CRITICAL NOTES
2 Corinthians 1:8.—No certainty as to the “affliction” referred to, whether some outward persecution at Ephesus (query at Ephesus at all?) known to his readers (query that of Romans 16:4; cf. 1 Corinthians 16:9) (“brethren”), or such acute distress about the state of things at Corinth as nearly killed him, and at any rate utterly broke down his health and threatened to interrupt his work. [How little the Acts tell of the life of Paul: cf. chaps. 4, 11, 2 Corinthians 7:5.] Notice, “mere weighed down exceedingly,” closely parallel to the original of 2 Corinthians 4:17.
2 Corinthians 1:9.—Little to choose between “answer” and “sentence.” [In A.V. and text and margin change places.] “We ask ourselves ‘Shall this end in life or in death?’ Our ‘answer,’ our ‘sentence’ upon ourselves, is ‘Death.’ ” “If we live, it will be a real resurrection by the power of God.” Cf. “I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31).
2 Corinthians 1:10.—Notice in, “will deliver,” variant reading for “doth deliver.” If this be accepted, then the latter clause only reiterates “will” with an expression of strong “hope.” The nature of the “deliverance” is as uncertain to us as is that of the peril. “From” is almost, “out of the hand of.”
2 Corinthians 1:11.—Cf. for the thought Philippians 1:19. See the Corinthians working with and for Paul. Gift.—I.e. the “deliverance” primarily, but not excluding the “comfort,” or the “trust” (2 Corinthians 1:9), which had sustained him until deliverance came; and all is “grace,” a real “charism.” Persons.—Perhaps too technical a translation of what literally means “faces”; as if we saw a whole company with uplifted eyes and hands, and upturned faces, interceding for Paul. Also 2 Corinthians 4:15; 2 Corinthians 9:12 are parallel in thought.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.— 2 Corinthians 1:8-11
Death and Deliverance.
I. Unrecorded dangers.—
1. What a glimpse of the life of Paul is given here. The Acts gives no “Life of St. Paul.” It is a chapter in the history of the growing “kingdom of God”; the things which Jesus went on to do and to teach after He was taken up. [But this lays precarious emphasis on “began” (Acts 1:1).] Paul, like Peter, is introduced, and dismissed, just when, and just so far as, the exigencies of that history demand. The whole story of the revelation and the historic evolution of the Kingdom is, in Old Testament and New Testament, written historically, and very largely biographically. But the men are secondary, the kingdom is first.
2. What adequate motive other than devotion to a Christ for the actuality of Whose life Paul had abundant evidence, would have carried him through so much? What he had surrendered is well known. What he gained in exchange he is now, and will eternally be, learning in the presence of his Christ. But the immediate return for the exchange was to be “in deaths oft,” as the climax of all other hardships. Yet through how much the love of Christ will carry a man! For wealth, or honour, or from fear of disgrace, men will do great things and will dare deaths. But to live a life of perpetual, “killing” hardship and peril, of obloquy and ignominy, of privation, of thankless and unthanked labour,—a “far more exceeding weight” of work and self-denial and shame and danger,—the only price with which to purchase such devotion is this: “The love of Christ constraineth me.”
3. The unrecorded martyrdoms, the unrecorded heroisms, of the Church are suggested. There are martyrdoms of daily life [“I die daily”] in the workshop, where one man has, with all wisdom and beauty of life, for years stood out a witness for, and a servant of, Christ; in the schoolroom and dormitory,—and there are no ingenuities of persecution and torture greater, in their proportion, than those devised by schoolboys and schoolgirls for a Christian confessor in their midst; at the table, where for years the husband has never broken a sullen silence towards his faithful wife except to complain, or sneer, or stab with keen words, because, and only because, she is a Christian; and the like. It is heroic, and has stirred the heart of the very persecutor, to see men, or even tender women, go to the stake with a song or a least a cheerful word, and stand quietly until the spirit escaped away, as in a chariot of fire, out of the midst of the flames which leaped up after it like disappointed hounds baulked of their prey. But the daily burden that presses “out of measure” until the most cheerful begin to say, “This will kill me”; the daily racking which tortures all that is finest and most sensitive in the nature; the daily danger which is faced in perilous mission-fields or in unhealthy city slums, as for Christ’s sake men and women go quietly forth morning after morning to the daily round,—this is carried, or borne, or done, without much comment, without indeed much notice. But One Heart knows it and rejoices in it. There is romance enough, heroism enough, martyrdom enough, in many quiet lives to kindle the enthusiasm of a Church or of a world, if it could only be known and read and written as He knows it, for Whom it is undertaken and faced and wrought.
