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“If you want to move to another level in your spiritual life and leadership, take the
time to read this book. It is not just biblical, but practical and readable. The em-
phasis on the local church and its role in discipling others sets it apart from other
books. Read it and share it with others.”
Ronnie Floyd, President, Southern Baptist Convention; Senior Pastor,
Cross Church, Springdale, Arkansas

“Mark Dever is known for being a faithful, exegetical preacher of God’s Word. But
what you may not know is that Mark is an intentional disciple-maker. Whether
he’s meeting on Saturday with lay leaders over lunch to discuss his application
grid for Sunday’s message or discussing church polity in his study with a group
of young interns, Mark emulates what he expects from others. I believe his legacy
will not be just on the pages of the books he has penned, but on the hearts of the
men he’s invested in personally. Don’t just read this book. Implement the biblical
principles found within.”
Robby Gallaty, Senior Pastor, Long Hollow Baptist Church, Hendersonville,
Tennessee

“I love reading books written by authors who are zealous about the subjects they
write about. I often feel like emulating their example even before I get to the last
page of the book. If you know Mark Dever, then you know he is a committed disci-
pler. Discipleship oozes out of him. What drives him and how he disciples others
and gets his church members to do the same is what these pages are all about.
Prepare yourself for a life-changing experience as you read this book!”
Conrad Mwebe, Pastor, Kabwata Baptist Church, Lusaka, Zambia

“This book convicts, exhorts, and instructs followers of Christ concerning the call
to a life of discipling others. It also offers warm-hearted glimpses of this call being
answered in the life of a pastor and his congregation. Mark Dever takes us to the
Scriptures and roots us in the church, with particular focus on church leaders and
careful attention to all. This makes much sense, but we need to be reminded that
the process of discipling others is every believer’s clear and joyful calling.”
Kathleen B. Nielson, Director of Women’s Initiatives, The Gospel Coalition

“With simple yet profound insights, Mark Dever takes Jesus’s final command to
make disciples and teaches us what that means for us and for our churches. By
answering our questions—the why, the what, the where, and the how of discipling—
Pastor Mark coaches us in how to follow Christ by helping others to follow him, to
know the truth, and to live it well. Every follower of Christ needs to read this book!
It’s the best book I’ve ever read on discipling.”
Jani Ortlund, Executive Vice President, Renewal Ministries; author,
Fearlessly Feminine and His Loving Law, Our Lasting Legacy
“Here is a church-strengthening book full of down-to-earth advice about the nuts
and bolts of discipling. Dever’s love for Jesus and his people shines throughout,
and his firm placement of discipleship within the context and bounds of the local
church is vintage Dever ecclesiology. He has a keen eye for pastors, addressing them
about their role with warmth and clarity. I was personally challenged by Dever, who
himself has a track record of prioritizing discipleship in the midst of all his other
responsibilities. If Mark does it, I can do it!”
Grant J. Retief, Rector, Christ Church, Umhlanga, Durban, South Africa

“Dever reminds readers that discipling is a biblical mandate, motivated by obedi-

ence to Christ’s commandment and love for others, and it is not an effort reserved
for a select few. It does not reduce person to projects, but rather it seeks to inten-
tionally develop a relationship with them. It requires time invested in the lives of
people who are interested and motivated to follow Jesus. Finally, only truly humble
teachers should disciple Jesus’s sheep, because ‘when a disciple is fully trained,
he will be like his teacher.’ These emphases and more are contained within this
book. Upon reading it, you will most likely recommend it to others. I know I will.”
Miguel Núñez, Senior Pastor, International Baptist Church of
Santo Domingo; President, Wisdom and Integrity
Discipling
9Marks: Building Healthy Churches
Edited by Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman
Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus,
Jonathan Leeman
Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents
Jesus, Jonathan Leeman
Sound Doctrine: How a Church Grows in the Love and Holiness of
God, Bobby Jamieson
Church Elders: How to Shepherd God’s People Like Jesus, Jeramie
Rinne
Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus, Mack Stiles
Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today, David
Helm
The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ, Ray
Ortlund
B u i l d i n g H e a l t h y Ch u r c h e s

Discipling
How
to Help
Others
Follow
Jesus

M a r k De v e r

W H E AT O N , I L L I N O I S
Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus
Copyright © 2016 by Mark Dever
Published by Crossway
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-
copy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except
as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the
United States of America.
Cover design: Dual Identity, inc.
Cover image: Wayne Brezinka for brezinkadesign.com
First printing 2016
Printed in the United States of America
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy
Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing minis-
try of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International
Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permis-
sion. All rights reserved worldwide.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-5122-2
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-5125-3
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-5123-9
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-5124-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dever, Mark.
Discipling : how to help others follow Jesus / Mark
Dever.
   pages cm.—(9Marks: building healthy churches)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4335-5122-2 (hc)
1. Discipling (Christianity) I. Title.
BV4520.D44   2016
253—dc232015031755
Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
LB 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16
15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Series Preface 9
Introduction11

Part 1: What Is Discipling?

1 The Inevitability of Influence 23
2 Oriented toward Others 27
3 The Work of Discipling 35
4 Objections to Discipling 45

Part 2: Where Should We Disciple?

5 The Local Church 51
6 Pastors and Members 58

Part 3: How Should We Disciple?

7 Choose Someone 73
8 Have Clear Aims 83
9 Pay the Cost 87
10 Raising Up Leaders 93

Conclusion by Jonathan Leeman105

Appendix: Books besides the Bible to Use in  115
Discipling Relationships
Notes119
Scripture Index 121
 Series Preface

Do you believe it’s your responsibility to help build a healthy

church? If you are a Christian, we believe that it is.
Jesus commands you to make disciples (Matt. 28:18–20).
Jude says to build yourselves up in the faith (vv. 20–21). Peter
calls you to use your gifts to serve others (1 Pet. 4:10). Paul
tells you to speak the truth in love so that your church will
become mature (Eph. 4:13, 15). Do you see where we are get-
ting this?
Whether you are a church member or leader, the Building
Healthy Churches series of books aims to help you fulfill such
biblical commands and so play your part in building a healthy
church. Another way to say it might be, we hope these books
will help you grow in loving your church like Jesus loves your
church.
9Marks plans to produce a short, readable book on each
of what Mark has called nine marks of a healthy church, plus
one more on sound doctrine. Watch for books on expositional
preaching, biblical theology, the gospel, conversion, evange-
lism, church membership, church discipline, discipleship and
growth, and church leadership.
Local churches exist to display God’s glory to the nations.
We do that by fixing our eyes on the gospel of Jesus Christ,
trusting him for salvation, and then loving one another with

9
 Series Preface

God’s own holiness, unity, and love. We pray the book you are
holding will help.

