerusalem saints (Rom 15:26-27). And finally the Corinthian church’s preservation of 2 Corinthians argues may argue for this church’s acquiescence to Paul’s admonitions and warnings. It would hardly have been preserved by the false teachers.
These are not certainties, for there could be other explanations. He may have kept to himself the struggles he was having, although that is not like Paul elsewhere. His further outreach might have resulted from his despairing of Corinth, but then we might have expected him to mention this in other letters, and ask for prayer for the loyal members who were suffering adversity. His reference to the Corinthian contribution is a fairly strong evidence, for he had no need to mention it if it had been done by them separately from him. But it is always possible that Paul was making the best of a bad job. And the preserving of his letter may have been by a loyal member of a disloyal church.
It is rather the fact that there is no hint anywhere of catastrophe at Corinth that can give us the most hope, but that the Corinthian church continued to be difficult, probably mainly arising from the background and environment of its members, comes out in that later in the century Clement of Rome could write of their quarrelsome behaviour. They had a reputation for dissension.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
2Co 13:14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, The word 2Co 1:10. should rather be rendered here by favour: for if grace be taken for sanctifying influences communicated from Christ,which doubtless makes a great part of the idea,it may be less easy to distinguish it from the communion of the Spirit. This text has always been produced with great force in proof of the doctrine of the Trinity. It is with great reason that this comprehensive and instructive benediction is pronounced just before our assemblies for public worship are dismissed; and it is certainly very indecent (to usethe mildest term) to see many quitting those assemblies, or getting themselves into postures of removal, before this short sentence can be ended. See Num 6:26-27.*
* See Locke, Doddridge, Beza, Whitby, Grotius, Homberg, Cradock, Heylin, Wetstein, Tillotson, Mill, Wall, Mintert, Bos, Hallet, Piscator, Bengelius, Elsner, Pearson, Scott, Hammond, Calmet, Clarke, Boyse, Hare, Raphelius, Taylor, Peters, Wolfius, Gordon, Estius, Junius, Osterman, Witsius, Rymer, Fenelon, Stockius, Lowth, Lyttleton, and Bull.
Inferences drawn from 2Co 13:14.In this passage we find, first, grace, as coming from God the Son, love as from God the Father, and communion as being of the Holy Ghost. What these three things mean, will be shewn when I speak of their distinct offices; for I design, first, to consider the nature, distinction, union, and offices of the three divine Persons; and secondly, to intimate the use and importance of these great articles of our Christian faith.
I. 1. In the first place, it is proper to say something of the nature of each Person, that we may the better conceive what kind of Persons they are. The first and most general distinction of all things is into two kinds, created and uncreated. The nature of a creature is, that it comes into being by the order and will of another, and may cease to be whenever the Creator pleases. Of this kind are the sun, moon, stars, men, and angels; they are all of a frail and changeable nature; they might cease to be, and sink into nothing, as from nothing they came, were they not supported by a superior hand. Only the three divine Persons,the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, from absolute necessity never can fail or cease. They always were, and always will be: their property is, always to exist, from everlasting to everlasting, without the help or support of any thing else whatsoever, being indeed the stay and support of the whole creation.
Our thoughts are quite lost, as often as we think of any person’s existing before all beginning; yet we are very certain that so it must be, or else nothing would ever begin to be at all. Whether one only, or more Persons, might or do exist in this most perfect and incomprehensible manner, we could never know by our own reason alone, unassisted by divine revelation. But sacred writ sufficiently assures us, that three such Persons there are; who have been from all eternity; who cannot but be to all eternity; and who are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And this is, and has been all along, the faith of Christ’s church, founded upon scripture.
To conceive then rightly of these three divine Persons, we should consider them as being just the reverse of what creatures are; not frail, mutable, or depending upon any one’s pleasure; not as beginning to be, or capable of ever ceasing to be; but as being perfect, unchangeable, and all-sufficient; without beginning, and without possibility of ever coming to an end: and for that reason they are all properly divine.
2. With respect to their distinction, they are constantly represented in scripture as distinct from each other. The Father is not the Son, nor is the Holy Ghost either of the other two. They are described, as any other distinct persons are, by different characters and offices; and that so very frequently in the New Testament, that it were needless to instance in particulars. The Father is said to send, the Son to be sent, and the Holy Ghost to proceed, or go forth. The Father is represented as one witness, the Son as another witness;the Son as one comforter, the Holy Ghost as another comforter, not both as one. The Father is introduced as speaking to the Son; the Son as speaking to the Father; and the Holy Ghost as delivering commands from both. These, and a multitude of other particulars, plainly prove their distinction one from another; which being analogous to, and nearly resembling the distinction of persons among rational creatures, we therefore presume to call it a personal distinction, and to call the sacred Three, Three Persons.
3. There is also an union, a very close and inexpressible union, among the divine Three; and though Scripture every where represents these three Persons as divine, and every one, singly, God and Lord; yet the same Scriptures do as constantly teach that there is but one God and one Lord: whence it evidently follows, that these Three are but one God and one Lord.And if such an imperfect union as that of man and wife be reason sufficient to make them twain to be one flesh; and if the union of a holy man to Christ shall suffice to make them, in a certain sense, one Spirit, (1Co 6:17.) how much more shall the incomparably closer, and infinitely higher union of the three divine Persons with each other, be sufficient to denominate them one God, and one Lord? There is no other union like it, or second to it;an union of will, presence, power, glory, and all perfections;an union so inseparable and unalterable, that no one of the Persons ever was, or ever could be, without the other two; it being as necessary for the three to be, and to act together, as to be at all; which is the perfection of unity, and the strongest conjunction possible.
This important doctrine is rendered certain, not only from Joh 10:30. Rev 21:22. Rev. xxii 1. 1Co 2:11 and 1Jn 5:7 but from many other places of Scripture. So that the unity of three Persons in one Godhead is sufficiently revealed, as well as their distinction: neither is there any difficulty in admitting that three things may be three and one in different respects; distinct enough to be three, and yet united enough to be one; distinct without division, united without confusion. These, therefore, together, are the one Lord God of the Christians, whom we worship, and into whom we have been baptized.
4. Having thus considered what the divine Persons are in themselves, let us next observe, what are their offices relative to us. The peculiar offices of the three divine Persons are to create, redeem, and sanctify: the Father is God the Creator; the Son is God the Redeemer; the Holy Ghost is God the Sanctifier. Which is not to be so understood, as if neither the Son nor Holy Ghost was concerned in creating; nor as if neither Father nor Holy Ghost was concerned in redeeming; nor as if neither Father nor Son was concerned in sanctifying. All the three Persons concur in every work; all the three together create, redeem, and sanctify: but each Person is represented in scripture as having his more peculiar province; on account of which peculiarity, over and above what is common to all, one is more emphatically Creator, another Redeemer, and a third Sanctifier. So much as is common to all, serves to intimate their union one with the other; and so much as is peculiar to any one, in like manner serves to keep up the notion of their distinction.
We may observe something of this nature in the words immediately under consideration: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: grace is the common gift of the whole Trinity; but yet, here it is peculiarly attributed to Christ, as his gift and blessing, and denoting the special grace of redemption. The next words are,the love of God; that is to say, of God the Father. Now we read of the love of Christ, and of the love of the Spirit; and love is common to the whole Trinity; for God is Love: but here one particular kind of love is intended;the love of the Father, in sending his Son to redeem us, and the Holy Ghost to sanctify our souls.
The last words are,And the communion of the Holy Ghost: now, there is a communion both of the Father and the Son with every holy man, Joh 14:23. Every holy man is the temple of the whole Trinity, which has communion with him, and abides in him; as is plain from innumerable texts of scripture; but in this text before us, one peculiar kind of communion, appertaining especially to the Holy Ghost, is signified. And upon the whole we may observe, that though St. Paul might have indifferently applied grace, or love, or communion to either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Ghost, or to all together; yet he rather chose to make the characters several and distinct, to keep up a more lively sense of the distinction of persons and offices.
II. 1. The importance and use of these weighty truths may be judged of, first, from the nature of the thing itself: for, if there be really such three divine Persons, as above described, (and none can doubt of it, that read the scriptures without prejudice,) it must be highly expedient and useful to let mankind into some knowledge of them all; for there is no having a right apprehension of any one, without knowing what relation he stands under to the other two: and without this knowledge we cannot honour God perfectly, or in full measure and proportion. Add to this, that if man is to be trained up to a knowledge of God here, in order to be admitted to see him as he is in the life hereafter, it seems highly expedient that he should know at least how many, and what Persons stand in that character; that by his acquaintance with them now, in such a measure as is proper to his present state, he may attract such love and esteem for them here, as may prepare him for the fuller vision and fruition of the same hereafter.
2. This reasoning is abundantly confirmed from the concern which God has shewn to imprint and inculcate upon us this so important a belief, and so saving when received with divine power. There is no need to cite here the various texts of scripture bearing testimony to the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and engaging us to place our hope, trust, and confidence in, and to pay our worship to them all: it will be sufficient for this purpose to single out two or three considerations, which appear of great force in the argument.
It is observable, that as soon as ever our Lord had given his disciples commission to form a church, he instructs them to baptize in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Mat 28:19. Whence we may justly infer, that faith in these three Persons as divine, in opposition to all the gods of the Gentiles, was to be a fundamental article of Christianity, and its distinguishing character.
There is another thing remarkable, not so obvious perhaps as the former, but no less worthy of notice; namely, how purposely the whole scheme of the divine dispensations seems calculated, to introduce men gradually into the knowledge of these three Persons. This appears all the way down, from the fall of Adam, to the completion of all by the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost. One might justly wonder why man, created after God’s image, should be so soon suffered to fall; and why, after his fall, such a vast preparation, and so long a train, should be laid for his recovery; that there should be no way for it, but by means of a Redeemer to mediate and to intercede, to do and to suffer for him, to raise and restore him, and at length to judge him. Why might not the thing have been done in a much shorter and easier way? Why might not God the Father,so graciously disposed towards all his creatures, have singly had the honour of pardoning, restoring, raising, and judging mankind? Or, supposing both the Father and the Son joined in the work, why should it be left as it were unfinished, and incomplete, though in the hands of both, without the concurrence of the Holy Ghost?Can any doubt be made, whether God the Father singly was able or willing to do all that the Holy Ghost has done for us; to work miracles, to shed gifts, to sanctify man’s nature, and to qualify him for the enjoyment of Deity:These things must appear, at first sight, strange and unaccountable; full of darkness and impenetrable mystery.
But our wonder ceases, as soon as we consider that mankind were to be gradually let into the knowledge of three divine Persons, and not one only: that we were to be equally obliged to every one of them, that so we might be trained up to place our love, our fear, our trust in all, and pay acknowledgments suitable to their high quality and perfections. This is the grand reason of that long train, and vast preparation in man’s redemption: and with this view there appears so many characters of consummate wisdom all the way, that nothing can furnish us with a more charming and august idea of the divine dispensations, from first to last. Let us consider but a little our Lord’s conduct, when he was going to take leave of his disciples, and what he said to them upon the occasion, respecting the sending to them a Comforter; (Joh 16:7; Joh 14:16.) and then ask what is the meaning of all this?Could the disciples want any other Comforter, when he had told them in the same chapter, that he himself and the Father should come and make their abode with them, Joh 14:23 and when he had determined himself to be with them alway even to the end of the world, Mat 28:20? What occasion could they have for any other Comforter?Or what Comforter could do more or greater things than the Father or Son could do, by their constant presence with them?But the reason of the whole procedure is very plain and manifest. The Holy Ghost, the third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, was to be introduced with advantage, to do as great and signal things for mankind as either Father or Son had done; that so He likewise might partake of the same divine honours, and share with them in glory; and thus Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be acknowledged as one God blessed for ever.
