NOTES for Co2 13:1-13

Paul calls his Corinthian brothers to test ("examine") and investigate first of all themselves - not in the sense of tests for conformity to some religious doctrines, but with regard to their faith. Here the apostle has in mind above all what he has already written much about to the recipients of his letter: personal relationships with Christ as the basis of Christian life, the life of the Kingdom as the foundational experience without which there is no Christianity. About himself Paul says that he is strong not against the truth, but for the truth. For him, however, truth is precisely that very experience of living Christian life against which he invites his readers to check themselves.

The apostle is not going to convince anyone of anything and will not prove anything to anyone when it comes to the many arguments and disputes that were then going on in the Corinthian church. He simply sees no point in it. Not because nothing can be proved that way - something can in fact be proved that way - but because even if one succeeds in proving something to someone, it will be completely different from what a Christian should care about at all. One can prove one's own rightness or an opponent's wrongness on one theological question or another, but who benefits, and how, from all such proofs? It is only a kind of intellectual sport, a contest of minds and erudition, in which victory proves nothing except the intellectual superiority of one rival over another or over others. In the spiritual life of those arguing, such a victory or defeat changes nothing, and if it does change something, it is not for the better: it gives the winner one more occasion for self-exaltation and arouses negative emotions in the defeated.

Paul is not going to Corinth in order to take part in contests of this kind. He does not want to prove anything to anyone - he wants the Christians of Corinth to wake up spiritually, leave useless disputes over words behind, and return again to that spiritual life in the true sense of the word, the experience of which they had, judging by the apostle's words. And if Paul succeeded in this, he would consider such an awakening his chief victory.