With hope,
Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman
Series Editors

10
 Introduction

For years my wife has had to endure my reluctance to ask for

directions. You see, I know myself to be gifted with a natural
sense of direction! Of course, that means my confidence some-
times outpaces my knowledge of the right way. As she says
about me, “Always confident, sometimes right.”
I am not alone in wanting to plow my own furrow. People
love Robert Frost’s words, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and
I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the dif-
ference.” Henry David Thoreau remarked, “If a man does not
keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears
a different drummer.” And William Ernest Henley famously
declared, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my
soul.”
It’s not just the poets and writers who love their indepen-
dence. The population at large is disengaging from their clubs,
civic associations, and local churches, says Robert Putnam in
Bowling Alone. The now-common sight of family members
texting friends while ignoring each other at the dinner table
explains Sherry Turkle’s title Alone Together: Why We Expect
More from Technology and Less from Each Other. And more and
more people are choosing to live alone, notes Eric Klinenberg
in Going Solo.1
Klinenberg writes,

11
 Introduction

In 1950, for instance, only 4 million Americans lived alone,

and they accounted for less than 10 percent of all households.
Today, more than 32 million Americans are going solo. They
represent 28 percent of all households at the national level;
more than 40 percent in cities including San Francisco, Seat-
tle, Atlanta, Denver, and Minneapolis; and nearly 50 percent in
Washington D.C. and Manhattan, the twin capitals of the solo
nation.2

And this trend is not only in America. In Stockholm, Sweden,

60 percent of all households have just one occupant, accord-
ing to Klinenberg.3
What’s going on? Klinenberg finds that in many places
residents increasingly value space less and nearness to ameni-
ties—stores, restaurants, and gyms—more. The singletons, as
he calls them, are reshaping everything to be more convenient
to them. Communal commitments, however, must be detach-
able and temporary.
Today is the day of iPhones and iPads, iTunes and—let’s
just say—the whole i-life. But is there any space in the i-life
for the we-life of Christianity?
At the heart of Christianity is God’s desire for a people to
display his character. They do this through their obedience to
his Word in their relationships with him and with each other.
Therefore he sent his Son to call out a people to follow him.
And part of following the Son is calling still more to follow the
Son. Then, in their life together, these people display the we-
life of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Together they demonstrate
God’s own love, holiness, and oneness.
His Son therefore gave this last command before ascend-