In this faith was the church of Christ originally founded: in this faith have the renowned martyrs and confessors of old lived and died; and in the same faith are all the churches of the Christian world instructed and edified at this day. Be it therefore our especial care and concern to continue in this faith firm and steadfast; never to be moved from it by the disputers of this world, who are permitted for a while to gainsay and oppose it for a trial and exercise to others, and that they who are approved may be made manifest. May we persevere in paying all honour, worship, and praise, to the three blessed Persons of the Godhead; knowing how great and how divine they are, and how securely they may be confided in! And let the intimate union which they have one with another, put us in mind of that brotherly love and union which ought to prevail among Christians; that so we may become as it were one heart, and one soul, knit in the striving together for the faith of the Gospel, in the unity of the Spirit, and the bond of peace. So may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with us all now and for evermore. Amen.
REFLECTIONS.1st, Having once and again warned the Corinthians, by his epistles, to amend their disorders, seconded by Sosthenes and Timothy who joined in his admonitions, the Apostle is now, the third time, ready to appear in person. Therefore,
1. He assures them, that if any continued yet refractory and disorderly, notwithstanding these repeated rebukes, he would not spare, but inflict condign punishment on such obstinate offenders. Note; There is an approaching end, when wrath to the uttermost will overtake the ungodly.
2. Since they demanded a proof of his apostleship, they should receive it; since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, as if I threatened what I had no power, or authority to execute; when you have had such demonstration before of that gospel which I preach, and of that authority with which I am invested, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you, who have experienced the efficacy of my preaching, and begun to smart under the chastening rod, (1Co 11:30.) For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God, and hath all power committed into his hands: for we also are weak in him, and because of our present sufferings treated by many of you as despicable, and possessed of no authority from him: but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you; and as surely as he lives, shall we prove ourselves cloathed with his power to punish offenders: and this would soon be experienced by them, if they did not instantly amend their ways.
3. He urges them to judge themselves, that they might not be judged of the Lord, or his ministers. Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; bring your hearts to the touchstone of God’s revealed will: prove your own selves, by this divine rule: know ye not your ownselves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, formed in your hearts by his Spirit, except ye be reprobates, and when brought to the test, like false metal, rejected as refuse, and found hypocrites. But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates, but approved and allowed of our divine Master, and acknowledged by him as faithful in all things.*
* In these reflections we have, as usual, considered this passage in its commonly received sense: but for its primary meaning see the introduction to this chapter, and the annotations.
2nd, The Apostle adds his fervent prayer for them, Now I pray to God that ye do no evil, nor incur censure from us, or wrath from God: not that we should appear approved, and by the punishment we inflict give a demonstration of our apostolic power; but that ye should do that which is honest, and praise-worthy; though we be as reprobates, and having no need to exert our power, should be thought of as insignificant persons, who really had it not. For we can do nothing against the truth, nor dare lift up the rod against such as walk according to the Gospel; but our power is to be exercised for the truth, to defend it against heretical teachers, and to recover backsliders, by the needful connection. For we are glad, when we are weak, and ye are strong; and when your exemplary practice renders censure unnecessary, and we appear as if we had no authority to inflict it. And this also we wish, even your perfection; that every offence were removed, the church knit together in perfect harmony and union, and every member of it perfect in love, yea, grown up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Therefore I write these things being absent, lest, being present, I should use sharpness according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction; desirous rather that all evils among you should be amended, and our reproofs effectual for your reformation, than that we should be constrained to give a proof of our power in executing deserved punishment on the impenitent.
3rdly, The Apostle, 1. Takes his leave of them with affectionate exhortations. Finally, my brethren, farewell: be perfect, giving up your hearts entirely to God without the least reserve, reforming every disorder, and united to each other in pure and disinterested love: be of good comfort, rejoice alway in the Lord: be of one mind, let every dispute be silenced, and the spirit of party subside: live in peace and love, and the God of love and peace shall be with you, and dwell in the midst of you with his especial presence and blessing. Greet one another with an holy kiss. All the saints salute you, wishing you all prosperity in your souls and bodies, in time and in eternity. Note; (1.) Union in affection and sentiment is the sure mark of the prosperity of the church. (2.) The God of love and peace commands us to be like himself, and that is to be happy.
2. He concludes with his apostolical benediction. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all; may the grace of a dying Redeemer, which includes all-spiritual and eternal blessings, be your portion! May a sense of the Father’s love, the spring and source of your redemption, be warm upon your hearts! And may the richest communications from the Holy Ghost revive, quicken, strengthen, comfort, and establish you ever more and more; till by the mighty operation of this tri-une God your salvation be completed in glory everlasting, and your happy service be his never-ending praise. Such is my prayer for you: cease not to join my supplications for these inestimable benefits; and let every soul among you with faith and fervency say, Amen!
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 2048
THE APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION
2Co 13:14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.
THE priests, under the law, were appointed to bless the people [Note: Num 6:22-27.]. The ministers of the Gospel also may consider this as a part of their office. All St. Pauls epistles begin or end with an authoritative benediction: that before us is more full and comprehensive than any other.
We shall endeavour to point out,
I.
Its meaning
Various are the senses in which these words have been understood. We shall content ourselves with stating what we apprehend to be the best.
The grace of Christ is that grace which he communicates [Note: If we understand it as relating to his special favour, it will anticipate the meaning of the next clause.]
[There is a fulness of grace treasured up in Christ [Note: Col 1:19.]: out of that all his people are to receive [Note: Joh 1:16.]; and all who depend upon it, shall find it sufficient for them [Note: 2Co 12:9. 2Ti 2:1.].]
The love of God is a sense of reconciliation and acceptance with him [Note: It cannot import our love to him, because it is something which we are to receive from him.]
[For this we are prepared by the grace of Christ; and by it we are brought to regard God as our Father and our Friend.]
The communion of the Holy Ghost imports the abiding influence of the Spirit
[There are sublime communications of the Spirit, which the people of God receive. These are represented as a Spirit of adoption [Note: Rom 8:15.], a witness [Note: Rom 8:16.], a seal [Note: Eph 1:13.], an earnest of their eternal inheritance [Note: Eph 1:14.]. By these they are enabled confidently to depend on God, and to delight themselves habitually in him; and by these they maintain continual fellowship with the Father and the Son [Note: 1Jn 1:3.].]
That all of these might be enjoyed by the Christians at Corinth, was the earnest wish and prayer of the Apostle
[They were not gifts peculiar to a few of the most exalted saints: they were the common privilege of all who truly believed; and are to be experienced now, as well as in former ages. We should therefore in the word, Amen, express our own fervent desire to partake of them.]
Having ascertained the meaning of this benediction, let us notice,
II.
Its importance
This will be manifest to all, if only we inquire,
1.
What should we be without the grace of Christ?
[Beyond a doubt we should be dead in trespasses and sins. There is no other source of grace, but the Lord Jesus Christ [Note: Joh 6:68.]: there is no substitute for grace that can have equal efficacy [Note: Not reason, or education, or human strength.]: there is no life without grace to any soul of man [Note: Eph 2:5.].]
2.
What should we be without the love of God?
[There is no medium between a state of friendship with God, or of enmity against him. If we be not objects of his love and favour, we must be of his just and heavy displeasure.]
3.
What should we be without the communion of the Holy Ghost?
[There is no access to God but by the Holy Ghost [Note: Eph 2:18.]. If we be not brought to God by the Spirit, we must be afar off from him [Note: Eph 2:13; Eph 2:17.]; and if we are without God, we are absolutely without hope [Note: Eph 2:12.]. Such a state is a prelude to that which will exist for ever [Note: Luk 16:23; Luk 16:26.].]
Can any thing more strongly mark the importance of this benediction than such considerations? But let us proceed to notice,
III.
Its excellence
In the text is comprehended all that is great and glorious
1.
It unfolds to us the deepest mysteries
[All the persons in the ever-blessed Trinity sustain distinct offices in the work of redemption. The Christian has, as it were, distinct communion with each of these divine persons. From each he receives that which his state requires; and from their combined influence arises his full salvation. How unsearchable are the heights and depths of this stupendous mystery!]
2.
It opens to us the most glorious privileges and blessings
[What on earth can be compared with these blessings? Contemplate the grace of Christ, by which the dead are quickened, the vile are sanctified, the weak are made victorious. As for the love of God, say, ye glorified saints, what that means; or, ye damned spirits, who know it only by your hopeless bereavement. And who can declare what the communion of the Holy Ghost is, when the taste of it creates a very heaven upon earth? Would to God, that the words so often, and so carelessly repeated by us, were more deeply considered, and more richly experienced!]
Learn then from hence,
1.
The proper object of a Christians ambition
[Earthly honours and carnal pleasures are unworthy of his pursuit; he should be satisfied with nothing but the full attainment of these blessings.]
2.
The benefit of fervent prayer
[We may ask the smallest things of man, and be disappointed of our hope: we may ask all that the blessed Trinity can give us, without fear of disappointment [Note: Psa 81:10.].]
3.
The misery of those who are careless about religion
[These blessings will not be bestowed unless we seek them; and, if we possess them not, we are poor indeed: if we die before we have attained them, it were better for us that we had never been born.]
END OF VOL. XVI.
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
(14) The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.
Here, like another Solomon, the Apostle comes to the conclusion of the whole matter, Ecc 12:13 . And, as Aaron, was commanded of God on this wise to bless the people; so Paul, Num 6:22 , to the end. Reader! take a leisurely survey of the wonderful expressions herein contained. In baptism, at the first introduction to the Church of Christ, no sooner brought from the Adam-nature of sin, and brought into the Portal of life in Christ, but we are baptized into the joint name of the Holy Three, agreeably to our Lord’s appointment, Mat 28:19-20 . And all along the pilgrimage way in Christ, the Church is blessed in the joint name, and refreshed, comforted, and strengthened in the joint blessing of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost! Oh! how blessed are the people thus blessed, who know the joyful sound, and walk in the light of the Lord s countenance!
