CRITICAL NOTES
2 Corinthians 2:12. Troas.— Acts 20:1-6. Note, “for the Gospel,” literally exact. Door.—Cf. 1 Corinthians 16:9, and material there.
2 Corinthians 2:13.—See Homily, “Conqueror; Captives; Incense.” Assumed in the homiletics, with most, that, although festive processions in honour of Bacchus are closely connected with the earliest root of the word “triumph,” yet the word had been borrowed and was in common use for the triumph of a victorious Roman general; which Roman triumph, moreover, alone supplies the figure with the touch of “incense.” [See these points, and nearly all others, dealt with in the various homilies which follow.] Cf. Luke 20:18. “Men must build with the Stone, or be crushed beneath it.” Also Luke 2:24. “This Child is set … for the fall and for the rising again of many.” Men fall, or rise, whenever they come into contact with Christ in a faithful Gospel. [Happily, all who rise have first “fallen.” The “fall” is the first thing. Men may do both; they must, in order to a full salvation.] The triumph of Memmius, a century earlier, after the sack of Corinth, had been a very remarkable and famous triumph, certain to be in the minds of Paul’s readers.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.— 2 Corinthians 2:12-17
(Nearly all the details of interpretation of 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 will be found more fully taken up in the detailed Homiletics which follow.)
I. “Paul turning away from ‘an open door’!”—
1. A marvel! This is the man who in his former letter could not leave his work at Ephesus because there was “a great door and effectual” opened to him (1 Corinthians 16:9). In this very Troad and its neighbourhood he had on a former journey tried many “doors,” only to find that they were not “open”; closed against him by the “Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:6-8). Now the door was open, and apparently he did enter and begin his work, and in a brief while with much success; for on the return journey from Corinth he found a little Church in Troas with whom he spent the Sunday (Acts 19:5-12). Yet he put his work down, left the open door, and in “restlessness” of spirit, and in anxiety about Corinth, from which there came no tidings, he crossed over into the Macedonian region to meet Titus, as he hoped, the sooner [as he, in fact, did (2 Corinthians 7:6)].
2. Such a detail, with its self-revelation, has no small value from the point of view of the historical student. Just such touches as these make it impossible, without a scepticism which puts the sceptic altogether out of court, as not deserving to be listened to, to doubt that we are dealing with a document historically veracious to the last degree, the real letter of a real man, of the date which is professed and claimed; with all the evidential consequences which flow from the genuineness and the contemporary testimony of such a letter from such a competent witness. Such details are important credentials of a revelation which is nothing if not historic.
3. But they are parts of the revelation.—God reveals His mind partly in selected histories and biographies, “stories with a purpose,” those points being brought out in the telling which best help the purpose of the Divine Narrator. Plainly, then, the highest type of worker is not above “moods” and almost uncontrollable emotion; such moods and deep emotion as may unsettle him, and even render it impossible for him to continue his work. “The peace of God which is to guard heart and thoughts” (Philippians 4:7), standing sentry, as it were, at the heart’s door and preventing the entrance of distressing or mischievous thought, is no such mechanical defence as to produce mere insensibility. There is in perfect service no such mechanical labour, no such mechanical fulfilment of duty, as might be got from a machine wound up to do a set task, and going rigorously through with it, without interest or without feeling. “But, Paul cannot you trust your work at Corinth in the hands of your Master? After all, is it not more His work than yours? You did your part at Corinth whilst you lived there; you have done your part in this unhappy business about the incestuous man, by writing your letter and by sending Titus. Cannot you now leave the issues, and go quietly on with your work? We know, indeed, that your personal stake in the matter is not small, but we know, too, that your reputation has long ago been put into the hands of your Lord. What the Corinthians will have thought and done, when they got your letter, whether they will obey you, or whether this will have inflamed the factious party into fresh opposition, or even have given them a means of bringing over to their side some who have hitherto been ‘of Paul,’—we know how little you regard this for your own sake. Cannot you ‘rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him’? and meanwhile work on, within this open door in the Troad?” There is nothing in such thoughts which is not truth, and the high privilege of the life consecrated so entirely to Christ that everything in it, like the man himself, is Christ’s, not his own. No life was ever more utterly removed from all self-centering thought or work or care than was Paul’s: “to him to live was ‘Christ.’ ” Yet we love him none the worse, nor is he the less valuable a detail of God’s revealed will on such matters, that his very example here checks all unhealthy and exaggerated application of such truths as were just now suggested. There is not the rigid support of, and compliance with, a relentless code which takes no account of human nature. In the illustrative and didactic instance which Paul supplies there is the perfect naturalness and elasticity of simple, real life. No man more certainly than he would subordinate all personal considerations to the interests of the work of Christ. But neither did His Lord expect him not to feel, to feel acutely, to feel with a depth of emotion which was a real disqualification for going on with his work in Troas. We serve a profoundly reasonable Master, Who knows exactly how much to expect from His servants, of submission in days of sorrow, of acquiescence in days of disappointment, of peace and rest as well as trust in days when, naturally, circumstances would keep brain and heart in a whirl of anxiety, or strained to their utmost tension. After all, the work of Christ at Corinth was the main thing at stake. To this, even in Paul’s mind, everything else stood second. We love Paul none the less, nor did his Lord, we may well believe, condemn him, that his distress turned him away from “an open door.”
