Why was Paul so concerned that his
churches contribute to this fund for Jerusalem, and even send their delegates
to accompany it? What was its importance for him, that he should finally decide
to take it to Jerusalem himself, thus further postponing a long-delayed trip to
Rome and mission to Spain? Several factors seem to have been operative.
First, Paul was undoubtedly concerned
to provide needed economic assistance to “the poor among the saints in
Jerusalem” (Rom 15:26, RSV). In this respect, the so-called “famine-relief”
mission he and Barnabas had carried out for the Christians at Antioch could
well have been prototypical. Thus, in 2 Cor 8, 9, Paul does not hesitate to
commend the collection as a genuinely charitable act, those who have much
sharing with those who have little (8:13-15), assisting those who are in need
of material support (9:12). It is hardly surprising, then, that one of the
terms the apostle uses to identity the collection is the word diakonia (Rom
15:31; 2 Cor 8:4; 9:, 12, 13; the corresponding verb in Rom 15:25; 2 Cor 8:19,
20), in these instances used by him in the technical sense of “relief work” . .
.
However, several of Paul’s other terms
for the collection show that it also had important theological significance for
him. In fact, he refers to it as a “collection” (logeia) only in 1 Cor
16:1, 2 (RSV: “contribution[s]”). More frequently, he uses words which
have rich theological associations; these include eulogia (2 Cor 9:5; sometimes
“blessing”), charis (1 Cor 16:3; 2 Cor 8:6, 7, 9; sometimes “grace,” as
in 2 Cor 8:1, 9; 9:14), leitourgia (2 Cor 9:12, and the verb in Rom 1527;
sometimes “priestly service”), and koinonia (Rom 15:26; 2 Cor 8:4; 9:13,
and the verb in Rom 15:27; sometimes used to mean “partnership” in Christ, the
Spirit, the gospel, faith, etc.). . . . The last term is especially important.
Above all, Paul seems to have promoted the collection among his largely Gentile
congregations as a tangible expression of the unity of Jew and Gentile in the
gospel. It was to be further evidence, now offered by his congregations
themselves, of that “partnership” (koinonia) he and Peter had once celebrated
with a handshake in Jerusalem (Gal 2:9). The “relief work” is at the same time
a work of “grace” and an act of Christian “partnership,” and it is described as
such in 2 Cor 8:4, where all three terms are used (literally: “the grace and
the partnership of the relief work for the saints”). Paul can also think of it
as an expression of live (2 Cor 8:8, 24), and he compares one’s participation
in it with the utter self-giving of Christ for others (2 Cor 8:9). For he is
convinced that participation in the sufferings, death, and resurrection of
Christ (e.g., Phil 3:10-11; cf. 2 Cor 1:5-7) both bestows and requires a
community of caring and concern. That partnership in Christ transcends even
such apparently unbreachable barriers as those between Jew and Greek, slave and
free, male and female (Gal 3:27-28). Paul’s collection, then, was also an ecumenical
act, an act of Christian fellowship, an enactment of the partnership of Jew and
Gentile in the gospel of Christ. (Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians [AB
32a; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1984], 411-12)