12
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
distinctions, as if these had anything to do with the Gospel?" This is
a good Pauline idea, but it is doubtful whether τὰ κατὰ πρόσωπον
can yield it. The natural sense of these words is, "What is before
your face." The Revised Version accordingly renders, "Ye look at the
things that are before your face": meaning, apparently, "You allow
yourselves to be carried away by whatever is nearest to you—at
present, by these interloping Jews, and the claims they flaunt before
your eyes." It seems to me more natural, with many good scholars,
to take βλέπετε, in spite of its unemphatic position, as imperative:
"Look at the things which are before your faces! The most obvious
and palpable facts discredit these Judaists and accredit me. A claim
to be Christ's is not to be made out à priori by any carnal
prerogatives, or any human recommendations; it is only made out
by this—that Christ Himself attests it by giving him who makes it
success as an evangelist. Look at what confronts you! There is not a
single Christian thing you see which is not Christ's own testimony
that I am His; unless you are senseless and blind, my position and
authority as an apostle can never be impugned among you." The
argument is thus the same as that which he uses in chap. iii. 1-3,
and in the First Epistle, chap. ix. 2.
At first Paul asserts only a bare equivalence to his Jewish opponent:
"Let him consider this with himself, that, even as he is Christ's, so
also are we." The historical, outward connexion with Christ,
whatever it may have been, amounted in this relation to exactly
nothing at all. Not what Christ was, but what He is, is the life and
reality of the Christian religion. Not an accidental acquaintance with
Him as He lived in Galilee or Jerusalem, but a spiritual fellowship
with Him as He reigns in the heavenly places, makes a Christian. Not
a letter written by human hands—though they should be the hands
of Peter or James or John—legitimates a man in the apostolic career;
but only the sovereign voice which says, "He is a chosen vessel unto
Me, to bear My Name." Neither as Christian nor as apostle can one
establish a monopoly by making his appeal to "the flesh." The
application of this Christian truth has constantly to be made anew,
for human nature loves a monopoly; it does not seem really to have
a thing, unless its possession of it is exclusive. We are all too ready
to unchurch, or unchristianise, others; to say, "We are Christ's," with
an emphasis which means that others are not. Churches with a
strong organisation are especially tempted to this unchristian
narrowness and pride. Their members think almost instinctively of
other Christians as outsiders and inferiors; they would like to take
them in, to reordain their ministers, to reform their constitution, to
give validity to their sacraments—in one word, to legitimate them as
Christians and as Christian societies. All this is mere unintelligence
and arrogance. Legitimacy is a convenient and respectable political
fiction; but to make the constitution of any Christian body, which has
developed under the pressure of historical exigences, the law for the
legitimation of Christian life, ministry, and worship everywhere, is to
deny the essential character of the Christian religion. It is to play
toward men whom Christ has legitimated by His Spirit, and by His
blessing on their work, precisely the part which the Judaisers played
toward Paul; and to compromise with it is to betray Christ, and to
renounce the freedom of the Spirit.
But the Apostle does not stop short with claiming a bare equality
with his rivals. "For though[84] I should boast somewhat more
abundantly concerning our authority ... I shall not be put to
shame"—i.e., "The facts I have invited you to look at will bear me
out." The key to this passage is to be found in 1 Cor. xv. 15, where
he boasts that, though the least of the apostles, and not worthy to
be called an apostle, he had, through the grace of God given to him,
laboured more abundantly than all the rest. If it came to
comparison, then, of the attestation which Christ gave to their
several labours, and so to their authority, by success in evangelising,
it would not be Paul who would have to hide his head. But he does
not choose to boast any more of his authority at this point. He has
no desire to clothe himself in terrors; on the contrary, he wishes to
avoid[85] the very appearance of scaring them out of their wits by
his letters (for ἐκφοβεῖν compare Mark ix. 6; Heb. xii. 21). His
authority has been given him, not for the pulling down, but for the
building up, of the Church; it is not lordly (chap. i. 24), but
ministerial; and he would wish, not only to show it in kindly service,
but also in a kindly aspect. "Not for casting down," in ver. 8, is no
contradiction of "mighty for casting down" in ver. 4: the object in the
two cases is quite different. Many things in man must be cast down
—many high thoughts, much pride, much wilfulness, much
presumption and sufficiency—but the casting down of these is the
building up of souls.
At this point comes what is logically a parenthesis, and we hear in it
the criticisms passed at Corinth on Paul, and his own reply to them.
"His letters," they say (or, he says), "are weighty and strong; but his
bodily presence weak, and his speech of no account." The last part
of this criticism has been much misunderstood; it is really of moral
import, but has been read in a physical sense. It does not say
anything at all about the Apostle's physique, or about his eloquence
or want of eloquence; it tells us that (according to these critics),
when he was actually present at Corinth, he was somehow or other
ineffective; and when he spoke there, people simply disregarded
him. An uncertain tradition no doubt represents Paul as an infirm
and meagre person, and it is easy to believe that to Greeks he must
sometimes have seemed embarrassed and incoherent in speech to
the last degree (what, for instance, could have seemed more
formless to a Greek than vv. 12-18 of this chapter?): nevertheless, it
is nothing like this which is in view here. The criticism is not of his
physique, nor of his style, but of his personality—what is described is
not his appearance nor his eloquence, but the effect which the man
produced when he went to Corinth and spoke. It was nothing. As a
man, bodily present, he could get nothing done: he talked, and
nobody listened. It is implied that this criticism is false; and Paul bids
any one who makes it consider that what he is in word by letters
when he is absent, that he will also be in deed when he is present.
The double rôle of potent pamphleteer and ineffective pastor is not
for him.
The kind of criticism which was here passed on St. Paul is one to
which every preacher is obnoxious. An epistle is, so to speak, the
man's words without the man; and such is human weakness, that
they are often stronger than the man speaking in bodily presence,
that is, than the man and his words together. The character of the
speaker, as it were, discounts all he says; and when he is there, and
delivers his message in person, the message itself suffers an
immense depreciation. This ought not so to be, and with a man who
cultivates sincerity will not so be. He will be, himself, as good as his
words; his effectiveness will be the same whether he writes or
speaks. Nothing ultimately counts in the work of a Christian minister
but what he can say and do and get done when in direct contact,
with living men. In many cases the modern sermon really answers to
the epistle as it is referred to in this sarcastic comment; in the pulpit,