4. He has a record where nothing is unwritten, nothing unrecorded; down to the last detail all is “entered up” in most perfect completeness; not a name which has borne anything, or been anything, for Him is omitted. So, too, there are—
II. Unrecorded deliverances.—What a story will some unknown saints have to tell in heaven, of their daily death indeed, but also of their daily deliverances! Not alone such foremost heroes as Paul, but many a hard-pressed, yet triumphant, “nobody,” in the knowledge and reckoning of even their Christian fellows, will have a story which is really one of perpetual miracle, a perpetual “resurrection.” Often, literally, “as good as dead” on all human lines of estimation, taking death into practical, near account every day, in the laying out of plans and the undertaking of work for Christ. Each new morning a new Easter morning, a life renewed as by a real raising up of God’s own hand. Many a burden, many a battle, many a danger, is never known outside the secrecy of the man’s own heart; and many a deliverance too. There must, moreover, be many deliverances unrecorded in even the privacy of the man’s own knowledge. In each day’s common life there must be for every man many occasions when danger, and even death, has been very really near, but, just because the deliverance has been so complete, he has passed through all in the happy, secure confidence of ignorance. Every ordinary journey has its peril. Every day’s duty offers at many points opportunity to “death.” Men could not bear to think of, or to know, through, and out of, how much they are daily being delivered.
III. Indirect blessing from these experiences.—
1. We may narrow 2 Corinthians 1:9 a little, and press its teaching with a particular application. The near prospect of death, if sanctified,
(1) Destroys all trust in ourselves. At that moment the vanity of all human endeavour and resistance to “fate,” is palpable. If the grace of God be yielded to, all trust in self for salvation may at that moment be destroyed. No lesson harder to learn, or more urgently necessary than this. Fundamental that the man should learn to put all reliance for salvation, not on anything within the circle of his own life and character, but wholly and entirely to make salvation depend upon Christ and His work. Yet not until face to face with eternity—and not always even then—is fully seen the unreliableness of everything within the man himself—everything he has been and has done, or has not been and has not done—as a resting-place for hope of acceptance before God. Thus it
(2) Disposes to trust in God. “ ‘To whom should we go?’ One moment more, and the mystery of the future will be a mystery no longer; where men have hitherto been inquiring, and speculating, and hoping or fearing, I shall know. One moment more and the world of which I do know something will have slipped from me, and I shall find myself in a world of which I know nothing. At home here, I shall be a stranger there, in a strange world. I am a sinner, and in one moment more, I shall find—what? What can I trust to for my ‘leap into the darkness’; what can assure me that I shall ‘light on my feet,’ and on sure ground of rest and peace? When I loose my hold, perforce, of a world of knowledge, and drop into a world which is entirely a matter of faith, what am I to trust to?” Nothing, except the promises of God in connection with the work of Christ. Invaluable and secure, or valueless and deceiving, will these in that supreme moment be. Trust in God, or nothing except a huge venture with an eternal risk. Happy if a man, thus shut up to trusting in his God in Christ does trust. But further there is
(3) The hope of resurrection. And this rests securely on the power and declared will of the “God who raises the dead.” “The (declarations of the) Scriptures and the power of God” were the two “heads” of an argument which Christ presented for the consideration of Sadducee doubters or unbelievers (Matthew 22:9). An argumentum ad homines, of course, like the appeal of Paul to Agrippa. The Jew, such a Jew as even Agrippa, could hardly “think it i credible that God—God—should raise the dead” (Acts 26:8).
