The Message of 2 Corinthians by Paul Barnett;

Author:Paul Barnett;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830817405
Publisher: Inter-Varsity Press
Published: 2020-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

1. Paul’s ministry: a basis for pride (5:11–13)

Paul’s allusion to those who take pride (12) brings the newcomers into focus once more.1 In what do they take pride? It is in what is seen, their position (literally, ‘face’, prosōpon, 12), which Paul explains as being out of their mind (13; cf. Mark 3:21), a reference to their ecstatic behaviour. It seems that the new ministers were seeking recognition on the basis of bizarre religious trances or gibberish, doubtless as a sign of their inspiration by God.

Paul’s admission If we are ‘out of our mind’ (13) is written to anticipate a possible rejoinder from the Corinthians that Paul also was in this condition. Did he not ‘speak in tongues more than all’ of them (1 Cor. 14:18)? Surely Paul too, by his tongues-speaking, was trying to legitimize his ministry by means of position or ‘appearance’ – the very thing he complains the newcomers are doing. Paul’s reply is that his glossolalia is something private; it is for God alone, presumably as an expression of personal devotion. It is not done to support his apostolic claims.

For you, however, he tells the Corinthians, we are in our right mind (or ‘self-controlled’, 13). Käsemann comments that ‘the realm of private religious life . . . is marked off from the realm of apostolic service to the community, which is described . . . as being of sound mind’.2

Nevertheless the Corinthians need to be able to say something in defence of Paul. It would be helpful if there were some quality or achievement about which they might express confidence in him. The opportunity (12) for which they should take pride in Paul, he tells them, is that he persuades people (11),3 that is, he engages in evangelism (20). It is the ‘ministry’ therefore, and his faithfulness to it, which are to be the basis of Corinthian confidence in Paul. This source of pride in Paul is not something esoteric or bizarre; his ministry, being public, is plain to the Corinthians’ conscience just as Paul himself is plain to God (11). Mystic experience or ecstatic behaviour in ministers, therefore, should play no part in their recognition or accreditation, though such things may validly belong to their private world of relationship with God. What matters is that the would-be minister is active in ‘persuading’ others to become Christians and that he or she does so in a ‘self-controlled’ way in the public exercise of ministry.

If the object of persuading people was that they might be ‘reconciled to God’ (20), his motive for doing so was the fear of the Lord (11), the fear, as the previous verse stated, that ‘we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ’. To stand before the Lord Christ seated on his throne of judgment is indeed a fearful thing, but for whom? Paul or the people he sought to persuade? It is quite probable that he was thinking of the judgment of both sinners and the servants of the Lord. Paul

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