1 Corinthians 16:15-24

CRITICAL NOTES

1 Corinthians 16:15.—Postscript-like personal matters begin here. Achaia.—This corrects the wrong reading in Romans 16:5. Stephanas’ household.—See 1 Corinthians 1:16. What a family picture! “Addicted to,” etc. Stanley (apparently alone) thinks the Stephanas of 1 Corinthians 16:17 the slave of this one, who had taken his master’s name, by a not unusual custom; Fortunatus and Achaicus being his fellow-slaves.

1 Corinthians 16:17.—No blame to the Corinthians in “lacking on your part”; they could not, so far away and without opportunity to visit Paul, do what these had done, viz. 1 Corinthians 16:18 (Philippians 2:30; Philippians 4:10 sqq.).

1 Corinthians 16:19. Church in … house.—Cf. 1 Corinthians 1:2; 1 Corinthians 16:1; Romans 16:5. See other cases, Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:2. Observe “salute you much.” They had lived in Corinth (Acts 18:2); but are at Ephesus by Acts 19:26.

1 Corinthians 16:20. A holy kiss.— Romans 16:16; 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:26. “The common form of affectionate Eastern salutation, transferred to the forms of the Christian society, and hence the epithet of holy. The practice continued in Christian assemblies chiefly at the celebration of the Eucharist. The Apostolical Constitutions and the Canons of Laodicea enjoin that before the Communion the clergy are to kiss the bishop, the men amongst the laity each other, and so the women. On Good Friday it was omitted, in commemoration of the kiss of Judas.… It is still continued in the Coptic Church. Every member of the congregation there kisses and is kissed by the priest. In the Western Church it was finally laid aside in the thirteenth century.” (Stanley.)

1 Corinthians 16:21.—The authenticating autograph, 1 Corinthians 16:21. So 2 Thessalonians 3:17. What shall it be? What shall he write? What is worthy of his own hand, after all this dictating to an amanuensis? “If any man,” etc. (1 Corinthians 16:22). Note the, shorter reading and punctuation. Maran atha.—“Syriac,” so-called. “The Lord … has? or will?… come.” “Cometh,” best. Very recently M. Halévy divides it “Marana tha,” and translates “Our Lord, come!” And in this is supported by (the Syrian) Archbishop David, of Damascus (Expos., 1889, p. 240). Quite a separate word from the word “Anathema,” N.B. “His grace;” “my love.”

HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.— 1 Corinthians 16:15

Friends and Foes.

I. Friends—

1. Even in Ephesus, and because in Ephesus, where there are “many adversaries.” A day came when Paul, like his Master before His judge, stood friendless, “when no man stood by him,” not a Christian in all Rome daring to show himself as a friend of Paul in court that day (2 Timothy 4:10). Yet he was not forsaken: “The Lord stood by me, and strengthened … and delivered.” That is the supreme strength and support of a Christian man. But next to that is the “refreshing of spirit” when, to a hard-worked toiler in a dangerous post in Ephesus, some Stephanas or Fortunatus or Achaicus “comes,” bringing letters and tidings and supplies. Others brought ill news and disquieting (1 Corinthians 1:11, where, however, see note). Paul’s Master is careful that His servant shall not have all disquiet; these bring “supplies.” It is good to see a loyal Corinthian face again! [See another instance of God’s loving consideration, by way of alleviation and compensation (Philippians 2:27), “lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.”] What worker for Christ does not recall many such instances, where the coming of friends has been as “cold water to a thirsty soul,” or as a “draught from a brook by the wayside” (Psalms 110:7); a supply and comfort which was only typical of many another up-springing well of comfort in a very desert of isolated experience or labour. The highest service that friendship can be made to render, next to that of leading a soul to seek the Highest Friendship of all.

2. A new brotherhood is springing up.—“Greetings” fly across the Ægean between Ephesus and Corinth. There are “Churches in Asia” who join hands across the water with a Church in Corinth. Aquila and Priscilla have a “Church in their house” [as afterward they had in Rome (1 Corinthians 16:5)], which greets Corinth. Paul “greets” Corinth,—Corinth and not merely the party “of Paul.” Corinthian is to greet Corinthian “with a holy kiss,” though one may be a rich man and the other a slave. A new love has been born into the world, which forgets that Aquila is a Pontian Jew and Apollos an Alexandrian Greek, and that Stephanas and his friends are Corinthians. “See how these Christians love another!” See how this Paul loves the Timothy who is “his son in the faith.” See how he loves this Stephanas and his household. They were his “firstfruits”; in them he first tasted the joy of harvest in the field of “Achaia.” Christian and Christian, minister and convert, are the closest “kin.”