people say, the minister is impressive and memorable; but in the
ordinary intercourse of life, and even in the pastoral relation, where
he has to meet people on an equal footing, his power quite
disappears. He is an ineffective person, and his words have no
weight. Where this is true, there is something very far wrong; and
though it was not true in the case of Paul, there are cases in which it
is. To bring the pastoral up to the level of the pulpit work—the care
of individual souls and characters to the intensity and earnestness of
study and preaching—would be the saving of many a minister and
many a congregation.[86]
But to return to the text. The Apostle is disinclined to pursue this
line further: in defending himself against these obscure detractors,
he can hardly avoid the appearance of self-commendation, which of
all things he abhors. An acute observer has remarked that when war
lasts long the opposing combatants borrow each other's weapons
and tactics: and it was this uninviting weapon that the policy of his
opponents laid to the Apostle's hand. With ironical recognition of
their hardihood, he declines it: "We are not bold—have not the
courage—to number ourselves among, or compare ourselves with,
certain of them that commend themselves"—i.e., the Judaists who
had introduced themselves to the Church. "Far be it from me," says
the Apostle grimly, "to claim a place among, or near, such a
distinguished company." But he is too much in earnest to prolong
the ironical strain, and in the verses which follow, from 12 to 16, he
states in good set terms the differences between himself and them.
(1) They measure themselves by themselves, and compare
themselves among themselves, and in so doing are without
understanding.[87] They constitute a religious coterie, a sort of
clique or ring in the Church, ignoring all but themselves, making
themselves the only standard of what is Christian, and betraying, by
that very proceeding, their want of sense. There is a fine liberality
about this sharp saying, and it is as necessary now as in the first
century. Men coalesce, within the limits of the Christian community,
from affinities of various kinds—sympathy for a type or an aspect of
doctrine, or liking for a form of polity; and as it is easy, so is it
common, for those who have united like to like, to set up their own
associations and preferences as the only law and model for all. They
take the air of superior persons, and the penalty of the superior
person is to be unintelligent. They are without understanding. The
standard of the coterie—be it "evangelical," "high church," "broad
church," or what you please—is not the standard of God; and to
measure all things by it is not only sinful but stupid. In contrast to
this Judaistic clique, who saw no Christianity except under their own
colours, Paul's standard is to be found in the actual working of God
through the Gospel. He would have said with Ignatius, only with a
deeper insight into every word, "Where Jesus Christ is, there is the
Catholic Church." (2) Another point of difference is this: Paul works
independently as an evangelist; it has always been his rule to break
new ground. God has assigned him a province to labour in, large
enough to gratify the highest ambition; he is not going beyond it,
nor exaggerating his authority, when he asserts his apostolic dignity
in Corinth; the Corinthians know as well as he that he came all the
way to them, and was the first to come, ministering the Gospel of
Christ. Nay, it is only the weakness of their faith that keeps him from
going farther: and he has hope that as their faith grows it will set
him free to carry the Gospel beyond them to Italy and Spain; this
would be the crown of his greatness as an evangelist, and it
depends on them (ἐν ὑμῖν μεγαλυνθῆναι) whether he is to win it; in
any case, the winning of it would be in harmony with his vocation,
the carrying of it out in glorious fulness (κατὰ τὸν κανόνα εἰς
περισσείαν); for, like John Wesley, he could say the whole world was
his parish. If he boasts at all, it is not immeasurably; it is on the
basis of the gift and calling of God, within the limits of what God has
wrought by him and by no other; he never intrudes into another's
province and boasts of what he finds done to his hand. But this was
what the Jews did. They did not propagate the Gospel with apostolic
enthusiasm among the heathen; they waited till Paul had done the
hard preliminary work, and formed Christian congregations
everywhere, and then they slunk into them—in Galatia, in
Macedonia, in Achaia—talking as if these Churches were their work,
disparaging their real father in Christ, and claiming to complete and
legitimate—which meant, in effect, to subvert—-his work. No wonder
Paul was scornful, and did not venture to put himself in a line with
such heroes.
Two feelings are compounded all through this passage: an intense
sympathy with the purpose of God that the Gospel should be
preached to every creature—Paul's very soul melts into that; and an
intense scorn for the spirit that sneaks and poaches on another's
ground, and is more anxious that some men should be good
sectarians than that all men should be good disciples. This evil spirit
Paul loathes, just as Christ loathed it; the temper of these verses is
that in which the Master cried, "Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one
proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a
son of hell than yourselves." Of course the evil spirit must always be
disguised, both from others and from itself: the proselytiser assumes
the garb of the evangelist; but the proselytiser turned evangelist is
the purest example in the world of Satan disguised as an angel of
light. The show is divine, but the reality is diabolical. It does not
matter what the special sectarianism is: the proselytising of a
hierarchical Church, and the proselytising of the Plymouth Brethren,
are alike dishonourable and alike condemned. And the safeguard of
the soul against this base spirit is an interest like Paul's in the
Christianising of those who do not know Christ at all. Why should
Churches compete? why should their agencies overlap? why should
they steal from each other's folds? why should they be anxious to
seal all believers with their private seal, when the whole world lies in
wickedness? That field is large enough for all the efforts of all
evangelists, and till it has been sown with the good seed from end to
end there can be nothing but reprobation for those who trespass on
the province of others, and boast that they have made their own
what they certainly did not make Christ's.
At the close, to borrow Bengel's expression, Paul sounds a retreat.
He has liberated his mind about his adversaries—always a more or
less dangerous process; and after the excitement and self-assertion
are over, he composes it again in the presence of God. He checks
himself, we feel, with that Old Testament word, "Now he that
glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. I have always broken new ground;
I have come as far as you, and wish to go farther, evangelising; I
never have boasted of another man's labours as if they were mine,
or claimed the credit of what he had done; but all this is mine only
as God's gift. It is His grace bestowed on me, and not in vain. I
would not boast except in Him; for not he who commends himself is
approved, but only he whom the Lord commends." No character
which is only self-certificated can stand the test: no claim to
apostolic dignity and authority can be maintained which the Lord
does not attest by granting apostolic success.

