YOU do not indicate what special point is before your mind in making this request, so the few words we say can only be of a general nature.
In these verses the Apostle is showing that one great mark of the Christian is stability. He had thought of visiting Corinth some time before writing this letter, but had not done so. Certain adversaries took advantage of this change of plans to insinuate that he was a man marked by vacillation and insincerity or lightness (verses 15-17). This charge he rebuts. He was not a man vacillating between yea and nay, even as the Son of God, who was the theme of his Gospel, was not yea and nay. In Christ the whole will of God is accomplished and stands fast, even as ultimately He will put the finishing touch, the Amen, to it all (verses 18-20). Paul, the herald of the Gospel, shared in the stability which the Gospel announces.
But not only so, the Gospel imparts its stability to all who receive it. We it is, who have believed, for faith is that which springs up in the hearts of men, yet behind our faith lies the work of God, for He it is who has “established us in Christ,” or “connected us firmly with Christ.”
Intimately connected with this is the gift of the Spirit which we have of God. There is but one Spirit, and but one giving of the Spirit to the believer, yet the Spirit when given may be viewed in three different ways, according to the various capacities and offices which He fills.
First, He is the anointing. There is here a little play upon words in the original which is lost in our translations. If we could say in English, “He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath ‘christed’ us, is God” we should see it. The Lord Jesus is the Anointed One and we, as established in Him, are anointed ones. It is the anointing of the Spirit which gives us capacity and power to understand and handle the things of God.
Secondly, the same Spirit is the seal of God placed upon us, and in us. Thus we are marked out as God’s, and secured for the day of glory that is coming. Our place in that coming world is secure for we are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Thirdly, the Spirit is the earnest of all that is coming. He conveys to our hearts a foretaste. The things themselves lie in the future though already revealed to faith, yet we may know even now something of their reality and blessedness by the Spirit given as the earnest of them all.
Thus established in Christ, anointed and sealed with the Spirit and possessing the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts, we too are marked by stability in a world of instability and change. Thus it is that there can be “the glory of God by us” as is stated in verse 20.