Sincere and Pure Devotion to Christ (Vol. 1, 2 Corinthians 1-6) (eBook)

Introduction to 2 Corinthians:

A Witness to Christ
and a Window
into the Heart of Paul

Saul of Tarsus, that energetic and highly educated Pharisee who took the name Paul following his saving encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, has become synonymous with Christianity. Some even contend that he, not Jesus, was its founder. Paul himself would have cringed at any such notion.

But who was this man? What made him tick? Why did he make the painful choices we read about in the New Testament? People who have tracked his missionary journeys and struggled to comprehend his many letters long to get inside his head and peer into his heart. What were his motives? How did he persevere in the face of unending hardship and excruciating persecution? What accounts for his unyielding commitment to Christ and his love for the many churches he established? What empowered him to endure the slander of those he served and to sacrifice himself for people who repaid his devotion with disdain and contempt?

One might think such experiences would compel Paul to withdraw within himself, to retreat relationally, to close off his heart and take whatever steps necessary to guard his wounded soul from further damage. I thank God daily that such never occurred. In fact, 2 Corinthians is a vivid portrayal of the courage, honesty, and vulnerability of this remarkable man. Unlike any of his other letters, in 2 Corinthians we hear his heart beat, we feel his passions, we are put in touch with his deepest fears and longings and loves.

It’s not easy to move beyond the public image that people project to see into their very souls. Their true thoughts, intentions, motivations, anxieties, desires, greatest joys, and greatest disappointments are often hidden from sight, obscured beneath the complexities of human personality and relational defense mechanisms. If you’ve read much of the New Testament, you’ve no doubt wondered about such things in Paul. Unfortunately, you won’t learn much about him from reading Romans or Galatians, his most theological writings. There’s more to learn of him as a person in his two letters to Timothy, which were most likely written within months of Paul’s martyrdom in Rome. But nowhere does Paul pull back the curtain on his life and expose his inner self to such a degree and with such brutal honesty as he does in 2 Corinthians.

If you’ve never studied this book before, you’re in for a treat and a challenge. But don’t think for a moment that this letter to the church in Corinth is primarily about Paul, or even the Corinthians themselves. It’s about Jesus. Paul summed it up perfectly in chapter 4, verse 5: “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” There it is. Jesus alone and always is Lord. He is supreme, central, and all-satisfying. He is the center and circumference of the gospel we proclaim. And we, Paul says, are here simply to proclaim that truth and serve you in such a way that you find in him complete joy and satisfaction for your souls, for his eternal glory. That is 2 Corinthians. I hope you enjoy the journey into this remarkable book and, through what you read, into the heart of a man whose life-long passion was to make known the glories of Christ Jesus for the joy of the church.

Coming to Corinth

In the summer of 1991 I was given the incredible opportunity of participating in a trip that traced Paul’s missionary journeys. Athens, Thessalonica, Ephesus, and eventually Rome were included in our tour. So, too, was Corinth. As I stood among the ruins of that ancient city, I couldn’t help but think about its storied history and the critical role it played in the early years of the Christian church.

The history of ancient Corinth is the story of two cities. Perhaps the first event of importance occurred in 146 BC, when a Roman army invaded and destroyed the city and killed or enslaved virtually the entire population. Corinth lay in ruins for more than a century, until 44 BC when Julius Caesar saw its great potential and gave orders that it be rebuilt as a Roman colony.

Not only did Corinth soon prosper because of its position as a port city, it also became one of Rome’s most notable centers for banking and finance. We should also note its political significance. In 27 BC it became the seat of the region’s proconsul and the capital of the senatorial province of Achaia until AD 15, when it became an imperial province. Corinth was also widely known for its hosting of the Isthmian games, a biennial athletic competition second only to the Olympic games in importance. Corinth soon was regarded as the third most important city of the empire after Rome and Alexandria.1

The Character of Corinth

First-century Corinth, with a population estimated to be as high as two hundred thousand, has been described as “a wide-open boomtown” comparable to San Francisco of the Gold Rush days. Corinth boasted two harbors and was strategically located, thus enhancing its reputation as one of the leading commercial centers of southern Greece. Sailors and merchants from every city and province, and therefore from every race and religion, passed through Corinth. It was truly cosmopolitan in nature.

