Paul’S Warning
PAUL’S WARNING
2 CORINTHIANS 13:1-4
Paul tells his readers he is the representative of Christ, the Crucified One.
The promise and prospect of a third impending visit (12:14) are renewed in 13:1. Paul has already issued a direct and strong warning, as an authoritative spokesperson of Christ (13:3), about the ethical laxity of the members who had sinned. He reiterates that warning (13:2) and tells them plainly that he will deal firmly with any repeated indiscipline and trifling with Christian moral standards. He is outspoken in his warning.
There is a veiled threat of some discipline (in 13:2-3) which he will exercise, not in his own right or name, but simply and solely because he is the genuine messenger of Christ, who seeks, as an overriding consideration, the highest welfare of the church (13:9).
Yet Paul’s threat of a severe reprimand is tempered by some paradoxical thoughts (13:3b). He is weak in himself and seemingly powerless to remedy the menacing situation at Corinth, but clothed with an authority which derives from his status as Christ’s apostle—almost his personal representative—Paul has the ability to cope firmly with this ugly problem and to bring to bear on it Christ’s own power as head of his people. “The church is subject to Christ” (Ephesians 5:24), and to the apostle who represents Christ to the congregation. Yet (if we recall 1:24) this authority is exercised in no dictatorial or authoritarian way, as though Paul were simply imposing his own personal whims and wishes on the church. It is an authority exercised in the spirit of the crucified One (13:4), which will bring the Corinthians to see the folly of their ways. In other words, it is love which subdues, by turning disobedience and hostility into a glad acceptance of God’s will and a willing alignment of our selfish ends to his nobler purposes for our lives. It is the message of the cross applied to a difficult and delicate situation, created by a still rebellious minority at Corinth.
Notes 13:1: Paul is still under fire from a small group of discontented people who maintain their resistance to him. “But can they agree on the accusation they bring?” asks Paul, reminding them of Deuteronomy 19:15 (see Matthew 18:16). 13:2: a clear allusion to the second (“painful”) visit.
Meditation “Crucified in weakness.” Consider Bonhoeffer’s comment on this phrase: “God in human form, not, as in other religions, in animal form—the monstrous, chaotic, remote, and terrifying—nor yet in abstract form—the absolute, metaphysical, infinite, etc.—nor yet in the Greek divine-human or autonomous man, but man existing for others, and hence the Crucified.”