Note on vv. 12 and 13.—In some MSS. (D*, F, G, 109, It., and
some Latins) the last two words of ver. 12 and the first two of
ver. 13 (οὐ συνιᾶσιν· ἡμεῖς δέ) are omitted. Most editors of the
text (Tischdf. vii., Tregelles, Westcott and Hort) seem to think
the omission accidental; among exegetes, the fact that it yields
an easy and natural, though of course a quite different, sense,
has caused some hesitation. Thus Bengel, and recently
Schmiedel, reject the words. The latter renders the whole
passage: "We do not venture to put ourselves on a level, or to
compare ourselves, with certain of those who commend
themselves; but in measuring ourselves by ourselves, and
comparing ourselves with ourselves, we shall not boast beyond
measure, but according to the measure of the rule," etc. This is
no doubt intelligible and appropriate enough, and certainly one's
first impression is that ἀλλ' αὐτοί in ver. 12 ought to refer to
Paul; but as the meaning yielded by the passage with the four
words included is equally appropriate, and their insertion
immeasurably harder to understand than their omission, it
seems preferable to let them stand, in the sense explained
above. They are found (with the variation of συνίσασιν for
συνιᾶσιν in ‫ )*א‬in ‫**א‬, B, minusc. Theodoret: in E, K, L, P, the
form is συνιοῦσιν. Apparently it is only by an accident that their
omission leaves good sense.
 XXIV
GODLY JEALOUSY
"Would that ye could bear with me in a little foolishness: nay
indeed bear with me. For I am jealous over you with a godly
jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I might
present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any
means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds
should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is
toward Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus,
whom we did not preach, or if ye receive a different spirit,
which ye did not receive, or a different gospel, which ye did not
accept, ye do well to bear with him. For I reckon that I am not a
whit behind the very chiefest apostles. But though I be rude in
speech, yet am I not in knowledge; nay, in everything we have
made it manifest among all men to you-ward."—2 Cor. xi. 1-6
(R.V.).