II. Paul in the train of Christ’s triumph.—
1. Such details as we have been studying are part of God’s Revelation, taken up into it, made the vehicle of a distinct addition to our knowledge of the mind of God, and of His will on such questions of the practical conduct of Christian men. So, similarly, such changes of plan, hingeing on such trivial occasions, are all parts of the progress of the Gospel. They are all contributory to the great plan of campaign, according to which Christ is subduing the world to Himself. They all fall in with the movement of His march to ultimate victory over “things in earth” (Philippians 2:10). They are small details of a great progress whose goal is the day when it shall be proclaimed that “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of God’s Christ” (Revelation 11:5). It is a progress which seems often retarded. The ground occupied in this very Asia and Troas and Macedonia, is hardly retained for Him to-day. It is often difficult for faith to see any movement at all; more difficult to see any plan at all. The faith which does see the plan, and hold fast to its hope in the triumph, is a grace, the gift of the “Spirit of faith.” It is one subordinate manifestation of the supreme faith, which that Spirit also alone gives, that “Jesus is the Lord” (1 Corinthians 12:3). If that truth be grasped, all else is held. “We see not yet all things put under Him. Though the name of Christ rises ever more loudly above the tumult, the day of victory seems far off. But by the Holy Ghost we know that ‘nothing which ought not to be need be.’ We look back and see forms of evil dead—it may be dead for ever. Evil itself lives, and may even seem after some triumph of good to close in more pitilessly than before, but to those who take the large outlook it is clear that progress is being made. To say that the fight is hopeless is to deny the Lordship of Christ.… There is danger unfathomable and unending in admitting that any wrong is inevitable, that anything is too hard for the Lord” (Editorial, British Weekly, October 26th, 1893). Every conversion has this significance and this importance to the history of the very world itself, that one more life which lay athwart, or ran counter to, the line of the movement of the will of God, and the progress of King Jesus to His final and universal victory, is brought into parallelism, and moves with the Divine movement. And then, all the details of that life, all its activities and aims, in proportion as they are pervaded with the spirit of consecrated service and are made a perpetually renewed offering to Christ, for His service and glory, become details in the triumph of the Great Conqueror. In the old phrase, all such turnings away from Troas and crossings over into Macedonia, are “overruled” for the advantage of the work of God. At the least, the “knowledge of Christ and its savour” are thus “made manifest” in a greater number of cities and centres. No man is on that account to indulge “moods” and “feelings”; to pick up this work, or lay down the other, according as he may, or may not, “feel in the spirit of it”; to enter one door “because he is happy in the work” there, and turn aside from another, or quit it, when he has entered it, because “he was not happy.” But Paul’s quick faith triumphs over the record and the memory of his keen distress at Troas. “It is all right! Thank God! The triumph moves on nevertheless. And we with it! Glory be to God!”
2. The triumph sweeps everybody into its course.—There are no mere spectators. Paul was an enemy once. He is a trophy of the Great Imperator now. He is indeed (by a quick transformation) a soldier sharing, in some humble part, the triumph. It is Christ’s triumph, indeed. The Lord is the Centre of the spectacle. But every subaltern and private is the object of somebody’s regard; to them, he is triumphing. To himself, at any rate, he is triumphant. Nobody who comes into contact with Christ remains indifferent. Triumphed over, and that only, and dragged onward “to death”; or triumphed over, and led onward, triumphing also, “to life.” If Christ’s triumph “comes our way,” we must, in one way or another, “fall in.” To Paul himself the “savour,” so far as he knew of it, was once “of death, unto death”; now “the savour” of his living Lord—not lying dead or corrupting in Joseph’s new tomb—was “of life,” as, himself “saved by the Lords life” (Romans 5:10) and diffusing a Gospel “of life” wherever he went, he moved onward “to life,” “to lay hold of the life which is Life indeed” (1 Timothy 6:19).
