Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. NIV

Again, let us note the lovely balance in the words: ‘’You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry…’’.

We are workers together with God:

‘’ In this work, we work with God, and that means that you are a field under God’s cultivation, or, if you like, a house being built to his plan.’’ 1 Cor.3:9 J.B.Phillips

Before moving on from this paragraph, some comments from Paul Barnett are worthy of note. He says that Paul staked his claim to legitimate ministry on the existence of the Corinthian church: ‘Prior to Paul’s coming, there was no Christian community in Corinth. Through his labours there was now a congregation in that large and prosperous city, some of whose members had been criminals and immoral people. in the first letter (9:1-2) he referred to the Corinthian church as ‘the result of my work in the Lord’ and ‘the seal of my apostleship’. If the Corinthians need evidence that Paul was a true apostle let them look at themselves: You yourselves are our letter (verse 2)…The ‘letter’ written in the lives of the Corinthians was, like the letter written to them, a public document, an ‘epistle’, able to be known and read by everybody (verse 2)…It is one thing to possess the appropriate ordination documents or the framed university degree proudly displayed; but are there ‘living’ letters? The confirmation of one’s ministry lies in the effects of that ministry in human lives. This will depend upon having ministered a pure, undiluted gospel and also upon having taken people into our hearts. To do the former alone could mean inflexibility, while to do the latter alone could mean sentimentality. The proper balance lies in faithfulness to the gospel and pastoral love of the people.’