All through the tenth chapter there is a conflict in the Apostle's mind.
He is repeatedly, as it were, on the verge of doing something, from
which he as often draws back. He does not like to boast—he does
not like to speak of himself at all—but the tactics of his enemies, and
the faithlessness of the Corinthians, are making it inevitable. In
chap. xi. he takes the plunge. He adopts the policy of his
adversaries, and proceeds to enlarge on his services to the Church;
but with magnificent irony, he first assumes the mask of a fool. It is
not the genuine Paul who figures here; it is Paul playing a part to
which he has been compelled against his will, acting in a character
which is as remote as possible from his own. It is the character
native and proper to the other side; and when Paul, with due
deprecation, assumes it for the nonce, he not only preserves his
modesty and his self-respect, but lets his opponents see what he
thinks of them. He plays the fool for the occasion, and of set
purpose; they do it always, and without knowing it, like men to the
manner born.
But it is the Corinthians who are directly addressed. "Would that ye
could bear with me in a little foolishness: nay indeed bear with me."
In the last clause, ἀνέχεσθε may be either imperative (as the
Revised Version gives it in the text), or indicative (as in the margin:
"but indeed ye do bear with me"). The use of ἀλλὰ rather favours
the last; and it would be quite in keeping with the extremely ironical
tone of the passage to render it so. Even in the First Epistle, Paul
had reflected on the self-conceit of the Corinthians: "We are fools for
Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ." That self-conceit led them to
think lightly of him, but not just to cast him off; they still tolerated
him as a feeble sort of person: "Ye do indeed bear with me." But
whichever alternative be preferred, the irony passes swiftly into the
dead earnest of the second verse: "For I am jealous over you with a
godly jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I might
present you as a pure virgin to Christ."
This is the ground on which Paul claims their forbearance, even
when he indulges in a little "folly." If he is guilty of what seems to
them extravagance, it is the extravagance of jealousy—i.e., of love
tormented by fear. Nor is it any selfish jealousy, of which he ought to
be ashamed. He is not anxious about his private or personal
interests in the Church. He is not humiliated and provoked because
his former pupils have come to their spiritual majority, and asserted
their independence of their master. These are common dangers and
common sins; and every minister needs to be on his guard against
them. Paul's jealousy over the Corinthians was "a jealousy of God";
God had put it into his heart, and what it had in view was God's
interest in them. It distressed him to think, not that his personal
influence at Corinth was on the wane, but that the work which God
had done in their souls was in danger of being frustrated, the
inheritance He had acquired in them of being lost. Nothing but God's
interest had been in the Apostle's mind from the beginning. "I
betrothed you," he says, "to one husband"—the emphasis lies on
one—"that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ."[88]
It is the Church collectively which is represented by the pure virgin,
and it ought to be observed that this is the constant use in Scripture,
alike in the Old Testament and the New. It is Israel as a whole which
is married to the Lord; it is the Christian Church as a whole (or a
Church collectively, as here) which is the Bride, the Lamb's wife. To
individualise the figure, and speak of Christ as the Bridegroom of the
soul, is not Scriptural, and almost always misleads. It introduces the
language and the associations of natural affection into a region
where they are entirely out of place; we have no terms of
endearment here, and should have none, but high thoughts of the
simplicity, the purity, and the glory of the Church. Glory is especially
suggested by the idea of "presenting" the Church to Christ. The
presentation takes place when Christ comes again to be glorified in
His saints; that great day shines unceasingly in the Apostle's heart,
and all he does is done in its light. The infinite issues of fidelity and
infidelity to the Lord, as that day makes them manifest, are ever
present to his spirit; and it is this which gives such divine intensity to
his feelings wherever the conduct of Christians is concerned. He sees
everything, not as dull eyes see it now, but as Christ in His glory will
show it then. And it takes nothing less than this to keep the soul
absolutely pure and loyal to the Lord.
The Apostle explains in the third verse the nature of his alarm. "I
fear," he says, "lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his
craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity [and
the purity][89] which is toward Christ." The whole figure is very
expressive. "Simplicity" means singleness of mind; the heart of the
"pure virgin" is undivided; she ought not to have, and will not have,
a thought for any but the "one man" to whom she is betrothed.
"Purity" again is, as it were, one species of "simplicity"; it is
"simplicity" as shown in the keeping of the whole nature unspotted
for the Lord. What Paul dreads is the spiritual seduction of the
Church, the winning away of her heart from absolute loyalty to
Christ. The serpent beguiled Eve by his craftiness; he took
advantage of her unsuspecting innocence to wile her away from her
simple belief in God and obedience to Him. When she took into her
mind the suspicions he raised, her "simplicity" was gone, and her
"purity" followed. The serpent's agents—the servants of Satan, as
Paul calls them in ver. 15—are at work in Corinth; and he fears that
their craftiness may seduce the Church from its first simple loyalty to
Christ. It is natural for us to take ἁπλότης and ἁγνότης in a purely
ethical sense, but it is by no means certain that this is all that is
meant; indeed, if καὶ τῆς ἁγνότητος be a gloss, as seems not
improbable, ἁπλότης may well have a different application. "The
simplicity which is toward Christ," from which he fears lest by any
means "their minds" or "thoughts" be corrupted, will rather be their
whole-hearted acceptance of Christ as Paul conceived of Him and
preached Him, their unreserved, unquestioning surrender to that
form of doctrine (τύπον διδαχῆς, Rom. vi. 17) to which they had
been delivered. This, of course, in Paul's mind, involved the other—
there is no separation of doctrine and practice for him; but it makes
a theological rather than an ethical interest the predominant one;
and this interpretation, it seems to me, coheres best with what
follows, and with the whole preoccupation of the Apostle in this
passage. The people whose influence he feared were not
unbelievers, nor were they immoral; they professed to be Christians,
and indeed better Christians than Paul; but their whole conception of
the Gospel was at variance with his; if they made way at Corinth, his
work would be undone. The Gospel which he preached would no
longer have that unsuspicious acceptance; the Christ whom he
proclaimed would no longer have that unwavering loyalty; instead of
simplicity and purity, the heart of the "pure virgin" would be
possessed by misgivings, hesitations, perhaps by out-right infidelity;
his hope of presenting her to Christ on the great day would be gone.
This is what we are led to by ver. 4, one of the most vexed passages
in the New Testament. The text of the last word is uncertain: some
read the imperfect ἀνείχεσθε; others, including our Revisers, the
present ἀνέχεσθε. The last is the better attested, and suits best the
connexion of thought. The interpretations may be divided into two
classes. First, there are those which assume that the suppositions
made in this verse are not true. This is evidently the intention in our
Authorised Version. It renders, "For if he that cometh preacheth
another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another
spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have
not accepted, ye might well bear with him." But—we must
interpolate—nothing of this sort has really taken place; for Paul
counts himself not a whit inferior to the very chiefest Apostles. No
one—not even Peter or James or John—could have imparted
anything to the Corinthians which Paul had failed to impart; and
hence their spiritual seduction, no matter how or by whom
accomplished, was perfectly unreasonable and gratuitous. This
interpretation, with variations in detail which need not be pursued, is
represented by many of the best expositors, from Chrysostom to
Meyer. "If," says Chrysostom in his paraphrase, "if we had omitted
anything that should have been said, and they had made up the
omission, we do not forbid you to attend to them. But if everything
has been perfectly done on our part, and no blank left, how did they
[the Apostle's adversaries] get hold of you?" This is the broad result
of many discussions; and it is usual—though not invariable—for
those who read the passage thus to take τῶν ὑπερλίαν ἀποστόλων
in a complimentary, not a contemptuous, sense, and to refer it, as
Chrysostom expressly does, to the three pillars of the primitive
Church.
The objections to this interpretation are obvious enough. There is
first the grammatical objection, that a hypothetical sentence, with
the present indicative in the protasis (εἰ ... κηρύσσει, εἰ ...
λαμβάνετε), and the present indicative in the apodosis (ἀνέχεσθε),
can by no plausibility of argument be made to mean, "If the
interloper were preaching another Jesus ... you would be right to
bear with him." Even if the imperfect is the true reading, which is
improbable, this translation is unjustified.[90] But there is a logical as
well as a grammatical objection. The use of γὰρ ("for") surely implies
that in the sentence which it introduces we are to find the reason for
what precedes. Paul is afraid, he has told us, lest the Church should
be seduced from the one husband to whom he has betrothed her.
But he can never mean to explain a real fear by making a number of
imaginary suppositions; and so we must find in the hypothetical
clauses here the real grounds of his alarm. People had come to
Corinth—ὁ ἐρχόμενος is no doubt collective, and characterises the
troublers of the Church as intruders, not native to it, but separable
from it—doing all the things here supposed. Paul has espoused the
Church to One Husband; they preach another Jesus. Not, of course,
a distinct Person, but certainly a distinct conception of the same
Person. Paul's Christ was the Son of God, the Lord of Glory, He who
by His death on the cross became Universal Redeemer, and by His
ascension Universal Lord—the end of the law, the giver of the Spirit;
it would be another Jesus if the intruders preached only the Son of
David, or the Carpenter of Nazareth, or the King of Israel. According
