1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 16.
Concluding Admonitions. 1 Corinthians 16, 1–24.
Final greetings: V. 21. The salutation of me, Paul, with mine own hand. V. 22. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema. Maranatha. V. 23. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you! V. 24. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Up to this point Paul has dictated the letter. But now he personally takes the pen and authenticates the letter with his autograph signature, 2 Thess. 3, 17.
And he adds a double motto and his greeting proper: If any one does not love our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. Lord, come! or, The Lord is coming.
Not only he that hates the Lord Jesus, but also he that has no real love for the Savior in his heart, but offers a pretense, a spurious love instead, is cursed and condemned. "Those who bow the knee to Him with a feigned heart are themselves anathema," under the curse.
On the other hand, the eager cry: Lord, come! or: The Lord cometh, was a favorite prayer, like a sigh for quick deliverance, in the early Church. Compre Phil. 4, 5; Rev. 1,7; 3,11; 22,20. It was both a watchword and a password among the early Christians, always ringing through their soul and expressed with ever-increasing fervor.
The personal wish of the apostle to the Corinthians is that the grace, the forgiveness of sins, the full divine favor of the Lord Jesus Christ, may be with them, and that his love, equal in intensity toward them all, may be with them.
His was the love which he had praised in his holy psalm, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, chap. 13, 7.
It was this love which caused Paul to desire that all divisions and schisms would be put aside and a perfect unity in Christ Jesus be secured