by N. T. Wright
So once more he goes around the tracks. Moving on from Troas to Macedonia, retracing the journey he had made with such excitement just a few years before, he still cannot relax or rest. And always the nagging question: Has it, after all, been all in vain?
Then, suddenly, the clouds roll away and the sun comes out again. His beloved churches in Philippi and Thessalonica hadn’t been able to comfort him. Only one thing would do that. At last, it happened:
The God who comforts the downcast comforted us by the arrival of Titus, and not only by his arrival but in the comfort he had received from you, as he told us about your longing for us, your lamenting, and your enthusiasm for me personally.4
The news was good. The Corinthians were appalled to think how badly they had treated him, and they were falling over themselves to apologize. They were doing everything they could to put things right. The underlying problem had involved some actual wrongdoing (what this was, as we saw, it’s impossible now to tell), and they were keen to sort it all out. Their loyalty has been contested, but it has held firm. So Paul, having been downcast beyond measure as he waited for news, is now over the top in his celebration:
As a result, I was more inclined to celebrate; because, if I did make you sad by my letter, I don’t regret it; and, if I did regret it, it was because I saw that I made you sad for a while by what I had written. Anyway, I’m celebrating now, not because you were saddened, but because your sadness brought you to repentance. It was a sadness from God, you see, and it did you no harm at all on our account. . . .
The real celebration, though, on top of all our comfort, came because Titus was so overjoyed. You really did cheer him up and set his mind at rest. . . . I am celebrating the fact that I have confidence in you in everything.5
With that, he can get down to business in a very different frame of mind. The next two chapters are about the Jerusalem collection. The Macedonian churches have already sorted out their contribution, and it is remarkably substantial, considering their own suffering and poverty. Now it is Corinth’s turn. Paul is sending Titus back again, with two other companions (tantalizingly for us, he doesn’t say who they are). They are to instruct the Corinthians to have their contributions ready, so that there will be no embarrassment when Paul arrives.
Having mentioned the varieties of writing style in 2 Corinthians, we should note—as a measure of something about Paul’s personality—that chapters 8 and 9, the fund-raising section so to speak, are written in very labored and tortured Greek. I have myself done a small amount of church fund-raising, and I find it comforting that the awkwardness I have always felt in asking people for money, even for causes in which I passionately believed, appears similar to what Paul obviously felt in writing these chapters. A measure of this awkwardness is that at no point in thirty-nine verses does he mention the word “money” or anything close to it. He talks of “the grace” and “the deed,” “the service,” “your service in this ministry,” and of course “partnership,” koinōnia.
All of this sets the scene for us to look at the letter as a whole. As we have noticed, it moves jerkily between one theme and another. But the underlying topic is Paul’s own apostolic ministry. Whatever specific problems there had been, they stemmed from the Corinthians’ failure to understand what apostolic ministry really ought to be like. That failure, in turn, grew out of a shallow or inadequate view of the gospel itself. Having had his own ministry challenged at the deepest level, he addresses head on the question of what an apostle is and does. His answer focuses on the strange way in which the death of Jesus plays out in the work of the apostle. That is how the “ministry of reconciliation” will go forward, with the apostle as it were embodying the divine faithfulness, thereby demonstrating once more the way in which Paul is modeled upon the “servant” of Isaiah 49.6
In particular, Paul challenges any suggestion that he might need “official references” if he wanted to return to Corinth. “Look in the mirror,” he says. “You are our official reference!” The Corinthian church, as it stands, indwelt by the spirit, is “a letter from the Messiah, with us as the messengers.”7 This shows that they are indeed people of the renewed covenant promised in scripture, and this in turn shows that Paul’s apostleship was and is the real thing. Paul argues this point in chapter 3 by means of an extended comparison between Moses’s hearers and Paul’s own. Moses couldn’t speak plainly because his hearers’ hearts were hard, but Paul can and does speak plainly and boldly (to the Corinthians’ obvious discomfort), because their hearts have been transformed by the spirit.
This itself is clear enough. But Paul goes on to insist that the ministry he exercises is simply the extended ministry of the crucified and exalted Lord himself:
The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they won’t see the light of the gospel of the glory of the Messiah, who is God’s image. We don’t proclaim ourselves, you see, but Jesus the Messiah as Lord, and ourselves as your servants because of Jesus; because the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts, to produce the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus the Messiah.8
We are here very close to Paul’s words about Jesus in Colossians, and with the same effect: Jesus is the true Image of God, the genuine human who embodies in himself the loving purposes of God, purposes that involve the creator God himself launching his new creation, through the gospel of Jesus and the power of the spirit, in the hearts and lives of his people.
This brings Paul back to the truth that had been burned into him, painfully, over the previous months:
We have this treasure in earthenware pots, so that the extraordinary quality of the power may belong to God, not to us. We are under all kinds of pressure, but we are not crushed completely; we are at a loss, but not at our wits’ end; we are persecuted, but not abandoned; we are cast down, but not destroyed. We always carry the deadness of Jesus about in the body, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body.9
This leads in turn to further reflections on death and life, developing things Paul had said about the resurrection in the previous letter.
