What Does 2 Corinthians 7:3 Mean?

(3) **I speak not this to condemn you.**—Better, *I do not speak as condemning.* There is no “you” in the Greek, and the form of expression seems intentionally vague, as leaving it an open question whether his words might refer to his readers or to others. We trace here a sudden revulsion of feeling. What he had just said seemed to imply that he condemned them for even listening to the calumnies which had been circulated against him, for joining in any measure even of outward friendship with men of evil lives; and then there rushes on his memory the recollection of all the good news which Titus had brought. Indignation and jealous sensitiveness are swallowed up in the overflowing thankfulness to which those tidings had given birth at the time, and which were now renewed. **I have said before . . .**—He had not used the form of expression before, as far as this letter is concerned, but the fact was implied in what he had said in 2Corinthians 6:11 : “Our heart is enlarged.” The words that follow are partly an almost proverbial expression for strong attachment, as in Horace (*Odes,* iii. 9): “Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens”— “With thee I fain would live, With thee I fain would die;” partly with a profounder meaning, that, whether in death or life (the order of the words throws us back on “dying, but behold, we live,” in 2Corinthians 6:9), his heart and prayers would be with them and for them.