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New Defender's Study Bible Notes
7:2 Receive us. Paul continues his personal appeal to the Corinthians after his parenthetical exhortation on separation from paganism (II Corinthians 6:14–7:1). Some expositors have assumed this digression was not part of the original epistle, but there is no external evidence for this assumption. All the manuscripts, as well as all comments by the early church fathers, accepted it just as is. Evidently the false apostles (II Corinthians 11:13) who were trying to discredit Paul with the church were also encouraging them to compromise with the pagan teachings from which they had turned when they accepted Christ, and Paul felt it necessary at this point to speak to that vital issue before concluding his personal appeal.
7:6 coming of Titus. Titus had evidently brought a letter or other news to Paul from the church at Corinth. He is mentioned no less than nine times in this one epistle. Paul had been anxiously awaiting his return from Corinth with the church’s response to his first epistle. He had evidently hoped first that Titus would come to Ephesus, next that he might meet him at Troas, and finally he was waiting for him at Philippi in Macedonia (Acts 20:1,5). He was very concerned until Titus finally arrived, carrying all the news to which Paul was now responding in his second epistle to the Corinthians.
7:10 godly sorrow. Instead of provoking resentment against Paul by the Corinthians, whom he had rather severely censured in that letter, Paul’s first letter had actually produced sorrow for their sins—“godly sorrow,” that is, of sorrow from God—leading to true repentance and correction of the sin which had been particularly rebuked (I Corinthians 5:1-6; note verse 6, also II Corinthians 2:1-10). This response proved the genuineness of their salvation.
7:10 sorrow of the world. The “sorrow of the world,” on the other hand, is not sorrow for the sin itself, but sorrow over its consequences (e.g., Luke 13:27-28). This type of sorrow issues only in eternal death, not salvation.