29 - With Rod and Love

The emperor Claudius was no more. He’d been put out of the way by his adopted son, Nero, and by Nero’s mother, and these two became the rulers of the empire. The Jews who had gone into hiding there began showing themselves again in their old quarter. Jewish refugees were streaming in from the provinces, Christians as well as Jews of the old faith.

Paul longed to go there, for he felt that to be his next field of conquest. At night he dreamed of great achievements in the capital of the world. He talked with Aquila and Priscilla to persuade them to join the other refugees going there and to prepare the city for his coming. He promised them that he would send a strong letter to the Christian community in Rome, setting forth the articles of the Christian faith.

Paul considered his work in Ephesus done. Elders had been set over the congregation, and it was now capable of maintaining itself without his help. If he didn’t go to Rome with them, it was because he had another commitment first. He had to visit Jerusalem and call on the saints there.

In planning his trip, Paul wanted to take with him a deputation consisting mostly of the finest Gentile Christians from the congregations in Macedonia and Achaia. He remembered how he’d won the approval of the Jewish Christians by taking Titus to Jerusalem, and presenting him as the fruit of his work among the Greeks. He hoped to win it again by displaying the evidences of new conquests for Christ.

Of course, there was the danger that chains awaited him in Jerusalem. Many Jewish communities sent reports to Jerusalem about the strife and dissension that followed his preaching. He didn’t doubt for a minute that the High Priest would come after him. But the voyage to Jerusalem was unavoidable.

No matter how independent he felt from the authority of the Jerusalem saints, no matter how convinced he was that his doctrine came to him directly from Christ himself, he would leave no stone unturned to prevent the splitting of the community into two hostile camps, one belonging to Jerusalem and one belonging to him. If he should pay with his life in the attempt, he must still seek reconciliation and unification. He didn’t see himself as a rebel against the true tradition, but rather as a fulfillment of the vision of the prophets in bringing the nations of the world to Mount Zion. The Greek believers in his deputation were the symbol of this fulfillment. Let them come to the Holy Hill, and find their spiritual home in Jerusalem.

So his plan was to go back through Macedonia and Achaia to assemble this deputation. At the same time, he decided to collect funds for the poor of Jerusalem. For neither the conditions in Jerusalem nor in the countryside had gotten any better since the years of the great famine. The small landowner was rapidly disappearing as the estates of the rich grew, and the independent farmer class was being transformed into day laborers, at least to whatever extent the capital was not drawing the landless and discontented to swell the ranks of its rebellious population. Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora were collecting funds for the unemployed of Jerusalem, and Paul felt that this was a great opportunity for the converted Gentiles to show that not only were they part and parcel of the spiritual life of Jerusalem, but that they could also take thought for its worldly needs.

Before leaving, though, he wanted to finish his letter to the Corinthians.


Paul’s letters could be compared to the books of the ancient prophets. Like them, he could punish and upbraid with flaming words. But again like them, he could comfort and inspire with hope. He taught them like a father and ministered to them like a son. He rejoiced and sorrowed with them. Anger, consolation, reproach, tenderness, all the moods of the spirit, were in his letters to the congregations.

“What do you think?” he asked them. “Should I come to you with a rod, or shall I come with love and a gentle spirit?”

“I don’t write these things to shame you, but to punish you as my beloved children.”

But he who did the punishing also wept with them.

“Until this time we have suffered hunger and thirst, we are naked and homeless.”

Paul used every means at his disposal, every method of approach. When he learned of the sins of the Corinthians, he tried to awaken their pity toward him.

“It is reported on every hand that there is whoredom among you, such whoredom as has not been heard of even among the Gentiles. But you can’t drink the cup of the lord and the cup of the devil. You can’t have a portion at the table of the lord and a portion at the table of Satan.”

He could threaten them by demanding that they throw out of the congregation him who doesn’t love the lord Christ. At the same time he could humble himself enough to confess his own weaknesses.

“We are fools for Christ, but you’ve been wise in Christ. We’ve been weak, but you’ve been strong. You’ve been honored, we’ve been ashamed.”

His letters were the mirror to his soul, and just as the mirror knows no shame, but merely reflects what shines on it, so his letters reflected his weaknesses in the sight of those whom he’d just won from an alien world to Christ.

But side by side with confessed weakness was prophetic anger.

“For now I hear there is dissension among you when you come together as a congregation. And in part I believe it. . . .

“I hear that when you assemble, it’s not to eat as at the table of the lord. For each one takes his own portion first, so some are full and some are hungry. Don’t you have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you want to shame the congregation of God, and to shame the poor?”

Then, remembering their sorrow for the dead, he comforted them in another strain.