3. This new brotherhood is an organised thing.—The friends, the brethren, form themselves into Churches, “in a house,” “in Asia.” Of such units of construction “The Church” is being built up; and each unit in its essential feature is a miniature of the Whole; it is “a Church” as really as is the whole. Precedence and sequence are beginning to show, as in all human social life. Some are to “submit” to others, but it is only for their worth’s sake and their work’s sake. And their precedence is in service. Beyond most they “set themselves to minister to the saints” (R.V.). [“Whosoever would be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matthew 20:27).] In the Church there should never have been office or precedence which did not mean serviceableness to the welfare of the whole; there should never have been an official whose honour was not rooted in this: “He helpeth with us, and laboureth.” There should have been no fainéants amongst the Church’s exalted names. “Working helpers” should be “acknowledged,” and if needful “submitted to.” And in the long-run recognition and deference do come naturally to worth and work.

II. Foes.—There is but one foe: “he who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ.” Not love Him? Think slowly over His Name and full style: “Jesus”—“Lord”—“Christ.” Why in His very name Jew, Gentile, Man, have their share and place. Not love Him? The embodiment of all moral Beauty, Truth, Goodness; the True, the Beautiful, the Good, after which the philosophers sought, and of whose interrelations they disputed in endless discussion—they meet in Him; the simplest Christian is no seeker merely, he has “Heureka!” in his mouth, since he got to know “the Lord Jesus Christ”! Not love Him? Who has loved us to the death; Who for our sakes became poor with a “Great Renunciation” which is, according to any human standard, by any human calculus, quite an incommensurable quantity. Not love Him? What is the matter with the heart that does not love Him? Is it blind, or deaf, or dead? Can it not see, or know, or love Him? The unloving heart perhaps admires, and says, or sings, or writes, fine words about the Teacher of Nazareth; it may gather up its skirts, with a shrinking that is a reminder from former days of a real faith, or which is only an æsthetic shrinking from “bad form,” when some daring, outspoken man calls “Jesus” plainly “accursed,” (1 Corinthians 12:3); but Paul has no softer, lesser word for the loveless heart itself. Not love Him? “Anathema” the loveless one! That seems “unjust”? “You cannot command love?” Certainly; but it can be awakened or suppressed, cultivated or killed, by the man himself. He will cultivate or let it die, as toward Christ, according to the whole moral attitude he takes up. “Mere indifference” to Christ reveals an inner world of moral alienation, and at least a possibility of the very fiercest aversion. Between the man, almost demoniac, who screams, “Jesus is Anathema! Jesus is Anathema!” and the man who perhaps would shrink from saying it outright, but who really feels no interest in, and cares nothing for, Christ, the difference is rather one of possibility, of opportunity, of occasion, of provocation. Press Christ and His claims upon the “merely indifferent” man, and you either lead to submission, trust, love, or you provoke anger at yourself, and dislike, antagonism, hatred to Him. There is no being neutral in the presence of Christ and His claim. “For judgment he is come into this world;” He is the test of character, the Revealer of hearts, making a swift, sharp discrimination between friends and foes (John 9:39). There is no trace of a permission to put mere sincerity in the place of correct faith, of separating a man’s religion from a correct theology on this topic. No man can help taking sides for or against Him; for better or for worse no man can remain the man he was before, after once being really, clearly, intelligently confronted with Christ. To say nothing of His personal “character”; He makes—as is often urged by Christian controversialists—such claims for Himself; He assumes, as with perfect, simple right, such a position in regard both to God and men; He makes such assertions about Himself as are tanta mount to a claim to be, and to be honoured and accepted as, Divine in the highest, the exact, sense. Presuming His sanity, He leaves no alternative: either He is a blasphemer, and justly “Anathema,” or Divine and at once and forthwith to be “honoured even as men honour the Father.” “He that is not with Me is against Me.” Not to be His friend is to be a foe, and necessarily “under the ban.” And He “cometh”!

