Twentieth Century New Testament - 29 - II Corinthians, Introduction and Chapters 1-5

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Second Letter to the Corinthians Introduction and Chapters one
through five from the twentieth century New Testament. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by J. A. Carter www dot authentic light dot org.

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The twentieth Century New Testament by a company of about
twenty scholars. The Second Letter to the Corinthians Introduction and
Chapters one through five. Introduction Saint Paul's second Letter to
the Corinthians, written probably during his stay in Macedonia in
the course of his third missionary journey about fifty five AD.

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In the brief period that seems to have intervened between
the writing of Saint Paul's two existing letters to the Corinthians,
the Apostle appears to have paid a second visit to
corinth of which no account has come down to us
Second Corinthians, Chapter twelve, verse fourteen and Chapter thirteen, verse one.
Apparently that visit failed of its object, and the reception
given to the Apostle was not such as he had

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the right to expect. It seems that Saint Paul returning
to Ephesus, wrote a strongly worded letter to his disloyal
Corinthian converts, and that this letter effected as he afterward
learned the purpose which the visit had failed to effect.
That letter is generally thought to have been lost, but
it has been suggested with some probability, that part of
it forms the last four chapters of this so called

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second Letter to the Corinthians. A few months later, a
riot instigated by Demetrius the Silversmith, drove the Apostle from
Ephesus Acts chapter nineteen, verse twenty and Second Corinthians, Chapter one,
verse eight. Traveling northwards, the Apostle went to the Troad
in the hope of meeting Titus, who had been sent,
possibly with the lost letter to corinth and of receiving

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from him some reassuring news as to the position of
matters in the Corinthian church. But Titus had not yet arrived,
and after waiting for him for some time in Vain,
Saint Paul keenly disappointed, Second Corinthians, chapter two, verse thirteen,
went on into Macedonia. There he met Titus at Philippi, and,
to the apostles great joy, Titus was able to report

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that the letter had been well received and promptly acted
upon by the majority of the Corinthian Christians, and that
they cherished a hearty affection for Saint Paul himself. On
the other hand, the Apostle was greatly distressed to learn
that there were members of the church who still stubbornly
refused to submit to his authority, and who attacked him
with cruel and persistent slander. This news brought by Titus

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may have been the occasion of the present letter. It
is an outburst of passionate feeling in which the Apostle
expresses his gratitude for the kindness and obedience manifested toward
him by the majority of the Church, and defends his
own personal character and apostolic authority against the unscrupulous attacks
of the minority. Chapter one to the Church of God

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in corinth and to all Christ's people throughout Greece, from
Paul and Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
and from Timothy, a brother. May God, our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ, bless you and give you peace.
Blessed is the God and Father of Jesus Christ, our Lord,
the all merciful Father, the God ever ready to console,

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who consoles us in all our troubles, so that we
may be able to console those who are in any
trouble with the consolation that we ourselves receive from Him.
It is true that we have our full share of
the sufferings of the Christ, but through the Christ, we
have also our full share of consolation. If we meet
with trouble, it is for the sake of your consolation

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and salvation. And if we find consolation, it is for
the sake of the consolation that you will experience when
you are called to endure the very sufferings that we
ourselves are enduring. And our hope for you remains unshaken.
We know that as you are sharing our sufferings, you
will also share our consolation. We want you, brothers to

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know that in the troubles which befell us in Roman Asia,
we were burdened altogether beyond our strength, so much so
that we even despaired of life. Indeed, we had the
presentiment that we must die, so that we might rely
not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
And from so imminent a death, God delivered us and
will deliver us again, for in him, we have placed

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our hopes of future deliverance, while you also help us
by your prayers. And then many lips will give thanks
on our behalf for the blessing granted us in answer
to many prayers. Indeed, our main ground for satisfaction is this.
Our conscience tells us that our conduct in the world,
and still more in our relations with you, was marked
by a purity of motive and a sincerity that were

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inspired by God and was based not on worldly policy,
but on the help of God. We never write anything
to you other than what you read in public and acknowledge,
and my hope is that you will acknowledge to the
very end, and indeed you have already partly acknowledged it
about us. That you have a right to be proud
of us, as we shall be proud of you on
the day of our Lord Jesus. With this conviction in

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my mind, I plan to come to see you first
so that your pleasure might be doubled, to visit you
both on my way to Macedonia, and to come to
you again on my return from Macedonia, and then to
get you to send me on my way into Judea.
As this was my plan where pray. Did I show
any fickleness of purpose? Or do you think that my
plans are formed on mere impulse? So that in the

