EXPOSITORY STUDIES IN 2 CORINTHIANS
Power out of Weakness
Ray C. Stedman
Copyright © 1982 by Ray C. Stedman
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission from the publisher.
Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946 (renewed 1973), 1956 and © 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission.
Discovery Books are published by Word Books, Publisher, in cooperation with Discovery Foundation, Palo Alto, California.
ISBN 0-8499-2946-6
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 82-050509
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
1 Why Does It Hurt So Much? (2 Corinthians 1:1-11)
2 When You Are Misunderstood (2 Corinthians 1:12-2:4)
3 When Discipline Ends (2 Corinthians 2:5-17)
4 Have You Got What It Takes? (2 Corinthians 3:1-11)
5 "Who Is Sufficient?" (2 Corinthians 3:12-16)
6 Who Is That Masked Man? (2 Corinthians 3:17, 18)
7 Nothing But the Truth (2 Corinthians 4:1-6)
8 Your Pot--His Power (2 Corinthians 4:7-15)
9 Beyond the End (2 Corinthians 4:16-5:5)
10 What's There to Live For? (2 Corinthians 5:6-17)
11 The Word for This Hour (2 Corinthians 5:18-6:2)
12 Sensible Fanaticism (2 Corinthians 6:3-10)
13 Watch Out for These (2 Corinthians 6:11-7:1)
14 How to Bring about Repentance (2 Corinthians 7:2-15)
15 Guidelines on Giving (2 Corinthians 8:1-15)
16 Giving joyfully (2 Corinthians 8:16-9:14)
17 Our Secret Weapons (2 Corinthians 10:1-6)
18 How to Spot a Phony (2 Corinthians 10:7-18)
19 Keep It Simple (2 Corinthians 11:1-15)
20 The Cost of Love (2 Con 11:16-30)
21 The Ecstasy and the Agony (2 Corinthians 12:1-10)
22 The Marks of a True Apostle (2 Corinthians 12:11-13:4)
23 Who Am I, Really? (2 Corinthians 13:5-14)
The second letter of Paul to the Corinthians is probably the least known of all his letters. First Corinthians is very well known, but many people consider 2 Corinthians to be such heavy reading that it has been called "Paul's unknown letter." It is too bad that we are so unfamiliar with it, because it represents the most personal, the most autobiographical letter from the apostle's pen. In 1 Corinthians we examined the church at Corinth. That letter is so valuable because the church today much resembles the church in Corinth; we live in "Corinthian" conditions now. But in 2 Corinthians we are looking at Paul; he is the one in focus as he lays himself open and reveals himself to the church. This, therefore, is a very personal letter from the heart of this mighty apostle. Here we see him more clearly, perhaps, than anywhere else in Scripture.
2 Corinthians 1:1-11
Second Corinthians should, perhaps, be called Fourth Corinthians, because it is the last of four letters that Paul wrote to the church there. Two of these letters have not been preserved--that is why we only have 1 and 2 Corinthians--but they are not in the order that these titles suggest. Let us recapitulate a little of the background. Then one can refer back to this if any confusion about the chronology should arise. Paul founded the church in Corinth somewhere around 52 or 53 AD. He stayed there for about a year and a half; then he went to Ephesus, where he remained for a few weeks. From there he made a quick trip to Jerusalem, returning again to Ephesus. While he was at Ephesus, he wrote a letter to the church at Corinth which is lost to us. It is referred to in 1 Corinthians 5:9, where Paul says he wrote to warn them about following a worldly life style. In response to that letter, the Corinthians wrote back with many questions. They sent their letter by the hands of three young men who are mentioned in 1 Corinthians. In reply to that letter, Paul wrote what we now call 1 Corinthians. In it he tried to answer their questions. We have looked at those answers in the volume on 1 Corinthians. He tried to exhort them and instruct them in how to walk in power and in peace; thus he sought to correct many problem areas in the church.
