2 Corinthians

The most personal letter Paul wrote, and the hardest to read calmly, because it is written from inside a relationship that has nearly broken. Between 1 Corinthians and this one there was a visit that went badly, a letter written in tears that Paul half regretted sending, an unnamed person who wronged him publicly, and the arrival of rival teachers with letters of recommendation who found his physical presence unimpressive and said so. The Corinthians had begun to wonder whether a man who kept getting beaten and imprisoned could really be who he claimed. So the letter defends an apostleship — but it defends it by conceding the charge. Yes, the vessel is cheap clay; that is the point, so the power is visibly not his. Yes, he is weak; he was told that grace is sufficient and power is perfected there. The result is that the deepest things in the letter arrive sideways, as by-products of self-defence: the treasure in clay jars, the inward person renewed while the outward decays, the ministry of reconciliation, God making the sinless one to be sin. In the middle sit two chapters of fundraising for the poor in Jerusalem — the most detailed teaching on money in the New Testament — and at 10:1 the tone changes so sharply that many read what follows as a separate letter later joined to this one.

Themes

• Comfort that is passed on — The letter opens with the word five times in three verses, and the logic is not that comfort is a reward but that it is supply: comforted in order to comfort others with the comfort received. Suffering is treated throughout as something that becomes usable.
• Treasure in clay vessels — The letter's answer to the charge that Paul is unimpressive. Cheap earthenware was disposable and everyone owned it; that the container is obviously worthless is what proves the power inside it is not the container's.
• Strength made perfect in weakness — The paradox is not decorative. Paul asked three times for the thorn to be removed and was refused, with a reason given — and from there he stops arguing that he is stronger than he looks and starts boasting about the beatings, the shipwrecks and the basket he escaped in.
• The ministry of reconciliation — The most concentrated statement in the New Testament of what the cross accomplishes and what it hands over: God was in Christ reconciling, not counting trespasses — and then the word about it was given to people to carry, so that the appeal comes through them.
• A new covenant, and a fading glory — Chapter 3 argues from Moses' veil that even the glory of Sinai was on its way out, and does it without disparaging what came before. The contrast is between a glory that faded and one that increases, and the transformation described is gradual: from glory to glory.
• Grace, meaning money — The word for grace does most of the work in chapters 8-9, where it means the collection. Giving is grounded not in obligation but in an exchange — he was rich and became poor — and the standard set is equality rather than sacrifice.
• Boasting, under protest — Paul boasts for four chapters while repeatedly saying he is being a fool to do it. The list he finally produces is the opposite of a résumé: floggings, shipwreck, hunger, and an undignified escape over a wall in a basket.

Outline

• 1. The Father of all comfort — Comfort as something received in order to be handed on, and a near-death experience in Asia. Then the first defence: a change of travel plans is not fickleness, because God's promises are Yes.
• 2. A sweet aroma — The painful letter explained, and an instruction to forgive the offender before grief swallows him. Then the image of a Roman triumph, where the aroma means life to some and death to others.
• 3. Not of the letter but of the Spirit — The Corinthians themselves are his letter of recommendation. Then Moses' veil, read to show a glory that was already fading — and unveiled faces being changed by degrees.
• 4. Treasure in clay vessels — We don't preach ourselves. Then the letter's central image, and four pressed-but-not-crushed pairs, and an outward person decaying while an inward one is renewed.
• 5. Ambassadors on behalf of Christ — A tent against a building, and the judgment seat. Then the compulsion of love, a new creation, and the ministry of reconciliation handed over to people.
• 6. Now is the day of salvation — A long catalogue of hardships offered as credentials, an open-hearted appeal — and then the sharp turn to being unequally yoked.
• 7. Godly sorrow — Titus arrives with news and the letter breathes out. Grief distinguished from regret, and a list of what genuine repentance actually produced.
• 8. The grace of giving — Macedonia gave beyond its means out of poverty. The standard set is equality, not sacrifice, and the delegation is deliberately built so no one can question the accounting.
• 9. God loves a cheerful giver — Sowing and reaping applied to money, with the giver's own supply guaranteed — and the whole exercise aimed at thanksgiving rather than at the balance.
• 10. The weapons of our warfare — The tone changes sharply. His opponents' complaint is quoted verbatim, and he answers with a rule about staying inside the field God assigned.
• 11. The fool's speech — False apostles named, and Satan as an angel of light. Then Paul boasts as he says a fool would — and the CV is beatings, stonings, shipwrecks and a basket.
• 12. My grace is sufficient for you — Caught up to the third heaven, told in the third person. Then the thorn, three refused requests, and the sentence the letter has been building toward.
• 13. Examine your own selves — A third visit announced with a warning attached, the test turned back on the readers — and a closing blessing naming Father, Son and Spirit together.