One point stands out of particular interest as we continue our quest to find out what drove him on. He still expects the return of Jesus, and with it the resurrection of the dead. But whereas in 1 Corinthians he had assumed he would be among those still alive at the time,10 he is now facing the prospect that he may well die before it all happens. This has been anticipated in Philippians11 and is now built into his thinking, no doubt as part of his having “received the death sentence” in Ephesus.12 His view of God’s future has not changed. What has shifted is his view of where he might fit into that future. But, however all that will work out, the coming resurrection with all that it entails is the platform on which Paul places one of his most characteristic and central statements of what his lifelong vocation really meant. This, in his own words, is what made him the person he was:
We must all appear before the judgment seat of the Messiah, so that each may receive what has been done through the body, whether good or bad.
So we know the fear of the Lord; and that’s why we are persuading people—but we are open to God, and open as well, I hope, to your consciences. We aren’t trying to recommend ourselves again! We are giving you a chance to be proud of us, to have something to say to those who take pride in appearances rather than in people’s hearts.
If we are beside ourselves, you see, it’s for God; and if we are in our right mind, it’s for you. For the Messiah’s love makes us press on. We have come to the conviction that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all in order that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised on their behalf.13
“The fear of the Lord” is a reverent fear; but there is also, and above all, love. A day of judgment is coming when all work will be assessed, but behind that, and motivating Paul far more deeply than anything else, was that sense of a personal love,
love for him, love through him. The love of which he spoke in his first letter (“the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”). The love that he saw at work now in Corinth and Ephesus, in Philippi and Thessalonica; the love that then became a rich bond with friends and fellow workers despite all disagreements and disappointments. The love that would, after all, hold strong despite everything. In and through it all, the new covenant in Messiah and spirit means new creation:
Thus, if anyone is in the Messiah, there is a new creation! Old things have gone, and look—everything has become new! It all comes from God. He reconciled us to himself through the Messiah, and he gave us the ministry of reconciliation.14
If the Corinthians had never understood what Paul was about before, they surely do now. He is not playing at being an apostle. He is not conforming his message or his methods to the social and cultural standards of any city or civilization. If people don’t like what they see, that is their problem; Jews demand signs, Greeks seek wisdom, and all they get is a crucified Messiah.
Yes, and a suffering apostle. This is the whole point, the theme that ties together everything else in 2 Corinthians, the theme that had been etched into Paul’s heart as well as his body by the last year or two even more than it had been already. Having stressed to the Corinthians that he doesn’t use rhetoric and simply tells it like it is, as he was warming to his theme he must have smiled darkly at the prospect of giving them a couple of volleys of verbal pyrotechnics. Here is the first:
We recommend ourselves as God’s servants: with much patience, with sufferings, difficulties, hardships, beatings, imprisonments, riots, hard work, sleepless nights, going without food, with purity, knowledge, great-heartedness, kindness, the holy spirit, genuine love, by speaking the truth, by God’s power, with weapons for God’s faithful work in left and right hand alike, through glory and shame, through slander and praise; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, yet very well known; as dying, and look—we are alive; as punished, yet not killed; as sad, yet always celebrating; as poor, yet bringing riches to many; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.15
And yet there is more. Now that Titus has met him and has assured him that the Corinthians are in a penitent and eager frame of mind, he relaxes. And this enables him, in the last chapters of the letter, to address a deeper problem that seems to have lain under some of the surface noise. There are some people, whether still in Corinth or still having an influence over the Corinthians, who have been lauding themselves, claiming some kind of superiority over Paul himself. They are Jews, that much is clear. But whether they are the kind of Jews who would insist on circumcision for Gentile converts we may doubt, since Paul nowhere here deploys any of the arguments he uses in Galatians and elsewhere against that position.
From what he says it appears that they have been “boasting” of their status, their achievements, their methods, and maybe other things as well. And they are angry because Paul refuses to dance to their tunes. He will not play their games. He had seen that problem coming a long time before, which is why, though he has accepted financial support from the churches of Macedonia in northern Greece, he has always refused such help from Corinth itself. He said this already in 1 Corinthians 9, and now he reemphasizes it in 2 Corinthians 11.16 This was, and is, his “boast”: that he has made the gospel what it really is, “free of charge.”17 And now he is himself accused of being standoffish, of not really loving them.18 Nobody will be able to “buy” him, to pay the piper and then call the tunes. Anyone who has had to deal with the complexities of church finances, especially in a community with wide differences of wealth, knows that the mixture of money and ministry can easily cause tension, especially where, underneath it all, there is a question of social status.
All this precipitates one of the finest and indeed funniest flights of rhetoric anywhere in the New Testament. After all the heartache earlier in the letter, in 2 Corinthians 11:16–12:10 Paul finally draws himself up to his full height.