“I assure you by the glory I have in Jesus Christ, our lord, that I die daily. And if I fought with the wild beasts of Ephesus in human form, what does it matter if the dead do not rise? For then we could just say, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. . . . Then suddenly the trumpet of the resurrection will sound, and the dead will rise uncorrupted.”

This letter to the Corinthians was a personal confession as well as a declaration of faith. Everything that he said in his letters to other congregations he also wove into his letter to the Corinthians. He showed himself not only the bearer of the great principle, but the pitiful and loving human being. And thereby he left to his congregants, for all ages to come, a moving document of eternal beauty.


Paul sealed the letter and sent it to the Corinthians with some of their own people, Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus. He also sent Titus with them, for Paul’s trust in Titus was very great. Titus had character, rocklike faith, and above all, exquisite natural tact in the management of people. Greek by origin, and therefore natural in his approach to the Gentiles, Titus would be a fine testimony to the Corinthians. But Paul placed his greatest trust in the letter.

Paul waited in Ephesus hoping that it wouldn’t take long for him to hear some results because of his letter. He tried to talk Apollos into going to Corinth, for he had to admit that Apollos had a great power of speech. But Apollos wasn’t in total agreement with the doctrine Paul preached, so he couldn’t be persuaded. So, just like Barnabas before, Apollos left the apostle and went, not out into the field, but to Jerusalem.

Once Priscilla and Aquila were ready to leave for Rome, Paul started getting antsy to leave also, having heard nothing from Corinth. Priscilla, trembling for his welfare as any mother would, tried to talk him out of his plans. But Paul comforted her, saying, “God, who has been with me in all danger in the past, and has brought me through to safety, will also be with me in Jerusalem, to rescue me from my own flesh and blood. I know of certainty, Priscilla, that we will yet labor together for Christ in Rome.”

Aquila and Priscilla boarded a ship bound for Italy, and Paul sailed for Macedonia.


Troas was the first point of call, the place where, years earlier, Paul had the vision of a man calling him to Macedonia. He found a little band of believers, a congregation founded by Jewish merchants, with a man named Corpus as its head. His stay was brief, but he promised the believers that he would visit them again on his return journey to Jerusalem, and he asked them in the meantime to gather whatever funds they could to send with him to the poor of the Holy City.

After boarding the ship for Philippi, Paul started to feel overcome by a sense of dread over his plans. He lay on the deck, wrapped in his mantle, and cowered as though he were beset by wolves. He was doubtful and afraid. That night as he called on the lord, he thought he heard a voice crying, “Jesus Christ!” But it didn’t sound like the voice of a dream or a vision. The sound of it rang in his ears. He opened his eyes and saw a vast, gaunt figure of a man, clothed in tattered clothing, standing in front of him. The man was standing over him and repeating the name, “Jesus Christ!”

“How do you know that name?” Paul asked.

“I heard it in the cavern ovens of the bronze foundries in Corinth. Then I heard you speak, and from that time on the name of Jesus Christ has been my last resort and help. Look down, messenger, and see!”

Paul looked down into the bowels of the ship where the man pointed. There below, in their long rows, the galley slaves were chained to their oars and were swinging back and forth to the sound of the hortator’s hammer.

“In the night that has no tomorrow,” the man said to Paul, “that name you brought to us is our refuge and salvation.”

But when Paul turned his shocked gaze back to the man, he was gone, and Paul didn’t know if he’d indeed spoken with someone, or whether he’d seen a vision.


Paul recovered from his strange depression once he saw the faithful in Philippi. The good, simple, deeply trusting Philippians had remained untouched by the destructive forces that had manifested themselves in other communities, and they believed in the apostle just as firmly as they did when he left them. Luke the healer, who Paul had left there many years before, was now a part of the congregation. It was well organized, and was in close contact with the congregation of Thessalonica, which had also developed well of late. Other congregations had also been founded in various cities of Macedonia.

Paul gathered much strength among the loving Philippians, and in the company of the pious and clever Lydia. The mere mention that funds were needed for the poor of Jerusalem caused the Philippians to immediately come forward with their offerings. Even the very poorest in the community, they who just yesterday had been idolaters and aliens to the concept of charity, brought their pitiful contributions and begged the apostle to accept them for the saints in Jerusalem.

And to top it all off, Timothy arrived with good news from Corinth.

“My father,” said Timothy, “they read your letter on the Sabbath and they read it again at the common evening meal. They read it constantly whenever they meet, as if it were part of Holy Scripture. Your words have broken their heart. Many of them repented the first time they heard the letter. Many of them were filled with dread by the anger of your words. They tremble in fear of your curse. They begged me to intervene with you for them, and to soften your anger with them.

