¹Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you? ²You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; ³being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Paul was not someone to “toot his own horn,” this very human tendency with which we all wrestle. To use the NT word, he did not “commend” himself to anyone. This is a word the apostle repeats in his second letter to the Corinthians at least nine times, and it carries the sense of to “recommend” or “endorse with full confidence.” Paul is not expecting to be treated with respect or any kind of weighty influence on his own say-so. One cannot vouch for oneself. Rather his influence arises (or should arise) out of the nature of his relationship with the Corinthians. After all, he was the one who planted the church there, having been the first to preach the gospel among them. They owe their very spiritual lives to the work God did through him. What more commendation of Paul do they need?

In the early days of the church, it was customary for traveling believers to carry a “letter of commendation” introducing them to the group to which they traveled. Paul’s letter to the Romans may have served this purpose of recommending his co-worker—“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea” (Rom. 16:1)—though the word for “commend” there is similar to but different from the one in 2 Corinthians 3:1.

The early Christians placed a high value on a written letter of introduction and commendation, where an accepted servant of the Lord recommends and endorses another Christian for his or her work of service so that others will accept them fully into their fellowship and local work for the Lord.

However, the Corinthians inexplicably wanted such a letter validating Paul’s ministry. We find this hard to understand apart from a manipulative attempt to somehow gain supremacy—or at least a certain control—over Paul. What Paul had to put up with in dealing with the Corinthians seems, at times, quite petty. But he loved them, just as a parent loves his teenage children even when they rebel. After all, they (the Corinthians) were Paul’s letter; they didn’t need a piece of parchment with writings on it. They were a letter of commendation for Paul, written by Christ. Instead of ink, Christ wrote with the Spirit. Instead of parchment, Christ used their hearts. And like tablets more enduring and more personal than stone, he wrote on the “tablet of human hearts.” He was ever hopeful that they would mend their ways.

Lord, help me believe the power of Christ crucified in changing people’s hearts.