III. Paul a genuine man dispensing a genuine Gospel.—
1. Other men might, and did, use an incense whose “savour” was not simply and only “of Christ.” There was in most cases much of Christ in it, or at least something. [Even the men at Rome who were preaching with “by-motives, not sincerely,” and indeed in a spirit “of contention,” were at least so “preaching Christ” that Paul rejoiced at their work, though only with a modified joy and satisfaction (Philippians 1:18).] Whilst they bade men “Come buy and eat” (Isaiah 55:1), there was adulteration in their bread, there was admixture in their wine. [The “milk” was not “the sincere milk of the Word” (1 Peter 2:2).] Like dishonest hucksters, for their own gain, or at best for some personal satisfaction, they dealt in a “Word of God” which was not “incorrupt” [Titus 2:7; but quite another word and figure from that of the text here]. Jewish admixture everywhere; half-heathen, childish superstition in Colosse; rationalising treatment of fundamental truths at Corinth; “many” dealt deceitfully with the Word they preached. [See Homiletics on “Charity,” 1 Corinthians 13:5, “thinketh no evil.”] By-motives in the preaching, even if the truth preached were tolerably pure. “Many!” What a view of “Primitive Christianity”! [Shall the figure be pushed so far as to suggest that some diffusers of the incense try so to compound it that it shall not be a “savour of death,” even to the “natural” man? Try so to flavour the wine that the “natural” palate likes it, or at least makes no great objection to it?]
2. Not so Paul.—He returns to the protest he made in 2 Corinthians 1:12, that his whole character and conduct had been at the uttermost remove from any of the self-seeking, the vacillation, or tricky change of purpose with which he was charged at Corinth. But he lifts the whole matter of his personal vindication up to a higher level here than there. Then he protested his “sincerity” as between himself and them; here he protests it in respect of his dealing with “the Word.” Yet even on that lower level it was a “sincerity of God,” which he here also claims; his phrases here analysing that of the earlier verse. He speaks in God’s hearing, conscious of a Listener before Whom he stands, seen through and through, heard through and through. No falsehood of heart but will ring in the voice, to that Ear! No unsoundness, no evil admixture, in his teaching can escape the scrutiny of that Eye. The Great Analyst knows that he does not deal falsely with the Gospel, the “Word of God” put into his mouth to speak. He can “call God to witness upon his soul,” he said (2 Corinthians 1:23). He can lay bare his inmost heart and thought, and challenge that scrutiny. He may well do so, for his “sincerity” is a grace, a gift “of God” by His Spirit. Happy that teacher of Divine truth who is sustained under calumny, or in the midst of misunderstanding, by such a confidence! “The Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods, he knoweth, and Israel he shall know” (Joshua 22:22). Happy if he never be betrayed into conduct in his office, if never a word come from his lips, concerning which he needs to falter as he faces his own conscience, and concerning which also, as far as man may, he may not look up into the face of God, and claim even His witness that he has not knowingly dealt falsely with his trust, “the Word” which has been given to him to administer. What a check upon everything but supreme loyalty to God’s Truth! What a defence against temptation to man-pleasing! And against self-pleasing! And against any dishonest retailing of old formulas which, rightly or wrongly, no longer represent a man’s beliefs! Honesty, honesty, before all things honesty, in the man who deals with the honest, genuine “Word of God”! Is any most unprincipled, adulterating tradesman so base as the man who adulterates the Bread by which men Live, the “Word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God”? Let the world have at least that as genuine as the apostle, the prophet, the teacher, can give it. This sincere man deals out a genuine Gospel.
