TEXT. us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you. 9 For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death. For we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ: we are weak, but ye are strong: ye are honourable, but we are despised. Even unto this present hour, we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; 12 And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless: being persecuted, we suffer it: 13 Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day. 14 I write not these things to shame you; but, as my beloved sons, I warn you. PARAPHRASE. every thing you desire; you have not need of me, but have reigned like princes without me; and I wish truly you did reign, that I might come and share in the protection and 9 prosperity you enjoy, now you are in your kingdom. For I being made an apostle last of all, it seems to me as if I were brought last upon the stage, to be, in my sufferings and death, a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men. 10 I am a fool for Christ's sake, but you manage your Christian concerns with wisdom. I am weak, and in a suffering condition; you are strong and flourishing; you are honourable, 11 but I am despised. Even to this present hour, I both hunger and thirst, and want clothes, and am buffeted, wandering 12 without house or home; And maintain myself with the labour of my hands. Being reviled, I bless: being persecuted, I 13 suffer patiently: Being defamed, I intreat: I am made as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things unto this 14 day. I write not these things to shame you; but as a father to warn you, my children, that ye be not the devoted zealous partisans and followers of such, whose carriage is not like this; under whom, however you may flatter yourselves, in truth, you do not reign; but, on the contrary, ye are domineered over, and fleeced by them'. I warn you, I say, as NOTES. 9 The apostle seems here to allude to the custom of bringing those last upon the theatre, who were to be destroyed by wild beasts. 10 So he uses the word weakness, often, in his epistles to the Corinthians, applied to himself: vid. 2 Cor. xii. 10. t 14 Vid. 2 Cor. xi. 20. St. Paul here, from ver. 8 to 17, by giving an account of his own carriage, gently rebukes them for following meu of a different character, and exhorts them to be followers of himself. TEXT. 15 For though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel. 16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me. 17 For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways, which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church. 18 Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you. 19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power. 20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. PARAPHRASE. 15 your father: For how many teachers soever you may have, you can have but one father; it was I that begot you in Christ, 16 i. e. I converted you to Christianity. Wherefore I beseech 17 you, be ye followers of me". To this purpose I have sent my beloved son Timothy to you, who may be relied upon: he shall put you in mind, and inform you, how I behave myself 18 every where in the ministry of the Gospel". Some, indeed, are puffed up, and make their boasts, as if I would not come 19 to you. But I intend, God willing, to come shortly; and then will make trial, not of the rhetoric or talking of those boasters, but of what miraculous power of the Holy Ghost is 20 in them. For the doctrine and prevalency of the Gospel, the propagation and support of Christ's kingdom, by the conversion and establishment of believers, does not consist in talking, nor in the fluency of a glib tongue, and a fine discourse, but in the miraculous operations of the Holy Ghost. NOTES. 16 This he presses again, chap. xi. 1, and it is not likely he would have proposed himself, over and over again, to them, to be followed by them, had the question and contest amongst them been only, whose name they should have borne, his, or their new teacher's. His proposing himself, therefore, thus to be followed, must be understood in direct opposition to the false apostle, who misled them, and was not to be suffered to have any credit, or followers, amongst them. 17 This he does to show, that what he taught them, and pressed them to, was not in a pique against his opposer, but to convince them, that all he did, at Corinth, was the very same, and no other, than what he did every where, as a faithful steward and minister of the Gospel. SECTION II. No. 6. CHAPTER IV. 21.-VI. 20. CONTENTS. ANOTHER means, which St. Paul makes use of, to bring off the Corinthians from their false apostle, and to stop their veneration of him, and their glorying in him, is by representing to them the fault and disorder, which was committed in that church, by not judging and expelling the fornicator; which neglect, as may be guessed, was owing to that faction. 1. Because it is natural for a faction to support and protect an offender, that is of their side. 2. From the great fear St. Paul was in, whether they would obey him, in censuring the offender, as appears by the second epistle; which he could not fear, but from the opposite faction; they, who had preserved their respect to him, being sure to follow his orders. 3. From what he says, ch. iv. 16, after he had told them, ver. 6, of that chapter, that they should not be puffed up, for any other, against him, (for so the whole scope of his discourse here imports) he beseeches them to be his followers, i. e. leaving their other guides, to follow him, in punishing the offender. For that we may conclude, from his immediately insisting on it so earnestly, he had in his view, when he beseeches them to be followers of him, and consequently that they might join with him, and take him for their leader, chap. v. 3, 4, he makes himself by his spirit, as his proxy, the president of their assembly, to be convened for the punishing that criminal. 