I speak not this to condemn you: for I have said before, that you are in our hearts to die and live with you.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul wants them to realize in what frame of mind he is speaking to them. He is certainly not rejecting people whom he wants to have as sharers with him, but he is exhorting them to make themselves worthy of this sharing. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
I speak not this to condemn you. I do not mean to accuse you of suspecting me of such things.
Ye are in our hearts to die and live with you. So great is my love for you that with you and for you I am ready both to die and to live. How this harmonises with the preceding will be seen in ver4. S. Paul alludes to lovers, whose love is commonly so ardent as to make them of one life, to hold all things in common, and to involve one in the death of the other. Cf. Nilus and Euryalus in Virgil, n. ix427-445; the Soldurii, mentioned by Caesar in lib. iii. de Bello Gallico, and the sacred cohort of the Thebans, described by Plutarch. Erasmus and others add that the Apostle is referring to that ancient kind of friendship in which on the death of one friend the other also killed himself, as Caesar records that the Soldurii were in the habit of doing. Such was the friendship Horace says that he had with Mcenas. In Peru and Mexico wives and the better-loved servants, when the husband or master dies,...
I speak not this to your condemnation; he means not to condemn them in general, though some had been blameable.
Great is my glorying. I have great joy in the greatest part of you. (Witham)
Paul mentions both dying and living, in order to preserve the right balance. For there are a lot of people who will sympathize with others in their misfortunes, but when things turn out well for them they become jealous and do not rejoice on their behalf. Not so the faithful, who are not wounded by envy.
How is this evident? For I have said before, he adds, that you are in our hearts to die and live with you. This is the greatest affection, when even though treated with contempt, he chooses both to die and live with them. 'For neither are you merely in our hearts,' he says, 'but in such sort as I said. For it is possible both to love and to shun dangers, but we do not thus.' And behold here also wisdom unspeakable. For he spoke not of what had been done for them, that he might not seem to be again reproaching them, but he promises for the future. 'For should it chance,' says he, 'that danger should invade, for your sakes I am ready to suffer every thing; and neither death nor life seems anything to me in itself, but in whichever ye be, that is to me more desirable, both death than life and life than death.' Howbeit, dying indeed is manifestly a proof of love; but living, who is there that would not choose, even of those who are not friends? Why then does the Apostle mention it as somet...