SEPARATE HOMILIES
2 Corinthians 2:14-16. The triumph; the Captives; the Incense.—[Probably, if not certainly, imagery derived from a Roman triumph.] One of the grandest spectacles of ancient world. All Rome kept holiday; everybody in the streets. Sometimes the show for three whole days winding its way along up to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. All ranks and ages watching the long procession hour after hour, with unflagging interest. The Victorious Army, with the spoil heaped up upon long trains of waggons; piles of gold and silver coin; magnificent dresses and ornaments; statues and pictures, such as Memmius had carried off from plundered Corinth; arms and armour from the battle-field. Then the Captives; of strange garb and look and speech. Then the Conqueror, the man of the Day. Not seldom, in golden fetters, bound to, and walking behind, his chariot, the unhappy general, or king, or queen of the conquered foes; often overwhelmed with ridicule, reproach, abuse, by the merciless, civilised brutality of the spectators. The procession moved along amidst clouds of Incense; many in the procession swung censers; burning braziers of charcoal fed with it along the line of route; a fragrance grateful to all! No, not to all. To some of those captives the fate appointed at the end of the day is Death. To the public eye the end of the spectacle will be the conqueror’s sacrifice in the temple of Jupiter. To the victorious troops, dismissal with rewards, each to become a hero in his little home circle. To the mass of captives, slavery, but life. To the condemned ones, death in the rock-hewn dungeons close by the Capitoline Hill. To these the “grateful” incense smells foul as the breath of a charnel-house. To all besides, “a sweet savour,” a “savour of life,” as they move on towards, at least life, if not liberty. To these “a savour of death,” as they move onwards “unto death.” [Most of these points are used in the passage; with some confusion of metaphor, or rather an intentional change in the use of the illustration, characteristic of Paul.]
I. What a Christian’s life is to himself.—
1. He is being led, by God, from place to place, in the triumphal procession of Christ. Paul is writing from Macedonia. At Troas, just before, he had found “an open door,” but had, strangely, turned away from it and had crossed over into Europe. Such a sudden change and movement was a sample of his life. “Found no rest for his spirit” in Troas; found no rest for his body anywhere! His life was an incessant movement. Antioch one day; Ephesus almost the next; Ephesus to Corinth; Corinth to Jerusalem; Jerusalem to Rome—the other end of the world of that day! Traversing the Roman Empire in journeys which were rather flights than journeys. To us it seems a wearing, restless, anxious life. To him God’s hand was in all such changes. Even a trivial change like this in question is part of God’s will and plan for Paul’s life. He accepted all such incessant change with acquiescence; indeed, with thankfulness and rejoicing. “Thanks be to God” who is thus leading him about from place to place in the train of the triumph of Jesus Christ! He only waits to know where God would have him go next. He follows gladly, since he follows Christ!
2. So for every Christian man. In every change of station, of circumstances, of abode, he should seek and follow the leading of God. Then even the most perplexing, harassing diversion from his own plans will be no matter of chafing discontent and fretful irritation, but of glorying acquiescence in the plan of God.
3. How grand this makes even the humblest life! The procession, the train of Christ’s triumph, is moving onward with majestic march, swelling in numbers as it advances. He is sweeping onward in triumph; the humblest of His people is moving on in triumph with Him—onward to the consummate day of His triumph.
4. From place to place he is being exhibited as one of Christ’s trophies. Grammatically, it may be either, “Maketh us to triumph,” or “Triumpheth over us.” Both are true. He is shown in the triumph; he shares in the triumph. The army and the captives are here one and the same company. Christ has been God’s General, sent to reduce rebellious earth to submission. Began the war single-handed. Every slain enemy becomes a living helper and a soldier. Other conquerors begin with an army, and lessen or lose it as the war proceeds. Our Captain began without an army, and wins and makes one as the war goes on. Has no victorious army but of conquered captives. Every enemy who submits, falls into the ranks of those who obey His command. The marvel of the mercy of the Gospel this. Every soldier has been an enemy. Rebels not only forgiven and allowed to live, but enlisted, and richly rewarded for service. Those over whom Christ triumphs, triumph with Him in His march to heaven. By-and-by, when He enters in glory through the “everlasting doors” the “King of Glory,” they shall appear with Him in, and with Him enter into, glory.
5. The victory of a Christian is the victory of one first vanquished. A soul’s victory begins in Christ’s victory over it. “Thanks to God who triumphs over us in Christ, for in Christ He makes us to triumph with Christ too!”
