Bible Commentaries
2 Corinthians 5

A Parenthesis on Death (4:16-5:10)

This is a real parenthesis, because 5:11 fits very nicely to 4:15; but, like Paul’s side remarks in general, it lets us in to some vital truths. You might put it this way: Paul is saying, "I know that I am in constant danger and am wearing myself out work­ing so hard; my life may be short and death only around the corner. But so what? Death will not destroy me; it will only bring me closer to the Lord." Physically, Paul is growing every day older and weaker, and yet inwardly, spiritually, he keeps forever young. In 4:7-10 and 11:23-29 Paul speaks of the very great hardships he had suffered, but here he dismisses all of this lightly as a "slight momentary affliction" (4:17). It is all a preparation for an "eternal weight of glory"; that is, glory so great that one can­not bear the thought of it. This word "glory" is one Paul often uses to describe the Christian’s next life. It is an indefinite word, used on purpose, because our minds are not capable of imagining what God has in store for us (see 1 Corinthians 15:43; Romans 8:18; Romans 9:23; Colossians 1:27; Colossians 3:4).

The things which are unseen are eternal (4:16-18). Death is dismal only if you think that nothing is real except what you can see and touch and hear. Death, physically, means decay, destruc­tion. The great dividing line between religion—any religion and not only Christianity—and no-religion is right here: Can what is neither seen nor heard nor felt be real? Are all realities only those we can measure with some kind of scales or yardstick? The person who is a materialist—that is, one who believes that all that is real can always be seen, touched, and measured—can think of death only as the great destroyer. A person who believes only in the "natural" cannot see beyond death—not an inch; only believers in the supernatural (that is, in reality that no lab­oratory can ever discover or measure) can believe in life beyond this life.

Paul compares the difference between this life and the next (remember he is speaking for himself and other Christians) to the difference between living in a tent and in a house (5:1-5). The tent is temporary; it is temporary on purpose. It is made to be portable. But a house is built to last. To be sure this is an imperfect illustration, for even a house wears out in time, and Paul does not mean that the next life, like this one, finally ends in decay! Still, just as most people would much rather live in a house than in a tent, so the next life is actually more livable than this one. Here we are camping out; yonder we shall be at home. Paul made tents and sold them, and he knew what he was talk­ing about. A man who lives in a tent never belongs where he is; he belongs somewhere else. A man in a house belongs there. So death is not a leaving home; it is a going home. We could ask no finer words for the next life than Paul’s immortal phrase, "so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." (Isn’t that the exact opposite of what irreligious people think? They suppose that in death, life has been swallowed up by destruction!)

There are two kinds of courage in the face of death. One is the courage of despair, the other the courage of hope (5:6-10). Paul expresses the second: "We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord." Paul does not even consider the possibility of not being. Philosophers and others who talk about Christian courage as if it were calmness in the prospect of "non-being," are talking about the courage of despair, not of hope. For Paul, the truth is that now I am, and then (beyond death) I shall be. The difference which death makes is not be­tween being and not-being; it is a difference between being in a tent and being in a house, being away from home and being at home, being away from the Lord and being with him.

Paul does not ever go into much detail about the next life, and we may well believe his silence was inspired. Yet one feature of that life he often mentions: the Judgment. Two points in verse 10 should be noted. One is that Christ is the Judge; this is one of the notable ways in which Paul ascribes to Christ a final and absolute authority equal to that of God. If we could say so rever­ently, when Paul draws a picture of either this life or the next, in the place where we expect to find a blank space for the in­visible God (Paul’s own word, Colossians 1:15), we see the Lord Jesus. The other feature of verse 10 is that here Paul seems to teach that human destiny depends on what we do, good or evil. There are people who believe that this is what Paul meant. Others, in­cluding most Protestants, know that when Paul set out to discuss this very question, On what does a man’s final destiny depend? his answer can be summed up (as all readers of Romans know): Not on actions but on faith; it is not what man does but the grace of God that saves him. So here Paul is not contradicting himself. What he most likely means is that not justification but rewards are given in accordance with what men have done of good or evil. In other words—if you want to push this further—there are grades of joy and blessedness in heaven, and grades of horror in hell.

Verses 11-13

The Ministry of Reconciliation (5:11-6:13)

Paul now comes back from the Last Judgment to his main theme in this part of his letter, namely, the work of the Christian ministry. In 5:11 he uses one of his all-embracing phrases: "Knowing the fear of the Lord [he means reverence, not fright], we persuade men." The minister stands between God and men; it is only as he knows God that he can persuade men. It is not Paul who gives Paul dignity, but God. Paul does not commend himself; he commends Christ. He may have been accused of being off-beat, off-center. Well, he says, if he has been crazy it is for God’s cause. Paul, like all true preachers ever since, however sensational he might be, had as his root-motive nothing selfish, much less crazy. "The love of Christ controls us," he says. He means first of all the love Christ had shown to him, but possibly he means also the love he has toward Christ. The Christian reader should stop and think about this sentence a long time. What is my motive in Christian work? What should be a young man’s reasons for entering the ministry, a girl’s for becoming a deaconess or a missionary? It is much better not to be a minister at all than to be one for the wrong reasons.

