2 Corinthians.
2 Corinthians.
§ 259. This Epistle was written in the eighteenth or nineteenth year after Paul’s conversion and is almost entirely a defense. At that time he opposed false apostles and false teachers, as well as detractors who were interpreting his words and deeds in a sinister direction. Against both these groups he showed that he wrote nothing out of levity, ambition, or a desire to dominate—as the false teachers and detractors were portraying him—but out of a sincere concern for promoting their salvation. Yet mingled with his apologetic treatise are exhortation as well as rebukes of various kinds.
It consists of thirteen chapters. In these, after his introduction, he excuses the delay of his coming and the intensity of his rebukes (c. 1-2); gives an account of his ministry (c. 2-3); exhorts them to patience in adversities (c. 3-4), to piety (c. 5), to purity and chastity (c. 6-7), to give alms (c. 8-9); and, finally, he asserts his own authority with an enumeration of the labors, visions, and perils he had endured for the sake of the Gospel of Christ (c. 11-13). At the end he adds an epilogue.