I stay not in this place to enter into a particular and critical enquiry, concerning the difference (if any here intended) between the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God; and the communion of the Holy Ghost. I rather accept the sweet expressions, as altogether intended to convey to the Church everything that is blessed, and lovely, and loving. Neither do I desire to do more than merely to notice, at this time, the order in which these distinct blessings from the glorious Persons are spoken of. First, of God the Son; next, the Father; and next, God the Holy Ghost, See 1Pe 1:2 . But I would beg to ask the Reader, or rather, I would beg of him to ask himself, whether by what is said of the communion of the Holy Ghost, is not implied conversation? The Reader should be told, that the word, which in this passage is rendered communion, is the same word, as in 1Jn 1:3 , is rendered fellowship. And is not fellowship or communion, conversation, partnership, intimacy, familiarity? And if so, how sweetly doth this verse preach to the Church, of the Person, as well as the love, of God the Holy Ghost? And while preaching of his Person, how sweetly also doth it relate to us of his love, and his delight in holding communion with his people? So that, were I to say by letter, or by word of mouth, as Paul here wrote to the Church, of my prayer to God, that the Church might have the communion of the Holy Ghost; it is in effect, saying, I pray that God the Holy Ghost may sweetly and graciously converse with you, talk with you, commune with you, in all, his manifestations and love to the Church. Paul certainly had such views of the Holy Ghost; for, in his Epistle to the Philippians, he makes the fellowship of the Spirit, and the consolations of Christ, as one and the same, and arguments of the same weight, to enforce what he was going to say to them, Phi 2:1 . And how doth Jesus, our Jesus, personally make sweet his consolations to us, but by his visits and conversation? And is not the Spirit’s fellowship made known the same way? Rev 3:20 . And are we not called upon to hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches, Rev 3:22 . Oh! for grace to set our Amen to all the truths of our God, while our God so graciously sets His!
REFLECTIONS
My soul! my Reader! let us both pause, and ponder well the sacred and sweet contents of this closing chapter of the Apostle. It opens with the assurances of two or three witnesses establishing every word. An, you and I, have the Three heavenly witnesses bearing record, that eternal life is in God’s Son. And the chapter ends with the blessings of those heavenly witnesses, in their grace, and love, and communion with the Church while upon earth; thus confirming the whole in personal proof. Reader! what say you to such decided records, to the truth as it is in Jesus. Oh! for grace, seeing we are encompassed with such witnesses, to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith!
Farewell Paul! farewell for the present, while we thank thee, as the Lord’s servant and minister, for those labors of love, with which, not only the Church at Corinth were blessed, but the Church of God, in all ages since, have been benefited, under the teaching of the Almighty Author of all scripture, God the Holy Ghost. Oh! for ministers of the Spirit, and not of the letter, and the faithful in every true Church of Jesus to be taught from those holy scriptures, by the continual unction of the Holy One, and to know all things? May it be the one language of the whole Church of God, in the common salutation of all saints: Brethren! the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.
Amen.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. << The second epistle to the Corinthians was written from Philippi, a city of Macedonia, by Titus and Lucas.>>
Ver. 14. The grace of our Lord ] A friendly valediction or fatherly benediction.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: 2Co 13:14
14The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.
2Co 13:14 Paul always closes his letters in a prayer or benediction, but this one is unique. It combines three aspects of God’s character with the three persons of the Trinity. It is also unusual that Jesus is mentioned first. For the full notes on “Trinity” see the Special Topic at 1Co 2:10.
The three aspects of God: grace, love, and fellowship, are for “all” believers at Corinth. This is a crucial part of the prayer. Paul wants to restore unity among believers yet recognize and reject false believers.
Paul used a scribe to write his letters, but probably took the pen himself to write the last prayer personally (cf. 2Th 3:17). Paul loved this church!
“the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” See Special Topics at 1Co 1:9; 1Co 12:11.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
grace. Greek. charis. App-184. Compare 2Co 8:9, 2Th 1:12. 1Ti 1:14. 2Ti 2:1.
communion = fellowship. Greek. koinenia, as 1Co 1:9.
Ghost = Spirit. App-101.
Note the order in this benediction.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
2Co 13:14
2Co 13:14
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,-[Paul said to the Corinthians: Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich. (2Co 8:9). His grace was a devotion to the good of man which knew no thought for self, which counted no sacrifice too great to attain it, not even the death of the cross. Grace, then, is an attribute of God seen in Jesus Christ who died for man. God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8). It was by the grace of God that Jesus tasted death for every man, and it is to the same grace every man owes his salvation. It begins in grace, is continued in grace, and perfected in grace. But grace passes from an attribute of the divine character to an active energy in the soul. At the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need (Heb 4:16). The heart is established by grace (Heb 13:9), and by grace offer service well-pleasing to God (Heb 12:28). It is in the grace that is in Christ Jesus that we find our strength, and we are assured of its sufficiency for endurance as well as for service. My grace is sufficient for thee. (2Co 12:9). We are commanded to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (2Pe 3:18). These passages all speak of the divine influence in the soul as the operation of grace, and regard that which has its source in the grace of God as the working power of salvation. Grace pardons the guilty, restores the fallen, delivers the captive, sanctifies the sinner, sustains and supports the believer.]
and the love of God,-[The fountain from which grace flows is the love of the Father, for it is said: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning. (Jas 1:17). This love for man becomes through faith and obedience the joyful sense of comfort that we are his children, and that one day we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is. (1Jn 5:2).]
and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.-The fellowship or companionship which the Spirit of the Lord (2Co 3:17-18) makes possible for Christians to have with God, with Christ, and with his fellow Christians; hence, Christian fellowship. The unity of the Spirit (Eph 4:3) is the unity of fellowship which binds the church as the body of Christ.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The Apostolic Benediction
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.2Co 13:14.
1. Such is the blessing with which the Apostle concludes his Second Epistle to the Church at Corinth. It is the longest and fullest of all the salutations which he was accustomed to use, each of which was by his own appointment to be the token that the letter in which it occurred came from him. This we have expressly stated to us in one of the earliest of the Epistles of St. Paul. It was the custom for the author to employ a clerk, or writing servant, who copied down the words as they were uttered, and who at times was permitted himself to send a message in the letter of his master. Such a servant was Tertius, who, in the sixteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans and the twenty-second verse, tells us that he wrote the letter: I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord. But though St. Paul dictated his Epistles to secretaries, yet he always added the salutation with his own hand. Hear his own words as given in his earliest Epistle but one (the second to the Thessalonians): The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write. And upon examination of the thirteen Epistles to which the name of St. Paul is prefixedas well as that to the Hebrews (which has in it many characteristic Pauline phrases)we find that they all contain near their conclusionwith some slight verbal variationsthe expression, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. During St. Pauls lifetime this blessing appears to have been considered pre-eminently his. After his death we find it employed by St. John to conclude the Revelationas the final salutation and blessing which the Holy Spirit inspired him to give to the Church of Christ through all ages.
2. St. Paul sets before us in these words the substance of Gods salvation, as it may be enjoyed upon the earth by saved men. All salvation, as it is progressively experienced on this earth, is comprehended in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost. All this the Apostle solemnly sought of God for the Corinthian Church, and solemnly commended to their faith by way of benediction. He takes us to a greater rock than that of Horeb, and, touching it with his rod, calls on the water to pour itself out, not in one channel, but in a threefold course and with a threefold fulness. All heaven is in this wondrous blessing; all Godhead is here, with the infinite and everlasting stores of Father, Son, and Spirit.
The Benediction of the New Covenant marks a great advance upon that of the Old. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel; ye shall say unto them, The Lord bless thee and keep thee: The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. So shall they put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them. In that Name put upon the children of Israel everything is omitted that makes the Name of God distinctively Christian. There is no mention of the Divine Fatherhood, the Divine Son, or the Divine Spirit. Neither is there any mention of the love of God, the grace of Christ, or the communion of the Holy Ghost. It conveys no sense of nearness, but gives the impression that God is remote, transcendental, and majestic, who graciously condescends to bless Israel His people. The Christian Benediction brings God near in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost.1 [Note: S. Chadwick, Humanity and God, 337.]
3. The Christian revelation comes to us through Jesus Christ. The communication of the truth concerning God is no longer confined to the prompting of mens minds, but is revealed in the Person of the Son of God. He came to reveal the Father, and declared that only He could reveal Him. At the close of His ministry He claimed to have accomplished His Mission. He said to Philip, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and to God He said, I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do I manifested thy name and I made known unto them thy name. That manifestation involves a Trinity of Persons in the one God. The word Trinity is not found in the Scriptures, nor is the doctrine of the Trinity formally stated. The Scriptures do not systematize doctrine; they furnish data and leave the work of systematizing to others. But the Trinity lies at the foundation of all New Testament teaching. Jesus claimed to be equal with God, and spoke of the Spirit as Personal and Divine, and yet there are not three Gods, but one. The Apostles everywhere proclaim this doctrine, and recognize the threefold distinction in the Persons of the one God. The equal Deity of the Son and Spirit with the Father is the mystery and the glory of the Gospel they preach.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. In these words St. Paul has completely transcended the fundamental conception of his nation. He has given utterance to a thought which he never could have derived from any mythical imagination suggested by his Jewish nationality. The fundamental idea of Judaism, while it remained untouched by Gentile influences, was the unity of God; He was the self-existent, incommunicable Jehovah. It is true that, as Judaism came into contact with the Hellenic spirit, there began to appear a break in its rigid conception of the Divine unity; and the ideas of the Word and Wisdom of God came to stand for separate manifestations of the life of God. Men began to see distinctions in that essence which they had hitherto believed to be an inseparable unity. But even in its later stages, Judaism was true to itself. It never would have occurred to the Jewish mind that an individual man, who had lived an actual life in history, could be made partaker of the essential nature of the Deity. We may admit, though it is very questionable, that the Logos of Philo was a personal being, dwelling in the heart of the Divine life; but, however personal he may have been, he was not a man who had ever lived in history. Philo himself did not offer him to the world as an actual historical personage, but, at best, only as an ideal personality who had dwelt for ever behind the veil of history.
Here, however, is a conception of St. Paul which he evidently shares with the Christian community, and in which we see an essential revolt from Judaism in all its forms. It is not simply that the unity has become a trinity; that might be accounted for on principles of historical development. But the new point in relation to Judaism consists in this: one of the persons of the Trinity is a man who had actually lived on earth, a son of Adam, a member of that Jewish race which had always emphasized the immeasurable nature of the distance which separates the creature from the Creator. Beside the great Jehovah whom Judaism had feared to name, and beside that Divine Spirit whose workings had been mysterious even to the prophets whom it inspired, St. Paul is not afraid to place the name of the historical Jesus; he is not even afraid to mention His name first of the three. We have grown so familiar with the rhythm of the formula that we are apt to forget the paradox it must have involved to every Jewish mind. Before the burning blaze of the Divine purity even the Lawgiver had been commanded to put the shoes from off his feet, and remember his unworthiness to stand on holy ground. Here is a man who five-and-twenty years before had been seen going in and out amongst his fellow-beings, sharing in their common toil, wearing their human frailty, walking their daily course of suffering and duty; yet this man, at the close of these five-and-twenty years, is spoken of by one of the leading Apostles of the primitive Church in the same breath with the eternal Jehovah and the life of the Divine Spirit; and spoken of in a way which shows the belief of that Apostle to have been an article of faith in the community amongst whom he laboured. The paradox is only another proof how boundless must have been the impression produced by the life of the Christian Founder, and how impossible it is to account for the construction of that life on any mythical principle of New Testament interpretation.1 [Note: G. Matheson.]