II. What a Christian’s life is to God.—
1. A grand exhibition of His conquering power, but also of His gracious heart in Christ towards all who submit. His method of advertising, of diffusing “in every place, the knowledge of Christ.” Paul a consummate example of this principle. Did his worst in rebellion against God’s Christ. A pre-eminent persecutor; a zealot of the zealots. Then what a change! Preaches the faith he once destroyed; preaches it, as he persecuted it, “unto strange cities” (Acts 26:11). Paul was in himself a fact which was a consummate testimony for Christ. In himself he was text and preacher and sermon. [“A pattern,” 1 Timothy 1:15-16.] To see Paul was to see what Christ could do. Not only his preaching, but his exhibition in this place and that, a captive chained to the chariot of Christ, was diffusing “the knowledge of Christ in every place.” If God be pleased so to use him, so to lead him hither and thither, he acquiesces, he glories. [Same turn of thought in 2 Corinthians 10:5. Read Paul, and see how this Rabbi’s whole system of thought—doctrinal, exegetical, ethical—wears the bonds of Christ. “Every thought led captive.” See Homilies, in loco.]
2. A work for God within the reach of all. Let Christ conquer; put His yoke upon natural pride, anger—“natural” everything; subdue, in business, home, all; then let God exhibit the man, parade him up and down the world, an example of His conquering power, His matchless grace. The great business of life. After some great change in life, involving a new home, perhaps, a new surrounding, a new beginning in everything; thrust, perhaps into an unintended, unexpected, unwelcome destination; after the earliest, inevitable, adjustment to the new conditions in which life to be spent, livelihood to be won, then ask: “Why am I put here? I have been led here in the train of Christ’s triumph, to diffuse here the knowledge of Christ.” A purpose that, to which every other stands second. “To be a savour.” Anybody can swing, can be, a censer! Men see the smoke of the incense. Cannot see the “savour.” Invisible, impalpable, unmistakable! So, how fine to meet these about whose every act, word, movement, hangs something defying analysis, impalpable, intangible, unmistakable, and all Christ! Nothing so much appeals to a non-Christian. [A “sweet savour.” Would that it were always sweet! Religion real, obvious, respected, in some Christians, but not “sweet.”] “Of Christ;” this important. Many lives, lovely, beloved, giving out a sweet savour. What is wanting? The trained “scent” of the spiritual man misses something from the incense! Christ wanting!
III. What a Christian’s life is to others.—
1. Everybody will not like the incense even when its savour is loveliest, perfect. To the captives it made all the difference whether it were the accompaniment of the march “to life,” or the march “to death.”
2. Note the sharp division of mankind into “those that are being saved”; and “those that are [now] perishing.” Here a ready test is provided. When a man comes across the “savour” of the incense, does he like it—or not? To “those who are perishing” the Gospel is loathsome as death. Is full of “death.” A dead (“crucified”) Christ; “dead in sins”; “dead to sin”; “dead with Christ.” A “savour of death” seemed to such to hang about all Paul’s preaching.
3. More than that, the Christian man and his testimony help “to life,” or help “to death.” No man can be neutral in the presence of Christ, or of the Gospel, or of a true Christian. Better—or worse—for knowing even one such. [Like his Lord, every Christian man is “come for judgment” (John 9:39). I.e. inevitably forces every man with whom associated, to take up an attitude, for or against, God and Christ; is inevitably a present test of character; necessarily ranges men as either “unto life” or “unto death.”] Well may Paul add, “Who is sufficient?” The issues, the responsibility, of a life full of the savour of Christ are terrible! How much more of one where the testimony is marred by inconsistency, the “savour” mingled with what is not “of Christ”!
