Night and day praying exceedingly
This good news, not only comforted their hearts, and revived
their spirits, and filled them with joy and thankfulness, but
also sent them to the throne of grace to pray without ceasing,
continually, night and day, and as often as they went thither,
and that with great fervency and earnestness, in a multitude of
petitions; or, as the Arabic version renders it, "with prayers
exceeding a multitude"; with innumerable requests:
that we might see your face:
once more, and converse face to face:
and might perfect that which is lacking in your
faith?
in the grace of faith; for though they remembered their work of
faith with pleasure, and had had good tidings of it very lately,
and were thankful that it grew exceedingly as it did, yet they
knew it was not perfect, there was unbelief attending them: and
though it is God's work to increase faith, as well as to produce
it, yet, as the ministry of the word is the means of the first
planting of it, so it also is of the increase of it. This may
likewise be understood of the doctrine of faith, which though
they had received in the love of it, and had made considerable
progress in their knowledge of it; yet they knew but in part, and
needed to be taught the way of God, and truths of the Gospel more
perfectly; and the ministry of the word is for the perfecting of
the saints in the knowledge of the Son of God, and of other
truths; wherefore the apostle desired greatly to see them, that
he might be an instrument of instructing them, more perfectly in
the knowledge of divine things; and in this, and in the following
epistle, he does particularly instruct them about the rise and
fall of antichrist, the coming of Christ and the resurrection of
the dead, articles of faith in which they seemed to have been
deficient: but now, though these saints had deficiencies in their
faith, yet they were not what the Jews call F15
(hnma yrowxm) , "such as
are deficient in faith", or want faith entirely, a phrase
somewhat like this which is here used.