4. In this threefold benediction the Apostle places the grace of Christ before the love of God. Why does he do this? The explanation is found in the fact that this is not a doxology, not primarily a confession of faith, but a benediction. A doxology is an ascription of praise; a benediction is a word of blessing. One ascends from the heart of man to God, the other descends from God to man. Consequently the benediction approaches the subject not from the standpoint of theology, but from that of experience. It is not concerned with definition, nor does it contemplate the glory of God in the absoluteness of His Deity, but it sets Him forth as He is realized in the soul. The process is in this order. We come to the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, and the Spirit is the gift of both the Father and the Son. It is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we come to the knowledge of the love of God, and it is by grace and love that we enter into the life of communion with the Holy Ghost. No other order is possible. To sinful men there can be no love apart from grace, and fellowship is impossible without love. God is always revealed as He is involved in His relation to the world and the human race, and here He is revealed as He becomes known to the soul in the process of salvation through faith in His name.
Which is first, the door or the housefirst, that is, when we enter into the house? If God has a great mansion of love, He must provide a door to it, or we shall never get in. Now grace is the door into love. If God has a heart of love in the midst of all His immense activity, He must show it to our hearts, or else we should never be able to trust Him in the view of all His actions; and therefore though a natural man, which commonly means a rough, unthinking fellow, may have come without sense of his sins and wants, to talk a little of the love of God, in a poor way it is true, and might wish the love of God to be placed first; the spiritual man, as a thoughtful man, can see that grace must be placed first, because a special favour is in its effect upon our character like a door which admits us into the great common, permanent, public favour of God; he will see that, unless God reveal to us His heart in His intimate kindness to our own, we shall never be able to feel quiet confidence when we look forth into the immensity of His universe.1 [Note: T. T. Lynch, Three Months Ministry, 319.]
5. The first Christians had a threefold experience of God, and they needed three Names to give it adequate expression. They knew that God had come to them in the perfect life of their Master; that Jesus Christ had lifted them up into a measure of the same consciousness of God as Father in which He Himself had always lived; and that God was reproducing His own life in their regenerate hearts. So they spoke of God as Son and Father and Holy Spirit. Nothing less would fully express what He had become to them.
What they used was the language of religion, and not the language of metaphysical speculation about the mystery of the Divine nature. They never attempted to define in accurate and systematic terms things that have abounding reality for the loving heart, the surrendered will, and the illumined eye, but which cannot be adequately presented to the logical intellect. It was not the words they cared about, but the meaning that lay behind the words; and this meaning could, even by very imperfect speech, be conveyed to others who had been brought into the same experience as themselves. They could express the nature of God in terms of their own hearts experience and in no other; and speaking in terms of experience they could not do justice to that which God was for them with fewer than these three Names. All of them would have responded with full hearts to St. Pauls threefold benediction; the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you. Now I do not know precisely what sense is attached in the English public mind to those expressions. But what I have to tell you positively is that the three things do actually exist, and can be known if you care to know them, and possessed if you care to possess them. First, by simply obeying the orders of the Founder of your religion, all grace, graciousness, or beauty and favour of gentle life, will be given to you in mind and body, in work and in rest. The Grace of Christ exists and can be had if you will. Secondly, as you know more and more of the created world, you will find that the true will of its Maker is that its creatures should be happy;that He has made everything beautiful in its time and its place, and that it is chiefly by the fault of men, when they are allowed the liberty of thwarting His laws, that Creation groans or travails in pain. The Love of God exists, and you may see it, and live in it if you will. Lastly, a Spirit does actually exist which teaches the ant her path, the bird her building, and men, in an instinctive and marvellous way, whatever lovely arts and noble deeds are possible to them. Without it you can do no good thing. To the grief of it you can do many bad ones. In the possession of it is your peace and your power.1 [Note: Ruskin, Lectures on Art, 125 (Works, xx. 115).]
I
The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
What is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? St. Paul said to the Corinthians that they knew it. Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich. The grace of Christ, that which was supreme in Him, which was His distinction and has made Him the type of perfect life, the example of salvation, to all mankind, was His complete devotion to the welfare of those with whom He came into contact. His grace was a devotion to the good of man which knew no thought for self, which counted no sacrifice too great to attain it, not even the death of the cross.
1. Grace, then, is first an attribute of God seen in Jesus Christ. God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Redemption originated in that disposition of the Divine mind. It was by the grace of God that Jesus Christ tasted death for every man, and it is to the same grace that every man owes his salvation. It begins in grace, is continued in grace, and is perfected in grace. At no stage is it of works; it is a gift of God, the outflowing of His grace.
Dr. Pierson, when a young man, was never spoiled with an oversupply of spending money, for while his parents were thrifty they had a large family and his father was not in a position to supply all his boys needs, much less his luxuries. He had, however, a wealthy uncle who one day asked Arthur if he was in need of money. When the young man candidly admitted that he was, the uncle took out a blank card and wrote an order to his cashier: Give the bearer, Arthur T. Pierson, as much money as he wants and charge to my account. John Gray. The boy took his uncle at his word, drew as much money as he needed and repaid it to the cashier as soon as he was able. The uncle never asked how much he drew nor when he returned it. In commenting on this incident in later years Dr. Pierson said: How like Gods unbounded grace is the promise Ask what thou wilt. How rich we are when God is our banker! It is not our name or account that makes our request honoured, but the name of Him who endorses itWhatsoever ye shall ask in my Name. 1 [Note: Delavan L. Pierson, Arthur T. Pierson, 37.]
2. But grace passes from an attribute of the Divine character to an active energy in the soul. At the throne of grace we find grace to help us in time of need. The heart is stablished by grace, and by grace we may offer service well-pleasing to God. It is in the grace that is in Christ Jesus that we find our strength, and we are assured of its sufficiency for endurance as well as for service, My grace is sufficient for thee. We are commanded to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. These passages all speak of the Divine influence in the soul as the operation of grace, and regard that which has its source in the grace of God as the working power of salvation. Grace pardons the guilty, restores the fallen, delivers the captive, sanctifies the sinner, sustains and perfects the believer.
Lord, with what courage and delight
I doe each thing,
When Thy least breath sustaines my wing!
I shine and move
Like those above,
And with much gladnesse
Quitting sadnesse,
Make me faire days of every night.1 [Note: Henry Vaughan.]
3. Finally, grace is always associated with our Lord Jesus Christ. For it comes to us only by Jesus Christ, being manifested in His work for us and then in His treatment of us. Graceseen in that unspeakable renunciation when He laid aside all that was to be prized, and esteemed it but as something to be surrendered for mans redemption. Graceseen in His descent, in His life, in His teaching, and in His death. Gracesinging its sweetest strain in the words, Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Graceabounding where sin abounded, and seen at its loveliest in His treatment of poor sinners. By grace ye are saved. But not only does the Apostle pray that such experience of grace might be theirs and ours; there is deeper depth in his desire than that. These words make clear the fact that we may know not only the grace which came by Jesus Christ, but the very grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not only the grace which imputes His righteousness to us, so that we stand uncondemned before a holy God, but the grace which imparts His very life, so that we walk undefiled before an unholy world. The salvation of God is not merely human life carried up to the highest possible height of development; it is rather the Divine life carried down to the lowest possible level of condescension. For He Himself who is all grace dwells with him that is of a humble and contrite spirit. May this wonderful grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, sufficient for every need, be with you, prays the Apostle, and may it lead you into a knowledge of the love of God.
It was at this convention at Indianapolis that he uttered those pithy sayings: The law says, Do, grace says, Done; the law says, Do and live, grace says, Live and do; the Gospel says to the sinner, Come, it says to the Christian, Go. These sayings soon found an echo in every Association hall in the land. They could readily be expanded into volumes; and they formed a large part of the basis of what in after years was Mr. Moodys working theology.1 [Note: W. R. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody, 407.]
Had I the grace to win the grace
Of some old man in lore complete,
My face would worship at his face,
And I sit lowly at his feet.
Had I the grace to win the grace
Of childhood, loving, shy, apart,
The child should find a nearer place,
And teach me resting on my heart.
Had I the grace to win the grace
Of maiden living all above,
My soul would trample down the base,
That she might have a man to love.
A grace I had no grace to win
Knocks now at my half open door:
Ah, Lord of glory, come thou in!
Thy grace divine is all, and more.2 [Note: George MacDonald, Organ Songs (Poetical Works, i. 312).]
II
The Love of God
1. However wide the scope of the grace of Christ, and however precious the blessings which it comprehends, the Apostle, as we see, does not rest in this alone, but proceeds from it to the love of God. And indeed this is, doctrinally and practically, the constant issue of the grace of Christit leads on to the love of the Father. There is an erroneous tendency in some mens minds to go no further in their thoughts of salvation than the person of Christ and the grace of Christ. All but this is to them vague and, one might say, almost unreal. But such views are not only defective, and dangerously so; they are also necessarily erroneous. Neither Christs Person nor His grace can be understood aright unless He be viewed as sent by the Father, and as the way to the Father. Accordingly, in the text the Apostle immediately reaches out from the grace of Christ to the love of God.
The first clause of the Lords Prayer, of course rightly explained, gives us the ground of what is surely a mighty part of the Gospelits first and great commandment, namely, that we have a Father whom we can love, and are required to love, and to desire to be with Him in Heaven, wherever that may be. And to declare that we have such a loving Father, whose mercy is over all His works, and whose will and law is so lovely and lovable that it is sweeter than honey, and more precious than gold, to those who can taste and see that the Lord is Goodthis, surely, is a most pleasant and glorious good message and spell to bring to men. Supposing this first article of the true Gospel agreed to, how would the blessing that closes the epistles of that Gospel become intelligible and living, instead of dark and dead: The grace of Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, the most tender word being that used of the Father!1 [Note: Ruskin, The Lords Prayer and the Church (Works, xxxiv. 196).]
2. The Apostle invokes the love, not of the Father but of God. He is contemplated in the completeness of His Being, and the Name is used which includes all relationships. The Christian revelation concerning Him is that He is Love. From everlasting to everlasting God is Love. Does not the fact of Eternal Love involve personal subjects and objects of love within the Godhead? Is it possible to conceive of love absolutely unrelated? It was Eternal Love that gave the gift of the Eternal Son. Love was behind grace, and grace made way for love. Christ brings us to the Father, and makes known to us the love of God. Love could not flow to us save through the grace of atonement; and the grace of atonement could not flow to us save through the love of God. Realization of the love of God in the redeeming work of grace brings the conscious experience of the love of God to the soul. The love of God is shed abroad in the heart through the Holy Ghost. The general love of God for the world becomes through faith a personal and conscious possession. The barriers of the soul disappear, all sense of distance and alienation is lost, every shrinking fear and haunting dread is cast out, and the heart finds its rest and home in God.
Susanna Wesley, this mother of nineteen childrenwho had to be their teacher and almost their bread-winner, as well as their motheryet resolutely spent one hour every morning and another every evening in prayer and meditation. In addition she generally stole another hour at noon for wholesome privacy, and was in the habit of writing down at such times her thoughts on great subjects. Many of these are still preserved, marked Morning, Noon, or Evening; and they have a certain loftiness of tone, a detachment from secular interests nothing less than amazing. Airs from other worlds seem to stir in them. Here is one example:
Evening.If to esteem and to have the highest reverence for Thee; if constantly and sincerely to acknowledge Thee, the supreme, the only desirable good, be to love Thee, I do love Thee. If comparatively to despise and undervalue all the world contains, which is esteemed great, or fair, or good; if earnestly and constantly to desire Thee, Thy favour, Thy acceptance, Thyself, rather than any or all things Thou hast created, be to love Thee, I do love Thee! If to rejoice in Thy essential majesty and glory; if to feel a vital joy oerspread and cheer the heart at each perception of Thy blessedness, at every thought that Thou art God; that all things are in Thy power; that there is none superior or equal to Thee, be to love Thee, I do love Thee!1 [Note: W. H. Fitchett, Wesley and his Century, 57.]
