2 Corinthians 2:14
New American Standard Bible
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.
Triumph in Christ…13I had no peace in my spirit, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said goodbye to them and went on to Macedonia. 14But thanks be to God,who always leads us triumphantly as captives in Christ and through usspreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him. 15For we are to God the sweet aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.…
Cross References
Song of Solomon 1:3The fragrance of your perfume is pleasing; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the maidens adore you.
Ezekiel 20:41When I bring you from the peoples and gather you from the lands to which you have been scattered, I will accept you as a pleasing aroma. And I will show My holiness through you in the sight of the nations.
John 16:33I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!"
Romans 1:8First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being proclaimed all over the world.
Romans 6:17But thanks be to God that, though you once were slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were committed.
1 Corinthians 12:8To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by the same Spirit,
1 Corinthians 15:57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
2 Corinthians 8:16But thanks be to God, who put into the heart of Titus the same devotion I have for you.
2 Corinthians 9:15Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!
Ephesians 5:2and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant sacrificial offering to God.
Philippians 4:18I have all I need and more, now that I have received your gifts from Epaphroditus. They are a sweet smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God.
Colossians 2:15And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
1 Thessalonians 1:8For not only did the message of the Lord ring out from you to Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone out to every place, so that we have no need to say anything more.
1 Timothy 2:8Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or dissension.
2 Timothy 2:2And the things that you have heard me say among many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be qualified to teach others as well.
(14) Now thanks be unto God.--The apparent abruptness of this burst of thanksgiving is at first somewhat startling. We have to find its source, not in what the Apostle had written or spoken, but in what was passing through his memory. He had met Titus, and that disciple had been as a courier bringing tidings of a victory. The love of God had won another triumph.Causeth us to triumph.--Better,
who always leads us in His triumph. There is absolutely no authority for the factitive meaning given to the verb in the English version. In
Colossians 2:15, it is translated rightly, "triumphing over them in it." It is obvious, too, that the true rendering gives a much more characteristic thought. It would be unlike St. Paul to speak of himself as the triumphant commander of God's great army. It is altogether like him that he should give God the glory, and own that He, as manifested in Christ, had triumphed, and that Apostle and penitent, the faithful and the rebellious, alike took their place in the procession of that triumph.
The imagery that follows is clearly that of the solemn triumphal procession of a Roman emperor or general. St. Paul, who had not as yet been at Rome, where only such triumphs were celebrated, had, therefore, never seen them, and was writing accordingly from what he had heard from others. Either from the Roman Jews whom he had met at Corinth, many of them slaves or freed-men in the imperial household, or the Roman soldiers and others with whom he came in contact at Philippi, possibly from St. Luke or Clement, he had heard how the conqueror rode along the Via Sacra in his chariot, followed by his troops and prisoners, captive kings and princes, and trophies of victory; how fragrant clouds of incense accompanied his march, rising from fixed altars or wafted from censers; how, at the foot of the Capitoline hill, some of the prisoners, condemned as treacherous or rebellious, were led off to execution, or thrown into the dungeons of the Mamer-tine prison, while others were pardoned and set free. It is not without interest to remember that when St. Paul wrote, the latest triumph at Rome had been that solemnised at Rome by Claudius in honour of the victory of Ostorius over the Britons in A.D. 51, and commemorated by a triumphal arch, the inscription on which is now to be seen in the court-yard of the Barberini Palace at Rome; that in that triumph Caractacus had figured as a prisoner; and that he and his children, spared by the mercy of the emperor, had passed from the ranks of the "lost" to those of the "saved" (Tacit.
Ann. xiii. 36). According to a view taken by some writers, Claudia and Linus (
2Timothy 4:21) were among those children. (See
Excursus on the Later Years of St. Paul's Life, at the close of the Acts of the Apostles.
The savour of his knowledge.--There is obviously a reference to the incense which, as in the above description, was an essential part of the triumph of a Roman general. It is there that St. Paul finds an analogue of his own work. He claims to be, as it were, a
thurifer, an incense-bearer, in the procession of the conqueror. Words, whether of prayer or praise, thanksgiving or preaching, what were they but as incense-clouds bearing to all around, as they were wafted in the air, the tidings that the Conqueror had come? The "savour of his knowledge" is probably "the knowledge
of Him:" that which rests in Him as its object.
Verse 14. - Now thanks be unto God. The whole of this Epistle is the apostle's Apologia pro vita sua, and is more full of personal details and emotional expressions than any other Epistle. But nothing in it is more characteristic than this sudden outburst of thanksgiving into which he breaks so eagerly that he has quite omitted to say what it was for which he so earnestly thanked God. It is only when we come to 2 Corinthians 7:5, 6 that we learn the circumstance which gave him such intense relief, namely, the arrival of Titus with good news from Corinth about the treatment of the offender and the manner in which the first letter had been received. It is true that this good news seems to have been dashed by other remarks of Titus which, perhaps, he withheld at first, and which may only have been drawn from him, almost against his will, by subsequent conversations. But, however checkered, the main and immediate intelligence was good, and the apostle so vividly recalls his sudden uplifting out of an abyss of anxiety and trouble (2 Corinthians 7:5) that the mere remembrance of it awakens a thankfulness to God which can only find vent by immediate utterance. Now thanks be unto God. The order of the original is more forcible, "But to God be thanks." The remembrance of his own prostration calls into his mind the power and love of God. Which always causeth us to triumph; rather, who leadeth us in triumph. The verb thriambeuo may undoubtedly have this meaning, on the analogy of choreuo, I cause to dance, basileuo, I cause to reign, etc.; and other neuter verbs which sometimes have a factitive scribe. But in Colossians 2:15 St. Paul uses this word in the only sense in which it is actually found, "to lead in triumph;" and this sense seems both to suit the context better, and to be more in accordance with the habitual feelings of St. Paul (Galatians 6:17; Colossians 1:24), and especially those with which these Epistles were written (1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 2 Corinthians 4:10; 2 Corinthians 11:23). St. Paul's feeling is, therefore, the exact opposite of that of the haughty Cleopatra who said, Οὑ θριαμβευθήσομαι, "I will not be led in triumph." He rejoiced to be exhibited by God as a trophy in the triumphal procession of Christ. God, indeed, gave him the victory over the lower part of his nature (Romans 8:37), but this was no public triumph. The only victory of which he could boast was to have been utterly vanquished by God and taken prisoner "in Christ." The savour of his knowledge. The mental vision of a Roman triumph summons up various images before the mind of St. Paul. He thinks of the streets breathing with the fragrance of incense offered upon many a wayside altar; of the tumult and rejoicing of the people; of the fame and glory of the conqueror; of the miserable captives led aside from the funeral procession to die, like Vercingetorix, in the Tullianum at the foot of the Capitoline hill. He touches on each of these incidents as they crowd upon him. The triumph of L. Mummius over the conquest of Corinth had been one of the most splendid which the Roman world had ever seen, and in A.D. , shortly before this Epistle was written (A.D. 57), Claudius had celebrated his triumph over the Britons and their king Caractacus, who had been led in the procession, but whose life had been spared (Tacitus, 'Ann.,' 13:36). The savour of his knowledge; i.e. the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. By us. The details of the metaphor are commingled, as is often the case in writers of quick feeling and imagination. Here the apostles are no longer the vanquished who are led in procession, but the spectators who burn and diffuse the fragrance of the incense. In every place. Even at that early period, not twenty-five years after the Crucifixion, the gospel had been very widely preached in Asia and Europe (Romans 15:18, 19).
