For our rejoicing is this.... — Better, our boast, as in Romans 3:17; Romans 15:17; 1 Corinthians 15:31. With the feeling of jubilant thankfulness which has hitherto characterised his language there mingles another of a different character. It had, perhaps, been in the background of his thoughts all along. He had seemed, in 1 Corinthians 4:21, to imply that he was coming to take strong measures against evil-doers (“Shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love?”). In 1 Corinthians 16:2-8 he had spoken yet more definitely, “I will come unto you, when I shall have passed through Macedonia.” And yet he had not come. Titus would seem to have told him what was said of this: “He was fickle, and changeable; said Yes one day, and No another. Perhaps he was afraid to come.” He is eager to refute the charge without a formal pleading as in answer to it, and seems to cast about for an opening. He finds it in the words which he had just dictated. He has a right to assume that the Corinthians will pray and give thanks for him, for he can boast that he has never failed, conscience bearing him witness, in transparent sincerity to them.
The testimony of our conscience. — The words present an obviously undesigned coincidence with St. Paul’s language in Acts 23:1; Acts 24:16, and again with that of Romans 9:1. To have nothing on his conscience, to “know nothing by (i.e., against) himself” (1 Corinthians 4:4), was the great law of his life. And this was true, as of his whole life in relation to the Corinthians, so especially of the supposed change of purpose with which he had been taunted.
In simplicity. — The better MSS. give “holiness” instead of “simplicity.” The Greek word for the latter is very characteristic of this Epistle (2 Corinthians 8:2; 2 Corinthians 9:11; 2 Corinthians 9:13; 2 Corinthians 11:3), but then it is used in these passages in quite another sense, as of a single-minded generosity. The word for “holiness” is not a common one, but it appears in Hebrews 12:10. It was, however, the natural correlative of the term “saints” applied to all believers. St. Paul’s conscience told him that he had not been false to the consecrated character which that term involved.
Godly sincerity. — Better, sincerity which is of God. It is seldom satisfactory to tone down the bold vigour of the Greek, or perhaps Hebrew, idiom into the tameness of an English adjective. The sincerity which St. Paul claims had come to him as God’s gift: he could submit it to God’s judgment. The word for “sincerity” (literally, transparency of character, or, perhaps, that which bore the test of the strongest light) had been used in 1 Corinthians 5:8.
Not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God. — Better, in or with in both clauses. The words indicate the same line of thought as those of 1 Corinthians 2:1-6. Men made invidious comparisons between his plainness of speech and the eloquent wisdom of some other teachers. That kind of “fleshly,” i.e., worldly, wisdom he disclaims. It was not that, but the favour or the “grace” of God which was the motive-force of his action, the sphere in which he lived and moved.
We have had our conversation. — Better, we conducted ourselves. The tense of the Greek verb implies a special reference in thought to the time when he had been at Corinth. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to note that “conversation” means “conduct,” but as the first occurrence of the word in the New Testament, it may be well to trace the several stages through which it has passed. On its appearance in English, as in Chaucer, it has its full etymological force as indicating, as it does here, habitual conduct. “Enquire of his conversation and of his life before” (Tale of Melibœus). So in Wiclif’s version of the Bible it is used, as in that of 1611, in Galatians 1:13. In somewhat later writers, e.g., in Sidney and Strype, the sense becomes that of “conduct with others,” “converse, intercourse,” a sense still prominent in the familiar legal term for adultery. In Swift and Cowper it has come to be all but absolutely identified with the intercourse which is carried on by talking. In its fullest sense, the Apostle can say that he had striven to live everywhere so as to avoid giving grounds for suspicion. Nowhere had he been more careful so to live than at Corinth, where men were suspicious in proportion to their own viciousness. (Comp. Notes on 2 Corinthians 7:1-2.)