to the conception of Christ, too, would be "the spirit" which
accompanied this preaching, the characteristic temper and power of
the religion it proclaimed. The spirit ministered by Paul in his
apostolic work was one of power, and love, and, above all things,
liberty; it emancipated the soul from weakness, from scruples, from
moral inability, from slavery to sin and law; but the spirit generated
by the Judaising ministry, the characteristic temper of the religion it
proclaimed, was servile and cowardly. It was a spirit of bondage
tending always to fear (Rom. viii. 15). Their whole gospel—to give
their preaching a name it did not deserve (Gal. i. 6-9)—was
something entirely unlike Paul's both in its ideas and in its spiritual
fruits. Unlike—yes, and immeasurably inferior, and yet in spite of this
the Corinthians put up with it well enough. This is the plain fact
(ἀνέχεσθε) which the Apostle plainly states. He had to plead for their
toleration, but they had no difficulty in tolerating men who by a
spurious gospel, an unspiritual conception of Christ, and an
unworthy incapacity for understanding freedom, were undermining
his work, and seducing their souls. No wonder he was jealous, and
angry, and scornful, when he saw the true Christian religion, which
has all time and all nations for its inheritance, in danger of being
degraded into a narrow Jewish sectarianism; the kingdom of the
Spirit lost in a society in which race gave a prerogative, and carnal
ordinances were revived; and, worse still, Christ the Son of God, the
Universal Reconciler, known only "after the flesh," and appropriated
to a race, instead of being exalted as Lord of all, in whom there is no
room for Greek or Jew, barbarian or Scythian, bond or free. The
Corinthians bore with this nobly (καλῶς); but he who had begotten
them in the true Gospel had to beg them to bear with him.
There is only one difficulty in this interpretation, and that is not a
serious one: it is the connexion of ver. 5 with what precedes. Those
who connect it immediately with ver. 4 are obliged to supply
something: for example, "But you ought not to bear with them, for I
consider that I am in nothing behind the very chiefest apostles." I
have no doubt at all that ὁι ὑπερλίαν ἀπόστολοι—the superlative
apostles—are not Peter, James, and John, but the teachers aimed at
in ver. 4, the ψευδαπόστολοι of ver. 13; it is with them, and not with
the Twelve or the eminent Three, that Paul is comparing himself.[91]
But even so, I agree with Weizsäcker that the connexion for the γὰρ
in ver. 5 must be sought further back—as far back, indeed, as ver. 1.
"You bear well enough with them, and so you may well bear with
me, as I beg you to do; for I consider," etc. This is effective enough,
and brings us back again to the main subject. If there is a point in
which Paul is willing to his inferiority to these superlative apostles, it
is the non-essential one of utterance. He grants that he is rude in
speech—not rhetorically gifted or trained—a plain, blunt man who
speaks right on. But he is not rude in knowledge: in every respect he
has made that manifest, among all men, toward them. The last
clause is hardly intelligible, and the text is insecure.[92] The reading
φανερώσαντες is that of all the critical editors; the object may either
be indefinite (his competence in point of knowledge), or, more
precisely, τὴν γνῶσιν itself, supplied from the previous clause. In no
point whatever, under no circumstances, has Paul ever failed to
exhibit to the Corinthians the whole truth of God in the Gospel. This
it is which makes him scornful even when he thinks of the men
whom the Corinthians are preferring to himself.
When we look from the details of this passage to its scope, some
reflections are suggested, which have their application still.
(1) Our conception of the Person of Christ determines our
conception of the whole Christian religion. What we have to proclaim
to men as gospel—what we have to offer to them as the
characteristic temper and virtue of the life which the Gospel
originates—depends on the answer we give to Jesus' own question,
"Whom say ye that I am?" A Christ who is simply human cannot be
to men what a Christ is who is truly divine. The Gospel identified
with Him cannot be the same; the spirit of the society which gathers
round Him cannot be the same. It is futile to ask whether such a
gospel and such a spirit can fairly be called Christian; they are in
point of fact quite other things from the Gospel and the Spirit which
are historically associated with the name. It is plain from this
passage that the Apostle attached the utmost importance to his
conceptions of the Person and Work of the Lord: ought not this to
give pause to those who evacuate his theology of many of its
distinctive ideas—especially that of the Pre-existence of Christ—on
the plea that they are merely theologoumena of an individual
Christian, and that to discard them leaves the Gospel unaffected?
Certainly this was not what he thought. Another Jesus meant
another spirit, another gospel—to use modern words, another
religion and another religious consciousness; and any other, the
Apostle was perfectly sure, came short of the grandeur of the truth.
The spirit of the passage is the same with that in Gal. i. 6 ff., where
he erects the Gospel he has preached as the standard of absolute
religious truth. "Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach
unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you,
let him be anathema. As we have said before, so say I now again, If
any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye
received, let him be anathema."
(2) "The simplicity that is toward Christ"—the simple acceptance of
the truth about Him, and undivided loyalty of heart to Him—may be
corrupted by influences originating within, as well as without, the
Church. The infidelity which is subtlest, and most to be dreaded, is
not the gross materialism or atheism which will not so much as hear
the name of God or Christ; but that which uses all sacred names,
speaking readily of Jesus, the Spirit, and the Gospel, but meaning
something else, and something less, than these words meant in
apostolic lips. This it was which alarmed the jealous love of Paul; this
it is, in its insidious influence, which constitutes one of the most real
perils of Christianity at the present time. The Jew in the first century,
who reduced the Person and Work of Christ to the scale of his
national prejudices, and the theologian in the nineteenth, who
discounts apostolic ideas when they do not suit the presuppositions
of his philosophy, are open to the same suspicion, if they do not fall
under the same condemnation. True thoughts about Christ—in spite
of all the smart sayings about theological subtleties which have
nothing to do with piety—are essential to the very existence of the
Christian religion.
(3) There is no comparison between the Gospel of God in Jesus
Christ His Son and any other religion. The science of comparative
religion is interesting as a science; but a Christian may be excused
for finding the religious use of it tiresome. There is nothing true in
any of the religions which is not already in his possession. He never
finds a moral idea, a law of the spiritual life, a word of God, in any of
them, to which he cannot immediately offer a parallel, far more
simple and penetrating, from the revelation of Christ. He has no
interest in disparaging the light by which millions of his fellow-
creatures have walked, generation after generation, in the
mysterious providence of God; but he sees no reason for pretending
that that light—which Scripture calls darkness and the shadow of
death—can bear comparison with the radiance in which he lives. "If,"
he might say, misapplying the fourth verse—"if they brought us
another saviour, another spirit, another gospel, we might be
religiously interested in them; but, as it is, we have everything
already, and they, in comparison, have nothing." The same remark
applies to "theosophy," "spiritualism," and other "gospels." It will be
time to take them seriously when they utter one wise or true word
on God or the soul which is not an echo of something in the old
familiar Scriptures.
 XXV
FOOLISH BOASTING
"Or did I commit a sin in abasing myself that ye might be
exalted, because I preached to you the Gospel of God for
nought? I robbed other Churches, taking wages of them that I
might minister unto you; and when I was present with you and
was in want, I was not a burden on any man; for the brethren,
when they came from Macedonia, supplied the measure of my
want; and in everything I kept myself from being burdensome
unto you, and so will I keep myself. As the truth of Christ is in
me, no man shall stop me of this glorying in the regions of
Achaia. Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth. But
what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them
which desire an occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be
found even as we. For such men are false apostles, deceitful
workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ. And no
marvel; for even Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light.
It is no great thing therefore if his ministers also fashion
themselves as ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be
according to their works.
"I say again, Let no man think me foolish; but if ye do, yet as
foolish receive me, that I also may glory a little. That which I
speak, I speak not after the Lord, but as in foolishness, in this
confidence of glorying. Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I
will glory also. For ye bear with the foolish gladly, being wise
yourselves. For ye bear with a man, if he bringeth you into
bondage, if he devoureth you, if he taketh you captive, if he
exalteth himself, if he smiteth you on the face. I speak by way
of disparagement, as though we had been weak. Yet
 whereinsoever any is bold (I speak in foolishness), I am bold
also. Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I.
Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I. Are they ministers of
Christ? (I speak as one beside himself) I more; in labours more
abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above
measure, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty
stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I
stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I
been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in
perils of robbers, in perils from my countrymen, in perils from
the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in
perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in labour and
travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings
often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are
without, there is that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for
all the Churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is
made to stumble, and I burn not?"—2 Cor. xi. 7-29 (R.V.).