2. The knowledge of others is to be enriched by our experience of deliverance.—“We would not have you ignorant,” etc. And so, too, God would not have them ignorant, and, for the sake of the glory of the God of the deliverance, and for the strengthening of their faith, would have His people communicate their experiences. A widely applicable principle. A reticence on such subjects, partly the result of temperament, and partly a tradition in many sections of the Christian Church, seals the lips of many, whose experience of the ways of God is most extensive, and would be most precious and helpful to other souls. A groundless and not very natural idea that such things are “too sacred to speak about,” coupled with a dislike, which has its honourable side, to be made the object of attention and to be the subject of one’s own talk, robs the Church of much testimony which would be its wealth. It is not a question of speaking of such deliverances before unsympathetic persons, “casting pearls before swine,” but of imparting them to those who are often in the like perils and trials, and need the same help and encouragements. To such hearers, often hungry for such help as testimony of deliverance would afford, and finding not their smallest difficulty in the thought that they are singular in their own experiences, it is a revelation and an inspiration to hear a fellow Christian—crucifying self, doing violence to habit and temperament, for the sake of glorifying the Deliverer and of helping souls—break the silence and tell his story of “death” and “deliverance.”
3. A wonderful unity of heart and effort is called out by Paul’s experiences (see fuller Homily on 2 Corinthians 1:11). The Pauls always owe much to the unknown pleaders in the Corinths; to those who can only “help together” by their pleading and “supplication.” How many deliverances did Paul owe to the fact that in every Church there were some who loved him, and who followed him wherever he went with “supplications.” How much of such a man’s success was by the Divine Eye—which alone can analyse the intricacies of such a problem—traceable to the many prayers put up for Paul by grateful hearts in his many Churches. “Success” is a very complex thing in itself, and in the causes which contribute to it. But not the least of these are the prayers of helpers who can only help by prayers. Paul and his work, with its accompaniments of danger, “death,” “deliverance,” rises up in a towering eminence in the view of the past of the Church’s history. But it rested upon a broad-spread, and in great part hidden, base, not the least solid stratum of which was laid in the prayers of his many helpers, “fellow-wrestlers,” with each other and with him, in their prayers for him (Romans 15:30).
SEPARATE HOMILIES
2 Corinthians 1:10. The God of Deliverance.— Psalms 68:28, “He that is our God is the God of Salvation.” An old “note” of the God of the Bible; ever true.
I. Our lesson in grammar in God’s school.—
1. Can our heart conjugate the verb “deliver”? Yes. Present: “Doth deliver” [But query the reading?] Past: “Hath delivered.” Future tense: “Will deliver.” “God” in every case the “subject.” Whatever lesson we are slow to learn, we have had occasion enough to know this excellently well. He has given us plenty of practice. Yet the future tense does not at all times come very readily to our lips; we stammer at “Will deliver.” Our slow heart easily forgets “Hath delivered.” In the story of the goodness of our life, we find it hard to pick out in the sentence, in the incidents of to-day, the present tense with its nominative: “God doth deliver.” We will ask, as not the least mercy of His hand, a heart quick to pick Him out in the story, and to see His “deliverance” in every day’s common, commonplace, safety and help.
2. The difficulty is not all of our own heart’s creating. The very completeness of the “deliverance” in part creates it. We are brought through in such complete safety that we pass through in happy security, entirely ignorant that danger or need of help has been so near and so great. The monotonously ordinary security of a common day is sometimes—if only we saw it as He does who accomplishes it—a most marvellous “deliverance.” [Very often, indeed, He spreads “a table” for His people “in the presence of” their “enemies” (Psalms 23:5). He holds these back—in their impotent malice—while His guests eat His banquet of plentiful “goodness and mercy.” We see them, but banquet in peace, crying, “See how He doth deliver.”]
