Today’s Passage: 2 Corinthians 13
Here is the last page. Paul tells the Corinthians he is coming a third time, and that when he comes he will handle matters the way the Law of Moses handled them, by witnesses, in the open, with nothing settled by rumor. He reminds them of a warning he gave them on his painful second visit and repeats it now in writing so that no one can claim surprise: if he returns and finds the same sin still standing, he will not spare anyone. Then he takes their demand for proof of his apostleship and turns it on its head. They want evidence that Christ speaks through him. Very well, he says, look at Christ, who was crucified in weakness and lives by the power of God, and look at yourselves, because you are the evidence. In the next breath comes the verse this chapter is famous for, the command to examine themselves and see whether they are in the faith. Then a prayer that they will do right whether or not it makes Paul look approved, a strange and beautiful gladness at being weak while they are strong, and a stated reason for the whole severe letter: he writes hard now so that he will not have to be hard in person, because the authority he carries was given for building up and not for tearing down. And then the letter softens into farewell. Rejoice. Live in peace. Greet one another. And the final sentence, which the church has been saying ever since, names the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each with a gift to give.
As you read, hold this: The letter of power perfected in weakness ends at the cross where that power was proved, turns the church’s audit of Paul back onto their own hearts, and leaves them standing in the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit.
Context The world of 2 Corinthians 13
Understand what the third visit meant. Paul had founded this church, spending a year and a half in Corinth teaching them from nothing. He had come back a second time on a visit so painful that he could barely bring himself to describe it, and he had left grieved, going away rather than staying to fight. In the interval, teachers had arrived with letters of recommendation, polished speech, and a great deal of confidence, and they had persuaded a sizeable part of the congregation that Paul was unimpressive in person, weak, possibly dishonest about money, and certainly no match for men who could command a room. So the church had put its own father in the gospel on trial. When Paul says they are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through him, he is describing an actual examination, the sort of scrutiny a Greek city gave to any traveling philosopher who wanted its ear. Corinth was a city that loved a contest and knew how to judge a speaker. What it did not know how to judge was a cross.
The legal rule Paul quotes at the top of the chapter comes straight out of Deuteronomy. No matter could be settled in Israel on the word of one person; two or three witnesses were required before anything could be established against anyone. Jesus had taken that same rule and given it to His church for handling sin among brothers, and Paul is announcing that he will follow it. There will be no ambush and no private verdict when he arrives. Everything will be examined properly and in the light. The closing lines of the chapter belong to the ordinary shape of an ancient letter, which ended with greetings passed along from those present and an instruction to greet those absent. The holy kiss was the standard greeting of family and close friends across that world, taken up by the church and handed across every barrier the city cared about, slave and free, Jewish and Greek, poor and wealthy, all of them kin now. What is not ordinary is the last sentence. Letters of that day ended with a brief wish for health or good fortune. This one ends with the Triune God.
2 Corinthians 13:1–2 (BSB)
¹ This is the third time I am coming to you. “Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” ² I already warned you the second time I was with you. So now in my absence I warn those who sinned earlier and everyone else: If I return, I will not spare anyone,
Notice how Paul opens the last page of a letter full of tenderness. He opens it with a courtroom rule. That is not coldness; it is protection. A church can be wrecked as thoroughly by a whisper as by a scandal, and the man who is coming with authority in his hand deliberately binds himself, in advance and in writing, to a procedure that makes private vengeance impossible. Nothing will be established against anyone in Corinth on the strength of one voice, one grudge, or one confident accuser. He is quoting the ancient safeguard God gave His people through Moses.
"A lone witness is not sufficient to establish any wrongdoing or sin against a man, regardless of what offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses." Deuteronomy 19:15 (BSB)
Sit with the mercy buried in that rule. Our God, who sees everything and needs no witnesses at all, gave His people a law that refuses to convict a man on one person’s word. And then see what Paul does with the warning itself. He gave it once already, face to face, on the visit that hurt. He gives it again now, in a letter, while he is still hundreds of miles away, precisely so that nobody will be caught off guard by it. Twice warned, in person and in writing, with weeks or months to repent before he ever walks through the door. That is the pattern of God’s own dealing with people all through Scripture: the warning always arrives long before the visit. And the warning is real. “I will not spare anyone” is not the language of a man who has grown tired of being nice. It is the language of a father who loves a church too much to let a settled, unrepented sin sit in the middle of it and rot the whole loaf. Sentiment lets things go. Love does not.
2 Corinthians 13:3–4 (BSB)
³ since you are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me. He is not weak in dealing with you but is powerful among you. ⁴ For He was indeed crucified in weakness, yet He lives by God’s power. For we are also weak in Him, yet by God’s power we will live with Him concerning you.
