Theopedia

Second Epistle to the Corinthians

Overview

Second Corinthians is Paul’s second surviving letter to the church at Corinth, an epistle widely regarded among the seven of his letters accepted across New Testament scholarship as authentic.1 It is Paul’s most personal and emotionally exposed letter, written to defend his apostolic ministry against rival teachers who had turned the Corinthian church against him.2

Author and Date

Paul wrote 2 Corinthians from Macedonia after Titus met him there with news of how the Corinthians had responded to a severe, now-lost letter Paul had sent them following an earlier painful visit.3 Linda Belleville describes the full Paul-Corinthian relationship behind the letter, “spanning seven years, three personal visits and four letters,” as “one of the most complex topics in New Testament studies.”4 Paul’s authorship is not disputed; 2 Corinthians is one of the letters “widely regarded as authentic” even by scholarship skeptical of Pauline authorship elsewhere.1

Historical and Literary Context

Rival teachers had infiltrated the Corinthian church and turned it against Paul. A class of teachers critical of Paul entered the congregation “with no apparent objection from the believers there,” boasting of “super-apostolic status,” prizing letters of recommendation, physical presence, and rhetorical polish over the substance of Paul’s ministry.5 They built their own standing chiefly by belittling his.6

Corinth’s culture of self-display made Paul’s ministry look like weakness rather than strength. First-century Corinth was a port city built on rapid social mobility, where, as Timothy Savage’s study of the letter observes and Samuel Parkison summarizes, “boasting and self-display” were the ordinary means of “social ascent.”7 Paul, by contrast, refused to boast in anything but his own weakness (2:17; 11:30-31; 12:9-10), avoided rhetorical showmanship (10:10; 11:6), and declined to enrich himself at the Corinthians’ expense (11:7-11), none of which suited Corinthian sensibilities.7 Paul’s defense of his ministry throughout the letter is not wounded pride but a corrective aimed at the Corinthians’ own idolatry of worldly strength.6

Structure

  1. Paul’s ministry and reconciliation with the Corinthians (chs. 1-7): Paul explains his travel plans and the reason for his severe letter, describes the nature of new covenant ministry, and appeals for reconciliation.
  2. The collection for the Jerusalem church (chs. 8-9): instructions and encouragement regarding the relief offering the Corinthians had pledged for the poor believers in Judea.
  3. Defense against the false apostles (chs. 10-13): a direct, at points ironic defense of Paul’s apostolic authority against the rival teachers, closing with a final warning and benediction.

Major Themes

The ministry of the new covenant

Paul’s longest sustained argument in the letter, beginning at 2:14 and running through 7:16, defends his ministry through a string of metaphors.2 In 3:7-18 he contrasts his own ministry of the Spirit with Moses’s ministry under the old covenant: Moses’s ministry, for all its glory, “led to death and condemnation,” and its glory was fading, where the ministry of the new covenant has a glory that “remains.”8

Treasure in jars of clay

Paul continues the same string of metaphors into chapter 4, describing the gospel ministry as “treasure in a clay pot” (4:7), alongside metaphors of light and momentary affliction against a weight of glory (4:16-18) and of the body as a tent, building, and clothing (5:1-11).9 The metaphor locates the ministry’s power in God rather than in the minister: an ordinary vessel carries a treasure that is not its own.

Reconciliation

In 5:18-21 Paul describes the ministry entrusted to him as “the ministry of reconciliation.” Samuel Parkison identifies two requirements this ministry carries: that trespasses not be counted against those reconciled to God, and that they become the righteousness of God. Christ accomplishes the first in his passive obedience, bearing what was counted against sinners in their place, and the second in his active obedience, which is credited to those “in him” (5:21).10 Paul’s declaration that anyone in Christ is “a new creation” (5:17) marks, in the underlying Greek, less a smooth sentence than an exclamation: “if anyone is in Christ, new creation!”, proclaiming a shift in identity that reaches beyond the individual to God’s larger purpose of making all things new.11

Power made perfect in weakness

In chapter 12 Paul recounts asking the Lord three times to remove a “thorn in the flesh,” a messenger of Satan sent to keep him from being overexalted, and receiving the answer, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness” (12:7-9). James Petigru Boyce reads Paul’s response, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses… for when I am weak then am I strong” (12:10), as evidence that this pattern is not confined to young or immature believers but persists in “the best instructed, and most sanctified,” requiring their continued watchfulness even so.12

Generous giving

Chapters 8-9 instruct the Corinthians on the collection they had pledged for the poor believers in Jerusalem. Paul points to the churches of Macedonia as a model: “in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity,” giving not only “according to their means” but “beyond their means” (8:1-3). Donald Whitney observes that their example ties generosity to self-sacrifice rather than surplus: giving that costs nothing sacrificed is not the giving Paul commends.13

Related Doctrines

Further Reading

References

  1. Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), chap. 3, “My Sheep Hear My Voice”: “of all of Paul’s epistles, only seven are widely regarded as authentic (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon).” ↩ ↩2

  2. Samuel G. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty: Beholding Triune Glory in the Face of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2021), chap. 5, “Veiled and Unveiled Beauty,” 217. ↩ ↩2

  3. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” 216. ↩

  4. Linda Belleville, quoted in Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” 217. ↩

  5. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” 218. ↩

  6. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” 219. ↩ ↩2

  7. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” 219-222, summarizing Timothy B. Savage, Power through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). ↩ ↩2

  8. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” chap. 5, §”Exegesis: doxa in 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:6,” 224. ↩

  9. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” 226-28. ↩

  10. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” chap. 4, §”Redemption Accomplished,” 185-186. ↩

  11. Ken Magnuson, “5. Aspects of Biblical Ethics: New Testament,” in Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2020): “if anyone is in Christ—new creation!” ↩

  12. James Petigru Boyce, “Chapter XXXVIII. Final Perseverance of the Saints,” in Abstract of Systematic Theology, 2nd printing (Baltimore: H. M. Wharton & Company, 1887), 430-431. ↩

  13. Donald S. Whitney, “Chapter 8: Stewardship … for the Purpose of Godliness,” in Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, anniversary ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2024). ↩