A String of Paradoxes.
I. Note the first paradox of the text: "As unknown, and yet well known." The early disciples were a literally unknown and obscure set of persons, even the Apostles themselves being called from the most ordinary avocations of life. By far the greatest of their number, notwithstanding his natural and acquired ability, was sneered at by the world of his day. The world, as a whole, still misjudges and underrates the Church. The Apostle John's declaration is as true now as ever: "The world knoweth us not," unknown to the world, yet well known to the Church triumphant and to the angels of God. Our names are written, not on earth, but in heaven itself.
II. "As dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed." It is not our only life that the world sees; we have another, an inner, higher, diviner life, hid with Christ in God a life of faith, a life of love, a life of hope, hope which, like an electric conductor, draws light from the very Throne of God, and tinges the dark death-cloud with the radiancy of the immortality beyond. And though this the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
III. Hear also the third paradox: "As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing." When the little bird starts from the twig to breast the force of the storm, the wind as it meets it only tends to drive it higher and higher towards the sky. In like manner the storms of life, as the Christian faces them, do but force him higher and higher, until he reaches that calm elevation above the storm where the sun of Divine love and peace sheds its light and warmth upon his soul.
IV. "As poor, yet making many rich." Poor enough were the Apostles and their early followers, and significant is the fact that not poverty but wealth has been the Church's chiefest bane. But amidst present poverty, God's children have the power to scatter broadcast present wealth the power to impart a knowledge of riches that wax not old.
V. "As having nothing, and yet possessing all things." A man may own a magnificent picture-gallery on earth, and yet, because of his lack of sympathy with painting, the poor man whom he permits to visit it, who has the mystic sympathy, may be the truest possessor of the pictures. Even so in reference to the Christian and the universe in which he lives: though legally he may have nothing, yet, being in harmony with the Spirit of the great Creator, he can trace His hand in every work; and whilst the wicked never acknowledge God in nature, he in reality, by sympathy and spiritual discernment, possesses all things.
J. W. Atkinson, Penny Pulpit,new series, No. 956.
References: 2 Corinthians 6:10. Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 1; J. Vaughan, Sermons,13th series, p. 101; W. Moffat, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 325; Sermons for Boys and Girls,p. 14; Homilist,2nd series, vol. iv., p. 217. 2 Corinthians 6:11. Ibid.,4th series, vol. i., p. 352.