Now the whole letter gathers itself and sounds one last time, and it sounds at the foot of the cross. The Corinthians want proof. They have been measuring Paul against men who dazzle, and by that measure he does not survive: unimpressive in person, plain in speech, forever in some kind of trouble, forever apologizing for nothing and boasting about beatings. So Paul asks them to look at the standard they are using, because it is a standard that would have disqualified Jesus Christ on Good Friday. He was crucified in weakness. That is the most honest sentence in the chapter. There was no display of force on that hill, no legion of angels, no argument won in front of a crowd. There was a man too weak to carry His own crossbeam, nailed up between two criminals and mocked by people who thought that settled the question of who He was. Weakness, visible and total. And then, “yet He lives by God’s power.” The tomb is empty and the same weakness that looked like defeat turns out to be the very place where the power of God did its greatest work in the history of the world.
Everything this letter has been saying rests on that. Treasure in jars of clay, so that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. Strength made perfect in weakness. A thorn left in the flesh and grace given sufficient for it. None of that is a coping strategy or a brave face put on a hard life. It is the pattern of the cross, worked into the life of everyone joined to the Crucified. Paul says it plainly of himself: we are also weak in Him, and by God’s power we will live with Him. He is not pretending to be strong. He never was. He is telling a church addicted to impressive things that the risen Christ is not weak toward them, that He is powerful among them, and that the apostle’s own frailty is not the disproof of Christ’s power but the very shape of it. If you have ever felt that your weakness disqualifies you from being useful to God, read verse 4 again, slowly. The cross is God’s answer to that fear, and it is a final answer.
2 Corinthians 13:5–6 (BSB)
⁵ Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you—unless you fail the test? ⁶ And I hope you will realize that we have not failed the test.
Read this verse in the room where it was written, because it has been lifted out of that room and used to torment tender people for centuries. The Corinthians had been running an examination. They had put Paul on the stand, weighed his speech, audited his handling of money, compared him with more polished men, and demanded that he prove Christ was speaking through him. Paul lets them keep their courtroom and simply moves the chair. Stop examining me, he says. dokimazō, pronounced dok-ee-MAHD-zo. Strong's G1381, to test, examine, prove genuine. The verb is dokimazō, and it comes out of the world of metal and money rather than the world of anxiety. It is what an assayer did with silver and what a banker did with a coin: heat it, weigh it, look at it closely, and find out whether it is the genuine article. Crucially, the word carries an expectation of a good result. When Scripture says a thing is dokimazō-tested, the usual outcome is that it comes through approved, stamped, and put into use. That is why the same word gets translated “approve” as often as “test.” A farmer tests the ground he intends to plant. God tests hearts because He intends to entrust them with the gospel. The word is not the sound of a man tearing at himself in the dark, wondering endlessly whether anything in him is real. It is the sound of the assayer’s confident bench, where genuine metal has nothing to fear from a hot fire. Christian self-examination in Scripture always runs in that direction. It looks honestly at what is there, and every honest look drives the believer straight back to Christ, who is the only reason there was ever anything genuine there to find. yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? And there is the argument, complete in one stroke. If Christ is in them, then their own existence as a church is his credentials, since they were pagans in a pagan city until this weak little tentmaker came and preached a crucified Jew to them. Look in the mirror, he says, and you will see the proof you have been demanding from me. That is why verse 6 follows immediately: he hopes they will realize that he has not adokimos, pronounced ah-DOK-ee-moss. Strong's G96, disqualified, failing the test, not approved. Its opposite is adokimos, the same word with the negative on the front: metal that went to the assayer and came back rejected, currency that would not pass, the coin the moneychanger pushed back across the table. Paul had used it of himself in an earlier letter to this same church, saying he disciplined his body so that after preaching to others he would not himself be disqualified, and there he plainly means the disgrace of a servant set aside from usefulness, not the loss of his salvation. Here he uses it as the hinge of an argument, and hear the tone of it. This is a rhetorical question expecting them to answer of course He is in us. Paul is not standing over a fragile congregation dangling their eternity in front of them. He is doing what a grandfather does when a child insists he is not loved: he turns the child around to face the evidence. Do you not realize Christ is in you? Look at the change in you. Look at the fact that you love the Scriptures and grieve over sin you once enjoyed. The unbelieving heart never asks whether it is genuine. The very anxiety that sends a soul running to this verse is usually itself the answer to it. either. The point of the self-examination is that it ends with them recognizing him.
Say the whole thing plainly, because this is where sensitive believers get wounded. Self-examination in Scripture is never a summons to endless morbid self-doubt, and this verse is not teaching that a person truly in Christ may one day discover he was never kept. This same letter has already settled that question twice, and both times it settled it in God’s favor and not in ours.