My eyes for beauty pine,
My soul for Godds grace:
No other care nor hope is mine,
To heaven I turn my face.
One splendour thence is shed
From all the stars above:
Tis named when Gods name is said,
Tis Love, tis heavenly Love.
And every gentle heart,
That burns with true desire,
Is lit from eyes that mirror part
Of that celestial fire.1 [Note: Robert Bridges.]
When I was in India, mine was the terrible experience of living through a famine. I do not know what the loss of life was in that famine, but I daresay a million human beings died directly or indirectly of hunger. If I take the deaths which were consequent upon it directly or indirectly, and not in British India only but in native states, it will not, I think, be an exaggeration to assert that the famine cost India a million of human lives. What is the thought which such a visitation suggests to a Christian? Is it not this? How can God, if He be All-loving, as He is, and All-powerful, suffer His children in such multitude to perish of hunger? But a Mohammedan will not, I think, entertain that cruel doubt. To him the famine appears solely as an imperious reason for bowing his head before the throne of God. And why? Because his God is a God of power and not of love; He is like some gigantic shadow of an earthly Sultan; and His power becomes only more awful and more admirable, when it asserts itself in vengeance against human sin. No Mohammedan would be staggered in his faith by such a calamity as the earthquake of Lisbon or the volcanic eruption in the island of Martinique. For the God of Islam is a God of power; but the God of Christianity is a God of love.2 [Note: Bishop Welldon, The School of Faith, 57.]
3. How then is Gods love made known?
(1) There is first of all the love we have spoken of already, the love that gave Jesus. Even that is the outcome and expression of another love, electing love. And then there is the love that draws the soul to Jesus Christ. All these are manifestations of the Fathers love, but it is not to these that the text alludes. These also are past and gone, they are historical. The Corinthians had already the love, and the knowledge and memory of it drew them one by one to Christ.
(2) Something more, therefore, must be meant when it is said The love of God be with you. What is it? There is no better explanation than that given by the Master Himself, speaking to His disciples. It is given in St. Johns Gospel. He says: Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends. You know the distinction between the servant and the friend: the servant is one thing and the master another. The servant is not taken into the masters confidence as the friend is supposed to be. The servant does not stand upon the same level as the master; the servant is supposed to be doing his work for his wages. Now, says Christ, that is not your relation to Me; I call you friends, I put you in a sense on a level with Myself; I give you My confidence; we stand or fall together, and you are not bound to Me simply by the prospect of the wages you will get. I love you and you love Me back again, and because you love Me you will keep My commandments; if you keep My commandments I will love you, and My Father will love you. That is a love of complacency, a love of delight and confidence.
Two or three years ago it was my duty to go to an elder of the church I serve, a most godly and faithful aged servant. An operation upon his eyes had been necessary, and the surgeon who performed it said to him: I want you to remember this: until these wounds are healed do not get into circumstances where a tear would be likely to come; it would spoil all my work. A few days after a telegram came to me: Kindly break the news to Mr. Walker that his son James is dead. It was a hard task under the circumstances, but I never saw grace come out more beautifully. He said: No one can judge what a great loss this is to me. James was not only my son, but he had become my friend. I talked with him about everything; he managed things for me; I had the fullest confidence in him. I have not merely lost a child; I have lost my best earthly friend. And to the credit of Gods grace I want to say that he did speak these words, and the tears were kept away.1 [Note: John Hall.]
III
The Communion of the Holy Ghost
Grace leads to love, and love opens the way to communion. As grace is through Jesus Christ and love is of God, so communion is with the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is the gift of both the Father and the Son, and is Himself the Giver of each. No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit; and if the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts, it is through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us. The Spirit is always revealed as the immediate Agent in the communication of God to the soul. It is He who convicts and converts, assures and inspires, equips and strengthens. In the Christian kingdom He is the Paraclete, who abides with us for ever. His abiding presence in the soul is the result of accepted grace and realized love. The end of redemption is realized in conscious communion with God through the Holy Ghost.
It was St. Pauls invariable habit to take the pen from his amanuensis at the close and write a parting salutation as his sign-manual. This was always a prayer that grace might be with his readers; the word was characteristic of his teaching, and it always occurs, even in the briefest form of the closing salutation. To understand the enlarged form of this salutation in 2 Corinthians we must recall the circumstances of the Corinthian Church. Party divisions were distracting it: all its manifold troubles St. Paul traces to this root. Unity must be restored: this is the first injunction of the first epistle (1Co 1:10), and the last injunction of the second (2Co 13:11). His remedy for disunion was his doctrine of the One Body, which he brought to bear on their sin of fornication, their difficulty about idol-meats, their jealousy as to spiritual gifts, their profanation of the Lords Supper. The second epistle opens with an outburst of relief at their return to obedience. Yet at the close he shows that his fears are still alive. What will he find when he comes? Strife, jealousy, wraths, factions, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults? If so, he warns them that he will not spare. He closes with exhortations to unity and peace, and promises the presence of the God of love and peace. Then his final salutation runs at first in its accustomed form, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ; but it is expanded to meet the occasion and its needs; the God of love suggests the addition the love of God, and the true sense of membership which the One Spirit gives to the One body is prayed for in the words the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. It is clear, then, that the genitive here is subjective and not objective; and this is confirmed by the parallel clauses. The grace which is of the Lord Jesus, and the love which is of God, are parallel with the fellowship which is of the Holy Spirit. The meaning in this place seems to decide the otherwise doubtful sense of Php 2:1, if there be any fellowship of the Spirit. Here, again, the context speaks of love and unity. So that it is most natural to interpret the phrase in both places of the sense of unity, membership or fellowship, which it is the peculiar work of the Holy Spirit to preserve in the Christian Church.1 [Note: J. Armitage Robinson, in Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, i. 460.]
1. What is Communion? It is partnership, the having something in common with another. It may be chiefly an outward thing, the sharing of a common business, or a common position, or a common home. But it may be chiefly an inward thing, the sharing of common tastes and sympathies, common joys and sorrows, common aims and aspirations, common feelings and hopes of any kind. In both cases there is the idea of a perfect oneness between two, so that what the one has the other has; what the one is the other is; what the one feels the other feels. It is not one giving and the other receiving; it is both giving and both receiving. It is not one speaking and the other listening; it is both speaking and both listening. It is not one loving and the other loved; it is both equally loving and both equally beloved. It is standing face to face, walking hand in hand, feeling that heart answers heart, seeing eye to eye.
One of the deepest facts of human life is mans perpetual need of intercourse and fellowship. A life of solitude is never satisfactory to a truly healthy man. He needs some fellowship. And for his whole satisfaction he needs various fellowshipwith those above him, on whom he depends; with those beside him, who are his equals; and with those below him, whom he helps. All three of these relationships furnish the life of a completely furnished man. And the essence of all these fellowships is something internal; it is not external. It is in spirit and sympathy, not in outward occupations. It is communion and not merely contact. This goes so far that where communion is perfect, where men are in real sympathy with one another, contact or outward intercourse may sometimes be absent.
Only goodness can see goodness, only spiritual minds can read spiritual, only faith can detect faith. Barnabas saw himself mirrored in Saul: onlyand this is the sign and sacrament of friendshipit was himself with self lost sight of. So long as we fear another, or so long as we look askance on him, we can have no communion with him. That only comes to friendliness, to love.2 [Note: R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 41.]
2. In partaking, then, of the Communion of the Holy Ghost, we share a common life bestowed upon us by the supreme Giver; we have fellowship one with another in love, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and the Son in their mutual love. God, through Christ, breathes into us His Spirit; this we receive, not alone, but conjointly one with another. God, through Christ, begins by imparting to our heart faith in His grace, and hope through His grace in all His goodness: and knowing and hoping in that, we abide in His love; together keep ourselves by the communion of the spirit in the love of God.
3. To those who seek so to walk there comes a constant fresh revelation of self, for the light is ever becoming brighter, and the clearer light of to-day shows up the small spots which yesterday were not discernible. Thus the communion of the Spirit leads inevitably to an increased self-loathing and distrust, and a more emphatic meaning each day in the testimony that in me dwelleth no good thing. But not only does the clearer light bring clearer self-knowledge. While it shows the sin, it also shines upon the blood, and in this blessed life of communion the light is not more powerful to reveal sin than the Blood is to cleanse it. Hence we must lay this fact to heart, that the communion of the Spirit is maintained only by our continual appropriation of the cleansing power of the precious blood. If we would walk with God, it must be in white raiment cleansed and kept clean by the Blood of the Lamb.
We cannot escape the dangers which abound in life, without the actual and continual help of God; let us then pray to Him for it continually. How can we pray to Him, without being with Him? How can we be with Him, but in thinking of Him often? And how can we have Him often in our thoughts, unless by a holy habit of thought which we should form? You will tell me that I am always saying the same thing: it is true, for this is the best and easiest method that I know: and as I use no other, I advise the whole world to it. We must know before we can love. In order to know God, we must often think of Him; and when we come to love Him we shall also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure! Ponder over this often, ponder it well.1 [Note: Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, 57.]
4. Moreover, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be hid. The fellowship of the Divine Spirit is a sharing in His Divine activity, in an unresting and untiring life, always moving, because motion and not rest is the essence of His naturealways moving with a blessing.
Is it not a great thing to know that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost cry to us for help from Heaven as they look down upon the masses in London? Whom shall We send, and who will go for Us? And then the great cry of humanity is: Whom wilt Thou send, and who will come to us? It is an awful thing to think that the Holy Trinity have bound themselvesat any rate, they have planned; God forbid I should say that God limits Himself to anythingto work through mens ministry and through womens ministry, on other men, women and childrenthat He uses in other words, human ministry in His work. And therefore to-day, among these thousands of people, if you listen, you hear the great cry come from the heart of the Godhead: Whom shall We send, and who will go for Us? And we are bound, if we believe in it, to answer in our little way: Here am I; send me. We cannot help it when we believe in it.1 [Note: A. F. W. Ingram, The Love of the Trinity, 54.]
East the forefront of habitations holy
Gleamed to Engedi, shone to Eneglaim:
Softly thereout and from thereunder slowly
Wandered the waters, and delayed, and came.
Then the great stream, which having seen he showeth,
Hid from the wise but manifest to him,
Flowed and arose, as when Euphrates floweth,
Rose from the ankles till a man might swim.
Even with so soft a surge and an increasing,
Drunk of the sand and thwarted of the clod,
Stilled and astir and checked and never-ceasing
Spreadeth the great wave of the grace of God;
Bears to the marishes and bitter places
Healing for hurt and for their poisons balm,
Isle after isle in infinite embraces
Floods and enfolds and fringes with the palm.2 [Note: F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.]