2 Corinthians 2:16. “Who is sufficient?”
I. The minister of the Gospel speaks in these words, as they stand in the Epistle. But they leap to the lips, they are the sigh of the deepest heart, of many another besides a minister.—There are responsibilities for all. There is no worthy life which has none. The self-sufficient heart that never feels them any burden, that in mere shallow light-heartedness, or slight-heartedness, feels itself at a moment’s notice “equal to anything,” that with the mechanical imperturbability of a Nasmyth steam-hammer is as ready without a misgiving “to forge an anchor as to crack a nut,” has no sense of the meaning of “Life.” The sense of insufficiency with which worthier souls must often go forward to meet and assume responsibilities, is one of the keenest and most daunting pains; none causes more exquisite suffering to a soul filled with a tender conscientiousness. Yet no worthy Man would purchase exemption, at the price of less sensitiveness or a duller conscience. But it makes, not dying but, living the awfully solemn thing. It is easier to die once, and “to die well” and to have done with it, than to live, “once” indeed also, but a “once” which is extended over twenty, forty, eighty years, at every point of which may be danger of failure, at every point responsibility, new burdens gathering as we go, old ones persistently pressing upon our heart, till life is often one long-drawn strain upon the brain and heart, themselves already tense with the sense of responsibility and of inadequacy. The solemnity of life is not that with untarrying pace it is leading to death—death which crowns all with a swift and irreversible “judgment”; nor that it is doing so much to determine what that death and its issues shall be. In the true view of life, it is a continuous thing, beginning here, but stretching on unbroken through the veil of “death,” into the unseen aud eternal. It is a continuous existence, in which dying is a momentary, and not the most important, incident, one of which the most that can be said is that it introduces to, and marks the commencement of, a new section of the new life—“new” because transacted in new conditions and surroundings. To a Christian man dying has been almost emptied of meaning, as well as of dread. It is not only that the “sting” is gone; the thing itself is practically “abolished” (2 Timothy 1:10). The eternal life has begun, but its real solemnity arises from the responsibilities of living, responsibilities before men and towards God. There are those, e.g.,
II. Of the individual.—
1. Nous mourrons seuls. One might say with equal truth, “We live alone.” “Thou art the man,” is the word of God, in all rebuke of sin, in all calls to duty, in all believing unto salvation, in the day of Christ’s judgment of men. God’s claims, our duties—with them each man has singly to do; for them each one of us must “give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12). As in creation no two atoms really touch each other, so souls are essentially apart. There are collective duties for which there is a collective responsibility, of co-extensive area of incidence. But even then a personal responsibility accrues for the assuming of one’s own share in the collective work and obligation. In the end, everything comes back to the individual. “When I remember, in view of this, with what unmeasured powers our Creator has endowed us, and that I am not only responsible for what is done by them, but for what they might do if I rightly used them; when I remember that God has an unquestionable right to all my activities, all my thoughts, all my love; and when withal I am conscious of Sin and Satan so often engrossing and mastering me, that I am daily ‘robbing God’ (Malachi 3:8) upon His own earth, under His very eye,—in a word, when I think of all that I ought to do, and all that I ought to be, as contrasted with what I really am, I feel that, in the face of every fact concerning my responsibility as an individual merely, I may well exclaim with trembling, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ ” Then there are responsibilities arising from—
2. His relationships.—“By connection with our fellow-men none of our old obligations to God are abrogated. There is not one code of morals for the man and another for the merchant, not one law for the individual and another for the statesman, warrior, king. All God’s claims are binding on us always—wrong is wrong, right is right, everywhere. By entering on new relationships we can never free ourselves from the moral laws that are authoritative upon us as individuals; on the contrary, new relationships create new responsibilities. Who can measure the responsibilities of a parent? To the father and mother of that infant are committed most of its preparation for the stern and deadly struggle with sin, which is to decide its eternal destiny. The privilege of training a child for a beautiful and true life here, and for a yet more beautiful and true life hereafter, is the most surpassingly glorious a parent’s heart can desire; the responsibility of having by lip or life ruined a child here, leaving it to wander, lost, homeless, for ever, will be the most crushing a parent’s heart can bear.” No father or mother who remembers how pliable and how delicate a thing is the young character, but will cry out, “Who is sufficient?” A single slip of the seal engraver’s tool, or too deep a cutting, may mar the labour of months. Parents are cutting an image in a most precious gem. A weight or a bond too many may give a warp to the young branch, which shall never be straightened out all life through. A wrong word or a wrong act may make its indelible mark upon the fearfully “spoilable” material, and yet so valuable, entrusted to us to work upon. And who can measure the responsibilities of a preacher? Men talk lightly of the preacher’s life, as if he had “light work, good position, good pay”! There is