3. The Present is so closely linked with Past and Future that the present deliverance cannot be considered alone. It is rooted in the mercy of the past; it projects itself, inserts itself, [mortises itself,] into that of the future. The mercy of to-day—“doth deliver”—is only the newest, latest link of a chain of deliverances which reaches back to my earliest need, and will stretch onward to the latest moment of my life’s necessity. No mercy stands by itself; no deliverance is an isolated piece of goodness. No matter where the musing heart takes hold of the mercies of life, at whatever point it locates the Present Tense, it is led on backward, forward, by links of the closest association. Psalms 59:10 gets quoted with more than a verbal inaccuracy. It is false to the thought to say, “The God of my mercies.” The Psalmist says, and feels, more justly, “of my mercy.” Each incident of mercy is so closely linked with what precedes and follows, they follow so closely one upon another, that, in the review, they coalesce into one long “mercy” (Psalms 40:5). Indeed, to speak humanly, in the grammar of God’s thought there is no present, past, future. We use the words; we distinguish between the times. The deliverances emerge and present themselves to us, in order and temporal succession. But they are by no means separate and independent “deliverances.” They are incidents in one continuous deliverance. It is only human feeling which says, “Awake to help me!” (Psalms 59:4). Our God has no need to arouse Himself for each new emergency, to consider how to make at the moment some new provision for the new demand. [As in Creation, so in Grace,—and the two are one Work,—the “Father worketh hitherto” (John 5:17); He never takes His hand from the thing He is creating, from the life He is regulating and guiding. There are no briefest pauses in His attention and interest. There is no intermission, even for an instant, in His ceaselessly operative activity to “deliver.”] Must not be so overpressed as to become fatalism, with its inevitable, unalterable, predetermined order of incidents and persons, in a Christian man’s life and course. But he should thankfully remember that the daily new “deliverances” (in the widest sense) are parts of a lifelong Deliverance, details in the working out of “a Purpose” “to bring His many sons unto glory” (Romans 8:28; Hebrews 2:10). [Should be remembered also how central—as in the chapter, Romans 8., so in thought and fact—is the word “good” in Romans 8:28. The mere temporal “deliverance,” from perplexity, or persecution, or death, is not the main thing in the mind of the God of our “Deliverance.” These, indeed, are not always granted. [Sometimes the real “deliverance” is effected rather by His shutting up against us paths, doors, which we begged to be allowed to enter.] Such providential deliverances are given or withheld, according as will best subserve the “good,” the definition of which is the “conforming” each son of His family of adopted ones “to the image of the Son, the Firstborn amongst many brethren.” Such a deliverance from danger as Paul is thinking of, is not an unworthy thing for God to consult for, but its real purpose falls in with His larger plan of gracious working, in Paul and all whom his life may affect and influence, the goal of which is the perfected holiness of His people.] Present, past, future, are our human expression; the fact—of our deliverance, as of His purpose and love, Who is “I AM”—is a perpetually extended present of grace and power.
