2 Corinthians 3:1 Commentary and Bible Study

I used to think years ago that it was a most complex chapter and difficult to follow, and why ever did the apostle carry out this detour that constitutes the bulk of this chapter, but actually it is a remarkable chapter. It is the chapter of the greatest contrasts in history, because it is a contrast between the giving of the law and the giving of the gospel – the great contrast that determines all eternity and salvation. That is why it is the most important of all contrasts.The background to this chapter is that the Corinthian church had been infiltrated and there were a number, a minority, but a number of people in the church who taught contrary to the teaching of the New Testament, the teaching of the apostle Paul. And in order to get away with that, they would discredit the apostle Paul and deride him at every opportunity. And they would twist all his words in their efforts to do this. So the church at Corinth, which was a good church and a loyal church, had some problems, and the biggest of the problems really was the infiltrators.Who were these infiltrators? Well there is little doubt from this chapter that they were people who we call today Judaisers. That is to say they were false teachers, with probably Jewish backgrounds who went round the Gentile churches and the young converts trying to convince them that their faith was not good enough. They had to go back to the ceremonial law of the Jews, to the Old Testament and follow that. And that was their message. Of course that meant that they completely negated salvation by grace through faith. They completely negated the free salvation purchased by Christ on Calvary’s cross of the gospel and of the New Testament. And so you will find the apostle constantly having to warn against them.This chapter is a series of arguments or contrasts to demonstrate both to those false teachers and to the Corinthian church that the time of ceremonies and the Jewish era is passed and it has been superseded by something vastly superior. He compares one with the other under a number of headings. In the back of his mind Paul has those Judaisers, and he is teaching the necessity and the superiority and the greater efficacy and glory of the gospel revelation.A number of false teachers had come to Corinth, and it just sounds as though one of the things they were saying was that the apostle was not authentic, had no credentials, had received no letters from, say, Jerusalem, to introduce himself to them. This means of undermining him was possibly what was going on. Anyway, though letters of commendation were good things on the whole and they were used in the early church and we see references in the epistles, one commending another, nevertheless, the apostle didn’t need this.