But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty. — Better, the hidden things of shame. We fail at first to see the connection of the self-vindication which follows with what has gone before, and have once more to go below the surface. He has defended himself against the charge of “fickleness” (2 Corinthians 1:17), but another charge, more disturbing still, had also been brought against him. Men had talked, so he had been told, of his “craftiness” (comp. 2 Corinthians 12:16), and to that imputation, perhaps also to another covered by the same general term (see Ephesians 5:12, and Notes on 2 Corinthians 7:1-2), he now addresses himself. The English word “dishonesty” is used in its older and wider sense. So in Wiclif we have “honest” members of the body in 1 Corinthians 12:23, and in Shakespeare and old English writers generally, and in popular usage even now, “honesty” in a woman is equivalent to chastity. The context shows, however, that St. Paul speaks chiefly not of sensual vices, nor yet of dishonesty in the modern sense of the word, but of subtlety, underhand practices, and the like. Men seem to have tried to fasten his reputation on the two horns of a dilemma. Either his change of plan indicated a discreditable fickleness, or if not that, something more discreditable still.
Nor handling the word of God deceitfully. — The word is nearly equivalent to the “corrupting” or “adulterating” of 2 Corinthians 2:17. In “commending ourselves” we trace a return to the topic of 2 Corinthians 3:1. Yes, he acknowledged that he did “commend himself,” but it was by the manifestation of truth as the only means that he adopted; and he appealed not to men’s tastes, or prejudices, or humours, but to that in them which was highest — their conscience, their sense of right and wrong; and in doing this he felt that he was speaking and acting in the presence of the great Judge, who is also the searcher of hearts.