"Now it is God who establishes both us and you in Christ. He anointed us, placed His seal on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a pledge of what is to come." 2 Corinthians 1:21–22 (BSB)
God establishes. God anoints. God places His seal, the mark of ownership a merchant pressed into wax so that everyone knew whose cargo it was and that it must not be broken open in transit. God puts His Spirit in the heart as a pledge, a down payment on a purchase He fully intends to complete. Paul says the same thing again at 5:5. That is the floor a believer stands on while he examines himself, and no honest examination can pull that floor out from under him, because he did not lay it. A tender conscience is far more likely to be wounded by verse 5 than a careless one is to be woken by it. So take it the way it was given. Look at yourself honestly, not to see whether God will keep His word, but to see whether Christ is truly your treasure, and if the looking unsettles you, then go where every examination in the Bible sends you. Go to Him. Nobody ever examined himself into peace. People are given peace at the cross, and then they examine themselves in the light of it.
2 Corinthians 13:7–8 (BSB)
⁷ Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong—not that we will appear to have stood the test, but that you will do what is right, even if we appear to have failed. ⁸ For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.
Here is one of the most selfless sentences any minister ever wrote, and it slips past quickly if you are not watching. Paul has spent four chapters defending his apostleship against men who were dismantling his reputation. And now he says: I would rather you do right and I look like a failure, than have you do wrong so that I can be proved right. Think about what he is surrendering. If the Corinthians repent before he arrives, he never gets his vindication. There is no dramatic confrontation, no display of apostolic power, no moment when the church has to admit publicly that he was correct all along and the smooth teachers were frauds. He will simply arrive to a healthy church and be thought of as the man who threatened much and did nothing. And he prays for exactly that outcome. He would rather be misjudged forever than see one of them harmed. That is what a shepherd looks like, and it is worth measuring our own hearts against it, because most of us would quietly prefer to be proved right.
Then verse 8, which is one of those short sentences that can hold a life up. “For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.” Paul is saying that his authority is not a personal possession he can point wherever he likes. It only works in one direction. If the Corinthians are actually walking in the truth, then there is nothing he could do against them even if he wanted to, because his commission runs with the truth and not against it. And this is a great comfort in a world of church power gone wrong. Real spiritual authority has no force whatsoever against a person who is standing in the truth. It cannot be used to bully the obedient. It has strength only where sin is, and the moment sin is repented of, the authority has nothing left to do but bless. Every threat in this chapter dissolves the instant they turn.
2 Corinthians 13:9–10 (BSB)
⁹ In fact, we rejoice when we are weak but you are strong, and our prayer is for your perfection. ¹⁰ This is why I write these things while absent, so that when I am present I will not need to be severe in my use of the authority that the Lord gave me for building you up, not for tearing you down.
He rejoices to be weak while they are strong. Read that in a culture, ancient or modern, where every teacher is quietly building a reputation, and feel how odd it is. Paul’s gladness is not in his own standing but in their strength, and he will trade the one for the other any day of the week. His prayer for them is a single word in the Greek, and it is a marvelous one: their katartisis, pronounced kah-TAR-tee-sis. Strong's G2676, restoration, being mended and made complete. The word is katartisis, and its root shows up in three ordinary trades. It is the word for setting a broken bone so that it knits straight; the word for mending fishing nets, which is exactly what James and John were doing in the boat when Jesus called them; and the word for fitting a ship out properly for sea. All three pictures are the same picture: something that belongs together is out of joint or torn or unready, and patient hands put it back in order so it can do what it was made to do. That is what Paul prays for a church that has been quarreling, doubting him, tolerating sin, and flirting with counterfeit teachers. Not that they would be scolded into line. That they would be mended. Notice that mending is slow, careful work, done by hands that know the shape a thing is supposed to have. And notice who does it. Paul prays for their mending rather than announcing that he will accomplish it, because only God sets bones. Two verses later the same root appears again when he tells them to aim for perfect harmony, so what he prays for them privately he also calls them to pursue together. That is the ordinary Christian life: God mending you, and you cooperating with the hands that are doing it. . Then verse 10 tells us the purpose of the whole hard letter, and it is a purpose worth writing on the inside of every difficult conversation we ever have to start. He is being severe on paper now, at a distance, so that he will not have to be severe in the room later. He would rather send a letter that costs him their affection than arrive and break something. And the last clause is the sentence that governs all Christian authority, forever: the Lord gave it for building up, not for tearing down. Every leader who has ever used the church to enlarge himself stands condemned by that half-verse, and every believer who has ever been flattened by someone wielding spiritual authority as a club may know for certain that what was done to them was not from the Lord, because the Lord does not issue authority for demolition.
2 Corinthians 13:11–12 (BSB)
¹¹ Finally, brothers, rejoice! Aim for perfect harmony, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. ¹² Greet one another with a holy kiss.
