His Final Wake Up Call (2 Corinthians 12:19-21)
‘You think all this time that we are excusing ourselves to you. In the sight of God speak we in Christ. But all things, beloved, are for your edifying.'
Do they really think that all this time he is only making excuses? Never. For let them consider before Whose eyes they speak. They speak in the sight of God. And they also speak ‘in Christ'. And as he has declared before, in them is ‘yes' and ‘Amen' (2 Corinthians 1:17-24). So there is no way in which, standing before God and dwelling in Christ, he can be trying to deceive them. No, they are beloved by him and by Titus, and their sole purpose is their building up and edifying. All that they do is to that end. And what is the consequence of their concern to build them up and edify them? It is that they must deal in depth with their sins which have again sprouted up.
2 Corinthians 12:20-21, ‘For I fear, lest by any means, when I come, I should find you not such as I would, and should myself be found of you such as you would not; lest by any means there should be strife, jealousy, wraths, machinations, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, disorderly behaviour; lest again in my coming my God should humble me before you, and I should mourn for many of them that have sinned heretofore, and repented not of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they committed.'
He now summarises why he has previously spoken so strongly. It is because he is afraid of what he will find is true of them when he comes. (The use of subjunctives leaves the question open. It is a probability but not a certainty). He is afraid that what he discovers then will but add to his sufferings, will result in another humbling, another heavy burden added to his ‘care for all the churches'.
This sudden bombardment at the end of these Chapter s, and bombardment it is, is intended to make the whole church sit up and think, and it is something that he has been preparing for. As they have listened to this last part of his letter being read they will have, as it were, largely been the audience considering his arguments against the false apostles. But now he wants them to know that his battle will not only be with the false teachers (2 Corinthians 10:2), but with them, for it is not so much the false teachers that he is concerned about as the Corinthians themselves. It is they who are his great concern. Let them then consider themselves (2 Corinthians 13:5). For he is afraid of what he will find when he looks at them, that he will find that they are still torn apart in dissension and strife, and riddled with immorality in spite of all his past efforts.
So he challenges them with the fact that his fear is very much that when he comes he will not find them as he would like to find them, as those over whom he can rejoice. But rather that he will find that they have not repented and put away their sins about which he had already warned them (in 1 Corinthians and in the severe letter).
Then he outlines those sins. They are the sins of infighting, of jealousy and anger towards each other as they support different sections and views, of continual bursts of antagonism towards one another (plural form), of intrigue and plotting, of party spirit and rivalry, of rumour spreading and pernicious talk, of pride and boasting and puffing out of chests, of disorderly behaviour and anarchy in the assembly, and indeed of all uncleanness, and especially those particular sins of being unequally yoked with idolatrous associations, together with their sins of sexual misbehaviour which partly result from this. (The news about all this had probably come from those who had warned him of the arrival of the false apostles).
And if all this is true let them be assured of one thing, that they also will not find him as they would like to find him. Indeed because of their behaviour, they will find him coming in anger, rather than in meekness and love. Let them then recognise that they are not sheep on the sidelines considering a case. They, and what they are, is in the end the central issue.
And his further fear is then that his forceful words will only result in further strife, in further jealousy, in further expressions of wrath, this time both ways, in an intensifying of their splitting up into factions, in continual backbiting, in more whisperings behind the hand, in further swellings of the chest through pride, and in further disorderly behaviour. Yet he knows that, unless they right themselves, it will have to be.
For he is aware that when he comes, if he does face a church in complete disarray, he will have to tackle it head on with all guns blazing. The time for gentleness and meekness will be past. And he does not like the thought of the consequences. For the result can only be that he will once again arrive to be insulted and humiliated as he was before, and thus be humbled by God as it will be a testimony to his failure. (He still feels that this is something that many would wish to avoid). And to be greatly grieved as he sees among them those who have committed uncleanness, fornication and lasciviousness, and have not repented. He is thus making quite clear that he does not view the prospect of his visit with any pleasure, accompanied as it will be by humiliation and grief, and is giving them the opportunity to do something about it before it is too late.
And the implication is (already stated in 2 Corinthians 12:20) that, unless they do so, he is going to have to himself do something about it, and when he does, it will be a something which will not be very pleasant. And he is fearful of what the effect might be on the church and its future.
So after all that he has been writing he makes clear that in the final analysis it is their state that he is still concerned about, and what he might find, and more so now as a result of the presence of the false apostles. This sudden list of sins may seem to come unexpectedly, but it actually brings them back to the main purpose of his letter, the reconciling of the whole church, although expressed more strongly now because of the new situation which makes him doubtful of their genuine continued repentance. It is an attack at the very root of their failures. It brings out his renewed fears of those old failures which had hoped had been dealt with but have again apparently sprouted up as a result of the effects of the pseudo-apostles on them. He fears that they will have aroused all the old tensions which he had hoped had been mainly settled as a result of 1 Corinthians, his forceful letter and Titus' visit. He therefore wants them to consider their ways and to recognise that he has no illusions about what their true state might well be, unless they will now take heed to what he has written. It is in fact up to them to decide what his attitude will be when he comes.
This forceful statement accords well with the earlier suggestion that, while earlier writing his letter rejoicing in their seeming reformation, and in the good spirit of unity and wellbeing that Titus had described as now being among them, he had suddenly received news of the working among them of men who had caused all the old problems to resurface, so that he had now not only felt it necessary not only to repudiate those men and compare himself with them in strongest terms, but also to appeal to the Corinthians in the strongest terms not to allow the worst to happen to them. The letter of rejoicing has become a desperate plea for them not to be so foolish as to revert to what they had been, and worse, and a warning of what it will do to their relationship with him. Thus does he bear the cares of this particular church. This is Apostolic authority at its strongest.