2 Corinthians — Chapter 13

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Macedonia in about AD 55–56, just before setting out for Corinth. Chapters 10–13 have been the sharpest part of the letter, aimed at the "super-apostles" who had won a following in Corinth and at the members who still doubted Paul. The last lines of chapter 12 named his fear: that he would come and find quarreling, arrogance and unrepented sexual sin (12:20–21). This short chapter is his final warning before he arrives, then a warm farewell. It ends with the best-known blessing in the New Testament, the one many churches still use to close a service.

Final Warnings (vv1–10)

• "This is the third time I am coming to you" (v1). The first visit founded the church (Acts 18:1–18). The second was a short, "painful visit" (2:1) that Acts does not record, apparently when someone in the church openly defied Paul. Now he is about to come a third time (12:14), and he will spend the winter there (Acts 20:2–3). During that stay he probably wrote Romans.
• "Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses" (v1). This quotes Deuteronomy 19:15, the law that no one could be convicted on the word of a single accuser. Jesus applied the same rule to church discipline (Matt 18:16), and Paul applies it to elders (1 Tim 5:19). What Paul means by the "witnesses" is debated. Some read it plainly: when he arrives, charges will be heard properly, with real witnesses, not rumor. Others think his own repeated warnings, given on the second visit and now in writing, are the witnesses. Either way, the point is that Paul will act as a fair judge, not an angry one, and the time for warnings is nearly over.
• "I will not spare them" (v2). Back in 1:23 Paul explained that he had delayed coming "to spare you." Patience was a mercy, but it had a limit. The ESV's "on my second visit" settles a long confusion. The King James renders the phrase "as if I were present, the second time," which led some older readers to think Paul had visited only once. The Greek is better taken the way the ESV takes it.
• "Since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me" (v3). This is the root of the whole quarrel. Some in Corinth wanted Paul to prove he was a real apostle, by impressive speech, visions or a commanding presence (10:10; 12:1). The word "proof" (dokimē) belongs to a word family that runs through vv3–7, built on testing metal to see whether it is genuine. Paul picks up their word and turns it around in v5.
• "He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you" (v3). The Corinthians had already seen Christ's power among them, in their own conversion and the Spirit's gifts (1 Cor 1:4–7). To doubt that Christ spoke through Paul was to doubt the source of their own faith.
• "Crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God" (v4). This verse holds the letter together. The cross looked like total defeat, yet God raised Jesus in power. Paul's ministry has the same shape: "we also are weak in him," sharing the Lord's humiliation (4:10–11; 12:9–10), "but... we will live with him by the power of God." The weak apostle the Corinthians looked down on was not a contradiction of Christ. He was a picture of him. And the same power that raised Jesus will be on display when Paul deals with them.
• "Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves" (v5). Here is the turn. They wanted to test Paul; he tells them to test themselves. Two verbs are used. "Examine" is peirazō, to put to the test. "Test" is dokimazō, the word for assaying metal, testing with the hope that it will prove genuine. "Yourselves" comes first in both clauses in the Greek, for emphasis.
• "Do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?" (v5). Paul expects the answer yes. The test is not mainly a hunt for sins but a question of whether Christ is truly present, both in each believer and among them as a church (the "you" is plural). If they are real Christians, and Paul believes most of them are, then they are themselves the proof of his apostleship, because Christ came to them through his preaching (3:2–3; 1 Cor 9:2).
• "Unless indeed you fail to meet the test!" (v5). "Fail the test" is adokimos, the negative of the same word family: a coin or metal that does not pass the assay and is rejected. The Old Greek of Isaiah 1:22 and Proverbs 25:4 uses it for silver turned to dross. Paul uses the same word of himself in 1 Corinthians 9:27, where he disciplines himself so that he will not be "disqualified." It is a sobering possibility, raised as a warning, not a verdict.
• Christians read v5 differently. Some traditions, especially Puritan and Reformed, have drawn on this verse to urge regular, searching self-examination about whether one's faith is genuine. Others caution that, in context, Paul is not asking anxious believers to doubt their salvation. He is asking a proud church that was cross-examining him to look at what God had already done in them. Both readings agree that faith should be real and fruitful, and that the gospel, not our own performance, is what the test finally rests on.
• "I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test" (v6). If they pass the test, Paul passes too. Their genuine faith is his credential.
• "Not that we may appear to have met the test" (v7). Paul prays that they will do right, and he would rather they do right and he look like a failure than that he win the argument. If they repent before he arrives, he will have no chance to show his authority in discipline, and his critics may go on calling him weak. He is content with that.
• "We cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth" (v8). An apostle's authority is not personal power. It exists only to serve the truth of the gospel. If the Corinthians are living in the truth, Paul has nothing to use his authority against.
• "Your restoration is what we pray for" (v9). The word is katartisis, used only here in the New Testament. Its verb form (katartizō) is used of fishermen "mending" their nets (Mark 1:19) and of restoring a believer caught in sin (Gal 6:1). The lexicon gives "strengthening, making fit," and in classical Greek "restoration, training." The older "perfection" (KJV) can sound like sinlessness, but the idea is putting something back in working order. The ESV's "restoration" captures it.
• "For building up and not for tearing down" (v10). Paul repeats words from 10:8, so this phrase bookends the whole section. It echoes God's commission to Jeremiah, appointed "to pluck up and to break down... to build and to plant" (Jer 1:10). Paul has authority to tear down if he must, but its purpose is to build. That is why he writes sharply now: so that he will not have to be severe in person.
• Commentators: Matthew Henry takes the "third time" to include Paul's letters, as if he had admonished them in person, and treats the letters as the witnesses. JFB disagrees: "This proves an intermediate visit," and it sides with the ESV against the KJV rendering of v2. Guzik also counts three actual visits. On v5, Henry warns that faith "is a matter in which we may be easily deceived," and so should be examined. Guzik adds the balance that self-examination should look mainly to Christ and should come before judging others. JFB likens the false metal image to failing the refiner's test. On v7 Henry observes, "We are more concerned to pray that we may not do evil than that we may not suffer evil." JFB says katartisis is used literally of setting a dislocated limb. The lexicon does not give that sense for this word, though the image fits the verb's wider range of "mend" and "restore."