“But,” and here Timothy paused, “there are some who oppose you, and your letter has made them furious. They say you don’t have authority from Jerusalem, and your reproaches mean nothing. They say you boast of your own work and undermine the work of the other apostles, and that you bring dissension into the Jewish communities, that you divide the Jewish people, and set one half against the other and create a deep abyss between Messiah and his own people. These evil speakers have a lot of influence, my father. If I may say so, I think you should go there immediately, for only your presence can put down the rebels and bring peace back to the congregation.”

Then, being faithful in repeating all the truth, Timothy had one more comment for Paul. “About the love of which you write to them, they say that he who writes such words must be the first to set an example in his life.”

All in all, Paul took this as good news, for the division seemed to be the only remaining evil, whereas in other matters, the Corinthians had repented and amended their ways. He began to wonder, though, if perhaps his words had been too harsh. Perhaps, if he’d been softer, the ones who despised his authority and his right to preach might not have been moved against him. Maybe he should write another letter before going there. He could use it to comfort the penitents and raise their fallen spirits, and he could again reprove the rebels, but in another spirit, a softer and kinder one.


Titus was out in the field somewhere, wandering among the cities of Macedonia, so Paul kept Timothy with him, and in the nights that followed he dictated the second letter to the Corinthians.

“You are our letter, engraved in our heart, known and read of all men,” he wrote to them. “You are revealed as the letter of Christ written not in ink, but in the spirit of the living God.”

And again he told them of his sufferings.

“We suffer on all sides, but we are not in fear. We are in need, but we do not despair. We are pursued, but we are not abandoned. We are beaten, but not lost. We carry the death of the lord Jesus in our body always, in order that the life of Jesus might be revealed in our lives.”

As to those who considered themselves his superiors because they had known Jesus Christ in the flesh and had lived in his company, Paul wrote, “He died for all, in order that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Therefore from now on we know no one in the flesh. And though we knew Christ in the flesh, we know him in the flesh no more. Therefore, when any one is in Christ, he is a new being. The old has died, and all has become new.”

Nor was Paul ashamed to defend himself to the Corinthians in matters that they had resented.

“We have given no offense in anything, that the service of Christ might not be shamed. We have been ministers of God in all things, in patience, in affliction, in need and in distress. . . . by pureness, by knowledge, by much suffering. . . . by honor and dishonor, by good report and by evil report. . . . sorrowful yet always causing joy, poor but always enriching others.”

And in the middle of the letter came the cry of his heart, “O Corinthians, my mouth is open to you, my heart is wide!”

He told them also of the coming of Timothy.

“We were comforted when he told us of your desires and sorrows, and of your longing for me. . . . For though I have caused you sorrow with my letter, I don’t regret it, but I rejoice that you sorrowed and repented.”

And this much said, he confessed himself, too, “Would that you might endure my foolishness. For I was jealous for you in the zeal of God.”

And he reminded them, “I robbed other congregations, and took wages of them, to serve you. But when I was with you I was a burden to no one. Our brothers of Macedonia came to my support, that I might not be a charge on you.”

Concerning those who denied the authority of his mission, he pointed to his Jewish origin.

“Many boast according to the flesh, therefore I too will boast according to the flesh. . . . Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? Let me answer as a fool, that I am more minister than they, I have labored more, been scourged more, suffered more in prison. I have known danger and shipwreck, I have been scourged five times with thirty-nine stripes, I have been in peril of robbers, in peril of the sea, in peril of my own countrymen. In pain and hunger, in weariness, in thirst, in daily anguish for the congregations.”

So it was indeed. He had paid full measure for his mission, among his own no less than among strangers. But his reward was the highest vision. He had been received into Paradise and had heard secret things that come to no living ear, and he said of himself, “Lest I should become too proud in the number of revelations given me, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me and keep me humble of spirit. And I prayed three times to God and he answered me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’”

Again he accused himself, “I have become a fool in boasting, but you made me do it.”

Then he added openly, “I will gladly come to you, and spend and be spent for you, though the more I love you the less I am loved by you.”

He betrayed his fear of the reception that awaited him.

“I fear that when I come I will not find you as my heart wants to find you and you will not find me as you want to find me. There will be dispute and quarreling, envy and backbiting and tumult. Yet I will come to you.”

“Finally, farewell. Be perfect, be comforted, be of one mind, be at peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

So he ended the letter with the words, “The grace of the lord Jesus Christ be with you.”

It was like the letter of a bridegroom to an offended but loving bride. He sent the letter with Luke, and asked him to prepare the Corinthians for his coming.