2 Corinthians - Brief Intro

Paul wrote this second letter to the Corinthians around AD 57 or 58 and probably shortly after he wrote his first letter to the Corinthians while on his third missionary trip.  He may have written this while still in Ephesus where he spent two years (see this prior post for timelines and maps) or after he left Ephesus and went on to Macedonia (either Thessalonica or Philippi).  He had originally visited Corinth, a major city in Greece, on his second missionary journey and had spent over 18 months there which was his first long stay in a city on one of his trips.  

There have been several letters back and forth between the believers in Corinth and Paul who is in Ephesus and it seems based on his comment in 2 Corinthians 12:14 and 13:1 that he must have visited them after his first letter and before this letter (He says that his next visit will be the third visit).  We see in Acts 20:3 that Paul goes back to Greece for 3 months after being in Ephesus and Corinth is the main city in Greece that Paul spent time in.  In this letter Paul talks about wanting to go back to Corinth by way of Macedonia as in chapter 1 verses 16-19, so he does in fact do that.

In the first letter, he was answering questions that they had and addressing some problems in the church in Corinth that he had heard about.  In this letter, he continues this discussion and is happy to see that the Corinthian believers took to heart what he had said in the first letter, repented, changed and he now encourages them to continue on in Christ.