I often think I see as it were, the Lord, sitting up in Heaven, looking on our sanctuaries with their mock performances and sham religion, saying, Where are the tithes? The people pray, in some sort of way I suppose, for God to pour out His Spirit and save men; and yet I think I can see the Lord Jesus almost weeping over them, and in an agony saying, Why do you cry to Me to do what you ought to be doing yourself? Why dont you arise and do as I have told you? Why dont you send the gospel to every creature? What the Lord wants is that you shall go about the business to which He sets you, not asking for an easy post, nor grumbling at a hard one. Not saying, Lord, I never engaged to do this. Like the servant we sometimes get into our houses, all goes smoothly till the child gets the whooping-cough or the measles, then she comes to you and says, I didnt bargain for this. She is not a servant for sickness. She is only a servant for fine weather. Are there not multitudes who act just the same towards the Lord Jesus? All goes smoothly till persecution arises, then they say, Lord, this is too much. They say, good-bye, or, if they dont say good-bye, they pocket their profession, and betray Him in their hearts. The Lord is tired of this mockery, this farce, and He says, I will provoke you to jealousy by a people who are not a people, and will anger you with a foolish nation, seeing that you will not be My servants in truth, and that the great mass of you will not follow Me in holiness; I will raise up a people from the gutters and slums, gin-palaces and public-houses. I will make a people for Myself, who will follow Me all lengths. I want you to determine to be such a servant as this.1 [Note: The Life of Catherine Booth, ii. 417.]
IV
Be With You All
1. In what sense and to what end may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be said to be with us? It cannot mean less than a conscious personal Presence. The invocation cannot seek grace, love, and communion as gifts apart from the Persons, in whom alone they are to be found. Neither grace, love, nor communion can have any reality apart from personality. We cannot give love and withhold ourselves; there cannot be communion without mutual exchange. The prayer cannot be for anything less than for the conscious presence of God in the soul. Jesus teaches that the Father, Son, and Spirit are all equally present in the soul of the believer. Speaking of the Spirit He says, He abideth with you, and shall be in you; of Himself and the Father He saith, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. The Personality is neither lost nor confused. They come distinctly as Father, Son, and Spirit, but One Lord. Jesus dwells in man the source of all grace, God abides in him the spring and perfection of all love, and the Holy Spirit communes with him and energizes for all the will of God. Man is indwelt of the Triune God and dwells in Him. So, when we speak of the grace being with any, in the sense of the text, we mean that they are so the objects of it that it is continually working its effects in their person and history, and that the sense and assurance of it abides in their hearts.
The smile which ever beams from the face of Christ, the eternal love which fills the heart of God, and the Holy Spirit who fills the hearts of the children of God with consciousness of His eternal love, are to be our companions along the pilgrimage of life. And, if so, the sunshine of Christs smile, the unchanging love of God, and the guidance and strengthening of the Holy Spirit, will make our path, be it ever so rough, a path of peace and joy.1 [Note: J. A. Beet, A Commentary on St. Pauls Epistles to the Corinthians, 479.]
2 And the great glory of this benediction is its unrestricted comprehensivenessgrace, love, fellowship be with you all. For this assures our hearts in spite of past failure and shame, in spite of broken ideals and unfulfilled vows. No sin-created disability can stand before the victorious flow of Gods grace and love, and the one who has failed hitherto may yet realize the promise. Just as through the smallest and feeblest members of our bodies there flows the same life which animates the brain, so the life of our great Head flows through all His members. And we may well take heart afresh to appropriate anew this triad of blessings which is possible of realization by us all.
It is a broad and blessed prayer. It comes to any. It reaches all. It knows no limitation or barrier. It needs no title or merit or worth on the part of those it would benefit and bless. That glorious, shining sun in the heavens flings its splendour lavishly and freely away on every side. It is as welcome to a beggar as to a king. A miserable wretch may shiver in rags, and his fellows may grudge him the very ground he stands on, or the grave he shall soon lie down in; but he has only to lift his head and look upward, that he may have lighting on him the glory of Gods shining sun, as if it were all his own, and none had any right to share with him its benignity and blessedness. Even so, a sinnerany sinner in all this weary worldwith nothing but his sin and misery and awful needmay come, and welcome, to the grace and love and fellowship so sweetly and generously prayed for here.1 [Note: John Morgan, The Ministry of the, Holy Ghost, 321.]
The favour, the benediction of Christ, with which the Apostle always parts from his readers is, he now finally assures them, the nearest approach of God to man, the nearest approach of man to God. It is no less, on the one hand, than the expression of the Creators affection for His creatures; it is no less, on the other hand, than the union of the hearts and spirits of men with the Heart and Spirit of God. And this blessing he invokes, not on a few individuals, or on any one section of the Corinthian Church, but expressly on every portion and every individual of those with whom, throughout these two Epistles, he had so earnestly and so variously argued and contended. As in the First, so in the Second Epistle, but still more emphatically, as being here his very last words, his prayer was, that this happiness might be with them all.2 [Note: A. P. Stanley, The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 583.]
The Apostolic Benediction
Literature
Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, iv. 290.
Bishop (J. W.), The Christian Year, 277.
Bonar (H.), Light and Truth: Acts and Epistles, 410.
Brooks (P.), Sermons for the Principal Festivals and Fasts, 303.
Chadwick (S.), Humanity and God, 337.
Conwell (R. H.), How to Live the Christ Life, 72.
Grimley (H. N.), The Temple of Humanity, 106.
Grubb (E.), The Personality of God, 62.
Hatch (E.), Memorials, 327.
Holden (J. S.), Fulness of Life, 68.
Holden (J. S.), The Pre-eminent Lord, 235.
Horne (C. S.), The Doctrine of the Trinity.
Huntingdon (F. D.), Christ in the Christian Year: Trinity to Advent, 1.
Ingram (A. F. W.), The Love of the Trinity, 27, 47.
Joynt (R. C.), Liturgy and Life, 35.
Knight (G. H.), Divine Upliftings, 63.
Lynch (T. T.), Three Months Ministry, 313.
McKim (R. H.), The Gospel in the Christian Year, 331.
Morgan (J.), The Ministry of the Holy Ghost, 308.
Muspratt (W.), The Work and Power of the Holy Spirit, 190.
Myres (W. M.), Fragments that Remain, 50.
Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, iv. 98.
Roberts (W. P.), Our Prayer Book, 278.
Steel (T. H.), Sermons in Harrow School, 200.
Thom (J. H.), A Spiritual Faith, 78.
Vallings (J. F.), The Holy Spirit of Promise, 123.
Welldon (J. E. C.), The School of Faith, 49.
Wilberforce (B.), Following on to Know the Lord, 35.
Williams (T. R.), Gods Open Doors, 238.
Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 260 (J. T. Stannard); xxxiv. 56 (J. Hall); 1. 344 (A. Whyte); lxxxix. 131 (M. Barwell).
Churchmans Pulpit: Trinity Sunday, ix. 410 (W. M. Richardson), 415 (J. M. Wilson), 418 (J. L1. Davies).
Expositor, 2nd Ser., ii. 152 (G. Matheson).
Expository Times, xviii. 257 (B. Rainy).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
The grace: Num 6:23-27, Mat 28:19, Joh 1:16, Joh 1:17, Rom 1:7, Rom 16:20, Rom 16:24, 1Co 16:23, Rev 1:4, Rev 1:5
the love: Rom 5:5, Rom 8:39, Eph 6:23, 1Jo 3:16, Jud 1:21
the communion: Joh 4:10, Joh 4:14, Joh 7:38, Joh 14:15-17, Rom 8:9, Rom 8:14-17, 1Co 3:16, 1Co 6:19, 1Co 12:13, Gal 5:22, Eph 2:18, Eph 2:22, Eph 5:9, Phi 2:1, 1Jo 1:3, 1Jo 3:24
Amen: Mat 6:13, Mat 28:20, Rom 16:20, Rom 16:27, 1Co 14:16
Reciprocal: Lev 9:22 – his hand Jos 6:27 – the Lord 1Sa 3:19 – the Lord Psa 67:1 – God Psa 72:15 – prayer Joh 5:23 – all men Joh 14:26 – Holy Ghost Act 15:11 – that Act 15:40 – being Rom 15:33 – be 1Co 15:43 – in power 2Co 8:9 – the grace 2Co 13:11 – with Gal 1:3 – General Gal 6:18 – the grace Eph 2:5 – grace ye Eph 6:24 – Grace Phi 4:23 – General Col 4:18 – Grace 1Ti 1:14 – the grace 2Ti 4:22 – The Lord Phm 1:3 – General Heb 7:7 – the less 1Pe 1:2 – Grace 1Jo 5:7 – The Father Rev 22:21 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A THREEFOLD BENEDICTION
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost.
2Co 13:14
Upon this text I base what is to me the absolute inference, that in the mind of St. Paul, when he wrote his salutation to the Corinthian Church, Jesus Christ and God and the Holy Spirit were themselves the One Deity. But somebody may say, Why define God at all? Why not say, I believe in God, and there leave the words? My answer is that it is not enough to say, I believe in God. Immediately the question arises, What is the nature of the God in Whom you believe? Whatever definition you give of God, as you are finite and He is Infinite, it must transcend reason. Trinity is not a perfect definition of the Godhead; it is the highest definition to which human thought has yet risen, or to which, under the limitations of humanity, it is apparently capable of rising; and it was a remark of the philosopher Kant himself that the idea of a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead is not an inappropriate representation of Gods threefold relation to us as moral beings.
I. What is it to believe in God the Father?Whatever happens in the world has a cause, and for that cause there is another cause behind it. And so indefinitely. And as the mind pursues the catena of causes until it seems to lose itself in the immeasurable darkness of the past, it is led to conceive the cause of all causesthe great First Causethat is God. But the question is, Is that First Cause kind or unkind, a foe or a friend to the children of men? Men used to think He was a foe. They importuned Him with prayers, they cajoled Him with offerings. Jesus Christ revealed Him as a Friend, as a Father, Who loves every child of His with an intensity of which an earthly fathers love is but a shadow. And when we embrace His revelation, and hold to it in spite of all difficulties which the frowning aspect of nature may present, then it is that we believe in God the Fatherwe believe, as the text says, in the love of God.
II. What is it to believe in God the Son?But a father is a father still, although he be far off; only it is so hardis it not?when father and children are sundered, to keep alive the sense of their relation. What would you do, if you were far away, to make your children remember you still? I think you would do just what God has done: you would send them a letter. That is the Gospel. You would send them a likeness of yourself. That is the Incarnation. And oh! if we believeand who is there of us who does not believe?that Jesus Christ, the Divine Son, chose the lot of suffering and of death for our sake, when He might have summoned the holy angels to His rescue, and they would have sped on silver pinions at His bidding: that is to believe in God the Son; it is to know what the text calls the grace, the sympathy, the infinite pity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
III. And what is it to believe in God the Holy Spirit?Jesus Christ lived a human life, He died a human death; but His Church lives after Himit will live until He comes again in glory. And, according to His own promise, there has been since Pentecost a Holy Spirit of Truth working in the hearts of men. You can see His operation in the surging tide of moral responsibility as it sweeps away one landmark of evil after another in the process of the centuries. You can see it in your own hearts, in the strange Divine strength which comes to man now and again, lifting him above himself into the vision of the High and Holy One. And to believe in that power which is irresistible as it is eternal, to know its presence, its inspiration, its victory, is to believe in the communion of the Holy Spirit.