Evidently that letter did not accomplish all that Paul intended. There was a bad reaction to it, and in 2 Corinthians 2:1 we learn that he made a quick trip to Corinth. How long that took we do not know. Paul calls it a "painful" visit. He had come with a rather sharp rebuke to them, but again he did not accomplish his purpose. Again there was a great deal of negative reaction. So when he returned to Ephesus he sent another brief letter in the hands of Titus to Corinth to see if he could help them. This letter, too, is lost to us, unless it consisted of chapters 10-13 of 2 Corinthians. Titus was gone a long time, for transportation and communication were very slow and difficult in those days. Paul, waiting in Ephesus, grew very anxious to hear what was happening in the church there. He became so troubled that he left Ephesus and went to Troas and then up into Macedonia to meet Titus. There in Macedonia, probably in the city of Philippi, he and Titus came together. Titus brought him a much more encouraging word about the church, and in response to that, out of thanksgiving, Paul wrote what we now call the Second Corinthian letter, although it was really the fourth of a series of letters.
The opening greetings are somewhat similar to the first letter, but a little briefer and perhaps a bit more brusque:
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother. To the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1:1, 2).
You will notice several emphases there. Chief among them is the fact that Paul says that he is not the representative of the churches but he is the Lord's apostle. His authority does not come from the church, or any members of the church, but from the Lord himself. This was a strong point with Paul. These days we hear teaching about how wrong Paul was in certain areas, that he cannot be trusted in parts of his writing, that he even said things we must reject today. We need to understand anew that the apostle himself said his authority came directly from the Lord. What he had learned and what he taught was taught to him by Jesus himself. "The Lord appeared to me," Paul says. "There were many visions and revelations from Christ," he says in effect, so that he did not learn his doctrine or anything he wrote from the other apostles. He learned it from the Lord directly. When you read Paul you are reading what Jesus said to him; therefore it comes with the full authority of the Lord Jesus himself.
Notice, too, that the letter is sent to more than the church at Corinth. It is sent to "all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia." Achaia was the ancient name for Greece as we know it today (except for Macedonia in the north). All the Grecian mainland, the Peloponnesus, the islands and so on, were part of Achaia. Therefore there were many churches to whom this letter was addressed, and we, even in the twentieth century, can rightly be included as one of them. As in all of Paul's letters, he offers them grace and peace. Now these are important words; they are more than a mere salutation. "Grace" is a word that gathers up all God is ready to do for us and give to us. All God's supply comes by grace. Therefore, anything God gives you--love, joy, peace, forgiveness, help, wisdom--is part of the supply of grace. The result of that supply in your life and mine is peace. When one's heart is resting and confident that God is at work, that person is calm within and is serene and untroubled of spirit. This is the way Christians are to live. The whole of the NT is addressed to that end. It is not only doctrine about how to go to heaven; it is also teaching on how to handle life, how to cope with pressures and stresses and how to face the difficulties and dangers of life. The constant gracious supply of God is to bring peace to our troubled hearts. We are to live at rest.
The God Who Strengthens
Now having said that, the apostle plunges right into his first subject--why Christians suffer:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort also. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-7).
Two words, "affliction," and "comfort," stand out repeatedly in this passage; and the two belong together. Affliction is what we today would probably call pressure, or stress. It is what many of you, perhaps, feel when you think about going to work tomorrow. It is whatever tics knots in your stomach and makes you feel anxious or troubled about what lies ahead. It is what makes for hectic days and sleepless nights. It gnaws continually at your mind and threatens your well-being; it refuses to go away and leave you alone; it depresses you and darkens the future with forebodings of disaster. That is pressure, stress, and we all live with it. People were no different in the first century. They lived under pressure and stress just as we do. Paul experienced it as well, but along with it he experienced the comfort of God.
