Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - 2 Corinthians 6:7 - 6:7
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
2Co_6:7. The enumerations hitherto made related generally to the conduct and character of God’s servants; now the stream, swelling ever more boldly, passes over to the province of the teacher’s work, and pours itself forth from 2Co_6:8 in a succession of contrasts between seeming and being, which are so many triumphs of the apostle’s clear self-assuranc.
ἐν λόγῳ ἀληθ .] through discourse of truth, i.e. through doctrine, the character of which is truth. Comp. 2Co_2:17, 2Co_4:2. It will not do to take, with Rückert, λόγ . ἀληθ . objectively, as equivalent to εὐαγγέλιον , because, as at Eph_1:13, Col_1:5, the article could not have been omitte.
ἐν δυνάμει θεοῦ ] through power of God, which shows itself efficacious in our work of teaching, 2Co_4:7. Comp. 1Co_2:4; 1Co_4:20. The limitation to the miracles is arbitrary (Theophylact, comp. Emmerling and Flatt).
διὰ τῶν ὁπλῶν τῆς δικαιοσ . κ . τ . λ .] is by Grotius connected with what precedes (Dei virtute nobis arma subministrante, etc.); but seeing that other independent points are afterwards introduced by διά , we must suppose that Paul, who elsewhere without any special purpose varies in his use of equivalent prepositions, passes from the instrumental ἐν to the instrumental διά , so that we have here also a special point: through the weapons, which righteousness furnishes. The δικαιοσύνη is to be taken in the usual dogmatic sense. Comp. τὴν θώρακα τῆς δικαιοσ ., Eph_6:15. It is the righteousness of faith which makes us strong and victorious in the way of assault or defence against all opposing powers. See the noble commentary of the apostle himself in Rom_8:31-39. It has been explained of moral integrity (comp. Rom_6:13; Rom_6:19; Eph_5:9; Eph_6:14), the genitive being taken either as ad justitiam implendam (Grotius), or as weapons, which the consciousness of integrity gives (Erasmus, Beza, Calvin, Billroth), or which are allowed to a moral man and are at his command (Rückert), or which minister to that which is of right (Hofmann), and the like; but the explanation has this against it, that the context contains absolutely nothing which leads us away from the habitual Pauline conception of δικαιοσύνη , as it was most definitely expressed even at 2Co_5:21, whereas the idea of δύναμις θεοῦ stands in quite a Pauline connection with that of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ . See Rom_1:16-17. Hence there is no ground for uniting the two conceptions of δικαιοσύνη (Osiander), or for explaining it of righteousness as a quality of God which works through Paul (Kling). The explanation: arma justa, legitimate weapons (Flatt, following Heumann and Morus), is out of the questio.
τῶν δεξιῶν καὶ ἀριστ .] right-hand and left-hand arms, an apportioning specification of the whole armament. The former are the weapons of attack wielded with the right hand, the latter are the weapons of defence (shield); the warrior needs both together. Hence it was unsuitable to refer the former specially to res prosperas, the latter to res adversas (Erasmus, Estius, Grotius, Bengel, and others, following the Fathers): “ne prosperis elevemur, nec frangamur adversis,” Pelagius. Comp. rather, on the subject-matter, 2Co_10:4 f.