IV. This doctrine of the Trinity has moved the highest expressions of religious devotion.Will you now say that the doctrine of the Trinity possesses no meaning and no value for human life? You are sad at heart, perhaps. You feel your own weakness, your poor, fragile, dying life, in the presence of the universe. You could cry with the Breton mariner, Have pity on me, O God, for my bark is so frail, and Thine ocean so wide! Then, even then, you flee for refuge to the everlasting Fatherhood of God. Or you are lonely and bereaved, and you want a friend who will abide with you, and not fail in the hour when human friendships seem to vanish like the clouds of the morning. And then you cling to the Friend of all friends, Who loved you, and Who gave Himself for you. Or you are conscious of moral infirmity, and long for a power that will strengthen you in temptation, and give you courage when you are downcast, and make you stronger than the strong, and endow you with victory over others, and that rarer victory over yourself. Then you take heart again at the thought of the strong Spirit Who inspires you with the conscience and the might of Christ Himself.
Bishop Welldon.
Illustration
Trinity Sunday is, in a sense, the climax of the Christian year. And Trinity Sunday differs from all the other festivals of the Church as being commemorative, not of any event or anything that happened in the life of our Lord or in the founding of His Church, but of a belief, the sublime mysterious belief, that God, although essentially One, may yet be most justly, or at least inadequately, conceived by human intelligence as a perfect Trinity of Persons. The Church has always held that the authority for that belief is found in the final words of our Lord Himself. St. Matthew relates that when He was parting from the disciples who had been the companions of His earthly life He bade them go into all the world, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the Namenot the Names, but the Nameof the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. No words can be clearer than these.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE WORK OF THE TRINITY
Much may be said regarding the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, but may we not learn more practical lessons from considering the work which each one of the Three Persons is doing for us?
St. Paul in our text mentions the work of each Person.
I. The love of God.He is our Father. It is His love which creates, preserves, provides, and sends all blessings. The greatest evidence of His love seen in giving His only begotten Son.
II. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.Grace means favour, and it was the grace or favour of the Lord towards us which brought Him to earth, and which enabled Him to fulfil His work. His grace is unchanging. It is seen now in the comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith to all who truly turn to Him.
III. The communion of the Holy Ghost.Communion means fellowship, such as exists between two great friends. Do we know anything of this fellowship of the Holy Ghost? If so, it will sanctify us. He it is Who would have fellowship with us, Who puts good desires into our minds, awakens us to the sense of sin.
The Trinityand each Person thereinis working in us and for us. No wonder St. Paul commended the Corinthians to that great Power. May it be ours to know more of the love of God, the favour of the Lord Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost!
Illustration
I appeal in respect of the doctrine of the Trinity to the words of the text, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost. St. Paul writes these words to the Corinthian Church. His Epistles are only letters, just like yours and mine. But when you write a letter to a friend, what do you tell him? Do you tell him the things which you know and he knows? Those are the things which are most certain, but they are the very last things that you would tell your friend in a letter. And what is implied, what can be read as it were between the lines, is, if I may so say, truer, or at all events is more certain, than what is explicitly declared. And so, when St. Paul writes in the text, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, he attests more powerfully to my mind than by any express declaration that the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity was part of the known platform of the faith which belonged, and could not but belong, to his converts and himself. For you will observe that he sends them a threefold benediction. He sends it in the name of three Beings. One of these Beings is God, and yet in sending it he does not put God first, but he puts the Lord Jesus Christ first and the Holy Spirit last, and God between them. When names are thus conjoined in the same salutation or benediction, there is only one possible reasonand that is, that the names are equal in rank or dignity, or, as the great Creed puts it, In this Trinity none is afore or after other: none is greater or less than another.
(THIRD OUTLINE)
OUR FELLOWSHIP
Our Lords life, passion, death, and resurrection, together with the assurances He gave His Apostles of His perpetual presence with them, and of His future return, established them, and established all who accept their testimony, in a living and personal relation with the Saviour, and with His Spirit, of the deepest and most affecting character. That life, death, and resurrection revealed in the Divine nature the most intense personal life, in living participation with the moral struggles of men and women; and the words of the text bore to them, and should bear to us, this living meaning and personal message. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost were to them, and should be to us, the expression of the personal and present action of those Divine Persons. Ye know, says St. Paul, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye, through His poverty, might be made rich.
I. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is not only, nor in the first instance, that special aid which He bestows by His spiritual influences; it is, first, and above all, the grace, the personal grace, which condescended to our weakness, which suffered the consequences of our sins, which submitted to our violence and injustice, which endured to shed His blood in patience and agony.
II. The love of God is not only His general benevolence to all His children, but that love which endured that His only begotten Son, in Whom He was well pleased, should endure all his bitterness and misery, instead of being delivered from it by the just execution of the Divine vengeance upon His enemies and persecutors.
III. The communion of the Holy Ghost is the fellowship of our spirits with the Spirit of this gracious Lord, and of His loving and patient Father, the privilege of being admitted to their society in a similar sense to that in which the Apostles were admitted to it, and of thus living in the perpetual comfort of such love and grace as the Saviour showed in His passion.
IV. The reality and depth of our Christian life depend upon our living in the sense of this fellowship, and realising the Saviours work for us with a similar personal vividness to that in which, as we have seen, it was present to the minds of the Apostles. It is this which constitutes the preciousness of the Sacrament of the Holy Communion, considered as a remembrance of the death of Christ. It is, indeed, an important truth that that Holy Sacrament is not only a memorial of the Lords death and passionnot, as is sometimes said, a bare memorial; it is also the communion, to those who receive it aright, of the body and blood of Christ. But let not this precious and mysterious spiritual grace obscure to us how much is involved in the fact that such a memorial it is. Its importance in this respect would seem especially emphasised by the Saviours dying words, Do this in remembrance of Me. It is, in fact, in proportion as we remember Him, in proportion as we realise His personal action and suffering on our behalf, in proportion as His death and the shedding of His blood for our sakes, as for the sakes of all mankind, is present as a living reality to the eye of faith, that we are fitted to receive the further benefits of that Holy Sacrament. But let us thus remember Him, remember Him in His grace and love, in His intense desire for our righteousness and our deliverance from all evil, and in the bitter sacrifice He made for that end, and we shall then live, more and more, in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Dean Wace.
Illustration
You can only find the doctrine of salvation by grace in the New Testament. You may read the Veda of the Brahmins, and the Koran of the Mohammedans, and the Zend Avesta of the Parsees, and you will find that these so-called sacred books teach that salvation is to be purchased, that it is to be bought, and that the purchase-money is your own works. They all say, Multiply your prayers, your pious acts; for there is nothing but your own works, accumulated like capital at a bank, that can save you from eternal ruin. How different from all this is the teaching of the Gospel!
(FOURTH OUTLINE)
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
St. Paul summed up his prayers and hopes for his Corinthian friends in these well-known wordsa prayer that they might have the presence in their hearts of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, and the love of God the Father.
In very brief, the Christian teaching about God is that all that we, with our present very small powers, can know about that infinite and unseen Being, Whose existence we infer and Whom we call God, comes to us in one of three ways, or shall we say that there are three things which compel most men to think of Him, or that there are three ways in which He shows us something of what He is? These three ways in which God shows us something of what He must be are: What we call Nature, the existing world of things and men that we see; the Person of Jesus Christ; and the human heart, with its sense of duty and of sin, its aspirations, its goodness, and its needs.
I. Let us keep in mind that we of to-day have as much opportunity and power of learning about God from what we see in Nature as our fathers had.Indeed, we have more. Every year teaches us more about Nature, and therefore more about God. We need not see only with our fathers eyes; we should use our own. Let us for a moment try to forget that there are any books to tell us what God has put into the minds of other men and other nations to think about Him. Let us try to see and feel and think for ourselves. Picture yourself as standing in some fair spot of this earth of ours, and for the first time consciously contemplating all that surrounds youthe hills and trees and flowersthis miracle of matter and life; lift your eyes, as for the first time, to the heaven above us of sky and cloud and light. Stand still awhile; look at it all; think of it all. It is real, wonderful beyond words. Whence did it come? Who made it? What does it mean? What is this ceaseless stream of energy and life? And what are wemere atoms on this tiny globe of earththat we can, as it were, stand apart and survey it all, as the Creator might do? What are we? We ask those questionswhat? whence? whither? why? and so, no doubt, did the long past races of men, who have passed and left no sign; races who lived before words were written to preserve their thought, perhaps before spoken words could begin to express it. God did not speak to them directly, any more than He speaks to us. But He gave to them what He gives to ussome power of interpreting the great silences of Nature. For we, too, are a part of Nature, and we share in the mind of God Who created it. No nation has existed without coming to the conviction that, behind all we see, is some great Power, or Mind, or Person, which under various names they called God, and which, for lack of better imagery, they represented by bodily forms and symbols. This slow process of arriving at a conception of God is what we call by the great name of revelationthe gradual showing to men the God without them and within by the exercise of that human reason which is itself the manifestation of God in us. This is revelation, that has come and still comes to the world, the conviction that we and all Nature are the expression of some Spiritual Personality, infinitely great, inconceivable, in Whom we live, and move, and have our being.
II. But we learn about God in a second way. There is that marvellous figure in world-history, Jesus Christto Whom the eyes of men have turned for centuries, as they have turned to no one else; on Whom they now rest with ever-growing intensity of hope. What of Him? Have we any warrant besides the words of Christ Himself, reported in St. Johns Gospel, for believing that it is God Whom Christ reveals? Our Lord Himself makes answer, If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me. The answer is Yes. Christ reveals God to us. Just as Nature compels the Recognition of a Cause behind it, and we name the Cause God, so Christ compels us to think how He came to be. We can know much of Christ, and the world has learned by experience what He is, the Teacher, the Inspirer, the Healer of Sorrows, the Saviour from sin, the Radiator of Love. Knowing all this, and that there is none like Him, we can say, from our own experiences, that it can be nothing less than God Himself which is manifested in Christ. God is our name for the highest we can conceive, and this is what Christ manifests. The more we know of Christ the more certain are we that it is God, and nothing less than God, Whom Christ reveals. His first disciples learned Who He was in just the same way. They lived with Him, talked with Him, for years, and at last came the irresistible conclusion. Not till the end of His days on earth did He teach them by direct words. He let them see Him, and they learnt the lesson. He that hath seen Christ hath seen the Fatherthat is, hath seen all that the Father can so manifest. This is the Christian thought of Christ, and no one will dispute it. Everything that exists is some revelation of its origin, and Christ, Whom we know in history and in His words, is a revelation of His origin, God the Creator of all, and He has shown us some elements in that God which we could never find in star, and sun, and earth. What has He shown us? He has shown us that human nature contains much of God; that God is akin to man. He has shown us that that love, and mercy, and purity, and goodness are signs of God. He has shown us much more. He has shown that sin is not necessary, not an essential and permanent quality of human nature; that it is a fall, a huge mistake, a frightful aberration. There is another way of life. He is the Way. He has shown us in human life, perhaps all that we can yet understand of God. He has given us an ideal, a standard, a hope. He is a light shining in darkness; but the world will never forget it, and will reach Him at last. Can you conceive any revelation to men as this? Any such Saviour, such Redeemer of man as Christ, the first-fruits of man as He is meant to be?
