2 Corinthians13chapter 13

2 Corinthians 13:1-2

two or three witnesses: This is the third time I am coming to you: Paul reckons a first founding visit, a painful second visit implied by 2:1, and this letter's promised third, the coming discipline no longer a threat but a schedule. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established: the citation is Deuteronomy 19:15's rule for establishing a matter, and the bench reads Paul's use of it as procedural, his coming judgment on unrepentant sin will follow the law's own standard of evidence rather than a single man's word. I told you before, and foretell you, as if I were present, the second time, and being absent now I write to them which heretofore have sinned, and to all other, that, if I come again, I will not spare: the warning already given in person is repeated in writing so no one at Corinth can claim surprise.

2 Corinthians 13:3-4

Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you: the false apostles had demanded evidence that Christ actually spoke through Paul, and he answers that the proof is already visible in the Corinthians themselves, a transformed church being Christ's own mighty work through his ministry. For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God: Paul grounds his own pattern of weakness and power in the pattern of Christ's own cross and resurrection, the same shape the letter has traced since chapter 4's treasure in earthen vessels. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you: the bench reads the verse as promising that the discipline Paul threatens, however weak it may look from outside, carries real divine power, the resurrection pattern working itself out in the apostle's coming visit.

2 Corinthians 13:5-6

Examine yourselves: Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves: Paul turns the demand for proof back on his accusers, peirazo and dokimazo both testing terms, the Corinthians who had been examining Paul's credentials now told to examine their own standing first. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?: adokimos, failing the test, and the bench reads the question as searching rather than accusing, an appeal to what the indwelling Christ has already produced in genuine believers as the surest evidence available. But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates: Paul's confidence rests in the reverse direction, that a healthy self-examination by the Corinthians will vindicate his own ministry as the source of their faith, since the tree that bore them cannot itself be corrupt.

2 Corinthians 13:7-8

Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates: Paul states a preference that overturns every worldly ministry calculation, he would rather the Corinthians do right and he himself look like a failed apostle than the reverse, his own vindication mattering less than their obedience. For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth: the bench reads the sentence as both a confession and a boundary, Paul's apostolic authority is real but it is not autonomous, bound to serve truth and incapable of overriding it, a limit no false apostle at Corinth had placed on himself.

2 Corinthians 13:9-10

your perfection: For we are glad, when we are weak, and ye are strong: and this also we wish, even your perfection: the paradox of weakness and strength returns one final time, Paul content to appear weak if it means the Corinthians are strong, and katartisis, perfection, names not sinlessness but full maturity, a body set in right order. Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction: the letter itself is offered as the alternative to the severity Paul would rather not use in person, and the bench reads the closing purpose clause as the standard for all apostolic authority in the New Testament, given for building up and never for tearing down.

2 Corinthians 13:11

the God of love and peace: Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace: the letter's closing exhortations answer its opening themes directly, comfort echoing the paraklesis of 1:3-7 and one mind answering the divisions catalogued in 12:20. And the God of love and peace shall be with you: the promise is conditional in shape though gracious in substance, the bench reading Paul's five imperatives as the path along which the God who is love and peace makes himself known to a reconciled church, the same God whose comfort opened the letter now promised to close it.

2 Corinthians 13:12-13

Greet one another with an holy kiss: the customary greeting of the early church, philema hagion, marking full fellowship restored after a letter that has spent most of its length defending Paul against division and suspicion. All the saints salute you: the wider church, likely of Macedonia where Paul writes, sends its own greeting alongside his, the bench noting the verse's quiet reminder that Corinth's troubles were known and prayed over well beyond its own walls.

2 Corinthians 13:14

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all: the letter closes with the fullest trinitarian benediction in the epistles, Son, Father, and Spirit named together with a distinct gift assigned to each, grace to Christ, love to God, and koinonia, communion or fellowship, to the Holy Ghost. The bench reads the order as significant rather than accidental, grace as the door through which believers first come to the Father's love, and that love sustained in ongoing experience by the Spirit's fellowship, the whole Godhead engaged in the single blessing with which Paul sends this most personal of his letters home. Amen: the letter that opened with the God of all comfort closes with the whole Trinity's benediction, the arc of 2 Corinthians complete.