God's comfort is more than a little cheer or friendly word of encouragement. Paul does not mean that. The word basically means to "strengthen." What Paul experienced was the strengthening of God to give him a peaceful, restful spirit able to meet the pressure and the stress with which he lived. That is what Christianity is all about. In the Greek, "strengthen" is a word used also for the Holy Spirit. The KJV frequently calls him "The Comforter," but really it is "The Strengthener," the one who strengthens you. This is God's provision for affliction. It is amazing to me how many thousands of Christians dread their daily lives because they feel pressured, stressful, tied up in knots, and yet they never avail themselves of God's provision for that kind of pressure. These words are not addressed to us merely to be used for religious problems. They are to be used for any kind of stress, any kind of problems. God's comfort, God's strengthening, is available for whatever puts you under stress.
Thousands do not avail themselves of God's comfort, I believe, because they seem to behave like a person who is not a Christian at all--they try merely to escape their pressures. Or, if they are Christian, they pray that they will be rescued from their pressures, that the problems will be taken away. You can always tell how ill-taught Christians really are when they pray to have their problems taken away, or to be completely shielded from them. All their hopes are for escape somehow, and their reactions are either worry or a murmuring, complaining spirit of anger and fear. That is not true Christianity in action. Listen to Paul: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He praises God for the circumstances of his life even though there were afflictions. He calls God the "Father of mercies and God of all comfort." He sees God's hand as having sent these very things into his life; therefore he never prays to have them removed so that he might escape from them. He sees them as opportunities for the release of the strength of God.
This suggests the first reason why Christians go through suffering. Recently, a lady said to me, "I know we are supposed to suffer as Christians, but why does it hurt so much?" Well, there are four reasons given in this passage.
First, it hurts because that is the way you discover what God can do. How are you ever going to find the comfort of God, the strengthening of God, if you are not under any pressure or stress? It takes this to discover what God can do. God will keep on sending stress until you understand this truth and begin to count on him to find from within the release that he provides. Do not try to run from it like everybody else is doing. Face up to it and do as Paul does by seeing these as opportunities to understand and experience anew the strengthening of God:
For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too (2 Corinthians 1:5).
The strengthening is exactly equal to the pressure. That is a Christian life style; that is what every Christian ought to experience.
"Well," you say, "I know all about that. I've tried it many times and it doesn't work for me. It works for you; it works for all the others I talk to, but it won't work for me." I am always amazed at how many Christian exceptions go to church! I remember one minister who had a secretary who was always cheerful no matter how much she was going through. He said to her one day, "I wish I had your faith and optimism." She replied, "Well, you would if you'd read your Bible right." "What do you mean?" he asked. "I read it in Greek and in English." She said, "Well, you don't read it right, because Paul says, 'Glory in tribulation.' Now G-L-O-R-Y doesn't spell 'growl,'" she said. "When you get tribulations you growl, you complain all the time, but Scripture says glory in tribulations, welcome them as challenges, as opportunities, as occasions to discover the strengthening of God." The truly Christian reaction to troubles and pressures is to see them all as sent by a loving God who is still in control, who will limit them, as he promised, so they will not be more than you are able to bear. He has sent them deliberately to help you discover the inner strengthening that can keep your heart at peace, no matter what the pressure is. That is the first reason pressures are sent.
For Someone Else's Comfort
A second reason for suffering is found in verse 4:
Éso that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Corinthians 1:4).
I think the older you grow as a Christian the clearer this becomes. Your sufferings are not sent for you so much as they are for someone who is watching you and seeing how you handle the pressure you are going through. Older Christians easily forget that younger Christians are watching them all the time. When we give way to complaining and murmuring about our circumstances we are teaching these younger Christians (just as though we sat down with them and waggled our fingers at them) that God is faithless, that the Scriptures are not true, that we can get no adequate support for what we are going through. When sufferings are sent to us they are often sent so that others watching us will know they, too, can be sustained. This is what Paul says to this church. "When I suffer," he says, "it is for your comfort; it is that you might see what God can do, and what he can take me through he can take you through. Therefore, as you watch me you will see how to handle this." The lesson is set forth clearly:
If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure (2 Corinthians 1:6).
