For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that you should be grieved, but that you might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
It is obvious that when someone admonishes another and in the process he himself suffers more grief over it than the person being rebuked, he is not doing this in order to cause grief but to show what deep love he has for the other. Someone who rebukes another without feeling this way merely tramples on his feelings. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
Paul shows here that he was not less affected than those who had sinned, but more. He could hardly bear the pain which the Corinthians’ wrongdoing was causing him.
What more tenderly affectioned than this man's spirit is? For he shows himself to have been not less pained than they who had sinned, but even much more. For he says not out of affliction merely, but out of much, nor with tears, but with many tears and anguish of heart, that is, I was suffocated, I was choked with despondency; and when I could no longer endure the cloud of despondency, I wrote unto you: not that you should be grieved, but that you might know the love, says he, which I have more abundantly unto you. And yet what naturally followed was to say, not that you might be grieved, but that you might be corrected: (for indeed with this purpose he wrote.) This however he does not say, but, (more to sweeten his words, and win them to a greater affection,) he puts this for it, showing that he does all from love. And he says not simply the love, but which I have more abundantly unto you. For hereby also he desires to win them, by showing that he loves them more than all and feels to...