Final Greetings (vv11–14)

• "Finally, brothers, rejoice" (v11). The word is chairete. It was also the ordinary Greek word for "goodbye," which is why the KJV has "farewell," and the lexicon lists this verse under that sense. The ESV chooses "rejoice," and Paul may intend both. After so many hard words, he still calls them brothers.
• Five short commands (v11). "Aim for restoration" uses the verb of the same root as v9 (katartizō): let yourselves be put right. "Comfort one another" picks up the great theme of chapter 1, where the word "comfort" appears again and again (1:3–7). "Agree with one another" is literally "think the same thing," the opposite of the factions that split the church from the start (1 Cor 1:10). "Live in peace" closes the list. These are commands to the whole church, not only to the leaders.
• "The God of love and peace will be with you" (v11). This exact title appears only here in the New Testament. It names the very things the Corinthians lacked, and promises the One who gives them.
• "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (v12). A kiss on the cheek was a normal greeting in that world, among family and close friends. Paul asks for it also in Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20 and 1 Thessalonians 5:26, and Peter calls it "the kiss of love" (1 Pet 5:14). By the mid-second century, Justin Martyr describes believers exchanging a kiss in worship before the Lord's Supper, later called the "kiss of peace." "Holy" sets it apart from romance or flattery. In a divided church, greeting one another this way meant something: you cannot kiss a brother you are refusing to forgive. Most churches today keep the meaning through a handshake or embrace.
• "All the saints greet you" (v13). These are the believers in Macedonia where Paul is writing. Corinth is reminded that it belongs to a wider family.
• Verse numbers. English Bibles differ here. The ESV, like the KJV, numbers the closing as vv12, 13 and 14. The standard Greek text, and some translations that follow it, put the kiss and the greeting together as v12 and the blessing as v13. Nothing is missing or added. It is only a difference in where the verse breaks fall.
• "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (v14). Most of Paul's letters end with a one-line grace (1 Cor 16:23; Gal 6:18). Only here does he name Father, Son and Spirit together in a blessing. This is not yet the developed language of later creeds, but it shows that within about twenty-five years of the resurrection, Christians already prayed to one God known as Father, Son and Spirit, side by side, with no sense that this was strange. Compare the baptismal command in Matthew 28:19.
• The order is telling. Paul names the Son first, not the Father. It is through "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ" (8:9) that we come to know "the love of God" (Rom 5:8), and the Spirit then brings believers into shared life with God and with one another.
• "The fellowship of the Holy Spirit." The word is koinōnia: fellowship, sharing, participation. The same word is used for the Jerusalem collection in 8:4 and 9:13. The phrase can mean the fellowship the Spirit creates among believers, or our fellowship with the Spirit himself. Interpreters divide, and both are true elsewhere in Paul (Phil 2:1; Eph 4:3). For a church torn by rivalry, the blessing is also a prayer: that the Spirit who unites them would do it.
• "With you all." Not just the loyal ones. The blessing includes everyone, even those Paul has just warned.
• Commentators: Guzik and JFB both note that "farewell" can be read as "rejoice." JFB reads "be perfect" (v11) as "filling up what is lacking in your Christian character," and Guzik makes the same point: weak areas are not to be excused but grown in. JFB skips vv12–13 entirely. Guzik treats the holy kiss as a cultural form whose principle, warm and fitting affection among believers, still applies. On v14, Guzik notes this is the one New Testament blessing that names Father, Son and Spirit together. JFB treats it as plain evidence for the Trinity, adding that "in this Trinity none is afore or after other," and it notes that the closing "Amen" in some Bibles is missing from the oldest manuscripts, probably added later for public reading.

Pointing to Christ

The whole of 2 Corinthians comes down to v4: Christ "was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God." Corinth wanted leaders who looked strong. God's power came to them through a crucified Savior and a weak, scarred apostle. The test of a church is not how impressive it looks but whether "Jesus Christ is in you." And the letter ends not with a threat but with a gift: the grace of the Son, the love of the Father and the fellowship of the Spirit, offered to "you all."

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the warning, self-examination, the prayer for perfection, and the Trinitarian benediction.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 2 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Examining Your Own Faith, Not Others' (v.5) — Paul urges the Corinthians to test whether they themselves are in the faith rather than scrutinizing his credentials. When did you last honestly examine the evidence of genuine faith in your own life instead of coasting on past decisions?
• Truth Cannot Ultimately Be Defeated (v.8) — Paul says he and his companions can do nothing against the truth, only for it. Are you living on the side of truth, or are there areas where you're quietly resisting it?
• Final Commands Toward Unity and Peace (v.11) — Paul closes with calls toward wholeness, encouragement, unity, and peace among believers. Where is there disunity or conflict in your relationships right now that needs to be addressed?
• A Blessing From All Three Persons of God (v.14) — Paul's closing benediction calls down Christ's grace, the Father's love, and the Spirit's fellowship together. Which of these three do you most need to experience today?