Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 3:1

"Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? or need we, as do some, epistles of commendation to you or from you?" — 2 Corinthians 3:1 (ASV)

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).