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same breath I say yes and no. As God is true,
the message that we brought you does not waver between
yes and no. The Son of God Christ, Jesus, whom
we silas Timothy and I proclaimed among you, never wavered
between yes and no. With Him. It has always been
yes for many, as were the promises of God. In

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Christ is the yes that fulfills them. Therefore, through Christ again,
let the amen rie through us to the glory of God.
God who brings us with you into close union with Christ,
and who consecrated us, also set his seal upon us
and gave us His spirit in our hearts as a
pledge of future blessings. But as my life shall answer

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for it, I call God to witness that it was
to spare you that I deferred my visit to Corinth.
I do not mean that we are to dictate to
you with regard to your faith. On the contrary, we
work with you for your true happiness. Indeed, it is
through your faith that you are standing firm. Chapter two.
For my own sake, as well, I decided not to
pay you another painful visit. If it is I who

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cause you pain, why who is there to cheer me
except the very person whom I am paining. So I
wrote as I did, for fear that if I had come,
I should have been pained by those who ought to
have made me glad, For I felt sure that it
was true of you all that my joy was in
every case yours. Also. I wrote to you, in sore trouble,
and in distress of heart, and with many tears, not

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to give you pain, but to let you see how
intense a love I have for you. Now, whoever has
caused you the pain has not so much pained me
as he has to some extent not to be too
severe pain to every one of you. The man to
whom I refer has been sufficiently punished by the penalty
inflicted by the majority of you, so that now you
must take the opposite course and forgive and encourage him,

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or else he may be overwhelmed by the intensity of
his pain. So I entreat you to assure him of
your love. I had this further object also in what
I wrote, to ascertain whether you might be relied upon
to be obedient in everything. When you forgive a man anything,
I forgive him too. Indeed, for my part, whatever I
have forgiven, if I have had to forgive anything, I

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have forgiven for your sakes in the presence of Christ,
so as to prevent Satan from taking advantage of us,
for we are not ignorant of his devices. When I
went to the district round Tros to tell the good
news of the Christ, even though there was an opening
for serving the Master, I could get no peace of
mind because I failed to find Titus, my brother. So
I took leave of the people there and went on

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to Macedonia. All thanks to God, who, through our union
with the Christ, leads us in one continual triumph and
uses us to spread the sweet odor of the knowledge
of Him in every place. For we are the fragrance
of Christ, ascending to God, both among those who are
in their path of salvation and among those who are
in the path of ruin. To the latter, we are

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an odor which arises from death and tells of death
to the former, an odor which arises from life and
tells of life. But who is equal to such a task.
Unlike many people, we are not in the habit of
making profit out of God's message. But in all sincerity
and bearing God's commission, we speak before Him in union
with Christ. Chapter three. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again?

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Or are we like some who need letters of commendation
to you or from you? You, yourselves, are our letter,
a letter written on our hearts, and one which everybody
can read and understand. All can see that you are
a letter from Christ delivered by us, a letter written
not with ink, but with the spirit of the Living God,
not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. This, then,

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is the confidence in regard to God that we have
gained through the Christ. I do not mean that we
are fit to form any judgment by ourselves, as if
on our own authority. Our fitness comes from God, who
himself made us fit to be ministers of a new Covenant,
of which the substance is not a written law but
a spirit. For the written law means death, but the
spirit gives life. If the system of religion, which involved

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death embodied in a written law and engraved on stones,
began amidst such glory that the Israelites were unable to
gaze at the face of Moses on account of its glory,
though it was but a passing glory, will not the
religion that confers the spirit have still greater glory? For
if there was a glory in the religion that involved condemnation,
far greater is the glory of the rel religion that

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confers righteousness. Indeed, that which then had glory has lost
its glory because of the glory which surpasses it. And
if that which was to pass away was attended with glory,
far more will that which is to endure be surrounded
with glory. With such a hope as this we speak
with all plainness, unlike Moses, who covered his face with
a veil to prevent the Israelites from gazing at the

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disappearance of what was passing away, but their minds were
slow to learn. Indeed, to this very day, at the
public reading of the Old Covenant, the same veil remains unlifted.
Only for those who are in union with Christ does
it pass away. But even to this day, whenever Moses
is read, a veil lies on their hearts. Yet whenever

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a man turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
And the Lord is the Spirit. And where the Spirit
of the Lord is there is freedom, and all of
us with faces from which the veil is lifted, seeing
as if reflected in a mirror, the glory of the
Lord are being being transformed into His likeness, from glory
to glory, as it is given by the Lord the Spirit.

