B. Final Greetings (16:19–24)
19The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house. 20All the brothers and sisters here send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.
21I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand.
22If anyone does not love the Lord, let that person be cursed! Come, Lord!
23The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.
24My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Greek Prisca, a variant of Priscilla
The Greek for Come, Lord reproduces an Aramaic expression (Marana tha) used by early Christians
Some manuscripts do not have Amen.
The letter now concludes with a series of standard (for Paul) greetings (vv. 19–21) and the grace-benediction (v. 23). But Paul cannot quite give up the urgency of the letter, so he interrupts these two rather constant elements of his conclusions with one final word of warning to those who have been causing him grief, this time in the form of an extraordinary curse formula (v. 22). The apparent harshness of this warning is matched by the equally unusual addition of a final word of affirmation of his love for them (v. 24), found only here in his extant letters. Thus right to the end the unique concerns that have forged this letter find their expression.
It is frequently suggested, especially because of the curse formula, that Paul deliberately shaped this conclusion to function as the transition from the public reading of the letter to the celebration of the Eucharist. But that is unlikely. There can be little question that Paul expected the letter to be read publicly—although whether in this case that would be done in a single setting is another question. The obvious setting for such a public reading is the gathered assembly. But it is tenuous at best to argue backward to this letter from the presence of the kiss in the eucharistic celebration of Justin’s Apology (chap. 65) and the use of Maranatha in a concluding eucharistic prayer in the Didache 10:6, and see these various elements as the actual preparation for the Lord’s Supper in Corinth. In the Didache the Maranatha comes at the end of the celebration as an eschatological cry for the coming of the Lord, and in this letter, however these elements are worked out in the actual life of the community, they nonetheless conclude the letter as a letter— even if some derive from worship and may actually take place in such a setting.
19–20a Such greetings as these become another way (besides the mutual collection for Jerusalem) that Paul keeps the various churches aware of, and thus in relationship to, one another. The greetings in this case are threefold: from (a) all the churches of Asia, (b) Aquila and Prisca and the church that meets in their house, and (c) all the brothers and sisters presently with him.
(a) The greeting from all the churches of a province occurs only here in Paul’s extant letters. One cannot tell from such language, of course, how much of the province this entails. We know from the “letters” to the seven churches in the Revelation (chaps. 2–3) that by the end of the first century there were churches in many of its cities. The implication of two passages in Acts (19:10 and 26) is that this had already begun with Paul’s ministry.
(b) The greeting from Aquila and Prisca probably reflects a twofold reality. First, these were former Corinthians (cf. Acts 18:2–3) who now join Paul in “warmly” greeting old friends; second, this is most likely the house church in Ephesus to which Paul himself is attached. Hence the greeting comes not only from their friends, but from the church as well.
Aquila and Prisca are among the companions of Paul about whom there is a bit more information than for some others. Fellow Jews and tentmakers, they first met Paul in Corinth (Acts 18:1–3). They then accompanied him to Ephesus, where they led Apollos to Christ (Acts 18:18–26), and where they still are at the time of this writing. A little later they are apparently again in Rome, where they have another house church (Rom. 16:3–5); but in a much later letter (2 Tim. 4:19) they are back in Ephesus. Both their mobility and their patronage of house churches (in Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome) indicate that they were at least moderately well-to-do.
(c) One cannot be sure whether “all the brothers and sisters” mentioned at the end (v. 20a) is a redundant generalizing of those mentioned at the beginning (v. 19), or whether, more likely, it refers to Paul’s various co-workers and traveling companions. If the latter, of course, we cannot name any except Sosthenes (1:1), since Timothy is not with him and one cannot be sure of who else is, although it is possible that Titus would currently be working with him (see 2 Cor. 2:13).
20b From greetings to the Corinthians from Asia, Paul turns to encourage them to “greet one another,” and to do so “with a holy kiss.” This is the second of five such appeals in the NT. There can be little doubt that this form of greeting prevailed in the church from the very beginning. Most likely it was a carryover from Judaism and from the culture in general. Its background in Judaism can be found in the greeting of both family (e.g., Gen. 27:26; cf. Luke 15:20) and friend (1 Sam. 20:41); it was also the evidence of reconciliation (Gen. 33:4).
By the time of Justin, the “kiss of peace” had become a part of the liturgy in Rome. Some have suggested, therefore, that it has liturgical significance here as well, where the kiss of peace, indicating an expression of reconciliation or unity, preceded the Lord’s Table. More likely, however, it is simply the common form of greeting, reflecting both the culture (thus “the kiss” as such) and the special relationship that believers had to one another as the family of God (thus a “holy” kiss, that is, a kiss that belonged to the Lord’s holy people).
21 With this sentence Paul proceeds to a third kind of greeting, his to them. In so doing he also begins the autographic conclusion. Thus (lit.): “This greeting is in my own hand, Paul.” This means that the letter to this point has been inscribed by someone else, probably Sosthenes (see on 1:1), and that the rest, from here through to the end (v. 24), would be in Paul’s own “large print” handwriting. This means of authentication was a common feature in letters and reports in antiquity. Although it does not occur in all of Paul’s letters, the possibility that someone had forged a letter in his name (2 Thess. 2:2) caused him to adopt such a procedure in 2 Thessalonians, and in other later letters as well. His reason for doing so here can only be surmised, but most likely it is related to the questioning of his authority by some in this church.