III. Paul’s outburst of feeling.—These last verses (chap. 16) have been, as it were, gradually “subsiding” from the often highly wrought interest and feeling of the body of the letter. The thought and tone have accompanied each other, as with the settling of a bird alighting, not suddenly, but in a series of gentle curves, each of which, though rising, ends at a level a little lower than it began, till one expects a quiet gliding in the last to the level ground. But instead there is this sudden dash upward; a volcanic, eruptive outburst of feeling. “Let all be in charity,” Paul had just said (1 Corinthians 16:14). What then is this? It is the Intolerance of Love. [Often pointed out that the “Apostle of love,” John, when a young man, was “Boanerges,” who would have called down fire upon the Samaritan village that would give no hospitality to Christ (Luke 9:54); and that the Boanerges temper is not extinct in the old man of ripest love and piety (1 John 4:3; 2 John 1:10). In each case it is to be observed how with John, as with Paul, it is the very intensity of conviction, and of devotion to Christ, which called out the fiery denunciation.] A man cannot be a lukewarm enemy, nor a lukewarm friend, of Jesus Christ. It is the “Intolerance of the Gospel” [title of a good sermon by A. Vinet], and throws much light upon the difficult question of the imprecatory psalms. At least it cannot be said without much qualification that they are wholly of an “Old Testament spirit,” in strong antithesis to that of the New. [Look, e.g., at 2 Timothy 4:14, “Lord … reward him according to his deeds!” (N.B. reading); Galatians 5:10, “Shall bear his burden”; 1 Corinthians 5:12, “Circumcision? I would there were an excision; a clean excision of these men from the body of Christ”; hear Stephen denounce the Sanhedrin (Acts 7:51), or Paul Bar-jesus (Acts 13:10); hear Christ Himself denounce the Pharisees, “Fill ye up the measure of your fathers!” (Matthew 23:32); hear John, “I do not say that he shall pray for it,”—as though he had been brought into such a perfect accord with God’s own abhorrence of sin, such a perfect acceptance of the righteousness of the heaviest judgment of God upon it, that he anticipates the day when the saved and the heavenly host shall together stand in holy aloofness from the condemned Harlot-evil of the universe, and, over the very judgments of God, shall solemnly sing an exultant “Alleluia!” (Revelation 19:1).] The New Testament cannot tolerate indifference to Christ or the Truth. No Christian man can leave it an open question whether his Master be “Jesus of Nazareth” or “Our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is no question of exactly agreeing about the doctrinal phraseology of a creed; but of a love to the personal Christ, which has sometimes co-existed with an imperfect creed about Him. [E.g. Dr. Adam Clarke denied the eternity a parte ante of His Sonship.] It is not the intellectual rightness of the man which is in issue, but the moral state of the man’s heart. The Godhead of Christ is a test question indeed, as men must apply tests; the moral attitude toward Christ, be He what He may, is the deeper thing which stirs Paul’s heart. “He may not accept, or totidem verbis repeat, my Christology; but does he love my Christ? If not, let him be Anathema.” If we are not so outspoken, or so confident in our condemnation, we should inquire whether our devotion to Christ is less intense; whether our convictions are as deep as Paul’s; whether truth is of as much certainty and importance to us. Loyalty to Christ may sometimes need to override all considerations of conventional courtesy and “charity” and liberality. (See also Separate Homily under 1 Corinthians 16:22.)

The Benediction.

The “bird” does “alight,” and very quietly! The outburst of 1 Corinthians 16:22 is quite compatible with a perfect peace and self-control within Paul’s soul. He passes as easily from it to these words of tender farewell, as he did from the Resurrection to the Collection (above). “His grace, my first and greatest wish for you at Corinth. My love, less, but not less real, with you also; and I wish it not with the mere good feeling of a benevolent heart; I wish it ‘in Christ Jesus’ ” Paul’s heart is full of Christ’s heart; to him “to live,” and so to greet his Churches, “is Christ.”

SEPARATE HOMILIES

1 Corinthians 16:22, connected with 2 Corinthians 1:20; 2 Corinthians 8:9; 2 Corinthians 9:15, may be made the occasion of a sermon on Undesigned Illustrations of “To me to live is Christ.”