The connexion of ver. 7 with what precedes is not at once clear. The
Apostle has expressed his conviction that he is in nothing inferior to
"the superlative apostles" so greatly honoured by the Corinthians.
Why, then, is he so differently treated? A rudeness in speech he is
willing to concede, but that can hardly be the explanation,
considering his fulness of knowledge. Then another idea strikes him,
and he puts it, interrogatively, as an alternative. Can it be that he
did wrong—humbling himself that they might be exalted—in
preaching to them the Gospel of God for nought, i.e. in declining to
accept support from them while he evangelised in Corinth? Do they
appreciate the interlopers more highly than Paul, because they exact
a price for their gospel, while he preached his for nothing? This, of
course, is bitterly ironical; but it is not gratuitous. The background of
fact which prompted the Apostle's question was no doubt this—that
his adversaries had misinterpreted his conduct. A true apostle, they
said, has a right to be maintained by the Church; the Lord Himself
has ordained that they who preach the Gospel should live by the
Gospel; but he claims no maintenance, and by that very fact betrays
a bad conscience. He dare not make the claim which every true
apostle makes without the least misgiving.
It would be hard to imagine anything more malignant in its
wickedness than this. Paul's refusal to claim support from those to
whom he preached is one of the most purely and characteristically
Christian of all his actions. He felt himself, by the grace of Christ, a
debtor to all men; he owed them the Gospel; it was as if he were
defrauding them if he did not tell them of the love of God in His Son.
He felt himself in immense sympathy with the spirit of the Gospel; it
was the free gift of God to the world, and as far as it depended on
him its absolute freeness would not be obscured by the merest
suspicion of a price to be paid. He knew that in foregoing his
maintenance he was resigning a right secured to him by Christ (1
Cor. ix. 14), humbling himself, as he puts it here, that others might
be spiritually exalted; but he had the joy of preaching the Gospel in
the spirit of the Gospel—of entering, in Christ's service, into the self-
sacrificing joy of his Lord; and he valued this above all earthly
reward. To accuse such a man, on such grounds, of having a bad
conscience, and of being afraid to live by his work, because he knew
it was not what it pretended to be, was to sound the depths of
baseness. It gave Paul in some measure the Master's experience,
when the Pharisees said, "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the
prince of the devils." It is really the prince of the devils, the accuser
of the brethren, who speaks in all such malignant insinuations; it is
the most diabolical thing any one can do—the nearest approach to
sinning against the Holy Ghost—when he sets himself to find out bad
motives for good actions.
As we shall see further on, Paul's enemies made more specific
charges: they hinted that he made his own out of the Corinthians
indirectly, and that he could indemnify himself, for this abstinence,
from the collection (chaps. xii. 16-18, chap. viii. and ix.). Perhaps
this is why he describes his actual conduct at Corinth in such
vigorous language (vv. 7-11), before saying anything at all of his
motives. "I preached to you the Gospel of God," he says, "for
nothing." He calls it "the Gospel of God" with intentional fulness and
solemnity; the genuine Gospel, he means—not another, which is no
gospel at all, but a subversion of the truth. He robbed other
Churches, and took wages from them, in order to minister to the
Corinthians. There is a mingling of ideas in the strong words here
used. The English reader thinks of Paul's doing less than justice to
other Churches that he might do more than justice to the
Corinthians; but though this is true, it is not all. Both "robbed"
(ἐσύλησα) and "wages" (ὀψώνιον), as Bengel has pointed out, are
military words, and it is difficult to resist the impression that Paul
used them as such; he did not come to Corinth to be dependent on
any one, but in the course of a triumphant progress, in which he
devoted the spoils of his earlier victories for Christ to a new
campaign in Achaia.[93] Nay, even when he was with them and was
"in want" (what a ray of light that one word ὑστερηθείς lets into his
circumstances!), he did not throw himself like a benumbing weight
on any one; what his own labours failed to supply, the brethren
(perhaps Silas and Timothy) made good when they came from
Macedonia. This has been his practice, and will continue to be so. He
swears by the truth of Christ that is in him, that no man shall ever
stop his mouth, so far as boasting of this independence is
concerned, in the regions of Achaia. Why? His tender heart
dismisses the one painful supposition which could possibly arise.
"Because I love you not? God knoweth." Love is wounded when its
proffered gifts are rejected with scorn, and when their rejection
means that it is rejected; but that was not the situation here. Paul
can appeal to Him who knows the heart in proof of the sincerity with
which he loves the Corinthians.
His fixed purpose to be indebted to no one in Achaia has another
object in view. What that is he explains in the twelfth verse. Strange
to say, this verse, like ver. 4, has received two precisely opposite
interpretations. (1) Some start with the idea that Paul's adversaries
at Corinth were persons who took no support from the Church, and
boasted of their disinterestedness in this respect. The "occasion"
which they desired was an occasion of any sort for disparaging and
discrediting Paul; and they felt they would have such an occasion if
Paul accepted support from the Church, and so put himself in a
position of inferiority to them. But Paul persists in his self-denying
policy, with the object of depriving them of the opportunity they
seek, and at the same time of proving them—in this very point of
disinterestedness—to be in exactly the same position as himself. But
surely, throughout both Epistles, a contrast is implied, in this very
point, between Paul and his opponents: the tacit assumption is
always that his line of conduct is singular, and is not to be made a
rule. And in the face of ver. 20 it is too much to assume that it was
the rule of his Judaising opponents in Corinth. (2) Others start with
the idea, which seems to me indubitably right, that these opponents
did accept support from the Church. But even on this assumption
opinions diverge. (a) Some argue that Paul pursued his policy of
abstinence partly to deprive them of any opportunity of disparaging
him, and partly to compel them to adopt it themselves ("that they
may be found even as we").[94] I can hardly imagine this being
taken seriously. Why should Paul have wanted to lift these preachers
of a false gospel to a level with himself in point of generosity? To
coerce them into a reluctant self-denial could be no possible object
to him either of wish or hope. Hence there seems only (b) the other
alternative open, which makes the last clause—"that wherein they
boast, they may be found even as we"—depend, not upon "what I
do, that I will do," but upon "them that desire occasion."[95] What
the adversaries desired was, not occasion to disparage Paul in
general, but occasion of being on an equality with him in the matter
in which they gloried—viz., their apostolic claims. They felt the
advantage which Paul's disinterestedness gave him with the
Corinthians; they had not themselves the generosity needed to
imitate it; it was not enough to assail it with covert slanders (chap.
xii. 16-18), or to say that he was afraid to claim an apostle's due; it
would have been all they wanted had he resigned it. Then they
could have said that in that in which they boasted—apostolic dignity
—they were precisely on a level with him. But not to mention the
spiritual motives for his conduct, which have been already explained,
and were independent of all relation to his opponents, Paul was too
capable a strategist to surrender such a position to the enemy. It
would never be by action of his that he and they found themselves
on the same ground.
At the very mention of such an equality his heart rises within him.
"Found even as we! Why, such men are false apostles, deceitful
workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ." Here, at last,
the irony is cast aside, and Paul calls a spade a spade. The
conception of apostleship in the New Testament is not that dogmatic
traditional one, which limits the name to the Twelve, or to the
Twelve and the Apostle of the Gentiles; as we see from passages like
chap. viii. 23, Acts xiv. 4, 14, it had a much larger application. What
Paul means when he calls his opponents false apostles is not that
persons in their position could have no right to the name; but that
persons with their character, their aims, and their methods, would
only deceive others when they used it. It ought to cover something
quite different from what it actually did cover in them. He explains
himself further when he calls them "deceitful workers." That they
were active he does not deny; but the true end of their activity was
not declared. As far as the word itself goes, the "deceit" which they
used may have been intended to cloak either their personal or their
proselytising views. After what we have read in chap. x. 12-18, the
latter seems preferable. The Judaising preachers had shown their
hand in Galatia, demanding openly that Paul's converts should be
circumcised, and keep the law of Moses as a whole; but their
experience there had made them cautious, and when they came to
Corinth they proceeded more diplomatically. They tried to sap the
Pauline Gospel, partly by preaching "another Jesus," partly by calling
in question the legitimacy of Paul's vocation. They said nothing
openly of what was the inevitable and intended issue of all this—the
bringing of spiritual Gentile Christendom under the old Jewish yoke.
But it is this which goes to the Apostle's soul; he can be nothing but
irreconcilably hostile to men who have assumed the guise of
apostles of Christ, in order that they may with greater security
subvert Christ's characteristic work. Paul dwells on the deceitfulness
of their conduct as its most offensive feature; yet he does not
wonder at it, for even Satan, he says, fashions himself into an angel
of light. It is no great thing, then, if his servants also fashion
themselves as servants of righteousness.
We can only tell in a general way what Paul meant when he spoke of
Satan, the prince of darkness, transfiguring himself so as to appear
a heavenly angel. He may have had some Jewish legend in his mind,
some story of a famous temptation, unknown to us, or he may only
have intended to represent to the imagination, with the utmost
possible vividness, one of the familiar laws in our moral experience,
a law which was strikingly illustrated by the conduct of his
adversaries at Corinth. Evil, we all know, could never tempt us if we
saw it simply as it is; disguise is essential to its power; it appeals to
man through ideas and hopes which he cannot but regard as good.
So it was in the very first temptation. An act which in its essential
character was neither more nor less than one of direct disobedience
to God was represented by the tempter, not in that character, but as
the means by which man was to obtain possession of a tree good for
food (sensual satisfaction), and pleasant to the eyes (æsthetic
satisfaction), and desirable to make one wise (intellectual
satisfaction). All these satisfactions, which in themselves are
undeniably good, were the cloak under which the tempter hid his
true features. He was a murderer from the beginning, and entered
Eden to ruin man, but he presented himself as one offering to man a
vast enlargement of life and joy. This is the nature of all
temptations; to disguise himself, to look as like a good angel as he
can, is the first necessity, and therefore the first invention, of the
devil. And all who do his work, the Apostle says, naturally imitate his
devices. The soul of man is born for good, and will not listen at all to
any voice which does not profess at least to speak for good: this is
why the devil is a liar from the beginning, and the father of lies.
Lying in word and deed is the one weapon with which he can assail
the simplicity of man.
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