PAUL was pre-eminently a Eucharistic man. His own word to us, “In everything give thanks,” was his own motto. All his epistles, with the exception of that to the Galatians, begin with thanksgiving. He had no heart to thank God for those who had given up the gospel of the grace of God for another, or rather no gospel at all.
But Paul blended triumph with thanksgiving, and that in a very remarkable manner. And these bursts of triumphant thanksgiving are found in closest connection with the deepest sense of sinfulness, helplessness, and overwhelming power of circumstances, because his triumph was always in Christ. In the seventh chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, where he has sounded as fully as man can sound the depths of sin (for it is the prerogative of Omniscience to search the heart and try the reins) (Jeremiah 17:9, 109The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 10I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. (Jeremiah 17:9‑10),) when be had bared himself to the searching power of God’s holy, just, and good law, which we know to be spiritual: it is when he it brought to the cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” that the triumphant cry of deliverance is uttered, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Or to take another instance, it is with sin death, and the law, staring him in the face as dread realities that he bursts forth in triumphant thanksgiving, “Thanks be unto God which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” But the triumph in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the instances above noticed, will probably be fount less difficult than such a triumph as the apostle celebrates in 2 Corinthians 2:1010To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; (2 Corinthians 2:10). There is perhaps no writing of the apostle which opens out to us so fully his inmost soul as the first half of this second epistle to the Corinthians. It throws some light on that remarkable expression in Colossians 1:2424Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church: (Colossians 1:24): “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, am fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church, whereof I (Paul) am made a minister.” Such trials, both outward and inward, the apostle could only have, because he never lost sight of being a member of that body, the head of which is Christ in heaven, and that he was minister of that body. Hence the trials he describes are more peculiarly ministerial trials. The apostle begins with that burst of adoring praise which almost takes the form of doxology. He had experimentally proved the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to be the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. That God had comforted him in all his affections. But the apostle had been brought so low as to “have the sentence of death in himself, that he should not trust in himself, but in God, which raiseth the dead.” Death and resurrection must be learned experimentally by the apostle in his ministry to Christ’s body, the Church. Hard, but necessary, schooling; and only to be learned even in the feeblest manner, when we have learned our place as members of Christ’s body, and of one another. In the eleventh chapter of this epistle the apostle sets, above all his outward trials, the daily pressure which came upon him, in caring for “all the churches.” And, in connection with the passage before us, we read, “Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother.” This man, so bold in the face of all outward danger, was hindered from entering in at the door opened to him of the Lord at Troas, by his deep inward trial. He goes to Macedonia. “Without were fightings, within were fears. Nevertheless, God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.” (2 Corinthians 7:5, 65For, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears. 6Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus; (2 Corinthians 7:5‑6).) This was the reason of the burst of exulting triumph in 2 Corinthians 2:1414Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. (2 Corinthians 2:14). The very abruptness of this burst, without any reason assigned for it, gives us an insight into the very heart of the apostle, big with the thought of what God was doing for him in Christ, that it requires four or five chapters of the pouring out of his heart, in telling out the glorious ministry with which he was entrusted, ere he resumed the narrative of his journey to Macedonia, his comfort at meeting Titus and bearing from him of their “earnest desire, their mourning, and their fervent mind toward him, so that he rejoiced the more.”
In his deep soul-trial, in his fears for the Corinthians, in the bitter disappointment be was feeling about their ways, whom he had regarded as his best letters of recommendation, God was still leading him about, or causing him to triumph in Christ. The sweet savor of Christ unto God was brought out by the very circumstances which were pressing him above measure, beyond strength. The apostle acted in Christ and for Christ, and God made him to triumph in Christ. It is the pressing and crushing trial of circumstances in the Church of God which is the real wear and tear of the Christian; and if he is not walking in Christ and acting in Christ, he will sink under it, or give up all as hopeless. If we in our measure are acting in Christ, whatever trouble and depression it may bring us into, still, if simply and perseveringly going on in Christ, God will always cause us to triumph in Christ. One great end will be answered, we ourselves hid, and Christ manifested. This is the great thing. God’s object is Christ, and oh, that He too may be our object, and that we may have a single eye to Him as our single object!
The apostle had only to go to Corinth, and put his authority in exercise against the gainsayers, and order and decorum would have been the result; but he had another and higher object, and that was, to get the souls of the Corinthians occupied with that which occupied his own soul, even “Jesus Christ and Him crucified;” yea, risen and glorified, and “his Lord and theirs.” They may charge him with fickleness, they may ridicule his bodily presence they may defame him; but he goes on acting towards them in Christ, and God causes him to triumph. Only let us own Christ as Lord, and be Christ-like in our ways, and God will make us also to triumph in Him; and triumphing in Him is triumphing over self. Oh, for grace to follow Paul as he followed Christ. J. L. H.