Patiently endure, trusting that God is in charge and he is taking you through this. He is not taking it away, he is taking you through it. So you patiently wait, rejoicing that the end is in sight; "this too shall pass." Someone once said his favorite scripture was, "And it came to pass." It did not come to stay, it came to pass. This, too, will pass, and you will be strengthened by it, therefore, patiently endure and discover the strength that God can give.
Paul then goes on to say their endurance was an encouragement to him:
Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort (2 Corinthians 1:7).
Sometimes I wish I could spare younger Christians their trials and pressures. I feel this way about my children. I would love to be able to deliver them from the pressure, from the test, but I know that I cannot, even as much as I want to, and it would not be good for them if I could. They need to experience the suffering so they can also experience the comfort. So Paul says to these Corinthians, "Our hope for you is unshaken. We've heard you are going through trials and difficulties and pressures and persecutions, but we're not disturbed. We know that if you share our sufferings you will also share our comfort, and the comfort is worth the suffering always." So he encourages them to go through this.
Notice, too, how we are encouraged to share with one another what we have gone through. Christians ought to share their problems, their struggles, their failures and their successes with each other, freely and openly, because this sharing is the very way we encourage one another. I was reading an article by Chuck Colson not long ago in which he said that he often asked himself why he had to go to prison as a result of Watergate. Legally, there was no reason why he should have been put in prison. Nevertheless, he ended up there and for a long time he struggled with this fact. Why did he have to suffer the humiliation, the shame, the disgrace and the discontent of prison? But then the answer began to come. While he was in prison he learned what prisoners go through. He saw these forgotten men and women of American society, the awful injustices they often face, the difficulty, even the impossibility of recovering themselves, and there was born in him a great sense of compassion and a desire to help. Since he has been released from prison he has devoted his whole life and ministry to going back in and helping these people. Now wonderful stories are beginning to come from prisons all over America of dramatic changes in human lives because Chuck Colson was sent to prison. That is why God sends us into difficulties at times. It is not always for our sake, but for someone else's sake. We have been brought along and matured to the point where we can take it and rejoice in it and handle it rightly. When we do, what a lesson we are giving to those who are following along behind.
I Can Do It by Myself
Now still a third reason for Christian affliction is given in verses 8 through 10:
For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead; he delivered us from so deadly a peril, and he is delivering us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again (2 Corinthians 1:8-10).
We do not know the details of this crushing time; some think Paul had a severe illness, and perhaps it was. Others, and I am among them, link this with the record in Acts 19 of the great riot which broke out in Ephesus, threatening the lives of the Christians in that city. At that time it appeared the whole Christian cause had collapsed in Ephesus and all Paul had labored on for years was falling apart. He must have gone through unusual emotional stress and physical threat during this time. He tells us that he was "utterly, unbearably crushed." Now that is the lowest ebb the human spirit can come to, the uttermost sense of despair. "Why," he said, "we felt that we had received the sentence of death." It was absolutely hopeless; he had given up; there was no way out. He could see himself losing his life at this point. But then he adds, "but that was to make us rely not on ourselves."
One of the major reasons God sends us suffering is to break the stubborn spirit of self-will within us. Our will insists on trying to work it all out by our own resources, to run to some other human resource, or in some way refuse to acknowledge that we need divine help. I find this in myself. I struggle sometimes. I do not want to pray about a certain matter because if I pray about it, it means I cannot handle it myself. Paul must have struggled the same way. This mighty apostle plainly and clearly understood the principles of how God operates. Still he had to go through a testing like this that he might again learn not to rely on himself. Read the story of Saul of Tarsus, that brilliant young Pharisee, and you see a self-reliant young man, confident that he has the world by the tail, that there is nothing he cannot do with his brilliant mind, his ability and logic, his strong, powerful personality. He felt he could handle anything, and again and again God had to break his self-confidence, to put him in circumstances he could not handle, that he might learn not to rely on himself, but "on God who raises the dead," the God for whom no cause is ever hopeless, who can bring life out of death.