Chapters

• 2 Corinthians 1 — The letter opens by refusing to treat suffering as a problem to be explained. Five times in three verses the word is COMFORT, and the logic is supply rather than reward: what he received in his own affliction is what he now has to give away. Then the first charge is answered — he changed his travel plans, and it was being read as unreliability. His defence goes somewhere unexpected: to the character of God's promises.
• 2 Corinthians 2 — He explains the letter he sent instead of coming, and admits what it cost him to write it — 'MUCH AFFLICTION AND ANGUISH OF HEART', with tears. Then the instruction about the man who caused the trouble, and its direction is the surprise: the danger now is not that he goes unpunished but that the punishment finishes him. Then the chapter's strangest image, a Roman victory parade in which Paul is not obviously the winner.
• 2 Corinthians 3 — The rivals carried letters of recommendation, and Paul says his letter is the congregation itself — written on hearts rather than paper. That leads into the boldest comparison in the letter: Moses veiled his face, and the reason given is not that the glory was too much but that it was fading and he did not want that seen. What is being argued is not that the old was bad but that it was always temporary, and the passage is careful to call it glorious while it says so.
• 2 Corinthians 4 — The letter's central image and its central concession. Paul does not deny that he looks unimpressive — he builds the argument on it. Cheap fired clay was the disposable packaging of the ancient world, and the point of putting treasure in it is that nobody could mistake the container for the value. What follows is four pairs, each conceding the blow and denying the result.
• 2 Corinthians 5 — Two halves that look unrelated and are not. First the body: a tent against a building, groaning, and a longing described carefully as wanting to be clothed rather than stripped. Then the reason Paul can face all of it — a love that compels, a death that changed the arithmetic for everyone, and a commission that turns out to be the letter's summit. God was reconciling, and the word about it was handed to people.
• 2 Corinthians 6 — The credentials Paul finally produces are not achievements. Twenty-eight items, and the first block is entirely things done TO him — beatings, imprisonments, riots, sleeplessness, hunger — followed by paradoxes that hold two verdicts at once: unknown and well known, dying and alive, having nothing and possessing everything. Then the letter opens its chest: our heart is enlarged, and the restriction is on your side.
• 2 Corinthians 7 — The narrative dropped at 2:13 finally resumes, and the relief in it is audible — Titus arrived, and the news was good. What Paul does with that is the chapter's real contribution: he distinguishes two kinds of grief that look identical from outside. One produces a change of direction and leaves no regret behind it; the other simply produces death. And he lists what the first one actually looked like, which is the most useful thing here.
• 2 Corinthians 8 — The most detailed teaching on money in the New Testament begins by refusing to call it money. It is GRACE — the same word used for God's own giving — and the example set is a group of congregations in poverty who gave beyond their means and had to beg for the privilege. The standard Paul finally sets is not sacrifice but EQUALITY, and the chapter ends by describing an accounting arrangement built so that nobody can suspect him.
• 2 Corinthians 9 — Having made the case, Paul turns to the giver's state of mind — and the whole chapter argues that HOW something is given determines what it is. Sent ahead of time so it is ready, given by decision rather than under pressure, and cheerfully. Then the promise that makes it possible: the supplier of seed does not run out. And the destination turns out not to be Jerusalem's poverty at all but thanksgiving.
• 2 Corinthians 10 — The temperature changes in one verse, and it changes so completely that many readers conclude chapters 10 to 13 were originally a different letter. Whatever its history, what follows is a defence conducted on his opponents' chosen ground — appearance, speech, presence — and answered with a rule about staying inside the field God assigned rather than measuring yourself against people who set their own exam.
• 2 Corinthians 11 — Paul does the thing he has just said not to do, announces that he is doing it, and calls it foolishness four times while he does — because his opponents have made the Corinthians think a résumé is the point. So he produces one. It is the most extraordinary CV in ancient literature: five floggings, three beatings with rods, a stoning, three shipwrecks, and an escape out of a window in a laundry basket.
• 2 Corinthians 12 — The one mystical experience Paul ever reports, and he reports it in the third person, refuses to say whether he was in his body, and will not repeat what he heard. Then the thorn — deliberately unidentified, so that it has been every reader's own affliction for two thousand years — and the answer he got when he asked for its removal, which is the sentence the whole letter has been walking toward.
• 2 Corinthians 13 — A third visit is announced with a warning attached, and then the letter's most surprising move: the test they wanted to run on him is handed back to them. You want proof that Christ speaks in me — examine yourselves. And the closing is written by a man who has just spent four chapters arguing, asking not to have to be severe when he arrives, and ending with the fullest blessing in his letters.

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