III. And there is the third revelation, nearer still to each of us, appealing, not to our reason (as we look at the marvels that surround us), not to our knowledge of Christ, which is limited to those who have learned about Him, but a voice speaking in the heart to every child of man, a voice never quite unheard, though muffled, it may be, by ignorance and dullness, or overpowered by the roar of other voices and passions. This revelation, too, is as near to us as it ever was to saints and seers, to poets and philosophers of old. We have the help of all who have gone before. For this revelation we must look within and around us. Then, also, in the human heart is a light shining in darkness, though to some of us it is a darkness appalling in its mystery. We must not shut our eyes to the mystery of sin, the wickedness of human selfishness, of our jealousies, hatreds, and blind ambitions and greed. There is the survival of the brute in us all. It is awful. But there is also the light that shines amid it allthe light of God Himself in the human conscience. We, too, are a part of Gods creation; we are children of our Father in heaven, and we bear His likeness. In every one, if we look for it, is some fragrant of the Divine. If the sight of Nature convinces us of the infinity of the God Who created it, and the sight of Christ tells us Gods love and purpose for man, so our own conscience makes reponse to these sights, and witnesses that within us is a temple in which God may dwell. And there can be no greater stimulus to effort than this conviction that we may be, or may neglect and refuse to be, the instruments and channels of the supreme Will of God on earth. Here is the light that may yet guide this staggering, sinning world to its goalthe true Kingdom of God on earth. Here is a power that may uplift the world.
Rev. Canon J. M. Wilson.
Illustration
God is light: that was a grand revelation. God is righteous: that, too, is grand. But God is love: that is the grandest of all. It is the very Koh-i-noor of Gospel truth. And when God gave His Son, as Harrington Evans said, He gave an infinite proof of infinite Love. There are two very wonderful clauses in Joh 17:23-24. In Joh 17:24 Christ said to His Father, Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world, with a changeless, everlasting love. Now listen to the last clause of Joh 17:23 : Thou hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me; that is, God loves His people with the same everlasting, changeless Love with which He loves His Son.
(FIFTH OUTLINE)
THE APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION
In the offices of the Eastern Church this, the Apostolical Benediction, is used in a slightly expanded form, by making the second clause read, the love of God the Father. And there can be little doubt but that this small alteration brings out the actual meaning of the text very fully, and teaches us one of the lessons we have to learn about the crowning mystery of our faith, the Trinity in Unity. It shows us real and personal distinctions within the Godhead when it speaks to us of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as Each marked by His own special attribute; while the whole Three Persons, being One in substance, are invoked to dwell within the Body, the Church, and within each individual soul of her children.
I. The love of God the Father is manifested to us.
(a) In creation.
(b) In preservation.
(c) In the blessings of this life.
(d) In redemption.
Most beautifully is this brought out in the daily preface which ushers in the Sanctus in the Eastern Liturgy: Meet it is and right to hymn Thee, to bless Thee, to praise Thee, to thank Thee, to worship Thee in all places of Thy dominions. For Thou art God unspeakable, incomprehensible, always I AM, still I AM. Thou and Thy only-begotten Son and Thy Holy Spirit. Thou it was that from non-existence to existence broughtest us, and when we were fallen aside raisedst us again, and leftest naught undone to bring us to heaven and bestow on us Thy kingdom to come. For all these things we thank Thee and Thine only-begotten Son and Thy Holy Spirit for all that we know, and for all that we do not know, of the seen and the unseen benefits that are come upon us.
II. The grace of God the Son is manifested in all its fullness in the Incarnation: The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. We need this grace, for we have inherited a corrupted nature; it was after his fall that Adam begat a son in his own image. And therefore, since we cannot raise ourselves out of the spiritual death of the Fall, and the spiritual corruption which is its consequence, the grace of God the Son has found a way to lift us up again and to set our feet in the way of holiness; and that way is the Incarnation.
III. The communion of the Holy Ghost is the individual application of both the others to the soul of each child of God in order to his sanctification. All spiritual blessings, we are taught, come to us from God the Father, through God the Son, by God the Holy Ghost. The love of the Eternal Father is the never-failing Fountain of all gifts of grace to men, and these come through the Person of the Incarnate Son. In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead, and to His Godhead He has added the nature of man. He is indeed EmmanuelGod amongst usand has bridged over the chasm which sin has made, and made Himself the Channel of all grace.
Thus to the penitent soul full and free communion with God is restored, and obedience is made to be a delight. Thus, indeed, a lively hope is assured to us, and we are kept by the Spirit unto the inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us.
Rev. C. G. Browne.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
2Co 13:14. The three members of the Godhead, namely, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Spirit), are named in this verse. Grace means the favor of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God denotes the affection that He extends toward his faithful children. Communion is from the same word as fellowship in many passages. It means the partnership that all faithful disciples may enjoy with each other through the truth made known by the work of the Spirit. It also includes the blessing of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church (1Co 6:19). For the meaning of amen, see the comments at Rom 16:24,
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
2Co 13:14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.[1]
[1] The amen is not genuine here.
Remarkable it is that an Epistle written under a tempest of conflicting emotions, breathing in some places indignation, reproach, and sadness, at being driven to self-vindication against worthless detractors who should never have been listened tothat precisely this Epistle is the one that closes with the richest and most comprehensive of all the benedictions in the New Testament, the one which the Christian Church in every land and of every age has found, and will find as long as the world lasts, the most available for public use, as a close to its worship. Nor does it except any one class in that Church, but embraces all alike in one common benediction. For, with all his complaints, he regards them as right-hearted but unwary, imposed upon, like the Galatian churches, by unprincipled zealots for a Judaized Christianity, destructive of the whole grace of the Gospel.
Observe the characteristic features in the agency of each of the Persons in the Godhead as here assigned them. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ stands first, because it is by it (as Bengel says) that the love of God reaches us. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth; and of His grace have we all received, and grace for grace (Joh 1:14; Joh 1:16). Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich (2Co 8:9). In two of his Epistles our apostle deems it enough to invoke The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ on those he wrote, as summing up all he could wish for them (Gal 6:18; Phm 1:25); for had not his Lord said to himself, My grace is sufficient for thee? (2Co 12:8)and the love of Godthat deep and exhaustless Fountain whence flows all the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. For God is love (1Jn 4:8). And God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, etc. (Joh 3:16). See also Rom 5:8; 1Jn 4:9-10,and the communion of the Holy Ghostnot communion with the Spirit, but that communion with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (1Jn 1:3), as also with all that are His (Php 2:1), which through His special agency is alone produced and maintained. From this subjective character of the Spirits agency in the economy of grace, it probably arises that the objective departments in that economy, which are assigned by Divine arrangement to the Father and the Son, have almost exclusive prominence in the statements of the New Testament; although nothing can be more clear than that, according to New Testament teaching, the same Personality and Divinity which are the properties of the Father and the Son belong also to the Holy Spirit; that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ here invoked is conveyed into the souls of men, and works out in them the fruits of righteousness, only through the operation of the Holy Spirit; and that all the blessed interchanges of aspiration and love and consecration on our part, with all the fulness of love and grace in return on the part of the Father and the Son, are carried on exclusively through His special Agency. This is that communion of the Holy Ghost which is here invoked. And this is that which alone explains those wonderful words of our Lord Himself, in His great Intercessory Prayer,that they may all be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us (Joh 17:21). In view of this, the Fathersdriven, by assaults in every form on the doctrine of the Trinity, to meditate deeply on all the aspects of the subject which the New Testament presentsheld that the communion of the Holy Ghost in the work of redemption is but a reflection and reproduction of the same communion in the Godhead itself; in other words, that all the interchanges of ineffable love between the Father and the Son are carried on by the active Agency of the Holy Ghostthat He is the life, in short, of the Divine Life. It may be so; and the thought is certainly beautiful, and at least innocent. But the line between the secret things which belong unto the Lord our God, and the things which are revealed which belong unto us and to our children, is easily crossed and never with safety. On such a subject, therefore, speculation should be very reverent and cautious.
One word more. As Christs own parting command ere He ascended up where He was before, was that His disciples should be baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghostcomprehending all that the Father sent the Son to bring down and the Spirit to convey into the souls of fallen menso the benediction which closes this Epistle invokes all this upon all the saints that are in Christ Jesus; and the writer humbly echoes it.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Here are the highest blessings and benefits wished to, and prayed for, in behalf of the Corinthians, which they could possibly be made partakers of; namely, all that love which doth or can flow from the Father; all that grace which was purchased by the Son, and all that fellowship and communion with, and communication from the Holy Spirit, which might render them meet for the service of Christ on earth, and for the full fruition and final enjoyment of him in heaven.
Observe here, A full text for the holy Trinity: the names of the three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are here distinctly mentioned, as in the commission for, and in the form of baptism, Mat 28:19
Here the apostle calls the Father God, the Son Lord, and the Spirit the Holy Ghost, and he attributes love to the Father, grace to the Son, so fellowship to the Holy Ghost; so that we have no reason to doubt of the personality of either, or any of them. But when we consider how many at this day, with impudence and impunity, deny the divinity of the second, and the personality of the third person in the blessed Trinity, we have reason to pray, as our church has taught us for our own establishment, in the collect for Trinity-Sunday;
Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us they servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the divine Majesty, to worship the Unity; we beseech thee, that thou wouldst keep us stedfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest one God, world without end. Amen.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Verse 14 Paul would close by praying that they should receive all the blessings the Godhead
had to offer.
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. [This is the full apostolic benediction. It contains three blessings respectively derived from the three divine sources. It occurs nowhere else in the Scripture. Coming, as it does, after this, the most severe of letters, it reminds one that the greatest showers of blessing often follow the fiercest flashes of lightning and the mightiest reverberations of thunder. Thus closes Paul’s second epistle to the church at Corinth. It evidently furthered the good work set in motion by the first epistle and by Titus; for when Paul a little later wrote his letter to the Romans from Corinth, he was evidently in a calm and peaceful frame of mind. Also compare 2Co 10:15-16 and notes, with Rom 15:22-24 . Moreover, the collection for Jerusalem was taken, and was apparently generous, for Paul accompanied them who bore it to Jerusalem. Compare 1Co 16:4 and note, with Rom 16:18; Act 20:4]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
C. The benediction 13:14
This so-called "Trinitarian benediction" is one of the most widely quoted verses in the Pauline corpus. In each of the three phrases the genitive is subjective (i.e., the grace that comes from Jesus Christ, etc.).
Paul wished that God’s grace demonstrated in the work of Jesus Christ on Calvary might be the atmosphere in which all his readers lived their lives. Appreciation for that grace banishes self-assertiveness and self-seeking. He hoped that God’s love demonstrated in the Father’s work in sending Jesus Christ as our Savior might be the motivation for their lives. Thankfulness for His love subdues jealousy and strife. He longed that the fellowship that God’s Spirit produces among all the saved might unite their lives in fellowship with one another and with all believers. Gratefulness for that fellowship minimizes quarreling and factions.
Note the centrality of Jesus Christ’s cross work in Paul’s arrangement of these prayerful wishes. Note, too, the clear testimony to the Trinity that this verse provides. It is in the grace of Jesus Christ displayed in His substitute sacrifice (2Co 8:9) that we see God’s love (Rom 5:8), which the Spirit uses to produce fellowship (Eph 4:3).