4. It may further be suspected, from what St. Paul says, ch. vi. 1, that the opposite party, to stop the church censure, pretended that this was a matter to be judged by the civil magistrate: nay, possibly, from what is said, ver. 6, of that chapter, it may be gathered, that they had got it brought before the heathen judge; or at least from ver. 12, that they pleaded, that what he had done was lawful, and might be justified before the magistrate. For the judging spoken of, chap. vi., must be understood to relate to the same matter it does chap. v., it being a continuation of the same discourse and argument: as is easy to be observed by any one, who will read it without regarding the divisions into chapters and verses, whereby ordinary people (not to say others) are often disturbed in reading the holy Scripture, and hindered from observing the true sense and coherence of it. The whole sixth chapter is spent in prosecuting the business of the fornicator, begun in the fifth. That this is so, is evident from the latter end as well as beginning of the sixth chapter. And, therefore, what St. Paul says of lawful, chap. vi. 12, may, without any violence, be supposed to be said in answer to some who might have alleged in favour of the fornicator, that what he had done was lawful, and might be justified by the laws of the country which he was under : why else should St. Paul subjoin so many arguments (wherewith he concludes this sixth chapter, and this subject,) to prove the fornication in question to be, by the law of the Gospel, a great sin, and consequently fit for a Christian church to censure in one of its members, however it might pass for lawful in the esteem and by the laws of Gentiles? There is one objection, which at first sight seems to be a strong argument against this supposition; that the fornication, here spoken of, was held lawful by the Gentiles of Corinth, and that, possibly, this very case had been brought before the magistrate there, and not condemned. The objection seems to lie in these words, ch. v. 1: "There is fornication heard of amongst you, and such fornication as is not heard of amongst the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife." But yet I conceive the words, duly considered, have nothing in them contrary to my supposition. To clear this, I take liberty to say, it cannot be thought that this man had his father's wife, whilst, by the laws of the place, she actually was his father's wife; for then it had been poxia and adultery, and so the apostle would have called it, which was a crime in Greece; nor could it be tolerated in any civil society, that one man should have the use of a woman whilst she was another man's wife, i. e. another man's right and possession. The case, therefore, here seems to be this: the woman had parted from her husband, which it is plain, from chap. vii. 10, 11, 13, at Corinth, women could do. For if, by the law of that country, a woman could not divorce herself from her husband, the apostle had there in vain bid her not leave her husband. But, however known and allowed a practice it might be amongst the Corinthians for a woman to part from her husband, yet this was the first time it was ever known that her husband's own son should marry her. This is that, which the apostle takes notice of in these words, "Such a fornication, as is not named amongst the Gentiles." Such a fornication this was, so little known in practice amongst them, that it was not so much as heard, named, or spoken of by any of them. But whether they held it unlawful that a woman so separated should marry her husband's son, when she was looked upon to be at liberty from her former husband, and free to marry whom she pleased, that the apostle says not. This, indeed, he declares, that, by the law of Christ, a woman's leaving her husband, and marrying another, is unlawful, ch. vii. 11; and this woman's marrying her husband's son he declares, ch. v. 1, (the place before us) to be fornication, a peculiar sort of fornication, whatever the Corinthians or their law might determine in the case; and, therefore, a Christian church might and ought to have censured it within themselves, it being an offence against the rule of the Gospel, which is the law of their society: and they might and should have expelled this fornicator out of their society, for not submitting to the laws of it, notwithstanding that the civil laws of the country, and the judgment of the heathen magistrate, might acquit him. Suitably hereunto, it is very remarkable that the arguments that St. Paul uses in the close of this discourse, chap. vi. 13-20, to prove fornication unlawful, are all drawn solely from the Christian institution, ver. 9. That our bodies are made for the Lord, ver. 13. That our bodies are members of Christ, ver. 15. That our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, ver. 19. That we are not our own, but bought with a price, ver. 20. All which arguments concern Christians only; and there is not, in all this discourse against fornication, one word to declare it to be unlawful by the law of nature, to mankind in general. That was altogether needless, and beside the apostle's purpose here, where he was teaching and exhorting Christians what they were to do, as Christians within their own society, by the law of Christ, which was to be their rule, and was sufficient to oblige them, whatever other laws the rest of mankind observed or were under. Those he professes, chap. v. 12, 13, not to meddle with nor to judge: for, having no authority amongst them, he leaves them to the judgment of God, under whose government they are. These considerations afford ground to conjecture, that the faction which opposed St. Paul had hindered the church of Corinth from censuring the fornicator, and that St. Paul, showing them their miscarriage herein, aims thereby to lessen the credit of their leader, by whose influence they were drawn into it. For, as soon as they had unanimously shown their obedience to St. Paul in this matter, we see his severity ceases, and he is all softness and gentleness to the offender, 2 Cor. ii. 5-8. And he tells them in express words, ver. 9, that his end in writing to them of it, was to try their obedience: to which let me add, that this supposition, though it had not all the evidence for it which it has, yet being suited to St. Paul's principal design in this epistle, and helping us the better to understand these two chapters, may deserve to be mentioned. |