"One has died for all." Here as in many places Paul starts from the Cross to find the meaning of Christianity. Verses 14 and 15 are a summing up of the whole Christian life. There is an argument about these verses. Does Paul mean by "all," all men, or only all for whom Christ died? Can you go to any human being anywhere and say, "Christ died for you"? Some theologians do not believe that Paul could have meant what he says here. But if we go on the principle that it is best to understand Paul (or anyone else) on the basis of his clearest and plainest state­ment on any topic, then it is hard to see where Paul ever ex­pressed himself more flatly and unmistakably than here: Christ died for all. There are churches that teach that God has no in­tention or wish to save some people; but the majority of Chris­tian churches teach that, in Paul’s words, God "desires all men to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:4). This does not mean that all will be saved; God leaves men free even to say No to him, No to the Christ on the cross.

Verse 16 does not mean that Paul had a sort of out-of-this­-world attitude to other people. It is another side of what we have already noticed: What is real is always more than meets the eye. He has been talking about salvation, only calling it not "salva­tion" but "life," and in verse 17 he comes to this point: What happens to a man when he is converted? Outwardly, nothing at all. He has been to church, he has been impressed by sermon or prayer or hymn, he consciously gave his heart to the Lord. And he goes home to Sunday dinner as usual. But Paul says he is a "new creation." What he means is that if you look at the man as, say, the policeman or his boss looks at him, "from a human point of view," he is still plain John Doe. But as God sees him, something has happened to him, inside. A new creation has be­gun, a new life has started. Paul does not use the words "new birth," but "new creation" is just as radical and means the same. Paul telescopes the life experience of a Christian; he says the old has passed away, the new has come—not fully come, as he well knew from those half-baked Corinthians, but the start has been made.

The life in Christ, furthermore, is not something a man simply decides to do, not a mere turning over a new leaf. It is some­thing God does to and in a person. And yet there is no getting away from personal response, taking or rejecting God’s love in Christ. Paul does not say, "All this is from God and therefore you don’t need to do a thing." He says, "All this is from God... So we ... beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (5:18-20).

Here as elsewhere, Paul speaks of our being reconciled to God, not of his being reconciled to us. Other religions may recommend ways of persuading the gods to be gracious. The Christian religion knows that the only God is a God of grace. He does not need to be won over to us; we need to be won over to him.

Here again it is well to stop and think as deeply as you can into this profound truth. What does it mean to be an enemy of God? How do we show hostility to him? Why is being reconciled to God the same thing as becoming a "new creation"?

And again Paul reminds us of the terrible yet triumphant paradox—the truth that is too strange to seem true—that, so to speak, God came so far over on our side that in Christ he not only became human, joining the human race, but he took the place of the human sinner. Christ knew no sin, yet he was made to be sin. As he took our place he gave us his. Paul has already (1 Corinthians 1:30) called Christ our righteousness; here he calls us the "righteousness of God in him [Christ]" (see 5:21).

Verse 21 can be called the whole doctrine of the Atonement in a single sentence. If someone complains that Paul does not fully explain it, all we can say is, How can anyone explain the love of a God who identifies himself with his own enemies in order to re-create them as his friends? It is really a good thing that God does not always act "rationally" toward us. If he did, we could have small hope. The God who is love does the unexpected, the unexpectable. We have to remember that when the God of love walked this earth as a man, some people thought him crazy and some thought him bad. A God who does nothing but what respectable citizens will approve would be a sorry sort of God.

Nevertheless, salvation—the new life in God—is not simply God’s affair It does not come automatically, without our knowl­edge and consent. If Paul had thought so he never would have gone on (6:1) to say, "We entreat you . . ." There is no point in the Christian life, at its beginning or in the midst of it, at which God does it all. Always we are called on to respond. The people at Corinth were Christians, church members. Paul is not appealing to them to accept Christ; they had done that. What he fears is that they have accepted God’s grace in vain; that is, they have gone on living as if God had never come in Christ to their rescue.

Paul now (6:3-13) rather suddenly comes back to the main theme of this section, the nature of the Christian ministry. He has been speaking about the message of the minister, the plea for harmony with God which as we have said is one of the main themes of the epistle. Now he speaks of the minister—of himself in particular, as the minister he knew best. Again we find a pas­sage calling for meditation rather than explanation. Up to verse 9 it is clear enough. The point is: Does it resemble the reader’s own experience? What Paul says can be applied to all forms of Christian service. Isn’t it true that most of us serve God—when we do—for selfish reasons? Isn’t it true that we serve him when convenient, and not otherwise? How many young men would turn back from the ministry if they knew that what Paul de­scribes in verses 4-8 would be their lot? How many of us refuse to serve just as soon as it becomes a little bothersome?

The long sentence beginning in verse 8 is not merely an ex­ample of Paul’s paradoxical style. It is the double truth about the Christian ministry. The truth is so double that it can be described only by what sounds like double talk. Ask Paul: What do you get out of being a missionary? He could honestly say, "What do you think? People claim I’m a faker; I have no reputation to speak of; I have to live in the slums; I’m often within inches of death; I get stiff sentences in the courts; I could sit down and cry—and I do—over these ’Christians’ and their stupid sins; I barely make ends meet, in fact they don’t meet." But Paul could also say honestly: "What do I get out of it? Everything! It isn’t only that I’m known from Jerusalem to Rome; God knows me and that’s enough. The nearer I am to death, the nearer I am to the life everlasting. I haven’t been killed yet, though a good many have tried it. I have learned to find joy in all that I do. I may not have money, but I have brought to many what money cannot buy, and they are grateful. I have everything God wants me to have, and that’s enough for any man."