22 With pen in hand, immediately following his signature, Paul apparently feels impelled to take one last shot at his Corinthian opponents, in the form of a curse: “If anyone does not love the Lord, let that person be anathema.” Because of the un-Pauline character of the language and of the alleged eucharistic setting for the following Marana tha, it has been argued that this is a ban formula, intended to exclude certain people from the Lord’s Table. But to arrive at that conclusion requires several leaps with the evidence. It seems quite probable that Paul has here borrowed something traditional; that its setting is a “fencing of the table” for the Lord’s Supper seems highly unlikely, at least it would seem so in light of his earlier corrections (11:17–34), where his judgments on their actions require a change, to be sure, but scarcely would result in a ban.
The clue to its meaning lies in two places: (1) Paul’s own usage of a similar “curse” in another letter (Gal. 1:8–9), where it is pronounced on those who deviate from the gospel that Paul preached. There is no good reason to think it means otherwise here, especially in light of the frequent warnings of this letter, some of which take even stronger expression than this. (2) The similar warning that moves toward exclusion in an earlier letter (2 Thess. 3:14–15), where the warning is precisely for those who “do not obey our instruction in this letter.”
Thus, using traditional language whose origin is uncertain, Paul offers one last warning to those who persist in deviating from his gospel, and now especially to those who might refuse to obey the injunctions of this letter. He has just authenticated the letter with his signature. That leads him to assert their need to obey; but instead of putting it in terms of their obeying him, he puts it in the ultimate language of Christian obedience: “If anyone does not love the Lord.” That, it would seem, covers the whole letter. To insist on human wisdom over against the gospel of the Crucified One is to “not love the Lord”; so with living in incest, attendance at idol feasts, and so forth. The ultimate issue for Paul, therefore, is not their obedience to his word, but their love, or lack thereof, for the Lord himself. Failure to obey Christ is lack of love for him; to reject him in this way is to place oneself under the anathema.
But what, then, is the meaning of Maranatha? This is a particularly complex issue, both because of the ambiguity as to its meaning in Aramaic and because of its place here in the letter. The Aramaic lying behind this Greek (and English) transliteration can be pointed either Marana tha (= “Our Lord, come!”) or Maran atha (= “Our Lord has come”). In either case its use in a context like this can only be explained on the basis of its prior use in the Aramaic-speaking church, almost certainly in the context of worship. Whether or not it belonged to the “liturgy” of the Lord’s Table in such an early setting is moot. If so, then it probably meant “Come, Lord” (as the NIV), and is to be understood as an early eschatological prayer, similar to that in Revelation (“Come, Lord Jesus” [22:20]). This is precisely its function in the concluding eucharistic prayers in the Didache (10:6).
But it is not certain that in this context Paul intended it as a prayer, or if he did, whether he intended it eschatologically. Some have argued that his intent is to reinforce the preceding “ban formula,” as an invocation of the Lord’s presence to hear and bear witness, as it were, to the pronounced anathema. It is also possible that it functions in this same capacity as an indicative. In light of the inherent warning in the words “if anyone love not the Lord, let that person be anathema,” he concludes by affirming that the Lord whom they reject has indeed come.
At this distance, and especially with a word that would have had special significance for worship, one cannot be certain as to Paul’s own intent. In light of its later use in the Didache, supported by the prayer at the end of the Revelation, it seems most likely that it is in fact an eschatological prayer. If so, in the present context it would seem to function as a response to the anathema on those who do not love the Lord, affirming that the Lord whom they reject is indeed coming, and those who do not love him are under the anathema and in danger of being rejected by Christ at his coming. It needs only to be added that this prayer is clear evidence that in the very earliest days the Aramaic-speaking church referred to Jesus by the title that in the OT belongs to God alone.
23–24 All of Paul’s letters conclude with the grace-benediction. The standard “good-bye” in ancient letters was errōso (lit., “be strong”), found in the NT in the letter of James (Acts 15:29). As with Paul’s salutations, this standard conclusion is also Christianized. It is “grace,” the favor of God that is theirs through “the Lord Jesus,” that he wishes for them. Thus the letter begins with the salutation “Grace to you” and concludes the same way. Grace is the beginning and the end of the Christian gospel; it is the single word that most fully expresses what God has done and will do for his people in Christ Jesus; nothing is deserved, everything is freely given.
Given that reality, the concluding expression of Paul’s own love for them is all the more striking. Most likely it is added to soften the blow of what at times, including what has immediately preceded (v. 22), have been very strong words. To write as he has does not mean he loves them less, but more. Thus, along with the benediction of grace from the Lord, he affirms that his own love is also “with them.” It is more difficult to determine whether Paul here intends an indicative or an optative, but it matters little. His love is always “with them,” hence he offers it to them as the final matter of this otherwise very strong letter, in which he and they have been at odds on almost every issue. What makes all of this possible are the final words of the letter, “in Christ Jesus.” Just as the letter began (1:1–3), so he concludes, by reminding them that their common life together, and thus his love for them, takes place as they and he are together “in Christ Jesus.”
Thus the letter ends on a note similar to its beginning, full of the same tensions between what they are by grace and what they yet need to become in terms of obedience to Christ. They are greeted with warmth, and assured of Christ’s grace and Paul’s love. Along with him they await the coming of the Lord. They should continue to greet one another with the kiss of love. However, they are not yet fully there, so even here there is the word of warning (v. 22). Christians must continually live in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet”; what they must not allow to happen is to excuse themselves from obedience because they are not yet fully there! The grace of the Lord and the hope of his coming should cause all to heed the words of this letter so as to be watchful and to do all things in love (vv. 13–14).