Fulfill your duty, become like the Lord, and at the decisive hour for you, you will hear: “As you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”
“See how he again takes care not to be burdensome, and how he softens his word with these two expressions: ‘I give counsel,’ and ‘this is profitable for you.’ I do not compel, he says.
“I do not use force, and I do not demand against your will. I say this with a view not so much to the benefit of those receiving alms as to your own” (Chrysostom).
Having said this, and supposing that they are ready but hindered by something, he finally shows how convenient it is for them to fulfill it. First, they have already begun, and it remains only to complete what was begun.
Second, what is proposed is that each should give what he can (verses 12-15). By both points, he clears the road for them, as it were, and gives them wings to walk the path he has indicated.
“You began before,” he says, “since last year.” The work is already underway among you. You do not need to gather yourselves merely to begin it. Others might be troubled by considering how to take it up or approach it.
But you already have some habit in carrying it out. “He sets before them as an example not others, but themselves” (Chrysostom).
“Since last year” means even before the first epistle. In the first epistle he had already written the ordinances for how to conduct the matter. Now he offers persuasions that they should hasten and collect more.
Why especially? Because, he says, you began not only to act, but also to desire, before the Macedonians. You began, but the work among you proceeded slowly.
Meanwhile the Macedonians conceived the matter later and took it up, yet succeeded quickly and collected much. Therefore take care that, just as your almsgiving collection stands first by its beginning, so it may also stand first by its completion.
With this thought, the expression, “not only to do, but also to desire, you began before,” will not seem to have its order inverted. Whoever begins to do first, of course also desires first.
Yet whoever desires first does not necessarily begin to act first. But you, he says, began before not only to act, but also to desire. The Macedonians might have desired before and only lagged behind in deed.
No, he says, you preceded them not only in deed, but also in desire. “The beginning belongs to you not only with respect to the deed, but also with respect to the desire.
“That is, you began this work willingly, without suggestions and persuasions from elsewhere” (Oecumenius). “See how he shows that they came to the same point voluntarily and without exhortations.
“Since he had testified of the Macedonians that they willingly approached the giving of alms, he wishes to show the same perfection in the Corinthians. He adds: you did not begin only now, but before.
“Therefore I beseech you to fulfill that to which you yourselves had first stirred yourselves with such zeal” (Chrysostom).
THEOSIS