If at first glance you think that this commentary on 2 Corinthians is only an application commentary, think again! If you desire to know the background and historical context of Corinthian as well as the literary context of the portion of Scripture you are studying, quit your hunting for commentaries and invest in good, solid scholarship as well as practical application. If expository preaching is your aim behind the pulpit, this commentary set is sure to better equip you!

I am working with it! Great help for me when studying the Bible, and preparing for sunday class and for daily life. Thank you!

Scholars are often offered to contribute commentaries to series based on having done past work in that particular book. Hafemann wrote his doctoral dissertation on 2 Cor 3 and has also published another monograph dealing with 2 Cor, hence the selection of Hafemann to cover 2 Cor in NIVAC. In his dissertation, and repeated here and in other articles and books, is his view that there is not contrast between the Mosaic law and the gospel but rather only a "continuum." (In this he is following the work of Daniel Fuller who saw the "unity of the Bible" in it containing only covenants of grace). The result of this is that Fuller and Hafemann reject the Protestant (and biblical!) teaching of salvation by grace through faith alone. If you carefully read his handling of 2 Cor 3, which along with Gal 3:10ff and Rom 9:30ff are the most forceful passages articulating the antithesis between the Mosaic law and the gospel, you will find Hafemann making the gospel into law and the law, gospel. For easy to read commentaries on 2 Cor, you will do much better to use Colin Kruse in Tyndale NTC, FF Bruce, New Century Bible Comm and DA Carson, From Triumphalism to Maturity (on chs. 10-13). For more scholarly works, see David Garland, NAC and Paul Barnett, NICNT. And for a rich treatment that understands faith alone which rests upon the law-gospel distinction, see Mark Seifrid, PNTC.