2 Corinthians 1:1–2

2 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 1

Address, Thanksgiving, and Consolation. 2 Corinthians 1, 1–11.

The address of the letter: V.1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia: v.2. Grace be to you and peace from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

As in the first letter and in most of his other epistles, Paul’s personal interest in, and deep love for, the people won for Christ by his work caused him to expand the usual short form of address at the beginning of a Greek letter.

He calls himself an apostle of Christ Jesus; he was sent out, commissioned, by the great Lord of the Church Himself. And he held this position, especially also with reference to the Corinthians, through the will of God, not by any frivolous choice.

Timothy, his assistant, he names as a brother, not as coauthor, but as a coworker, and as one who was well known to the Corinthians in that capacity.

To the church, or congregation, of God Paul addresses himself, which owed its existence to the work of God through the Gospel. This congregation was established in Corinth; it was an organized body of such as confessed their belief in Jesus Christ.

But in the second place it was addressed also to all the saints, to all the believers sanctified by faith, in the entire province of Achaia, to all other congregations that had been established from Corinth as a center and were intimately connected with the Corinthian Christians through the bond of their common belief and confession. Though not a circular letter in the full sense of the word, it was yet intended to serve a large circle of Christians united in the common cause of the Master.

The apostle’s opening greeting and wish have reference to the greatest and most wonderful gifts which the Christians possess: Grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

To the believers, God is the common Father, they are all His children by faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord; they are united by the bonds of a common love toward Him and toward one another. “Grace is the key-note of the Gospel; and peace, the traditional and beautiful salutation of the East, on Christian lips signifies not earthly peace merely, but the peace of God, Phil. 4, 7” (Expositor’s Greek Testament, 3, 37).