Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 3

Do we begin again to commend ourselves?—The manuscripts present various readings: “Do we begin again to commend ourselves [No, not so], unless we desire [which we do not] letters of commendation;” but the Received Text is sufficiently supported, and gives a clearer and simpler meaning. Here, again, we have to read between the lines.

Titus has told St. Paul what has been said about him at Corinth. Referring, probably, to what he had said in his First Epistle as to the “wisdom” which he preached (1 Corinthians 2:6), his having “laid the foundation” (1 Corinthians 3:10), his dwelling on his sufferings (1 Corinthians 4:11), and his preaching without payment (1 Corinthians 9:15) as something he gloried in, they had sneered at him as always “commending himself.” They had added that it was no wonder that he did so when he had no authoritative letters of commendation from other churches, such as were brought by other teachers.

As soon as the words We are not as the many had passed his lips, the thought occurs that the same will be said again. He hears it said, as it were, and makes his answer.

Need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you?—We are left to conjecture who are thus referred to. Possibly some of the Apollos party had contrasted the letters which he had brought from Ephesus (Acts 18:27) with St. Paul’s lack of them. Possibly the Judaizing teachers who meet us in 2 Corinthians 11:13 had come with credentials of this nature from the Church of Jerusalem.

The indignant tone in which St. Paul speaks indicates the latter view as the more probable. The “letters of commendation” deserve notice as an important element in the organization of the early Church. A Christian traveling with such a letter from any Church was certain to find a welcome in any other. They guaranteed at once his soundness in the faith and his personal character, and served to give a reality to the belief in the “communion of saints,” as the necessary sequel to the recognition of a Catholic or universal Church. It is significant of the part they had played in the social victory of the Christian Church that Julian tried to introduce them into the decaying system which he sought to galvanize into an imitative life (Sozomen, Hist. v. 16).

You are our epistle written in our hearts.—This is an answer. They, the Corinthian converts, are written on his heart. In his thoughts and prayers for them he finds his true commendatory letter, and this a letter which is evident to the eyes of all men. In “known and read” we find the familiar play on the two words, epiginoskein and anaginoskein. (See Note on 2 Corinthians 1:13.) All who knew St. Paul could read what was there written.

Since you are manifestly declared.—The metaphor appears to shift its ground from the subjective to the objective. It is not only as written in his heart, but as seen and known by others, that they (the Corinthians) are like a letter of commendation. They are like a letter that Christ had written as with the finger of God. That letter, he adds, was ministered by us. He had been, that is, as the amanuensis of that letter, but Christ was the real writer.

Written not with ink.—Letters were usually written on papyrus, with a reed pen and with a black pigment (atramentum) used as ink. (Compare to 2 John 1:12.) In contrast with this process, he speaks of the Epistle of Christ as written with the Spirit of the living God. It is noteworthy that the Spirit takes here the place of the older finger of God in the history of the two tables of stone in Exodus 31:18. So a like substitution is found in comparing If I with the finger of God cast out devils (Luke 11:20), with If I by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28). Traces of the same thought are found in the hymn in the Ordination service, in which the Holy Spirit is addressed as “the finger of God’s hand.”

Not in tables of stone.—The thought of a letter written in the heart by the Spirit of God brings three memorable passages to St. Paul’s memory:

1. The heart of flesh of Ezekiel 11:19; Ezekiel 36:26–27.
2. The promise that the law should be written in the heart, which was to be the special characteristic of the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–33).
3. The whole history of the circumstances of the first, or older, covenant.

And, from this verse to the end of the chapter, thought follows rapidly on thought in manifold application of the images thus suggested.

But in fleshy tables of the heart.—The better manuscripts give in tables (or, tablets), which are hearts of flesh, reproducing the words of Ezekiel 11:19. The thought of the letter begins to disappear, and that of a law written on tablets takes its place, as one picture succeeds another in a dissolving view.

Such trust have we.—The words carry us back to the expressions of 2 Corinthians 3:2–3, perhaps, also, to the assertion of his own sincerity and sufficiency implied in 2 Corinthians 2:16–17. He has this confidence, but it is through Christ, who strengthens him (Colossians 1:11).

Not that we are sufficient . . .—He had not used the word “sufficient” of himself, but it was clearly the implied answer to the question, Who is sufficient for these things? In the Greek there are two different prepositions for the one “of” in English. “Not as though we are sufficient of ourselves to form any estimate as originating with ourselves,” would be a fair paraphrase. The habit of mind that led St. Paul to emphasize the shades of meaning in Greek prepositions, to an extent hardly expressible in English and perhaps not commonly recognized in colloquial Greek, is seen again in Romans 11:36.

Is of God.—The preposition is the same as in the second of the two previous clauses. The sufficiency flows from God as its source: originates with him.