honour, truly. Every man worthy to be in the ranks of the ministry, understands the privilege of being the confidant and comforter of souls, and their helper in sorrow. It is no mean honour to be in an office where he may speak words welcome to weary hearts as water to the thirsty traveller in an Arabian desert, or words which may send on the hearer into the week of worry and toil with new energy and hope. To send away singing some heart that came sad; to say words which in another heart shall ring on many following days like a trumpet-call to duty; or which in a moment of danger shall recur to another, perhaps to a young man in his hour of temptation, like the gentle voice of a warning friend; to be permited to speak words which shall for many a day feed men and women as with supernatural strength, or which may even awaken some soul that is slumbering on, heedless of its high destiny and its awful progress toward eternity, marking the turning-point of a life,—all this is an honour angels might covet; the dignity of being God’s ambassador yields to none other. But the responsibility of it! If the congregation come and go and no soul be cheered, or fed, or warned; if no lesson be taught, and no impetus given to the good in any life; what then? The man’s “service” is a failure, if no heart is lifted to God, if the sheep turn away hungry still; if the children gather round their elder brother, and he give them the stone of mere lecturing, or the husks of mere brilliance. There is a partial failure if the hearer be only instructed, and not persuaded. The heart may be moved, the intellect satisfied; but, if the will be not moved? “Who is sufficient?” Men understand what it is in business to pay high salaries for trustworthiness and responsibility. Money, life, depend upon one man’s skill and judgment and fidelity, and men pay accordingly. But for how much “pay” will a man intelligently undertake to “watch for souls as one that must give account”? Stand at the great “Day” by a preacher confronted with a man once in his congregation who says, and truly, “I came hungry, or perplexed, or indifferent,—or under deep conviction of sin, and you had no word for me. I passed on; my disappointed heart made me sceptical. I doubted God, or hated Him.” Another, “I passed on, hardening under your powerless word, and now am lost.” Another, “I, too, passed on, and my convictions died away.” Certainly the responsibility of the loss of a soul never lies entirely at a preacher’s door. Every man knows that, at the very heart of the matter, the responsibility is his own, however others may have contributed to the conditions of his life. But if in that Day that minister says: “Ah! that was the day when I had made ‘scamped,’ hasty preparation; when in mere spiritual indolence my closet devotion had been slurred over, when my own tone was low, and I went into the pulpit powerless. It was my opportunity with that man; I was not that day the man to seize it. I am saved here; but he—” As those that must give account of the sermons of a year, of a ministry; and of that incessant ministry of pastoral and personal character. For how much “pay” will a man undertake this? Then, further, are to be added the considerations here specially pressing upon Paul. On the most faithful ministry of the most spiritual man hangs not only life, but death. Some hearers he will certainly not save; as certainly will their heart pervert his ministry into the occasion of “death.” “For judgment Christ came into the world,” etc. (John 9:39). “For judgment” is every man come into the world. Every man is a test of character, swift, decisive, inevitable, to every other man with whom he comes into contact. Goodness will reveal and help goodness; but it may awaken and irritate into hatred the evil which it finds. And the minister is a test, and his word is a test, to men and women. The more faithful he is to the ideal and the responsibility of his office, the more surely is he set for “judgment” amongst his fellows. Life and death hang upon mere individual living; who dares live? Life and death depend on parental wisdom and love; who dares train a child? Life and death hang upon the ministry of the Gospel; who dares speak in the name of Christ? “Who is sufficient?” “Brethren, pray for us!”—Slightly suggested by “Homilist,” New Series, iv. 385.
2 Corinthians 2:16. “Who is sufficient?”
I. These words express a sense of the greatness of the work undertaken.—The ministry is a work
1. Great in its nature.—There is the exposition of the Bible. In His word He has given us the highest teaching, the divinest doctrine. He has taught us concerning our own past, and the world’s past, our own and the world’s future. Above all, He has given light on our relationship to Himself;—ourselves, Himself, and the Mediator between us. Hence there is here the greatest truth that can possess man’s mind, truth that the angels desire to look into, and which take us an eternity to understand; truth, too, whose distinguishing glory it is to be remedial in its nature, restorative in its aim. Every man is bound to be a student of the Holy Book and a learner for himself at the feet of the Great Teacher; the minister pre-eminently should acquaint himself with its truths, and aid those around him to understand them and feel their power. And all this statement and enforcing of truth must be in Paul’s spirit,—Christ’s. When the study of the preacher is unfaithful, unfilial, and his preaching unloving, unsympathetic, unchristian; when there is medley doctrine, or a forced, unnatural earnestness in its promulgation, the pulpit is weak. Not only does Christ claim that His spirit shall be present in the work of His servants; the very world of “society” demands it, and triumphs if it be absent, or lost. To misrepresent the truth of God, the life of Christ; to be erroneous in teaching and inconsistent in character,—the possibility makes a man cry: “Who is sufficient?”