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Chapter four. Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that
we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. No,
we have renounced the secrecy prompted by shame, refusing to
adopt crafty ways or to tamper with God's message, and
commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of
God by our exhibition of the truth. And even if

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the good news that we bring is veiled, it is
veiled only in the case of those who are on
the path to ruin, men whose minds have been blinded
by the God of this age, unbelievers as they are,
so that the light from the good news of the
glory of the Christ, who is the very incarnation of
God should not shine on them. For it is not
ourselves that we proclaim, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and

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ourselves as your servants. For Jesus's sake. Indeed, the same
God who said, out of darkness light shall shine, has
shone in upon our hearts, so that we should wring
out into the light the knowledge of the glory of
God seen in the face of Christ. This treasure we
have in these earth and vessels, that its all prevailing

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power may be seen to come from God and not
to be our own. Though hard pressed on every side,
we are never hemmed in, though perplexed, never driven to despair,
though pursued, never abandoned, though struck down, never killed. We
always bear on our bodies the marks of the death
that Jesus died, so that the life also of Jesus

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may be exhibited in our bodies. Indeed, we who still
live are continually being given over to death for Jesus's sake,
so that the life also of Jesus may be exhibited
in our mortal nature. And so while death is at
work within us, life is at work within you. But
in the same spirit of faith as that expressed in
the words I believed and therefore I spoke, we also

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believe and therefore speak, for we know that he who
raise the Lord Jesus, will raise us also with him,
and will bring us with you into his presence. For
all this is for your sakes, that the loving kindness
of God, spreading from heart to heart, may cause yet
more hearts to overflow with thanksgiving to His glory. Therefore,
as I said, we do not lose heart. No, even

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though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are
being renewed. Day by day. The light burden of our
momentary trouble is preparing us in measure, transcending thought the
weight of imperishable glory. We all the while gazing not
on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For
what is seen is transient, but what is unseen is imperishable.

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Chapter five. For we know that if our tent, that
earthly body which is now our home, is taken down,
we have a house of God's building, a home not
made by hands, imperishable in heaven. Even while in our
present body we sigh, longing to put over it our
heavenly dwelling, sure that when we have put it on,
we shall never be found to say scarnate. For we

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who are in this tent sigh under our burden, unwilling
to take it off, yet wishing to put our heavenly
body over it. So that all that is mortal may
be absorbed in life. And he who has prepared us
for this change is God, who has also given us
his spirit as a pledge. Therefore, we are always confident,
knowing that while our home is in the body, we

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are absent from our home with the Lord. For we
guide our lives by faith and not by what we see.
And in this confidence we would gladly leave our home
in the body and make our home with the Lord. Therefore,
whether in our home or absent from our home, our
one ambition is to please Him. For at the bar
of Christ, we must all appear in our true characters,

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that each may reap the results of the life which
he has lived in the body in accordance with his actions,
whether good or worthless. Therefore, because we know the fear
inspired by the Lord, it is true that we are
trying to win men. But our motives are plain to God,
and I hope that in your inmost hearts they are
plain to you. Also. We are not commending ourselves again

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to you, but rather our giving you cause for pride
in us, so that you may have an answer ready
for those who pride themselves on appearances and not on character.
For if we were beside ourselves, it was in God's service,
and if we are now in our senses, it is
in yours. It is the love of the Christ which
compels us when we reflect that as One died for all,

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therefore all died, and that He died for all, so
that the living should no longer live for themselves, but
for Him who died and rose for them for ourselves.
Then from this time forward we refuse to regard anyone
from the world's standpoint, even if we once thought of
Christ from the standpoint of the world, yet now we
do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in union

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with Christ, he is a new being. His old life
has passed away, a new life has begun. But all
this is the work of God, who reconciled us to
himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
To proclaim that God in Christ was reconciling the world
to himself, not reckoning men's offenses against them, and that

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He had entrusted us with the message of this reconciliation.
It is then, on Christ's behalf, that we are acting
as ambassadors God, as it were, appealing to You through
us we implore you, on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God,
him who never knew sin. God made to be sin
on our behalf, so that we, through union with Him,

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might become the righteousness of God. End of Introduction and
Chapters one through five.