To understand how this passage works and to get a new and sharp insight into how Paul’s mind and imagination themselves seem to have worked, we have to put ourselves into the world of a Roman colony like Corinth. Roman officials, in both Rome itself and the provinces, were expected to celebrate their achievements. As they looked forward to the end of their time in office, they would hope to carve, in stone or even marble, their list of achievements, their public works projects. That is what Augustus had done, spectacularly carving his list of achievements in huge letters on monuments all around the empire. The Roman equivalent of a curriculum vitae (remember that the Corinthians wanted fresh letters of recommendation for Paul) was called the cursus honorum, the “course of honors.” You would list your time as quaestor, your elevation to praetor. You would note the time when you had been in charge of the city waterworks or other important civic roles. Then, if you were fortunate, you would note the year when you served as consul. That remained, for most, the pinnacle of a political career, even under the empire, when everyone knew the consuls took second place to the emperor himself. Then you would note your service as proconsul, running a province. In addition, there was your army career: a list of campaigns fought, wounds, decorations received.
For a soldier there was a special honor. In the siege of a city, ladders were put up to get over the city wall. Since that was one of the most dangerous, indeed crazy, things to attempt, the first person over the wall in an attack (always supposing he survived) could claim as his prize the coveted Corona Muralis, the “Wall Crown.” But with several ladders going up simultaneously, it was hard to be sure who made it first. You might therefore have to claim this award on oath. It was the equivalent of the British Victoria Cross, the highest honor a soldier could achieve.
That is the kind of person the Corinthians were prepared to look up to. They would have been delighted with the “celebrity culture” in some parts of today’s Western church. That is what they were hoping Paul would be like, which is why they were so ashamed of his shabby presence, his awkward speaking manner, his blunt and direct teaching style. It speaks volumes for Paul as a person, for what 2 Corinthians is all about, and for what (he would have said) the gospel is all about, that the climax of the letter is a glorious parody of this whole world of imperial boasting, achievements, going over the wall, and everything else. He boasts of all the wrong things. Having warned them that he is going to be speaking like a complete fool, he launches in:
Are they servants of the Messiah?—I’m talking like a raving madman—I’m a better one. I’ve worked harder, been in prison more often, been beaten more times than I can count, and I’ve often been close to death. Five times I’ve had the Jewish beating, forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; I was adrift in the sea for a night and a day. I’ve been constantly traveling, facing dangers from rivers, dangers from brigands, dangers from my own people, dangers from foreigners, dangers in the town, dangers in the countryside, dangers at sea, dangers from false believers. I’ve toiled and labored, I’ve burned the candle at both ends, I’ve been hungry and thirsty, I’ve often gone without food altogether, I’ve been cold and naked.
Quite apart from all that, I have this daily pressure on me, my care for all the churches. Who is weak and I’m not weak? Who is offended without me burning with shame?
If I must boast, I will boast of my weaknesses. The God and father of the Lord Jesus, who is blessed forever, knows that I’m not lying: in Damascus, King Aretas, the local ruler, was guarding the city of Damascus so that he could capture me, but I was let down in a basket through a window and over the wall, and I escaped his clutches.19
“So there you have it. Here is my list of achievements,” he says. “Here is my curriculum vitae, my job application as an apostle! And, as the climax of it all, I declare on oath that when the going got tough, I was the first one over the wall running away.” We have to hope that by this point the great majority of those listening to the
letter in Corinth were at least smiling broadly. Here is a majestic piece of rhetoric in order to explain that rhetoric doesn’t matter (“I am no orator as Brutus is”). Here is an upside-down boasting list, a cursus pudorum, if you like, a “course of shame.”
Paul then continues in chapter 12 with his spiritual experiences, but he seems strangely reticent: “Someone . . . fourteen years ago . . . was snatched up to the third heaven . . . and heard . . . words . . . humans are not allowed to repeat.”20 It’s the same point. Yes, obviously Paul has had extraordinary experiences, but that isn’t the basis on which he stands before them as an apostle of the crucified Messiah. The main thing is that Paul, at the end of it all, received “a thorn in the flesh.” Speculation has been rife. Was it an illness? A particular physical weakness? A special nagging temptation that kept coming back to bite him? A sorrowful conscience about his former violent life or his bitter public row with Barnabas? He doesn’t say.
What he does say, and it’s worth more than all the actual information we could have, is what he had learned through that experience and particularly, we may suppose, through the entire horrible process of the confrontation in Corinth and the breakdown in Ephesus. “My grace is enough for you,” said the Lord. “My power comes to perfection in weakness.”21 Exactly what Paul needed to hear; exactly what the Corinthians did not want to hear. But hear it they must, because it comes at the end of the most powerful and personal letter Paul has written to date:
So I will be all the more pleased to boast of my weaknesses, so that the Messiah’s power may rest upon me. So I’m delighted when I’m weak, insulted, in difficulties, persecuted. and facing disasters, for the Messiah’s sake. When I’m weak, you see, then I am strong.22