2. Great in its influence.—To influence and mould deathless souls! To have to do with the understanding, heart, will, of man, with all their outworkings now and for ever! “The preaching is to bless or curse all who listen. It is to save those who receive it, from sin, self, hell; to save them by means of the truth, through the love of Christ, by the Spirit of God. It is to unshackle every undying power of the enslaved soul. It is to heal the diseased, to raise the dead. But those whom it will not bless it will curse; it will harden them in sin. It will add to their privileges and responsibilities new ones which will utter for ever a condemning cry against them. This continual, inevitable, twofold effect make the work awfully responsible, momentously great.”
II. The insufficiency of man to perform the work.—
1. How inadequate is man to expound the Scripture. “Easy work to preach the Gospel; it is so simple!” So they say; but is it? If an intelligent, harmonious representation of truth be given, there is material for the highest thought, scope for every faculty. Every power is challenged to the work, for also, in a true sense, man’s reason must be satisfied; the truth must be so presented as to do homage to the Book and persuade the man.
2. Is it “easy,” again, for feeble man to cherish the spirit essential to the work, a living sympathy with all that is holy and true, and a righteous hatred to all that is corrupt and false, unswerving loyalty to the claims of God, unchangeable love to the souls of men? It is impossible to interpret the Book without a spirit too real for pietism, too earnest for fearfulness, too holy for dalliance with sin; is it easy to retain such a spirit?
3. Who has ever taught even a Sabbath scholar, and, much more, who has tried to win an adult for Christ by direct, personal effort, but has learned this lesson, most quickly and most surely of all—the pitiable powerlessness of human strength to dislodge Satan from the hearts which we would bless? To attempt to guide the judgment or move the will of some wayward youth, or hardened profligate, or utter, though “blameless,” worldling,—it is a child’s attack upon a garrisoned fortress. It is hard to bless; and if the word do not bless “unto life,” it must hurt “unto death.” “Who is sufficient?”
III. The qualification for the work.—The great, primary qualification is this very spirit of conscious inefficiency. “When I am weak, then am I strong.” The old heathen believed that their heroes were strengthened to dare and to do, by becoming possessed of the skill and might of the gods of their special devotion. Their dream may be our reality. Only with them the gods favoured the cunning, the vaunting, the strong; our God “increaseth strength”—for work, as well as for journeying or endurance—“to them that have no might” (Isaiah 40:29). Depressing want of apparent success may often be needed to crush out egoism, self-sufficiency, pride, until in helplessness the man is at last flung upon God and His might. When men “have toiled all night and have caught nothing,” then are they ready to be helped and guided by their Master to a “catch” whose success is His, not theirs. To succeed, men must work and teach and live in this spirit of conscious insufficiency. “That no flesh should glory in His presence!”—Founded on homily by U. R. Thomas, “Homilist,” New Series, ii. 387 sqq.
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
2 Corinthians 2:15-16. Manward and Godward Aspects of the Gospel Ministry.
I. Manward.—It may have a vivifying effect. It may have a deadly influence. Because of three unalterable principles:
1. The greater the mercy abused the greater the condemnation.
2. The susceptibility to good impressions decreases in proportion to the resistance against them.
3. Man’s moral suffering will be increased in proportion to his consciousness that he once had the means of being happy. [“Woe unto thee, Chorazin,” etc.]
II. Godward.—A true ministry is unto God “a sweet savour,” whatever be its effects upon humanity. [Query is this the meaning of “unto God”? and not rather, “for God’s purposes (and glory)?”] It is in itself, therefore, for good, for good exclusively. It may be the occasion of evil, but it is the cause of good. [Cf. a similar, though not parallel, thought in Romans 7:10.] Therefore,
1. It saves by design; it destroys, if at all, in spite of its design.
2. It saves by its inherent tendency; it injures, if at all, in spite of that tendency.
3. It saves by Divine agency; it destroys, if at all, in spite of that agency. [“Ye do resist the Holy Ghost.”]—Extracted with modifications from “Homilist,” New Series, ii. 468.
2 Corinthians 2:17. The Word is Corrupted.
I. By introducing error, human philosophy, private opinions, irrelevant matter, by the omission or misrepresentation of important truths, selfish aims.
II. How it ought to be preached—faithfully, sincerely, humbly, earnestly.—[J. L.]
[Or start by inquiring what in common life is “adulteration,” and what are the motives of it.]