I. (2 Corinthians 1:20.) Paul had not kept to the route announced in the First Epistle—to Macedonia viâ Corinth. He had gone by the direct, shorter road, viâ Troas. The factious party seized upon this change of route. Said they to the loyal ones: “See this Paul of yours! What dependence on his word? He promises and fails; says he will come and does not.” Others, with more malice: “He wrote a very bold letter, and was going to follow it up with a visit; but your valorous apostle dares not come to Corinth.” This chapter very largely his indignant protest, his defence of his character and conduct. He appeals to his conscience whether all his conduct amongst them was not “in simplicity and godly sincerity.” He calls the True God to witness that he was never amongst them a “Yes and No” man, saying and unsaying in a breath, affirming one day, the next denying what he had affirmed, wavering in his own mind between “Yea” and “Nay.” If he had changed his plan, it was for good and sufficient reasons. But this vindicating of himself was uncongenial work. To him to live was not Paul, but Christ. His character as a man is to him only a matter of importance as it affected his character as a preacher of Christ’s Gospel. Every word in his preaching was “Yea.” He was no man to preach doubts or hints of doubt, or to give to his readers opinions crudely formed or loosely held. And then his thought by instinct rises to and rests in his Lord, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; Himself the great Promise and the great Ratification of all promises besides. This grand outburst in the midst of all this personal vindication, is a digression, a parenthesis; but he cannot help putting it in. Self-vindication is irksome. Christ exaltation is ever welcome. A word of it relieves him before he resumes the personal talk. To him “to live is Christ.”

II. (2 Corinthians 8:9.) Paul puts the Corinthians on their mettle, and tries to shame them into diligence. He has been telling all the Churches, up and down: “Achaia was ready a year ago.” With their zeal he has been calling out the zeal and generosity of many. He begs that they will not shame his boasting when the Macedonian (and other) delegates come with him to Corinth. Macedonia is a model to them, giving even “beyond their power.” Surely Corinth will not be behindhand. And with appeals to such motives many would have stopped. Not so this man; to him “to live is Christ,” and to him the motive to plead is, “Ye know the grace,” etc. In the next verse he is back again to the Fund. But the parenthetic insertion is significant as to this man’s habit of heart. He gladly escapes away from the Fund and laggard Church benevolence into a world of everlasting, world-concerning truth, and to his best-loved theme—his Lord who became a beggar to make him eternally rich.

III. (2 Corinthians 9:15.) With startling abruptness he breaks out: “Thanks be unto God,” etc. The chapter has been full of small details about the Fund, and his plans, and the movements of Titus. What has this outburst to do with the collection? Nothing. Everything. He sits dictating his letter. In the pauses, whilst the writer is doing his part, Paul’s mind goes off upon a well-known path. Every thought of this benevolence of saints to saints is pregnant to him with suggestion of a greater benevolence. He cannot think of these gifts of Church to Church without his thoughts flying off to the ever-welcome topic, God’s Gift to sinners. There is bounty! There is the root and the rule of all kindness between Christian and Christian! And as the amanuensis is finishing the last words dictated, his friend and teacher breaks out, “Thanks be to God for,” etc. For twenty years he had been studying Christ from all sides: the love that did not spare even Him; the grace of the Son which resigned such native dignity and glory; the misery, here and hereafter, of an unredeemed world; the eternally growing blessing flowing from the work of Christ. The twenty years of pondering express their result in one word; they are condensed into this “irrelevant,” parenthetic cry: “Unspeakable! Unspeakable! God’s unspeakable Gift! Thank God for Christ!”

IV. (Here 1 Corinthians 16:22.) He is in Ephesus, getting his letter off. He takes pen in hand to add the authenticating autograph sentence. Usually it is a benediction. In this letter all sorts of topics have been discussed: the resurrection and the collection, the Lord’s Supper and the women’s hair,—grand themes of eternal importance, and mere regulations no longer concerning men except in the underlying principles of which they are particular, passing embodiments. And now the letter is finished. What shall he add “with his own hand”? What he does add is: “If any man … Anathema!” There is apparently nothing to suggest it. But Christ never needs “suggesting” to Paul. To him “to live is Christ.” Within him is a heart of burning love for Christ. The fire breaks out here with eruptive force, but it is always burning. He loves Christ. Who would not? Not love Christ! Not love the Christ he loves! “Accursed be the man who does not love my Christ!” It is the intolerance of devoted love. This spontaneous, irrelevant, fierce exclamation is consummate proof that this man, Paul, has only one love, one thought, one object in life. To him to live is Christ, CHRIST, CHRIST!—H. J. F. From article in “Homiletical Magazine,” Jan. 1883 (condensed).