Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 13

This is the third time I am coming to you (2 Corinthians 13:1). These words may point to one of two possibilities. The first is that Paul refers to three actual visits:

1. The visit recorded in Acts 18:1.
2. An unrecorded visit (of which, however, there is no trace) during Paul’s stay at Ephesus.
3. The visit now being planned.

The second possibility is that he refers to a sequence involving:

1. One actual visit, as before.
2. The intended visit that had been abandoned (see Notes on 2 Corinthians 1:16).
3. The visit he now has in view.

The latter interpretation aligns best with the known facts of the case and is in complete accordance both with his language in 2 Corinthians 12:14 and with his way of expressing his intentions, as in 1 Corinthians 16:5.

In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established (Deuteronomy 19:15). There seems no adequate reason not to take these words in their simple and natural meaning. The rule, quoted from Numbers 35:30, Deuteronomy 17:6, and Deuteronomy 19:15, was like an axiom of Jewish law and, one might almost say, of natural law.

And it had received fresh prominence from our Lord’s reproduction of it when giving directions for the discipline of the society He came to found (see Note on Matthew 18:16). What could be more natural than for Paul to say, “When I come, there will be no more surmises and vague suspicions, but every offense will be dealt with in a vigorous and full inquiry”? There seems something strained, almost fantastic, in the interpretation that, seizing on the accidental juxtaposition of “the third time” and the “three witnesses,” assumes that the Apostle personifies his actual or intended visits and treats them as the witnesses whose testimony was to be decisive. It is a fatal objection to this view that it turns the judge into a prosecutor and makes him appeal to his own reiteration of his charges as evidence of their truth.

I told you before, and foretell you . . .—Better, I have warned you before (referring, probably, to the threat of 1 Corinthians 4:13–19, and implied in 2 Corinthians 1:23).

The chief objects of this rigor were to be those whom he had described previously as “having sinned beforehand” (see Note on 2 Corinthians 12:21); but he adds that his work as judge will extend to all the rest of the offenders. What he has in view is obviously passing a sentence of the nature of an excommunication on the offenders, delivering them to Satan (1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Timothy 1:20), with the assured confidence that that sentence would be followed by some sharp bodily suffering. In that case men would have, as he says in the next verse, a crucial test whether Christ was speaking in him, and learn that he whom they despised as infirm had a reserve-force of spiritual power, showing itself in supernatural effects even in the regions of man’s natural life.

Which to you-ward is not weak.—There is still a touch of indignant sadness in the tone in which the words are uttered. Men will not be able to cast that reproach of weakness upon Him whose might they will feel all too keenly.

For though he was crucified through weakness . . .—The better manuscripts give another reading, without the contingent or concessive clause: For even He was crucified. St. Paul seems to see in Christ the highest representative instance of the axiomatic law by which he himself had been comforted, that strength is perfected in infirmities. For He too lived encompassed with the infirmities of man’s nature, and the possibility of the crucifixion flowed from that fact, as a natural sequel.

For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him.—The thought that underlies the apparently hard saying is that the disciples of Christ share at once in their Lord’s weakness and in His strength. “We, too, are weak,” the Apostle says; “we have our share in infirmities and sufferings, which are ennobled by the thought that they are ours because we are His; but we know that we shall live in the highest sense, in the activities of the spiritual life, which also we share with Him, and which comes to us by the power of God; and this life will be manifested in the exercise of our spiritual power towards you and for your good.” To refer the words “we shall live” to the future life of the resurrection, though the thought is, of course, true in itself, is to miss the special force of the words in relation to the context.

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. The position of “yourselves” in the Greek (before the verb in both clauses) shows that this is the word on which stress is emphatically laid, and the thought grows out of what had been said in 2 Corinthians 13:3: “You seek a test of my power. Apply a test to yourselves. Try yourselves whether you are living and moving in that faith in Christ which you profess” (the objective and subjective senses of faith melting into one without any formal distinction). “Subject yourselves to the scrutiny of your own conscience.” The latter word had been used in a similar sense in 1 Corinthians 11:28. As far as we can distinguish between it and the Greek for “examine,” the one suggests the idea of a special test, the other a general scrutiny.

How that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? On the last word, see Notes on Romans 1:28 and 1 Corinthians 9:27. Here its exact meaning is defined by the context as failing to pass the scrutiny to which he calls them: “Christ is in you” (the central thought of the Apostle’s teaching; Galatians 1:16; Ephesians 2:22; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27), “unless the sentence, after an impartial scrutiny by yourselves, or by a judge gifted with spiritual discernment, is that there are no tokens of His presence.” The ideas which Calvinistic theology has attached to the word “reprobate” are, it need hardly be said, foreign to the true meaning of the word, both here and elsewhere.