The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Chapter 7
i. He declares his love, sincerity, and his confidence in the Corinthians.
ii. He declares (ver. 6) his joy at their repentance and amendment.
iii. He states (ver. 10) the signs and acts of true repentance.
iv. He names (ver. 13) Titus as his witness for the repentance, love, and obedience of the Corinthians.
Ver. 1. — Having therefore these promises . The promises that Christians should be the temples of God, should be His sons and daughters, and should have God dwelling in them and walking in them.
Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. From this passage theologians draw the division of sin into that which is fleshly and that which is spiritual. The first has to do with a carnal object, and makes man like a beast, as, e.g., gluttony, lust, and drunkenness. The second has to do with a spiritual object, and makes man like a devil, as, e.g., anger, pride, envy.
S. Basil (Reg. 53) says appropriately that “filthiness of the flesh denotes carnal actions, and filthiness of the spirit is having intercourse with them that do such things, as, e.g ., the Corinthians had with the fornicator whom the Apostle bade them wholly to avoid.”
Perfecting holiness. So that the mind, purged from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, may be perfectly holy and pure, given in the fear of God to good works. The fear of God is both the beginning and perfecting of true wisdom and holiness (Ecclus i. 16, 19, and v. 18). The more the fear of God increases, the more does holiness increase, and so the perfect fear of God is perfect holiness. S. Basil (Reg. 53) says beautifully: “ Holiness consists in being dedicated to God, and thenceforward wholly clinging to Him, in eagerly seeking after and earnestly maintaining such things as are pleasing to Him . Even in things offered to God as gifts those are rejected as unpleasing to Him which are maimed or defective; and to resume for human uses what has been once dedicated as a gift to God is infamous and accursed.”
Ver. 2. — Receive us. Embrace us with the arms of love, as with all our heart we do you (Theophylact). Cf. vi. 11-13. Strictly, the Greek denotes “make a place for us” — a large place in your hearts. Maldonatus (Note Manusc.) renders the words : “ Bear with me if I have praised myself over-much.”
We have defrauded no man. We have obtained no man’s goods, either by violence or fraud. Cf. ii. 11.
Ver. 3. — I speak not this to condemn you. I do not mean to accuse you of suspecting me of such things.
Ye are in our hearts to die and live with you. So great is my love for you that with you and for you I am ready both to die and to live. How this harmonises with the preceding will be seen in ver. 4. S. Paul alludes to lovers, whose love is commonly so ardent as to make them of one life, to hold all things in common, and to involve one in the death of the other. Cf. Nisus and Euryalus in Virgil, Æn. ix. 427-445 ; the Soldurii, mentioned by Caesar in lib. iii. de Bello Gallico , and the sacred cohort of the Thebans, described by Plutarch. Erasmus and others add that the Apostle is referring to that ancient kind of friendship in which on the death of one friend the other also killed himself, as Caesar records that the Soldurii were in the habit of doing. Such was the friendship Horace says that he had with Maecenas. In Peru and Mexico wives and the better-loved servants, when the husband or master dies, throw themselves upon the funeral pyre, or are buried alive with the dead body. In Japan, too, when noblemen are condemned to death, they in company with their nearest friends inflict death on themselves by ripping themselves up. Such suicide the Apostle condemns, but praises and embraces the friendship. He seems to say: “As they love each other even to death, so do I, O Corinthians, love you, and long to live with you and die with you ; but I do not, as they, long to inflict on myself death.” But there is no need to suppose that the Apostle finds a model for his love in illicit and parricidal friendships. They chiefly manifested themselves in simultaneous death and self-murder, and were, therefore, wickednesses, and deserving blame rather than praise.
Ver. 4. — Great is my boldness of speech toward you. My boldness is great because my love is so great. Hence comes my “ glorying of you ” (Theophylact and Ambrose). Paul says all this to banish all suspicion of his good faith, and to gain credence to his declaration , “ We have wronged no man,” &c. “ I have not said this,” he seems to say, “ out of any distrust of your good opinion of me, but out of the boldness engendered by my great love for you; hence it is that I am wont to glory of you.” Let superiors learn of S. Paul, to beware lest those under them distrust them, from a belief that their superiors do not believe them, do not trust in them, and do not therefore confidently entrust themselves and their goods to their superior ; let them rather endeavour to deal openly with them, and let them know that they are loved; let them show that they have a good opinion of their inferiors, and by so doing they will bind their hearts to themselves, and turn them wherever they please.
I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation. Viz., because you have corrected what in my First Epistle I condemned. You have so comforted me that I not only am filled with comfort, but more than filled. This exuberance of joy drowns all feeling of my afflictions , even as floods of water put out a small fire.
Observe here that friendship produces four affections in the souls of friends. The first affection is one of trust, of which Paul says : “ Great is my confidence in you ; ” the second is one of glorying, of which he says : “ Great is my glorying of you ; ” the third is one of comfort, of which he says : “I am filled with comfort;” the fourth is one of superabundant joy, of which he says : “ I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation.”
Ver. 5. — Without were fightings. Unbelievers were openly hostile.
Within were fears. I was inwardly anxious, both because of false and of weak Christians, lest they should be led to fall away through our persecutions (Anselm and Ambrose).
Ver. 7. — When he told us your earnest desire , your mourning, your fervent mind toward me ; so that I rejoiced the more . I was before saddened through your divisions and other sins, but when I saw and heard of your desire to amend, your penitence for your sins, and your zeal to protect me against all detractors, I rejoiced.
Ver. 8. — For though I made you sorry with a letter . Although in my First Epistle I made you sorry by rebuking your vices, nevertheless it was good for us, and it stirred you to repentance, which at once brought you peace and joy.
Though it were but for a season . My Epistle saddened you but for a short time, and it led you to repentance; therefore I rejoice both over my letter and your repentance.
Ver. 9. — Ye sorrowed to repentance. This sorrow led you to repentance, to mourning (ver. 7), to indignation and revenge (ver. 11). Repentance, therefore, is not merely a coming to one’s self again, as I will show directly by several proofs.
Ver. 10. — For godly sorrow worketh repentance. Observe 1. that the Apostle here distinguishes two kinds of sorrow, one according to God, and one of the world. The sorrow of the world, or carnal sorrow, is that which springs from loss of excessively loved worldly goods — as when wealth or pleasures are lost, when friends or great men are offended. This sorrow often works death to the soul, by bidding us recover our goods and offend God. Not unseldom it even works diseases and death to the body, for many pine away and die through excessive grief. “Sorrow slays many,” says Ecclus. xxx. 25, “and there is no use in it.” But godly or Divine sorrow is that which follows on the thought of having offended God, and is called contrition; it produces penance, or self-punishment; so leading to salvation, it is firm, sure, and not to be repented of. Hence Chrysostom and Erasmus refer not to be repented of to penance, not to salvation.