Not unexpectedly, Corinth became notorious for luxurious and debauched living. Although virtually every pagan deity had a cult following in Corinth (archaeologists have discovered temples devoted to Neptune, Apollo, Venus, Octavia, Asclepius, Demeter, Core, and Poseidon, among others), its chief shrine was the temple of Aphrodite (the Greek goddess of love and life), where as many as one thousand temple prostitutes were reported to have conducted their business. Sexual perversion and immorality of every conceivable (and some inconceivable) sort was rampant. One is not surprised, then, that the word “corinthianize” could mean to “fornicate” and was likely coined to refer to the opulence and pervasive vice for which this ancient city was known.

Corinth’s reputation is notorious. Among other things, archaeologists have discovered there clay representations of human genitals that were offered to Asclepius, the god of healing. Evidently, the hope was that that part of the body, suffering from venereal disease, would be healed. However, it is important to point out that Corinth’s reputation comes from what we know it to have been like prior to its devastation in 146 BC. Thus we should be careful “not to read the old city’s character into the new city. . . . [Nevertheless], traditions like that die hard, and as a great port city it is unlikely that new Corinth established a reputation for moral probity (see 1 Cor. 6:12ff.).”2

Perhaps, then, we would be justified in comparing Corinth not only with the San Francisco of the Gold Rush days but with the San Francisco of today as well!

It was, however, in just such a place that the grace of God appeared. For here Paul spent a year and a half preaching the gospel.

The church in Corinth was composed largely of Gentiles, the majority of whom were at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder (although there were a few wealthy families). As Gordon Fee has noted, “although they were the Christian church in Corinth, an inordinate amount of Corinth was yet in them, emerging in a number of attitudes and behaviors that required radical surgery without killing the patient.”3 Both of Paul’s canonical letters to this group of believers attempt to do this.

The Church in Corinth and Its Relationship to Paul

Paul’s relationship to the Corinthians was a long and tempestuous one. From several statements in both his first and second epistles to the church, we are able to reconstruct a sequence of events.4

1. Paul first preaches the gospel in Corinth during his second missionary journey, probably in late AD 50 or early AD 51. He worked with Priscilla and Aquila as a tentmaker and probably lived with them. The results of Paul’s initial ministry in Corinth are recorded in Acts 18:1–11. While there he regularly went to the synagogue and reasoned with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, seeking to demonstrate, as was his custom, that Jesus was indeed the Messiah prophesied by the Old Testament Scriptures.

2. After one and a half years of ministry in Corinth, in the spring of AD 52, Paul made his way with Priscilla and Aquila to the city of Ephesus. After only a brief stay, he left them there and departed for Jerusalem. From there he went to Antioch, eventually returning to Ephesus where he remained for the next two and a half years (from the fall of AD 52 to the spring of AD 55). It was during this two-and-a-half-year period of ministry in Ephesus that Paul composed his Corinthian correspondence.

3. Sometime in late AD 54 Paul wrote a letter to the Corinthians that is now lost (see l Cor. 5:9–11). We will call this “Corinthian Letter A.” He wrote this letter in response to news (either by personal report or a letter from the Corinthians) that some in Corinth had failed to separate from people within the church who had engaged in repeated sexual immorality. Evidently the Corinthians misinterpreted Paul, thinking that he was recommending they separate entirely from the wider Corinthian society.

4. Subsequent to this, Paul received reports from certain people in Chloe’s house (l Cor. 1:11) that there were problems in the Corinthian church, in particular the breaking up of the believing community into factions. Also, according to 1 Corinthians 16:17, three men (Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus) from Corinth came to him, evidently with a letter from the church asking Paul numerous questions about Christian behavior and belief (see l...