2 Corinthians 8, 9. The Collection for Poor Christians at Jerusalem. Paul attached the highest importance to this collection, to which he seems to have invited all the Gentile churches to contribute. He valued it not merely for the relief it would bring to the deep poverty of the Christians at Jerusalem, but also as a means of eliciting generosity in the churches to which he appealed, and as a symbol of that binding unity in which all the churches of God in Christ were held together. He thinks of the liberality thus evoked as a grace, a gift of God to man, and a gift of man to God, and also as a fellowship, a common participation in common service which was a precious symbol of participation in common life.
2 Corinthians 8:1-15. Of this liberality, significant of so much, the churches of Macedonia, such as Thessalonica, Philippi, Berœ a, had already given an example all the more remarkable because of their notorious poverty, and also of the persecution they were enduring. And, best of all, this offering was really a self-offering, and had been made not, as well might have happened, to the apostle, but first to Christ and then to Paul and the cause for which he pleaded.
Paul had already laid this subject of the collection before the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 16:1 ff.), and possibly Titus had taken the opportunity of a previous visit to set it on foot, and now Paul, encouraged by what has happened in Macedonia, has instructed him to bring it to a successful issue in Corinth. The readiness of the Macedonians is to be used as a test of the loyalty of the Corinthians. And they have a still higher example before their eyes. What else did they see in Jesus Christ Himself but a liberality which knew no limits? In view of this Paul contents himself with a suggestion, leaving it to the prompting of their own conscience to give effect to that resolve which already a year ago had been present behind the first steps of action. In 2 Corinthians 8:12 he lays down the same principle as that which underlies our Lord's appreciation of the liberality of the widow who cast in all that she had (Mark 12:42-44).
[ 2 Corinthians 8:9. The reference is not to the fact that Jesus lived a life of poverty on earth. The contrast is between His pre-incarnate life in heaven and the state of humiliation on which He entered at the Incarnation. This is strongly suggested by the parallel in Php_2:6-8; and the poverty which was His earthly lot could hardly be said to be the cause that many became rich. A. S. P.]