Feel the change of weather. The courtroom is gone, the warnings are behind him, and the old apostle sets his shoulders down and speaks the way you speak at a doorway when the visit is over and you are already halfway to missing someone. “Finally, brothers.” He calls them brothers, after everything. Then five short commands, quick and warm. Rejoice, because a church that cannot rejoice has forgotten what it was given. Aim for perfect harmony, which is that mending word again, so they are told to work at being put back together rather than waiting passively for it. Encourage one another, and that verb is built from the same family as the word for the God of all comfort in chapter one, which means they are to hand around to each other exactly what God has been handing to them since the first page. Be of one mind. Live in peace. And then the promise attached: the God of love and peace will be with you. Not “will love you if you manage it.” He is already the God of love and peace; walk in love and peace and you will find yourself walking where He is. Then the greeting. A kiss on the cheek was how families and close friends met in that world, and the church took the family greeting and made it the ordinary way believers touched one another, across every line Corinth cared about. Whatever form it takes in your part of the world, the command underneath it has not changed. Get close enough to touch. Christians are not permitted to keep the family at arm’s length.
2 Corinthians 13:13–14 (BSB)
¹³ All the saints send you greetings. ¹⁴ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
All the saints send greetings, and remember who is sending them: the Macedonian believers, poor and pressed hard by trouble, who had begged for the privilege of giving to Jerusalem out of their poverty. Those are the people waving across the sea at Corinth. And then the last sentence of the letter, and it is one of the fullest Trinitarian sentences in all of Scripture. Three Persons named in one breath, each with a gift in His hand. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is where a sinner always has to start and where he never stops standing, the undeserved kindness of the One who was rich and became poor for our sake. The love of God, the Father’s own settled love that sent the Son before we knew enough to want Him. And the koinōnia, pronounced koy-no-NEE-ah. Strong's G2842, fellowship, partnership, shared participation. The word is koinōnia, and it means far more than the friendly hour after a service that the English word “fellowship” now suggests. Its root is the plain adjective for common, and in ordinary Greek it named a partnership: two men who shared a fishing business, a contribution shared out among many, holding something jointly rather than each keeping his own. So when it is used of the Holy Spirit, it means the Spirit Himself is what believers hold in common, and that He is the one who makes them common to each other. This is not a group of individuals who happen to like the same songs. It is a body sharing one life, poured out from one Source. That is why this word is the right one to end this letter with. Everything wrong in Corinth had been a failure of common life: parties formed around teachers, a wounded apostle held at a distance, the wealthy comfortable while Jerusalem went hungry, a congregation auditing its own father in the faith. And the closing word over all of it is not “try harder to get along.” It is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the shared life of God Himself given to a church, which is the only thing that has ever made unlike people into one family and made them stay. of the Holy Spirit, the shared life of the Spirit poured into a congregation, binding them to God and to each other. Notice the order. Grace comes first, because grace is how anyone gets in. Love stands behind it as the eternal source of the grace. And the fellowship of the Spirit is how the whole thing is experienced day after day in an actual church with actual difficult people in it. Three Persons, one God, one blessing, spoken over a congregation that had been fighting with the man who wrote it. Be with all of you, he says. All of you, including the ones still unconvinced. He never draws the line he would have been entitled to draw.
Study notes Going deeper
So the letter ends, and it is worth standing still a moment and looking back down the whole road. It opened by blessing “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,” who comforts us in our troubles so that we can hand that same comfort on to somebody else in theirs, which meant from the first page that our sufferings were never wasted material. It went on to the new covenant and the unveiled face, to a treasure carried in cheap clay so that the surpassing power would obviously be God’s and not ours. It climbed to the highest ground in the letter at the great exchange, where the sinless One was made sin and sinners are made righteous in Him. It spent two whole chapters on money and never once made it a transaction, holding up instead the Macedonians who gave out of deep poverty and the Lord Jesus who “though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor,” and promising not personal enrichment but that God supplies us so that we “abound in every good work.” It went down into a thorn that was never removed and came back up with the answer that has held more suffering saints upright than any other sentence in Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” And now it lands here, at a cross where weakness and power met once and for all, and at a benediction with three Persons and three gifts. The center of the whole letter is one verse, and it never moves.
"God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Corinthians 5:21 (BSB)
That is why the last verse can be spoken over a church like the one in Corinth, and over people like us. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a wish; it was purchased at the place where He who knew no sin was made sin. The love of God is not sentiment; it is what put Him there. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is not an atmosphere; it is the seal and the pledge of chapter one, God’s own mark of ownership on people He fully intends to bring home. Examine yourself, then, and do it in that light, not to see whether God will keep you but to see whether Christ is your treasure, and let every honest look send you back to Him. Rejoice. Be mended. Encourage the person next to you. Live in peace. Carry your weakness without shame, because it is exactly where His power has always chosen to work. Learn the Word, love the Christ who was crucified in weakness and lives by the power of God, ask Him for the mending you cannot manage, and give thanks.