II. Paul’s confidence rests upon the God who delivers.—One lifelong deliverance; because One Mind, One Heart, One God, in all the deliverances of life. For this reason Paul counts upon deliverance; he counts upon Him! The future is as certain as the past, or present, because He may as certainly be reckoned with. “He cannot deny Himself”—i.e. He cannot at any point be unfaithful to His pledged word in the past, to His proved character in the past, to the precedents He has set in the past. His past acts and deliverances are “words” from His heart; He has declared in them what manner of God He is, and will be. He cannot turn His back upon the Self of past days, or upon His past principles of action. He can do no other, and can be no other, than His record in the past. Present, Past, Future, therefore, proceed in orderly, secure development. He can so guide and deliver His people to-day that the present shall fit harmoniously on to the past, and prepare the way for the future, with perfect sequence and adaptation; and the future deliverance is a certainty. [Has stamped His own unity upon His work in creation. This truth in modern theories of “development” is that no new created thing is isolated, a mere new beginning; it is always in close relation to the past; it is the next stage in the unfolding of an Idea upon which the Creator is ceaselessly at work; however modified, the lines of the preceding forms are in it; in its turn it preludes, and suggests, the coming forms. So His own unity is stamped upon the working of His delivering providence. Deliverance follows upon, grows out of, deliverance; deliverance preludes, and leads up to, deliverance. The heart that knows God finds the analogy run very closely; and the argument in it is: “One God; the God of my mercy.”] [Or, with another natural analogy. Give the astronomer six weeks, six months, six years—the longer the better—to make and collate and study observations of a new planet; and he will soon tell you where it may be looked for six years, or sixty, or six hundred years hence. He has “found the law” of its orbit and its motion. Paul records: “Hath delivered,” and “doth deliver.” Not two observations, but many a thousand, are embodied in that; he has “found the law” of the providence of his God. He says “Will deliver” with all confidence. He knows where to look for and to find his God.]
I. “We’ll praise Him for all that is past,
II. We’ll trust Him for all that’s to come.”
—Hymn by J. Hart.
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
2 Corinthians 1:11. Two Features in the Life of Citizens of the Kingdom of God.
I. “Circulation” in the life of the kingdom of God.—The cycle of life begins in, and returns to, prayer. “Prayer” first wins a “Gift”; then, the “Gift” won, and exhibited in its blessed fruits, calls out “Praise.” Then the-grateful, adoring Church begins the round again: making known its fresh requests once more; again getting the new answer; and then again acknowledging the mercy with new Praise. [Observe how the objective efficacy of Prayer is here assumed; prayer which is petition, and not merely adoration, contemplation, communion, with God, etc. Prayer—the consentaneous prayer of many persons—prevails, not only to their own blessing, but to secure for another person, Paul, not merely a spiritual grace, but an actual deliverance from very extreme peril.]
II. Union in the life of the kingdom.—The gift is bestowed in answer to the prayers of many; the thanks are given by many; many then help together in praying for the new deliverance.
1. There is solitary prayer which is of the mightiest; there is an offering of thanksgiving, in the holy privacy of the sanctuary within the heart, which is grateful exceedingly to God, but is a holy secret between the heart and Himself. But united prayer has a power all its own; united thanksgiving has a beauty and value all its own. [Cf. the strong figure in Romans 15:30: “that ye strive [wrestle, agonise] together with me in your prayers for me.” As though, not one “wrestling Jacob,” but a Church every member of which is a “wrestling Jacob,” had all taken hold of, and were hanging upon, God, with “We will not let Thee go.”]
2. No Church is strong unless its individual members are strong, for prayer and for work. It is in secret prayer that they learn to pray. But the Church, meeting as such, for prayer and for thanksgiving, has a mighty power. United waiting upon God brought Pentecost; united waiting upon God had secured “deliverance” for Paul. There is a principle in the Church prayer meeting; a special promise belongs to it (Matthew 18:19).
3. The missionary agents of the Churches, in difficulty and peril, should be remembered in Church prayer, and thanksgiving rendered for their “gift” and mercy. [
4. All the efficacy of Sympathy is utilised by such united prayer and thanksgiving; the Church does well to have its thanksgiving meetings, as well as its prayer meetings; sluggish hearts are stirred, flagging interest in one is aroused by zeal in another; beginners learn to pray, and learn to discover matter for praise, as they listen to the older and more experienced members.] [Further, remember that this “agreeing to ask” is very much more than that a given number of persons, all convinced that some certain object of desire is laudable or needful, concur in making request for the same thing. It goes deeper; it is a union of conviction and desire and petition, born of the common presence in each of them of One and the Same Spirit of prayer. They are one in the Body and in the Head. It is the one Mind, Life, Heart, of the Body breathing out its desire through each of the company who “agree to ask.” (“Prayer in the Holy Ghost,” Jude 1:20.)]