Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord. — Better, the fear of the Lord. The English word “terror” is unduly strong, and hinders the reader from seeing that what St. Paul speaks of is identical with “the fear of the Lord” — the temper not of slavish dread, but reverential awe, which had been described in the Old Testament as “the beginning of wisdom” (Job 28:28; Psalms 111:10). Tyndale’s and Cranmer’s versions give, “how the Lord is to be feared;” the Rhemish, “fear.” “Terror,” characteristically enough, makes its first appearance in the Geneva version.
We persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God. — The antithesis is singularly indicative of the rapid turn of thought in the Apostle’s mind. “We go on our way of winning men to Christ.” (Comp. the use of the same Greek word in Acts 12:20, “having made Blastus... their friend.”) It is singular to note that, in an Epistle probably nearly contemporary with this, St. Paul uses the phrase almost in a bad sense: “Do we now persuade men, or God?” i.e., “Are we seeking to please our friends or God?” (Galatians 1:10.) And here, apparently, the imperfection of the phrase and its liability to misconstruction occurs to him, and he therefore immediately adds, “Yes, we do our work of persuading men” (the case of Felix, in Acts 24:25, may be noted as showing the prominence of “the judgment to come” in St. Paul’s method), “but it is all along with the thought that our own lives also have been laid open in their inmost recesses to the sight of God.” The word “made manifest” is clearly used in reference to the same word (in the Greek) as is translated “appear” in 2 Corinthians 5:10.
And I trust also are made manifest in your consciences. — The words are an echo of what had already been said in 2 Corinthians 4:2. He trusts that in their inmost consciences, in the effect of his preaching there, in the new standard of right and wrong which they now acknowledge — perhaps, also, in the estimate which their illumined judgment passes on his own conduct — he has been made manifest as indeed he is, as he is sure that he will be before the judgment-seat of Christ.