O you Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged.
Read Chapter 6
Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul is saying this because of the freedom he enjoyed in a pure conscience. A mind with a bad conscience is afraid to speak, loses its train of thought and makes verbal slips. People whose heart is enlarged are happy with themselves because they are confident that they have behaved well. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you. My mouth is open, it longs to say more to you, and to express all my affection for you, and it cannot. No matter what and how much I may say, it is less than my affection. The Apostle says this to show that what he had said of his patience, tribulations, and virtues was not from self-love, but from friendship, trust, and love towards the Corinthians. Friends are in the habit of interchanging their secret joys and sorrows, and thus showing their love for each other. When this is great they more and more try to express it, but find themselves unable to do justice to their feelings. This is what Paul does here.
The two ideas of "straitening" and "enlarging" are frequently contrasted by the Hebrews , to denote on the one hand sadness, timidity, suspicion, and avarice, and on the other joyfulness and generosity of heart. As sadness and avarice contract the heart, the brow, and the hands, so joy, cheerfulness, and charity expand them. Cf. Psalm 1...
Our mouth is open to speak with freedom and confidence.
Our heart is enlarged, dilated, as it were, with the warmth of love and charity.
But you are straitened in your own bowels; you have not the like charity and love for me, nor for all your brethren, and for all mankind (Witham)
The apostle here complains, that the Corinthians have not the same affection for him, which he has for them: as if he should say, however enlarged your heart may be, through the love you have for me, it can never equal the ardour of my love for you. He alludes to those who followed some false teachers, of whom he says a little after: Though I love you more, I am less loved.
But having the same recompense, by a just return have the same affection for me, as I have for you. (St. Chrysostom)
Let your heart be dilated for me, and receive the advice I give you as coming from a father, who most tenderly loves his children. (Haydock)
Paul means by this that he talks to the Corinthians freely, as he would to people whom he loves. He holds nothing back and suppresses nothing. Nothing is wider than Paul’s heart, which loved all the believers with all the passion which one might have toward the object of one’s affection.
Having detailed his own trials and afflictions, for in patience, says he, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, (v. 4, 5.) in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumult, in labors, in watchings; and having shown that the thing was a great good, for as sorrowful, says he, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things; 2 Corinthians 6:10 and having called those things armor, for as chastened, says he, and not killed: and having hereby represented God's abundant care and power, for he says, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not of us; 2 Corinthians 4:7 and having recounted his labors, for he says, we always bear about His dying; and that this is a clear demonstration of the Resurrection, for he says, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh; 2 Corinthians 4:10 and of what things he was made partaker, and with what he had been entrusted, for we are ambassadors on behalf of Christ,...
