2 CORINTHIANS Vv. 14-15, 18-19, 21:—For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again… But all things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation: to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses… Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
I HAVE chosen for my text three sentences which do not form a consecutive passage. They stand, however, in very close contiguity within the limits of a single short paragraph, within the narrow compass, indeed, of eight verses. More than that, they stand out upon the face of this short paragraph as marked features, from which it receives its character and chief significance. Glancing over this paragraph, the eye can no more fail to fix itself upon these three sentences than gazing over a rich plain from seme high point of sight it could fail to be attracted by a series of bold promontories throwing themselves athwart it; or glancing on the fretted lid of some highly wrought casket it could fail to be drawn and dazzled by the jewels which blaze upon it. We cannot say, indeed, that the paragraph exists for these three sentences: they, rather, are here for the purposes of the paragraph and fulfil these purposes with perfection. But in prosecuting the end he has here in view the apostle is led to make his appeal to considerations of so high an order that the sentences in which they are adduced stand out above the general drift of the discussion like mountain-peaks in a plain, glow on its surface like jewels in their setting.
What Paul is engaged upon in this section of his Epistle is the vindication of his integrity as a minister of grace, and of the purity of the Gospel he preached. It is in full view of the judgment-seat of Christ, he asserts, that he prosecutes the mission that has been committed to him; and he has permitted nothing to deflect him by a hair’s-breadth from the message which has been placed on his lips. In giving force to this contention he is led to enunciate the contents of the message of which he has been made the bearer: and it is this enunciation which is thrown up to our view in these sentences I have chosen for my text.
In these sentences is contained therefore the announcement of Paul’s Gospel; and it is this fact which gives them their distinction. Search throughout the whole compass of Paul’s Epistles and it is doubtful if you will find another such succinct, complete and pungent statement of the Gospel which Paul preached; of what he deemed the very touchstone and heart of the message he brought to men. Certainly you will find none more formally set forth as the apostle’s own declaration of the essence of his Gospel. If we wish to know precisely what Paul preached and precisely in what he conceived all that he preached to centre and to be summed up, we cannot do better than attend to these crisp sentences. I have called them crisp sentences, and 1 might almost have spoken of them as detached sentences. For part and parcel as they are of Paul’s argument, fitting into it and bearing their part in it with the perfection of sentences born of the discussion of the moment, they yet have an odd air of detachment about them, which seems to assure us they were not struck out in the heat of this debate, but have been brought into it from without. One of them is introduced by what we may almost call a formula of citation: “ because we thus judge’— seeing that our judgment is this,”—viz. what follows. All of them are phrased with that sharply cut frugality of language which belongs to proverbial speech, and is the result, no doubt, of the attrition which sentences suffer from much repetition, by which all the rough edges, like superfluous particles, are worn off. One died for all: therefore all died: and He died for all that, living, they might no longer live to themselves, but to Him who died and rose for them.” ‘ All is of God; who reconciled us with Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, since it was God who in Christ was reconciling the world with Himself.” ‘ Him that knew no sin He made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” There is not a redundant word in any of these sentences; there is even a notable parsimony of words; even what might have been deemed the necessary connecting particles are omitted. I think we may be quite sure that these sentences were not first framed as Paul set them down on the sheets of this letter; that they had often been on his lips before; and that they went down on the sheets he was writing here in the form they had taken on his lips after numerous repetitions. In a word, we have here the phrases in which Paul was accustomed to give expression to the heart of his Gospel.