That is, I think, the major reason for suffering. It is the pressure designed to destroy our determined stubbornness. But do you see how Paul comes to a knowledge of the true Christian life style? "God delivered us"--in the past; "he is delivering us"--in the present; "he will deliver us"--in the future. Paul has learned to trust God to take him through whatever life throws at him, no matter what it is. Now that is a Christian life style. It is time some of us Christians quit acting like the world around us, constantly complaining, murmuring and griping about everything that comes our way. We should see these as opportunities to display an alternative life style, to release in our lives a quiet power that will keep our hearts at peace, because we know our adequate God is handling the situation; he will take us safely through.
Pray for Each Other
Then a final reason for suffering is given in verse 11:
You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us in answer to many prayers.
Once again, suffering is sent to show us that we are not individuals living all alone in life. We are members of a family, we are members of a Body, and we need each other. When you have a difficulty or a trial, share it with others so that they can pray with you, for many prayers will bring great deliverance. That is what this verse says. "In answer to many prayers" God will send a blessing which will awaken thanksgiving in many, many hearts. Paul says, therefore, "You must help us by prayer," so that there will be great thanksgiving for the great blessing that comes from many prayers. This is the reason for requests for prayer, for sharing our needs with one another, and for enlisting the aid of others in "praying us through" times of pressure, just as we ought to be ready to respond to those who are going through pressure with our prayers for them.
In these eleven verses, then, we see the way the Christian community ought to respond to stress and pressure, to difficulties and trials and disasters. God has sent them. God has allowed them to come as opportunities that we might learn again this amazing secret of inner strength, inner comfort, inner peace that can keep our hearts quiet, even though we are going through troubled times.
2 Corinthians 1:12-2:4
It seems fair to say that in some area of our lives, we are always being misunderstood. What a commentary on life to notice how often our motives are misjudged, our actions misunderstood. We never seem to be free from the experience of having something taken in quite a different light than we intended it.
Here in chapter 1 of 2 Corinthians, we have a classic case of a misunderstanding that will help us in handling such matters. Paul here is sharing certain experiences which come from being a Christian in a pagan world. In the previous chapter, we saw how he spoke about the universal tendency toward pressure and stress and the afflictions of life. We saw how God has given us a source of strengthening so we can handle the pressure. Here we are looking at a misunderstanding that developed between Paul and the church at Corinth. We shall see his hungering for vindication and his desire to correct and straighten out the matter.
For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience that we have behaved in the world, and still more toward you, with holiness and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God. For we write you nothing but what you can read and understand; I hope you will understand fully, as you have understood in part, that you can be proud of us as we can be of you, on the day of the Lord Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:12-14).
Paul has not yet mentioned the problem which caused the misunderstanding (we will look at that later). But it is interesting that he starts out by making this plain to the Corinthians--his conscience is clear in the whole matter. He wants them to understand that this is not merely a defensive reaction on his part. His actions, no matter how the Corinthians may have seen them, are clear before God.
A Clear Conscience
When you are misunderstood, when somebody misjudges you, the first thing you have to ask yourself, as a Christian, is, "Is there anything about this that God condemns? Have I really done anything wrong? Does my conscience bother me about any part of this?" If it does, then your first step, of course, must be to confess it, to acknowledge it and admit that you have done something wrong. There may be many elements about the situation you are facing in which you feel justified. But there may he areas, at least, where you did something wrong. You may have lost your temper, you may have said some cruel or unkind things, you may have retaliated against someone. If that is the case, then this is where you have to start; you must have a clear conscience before you can go on. Much of the strife between people comes from their unwillingness to clear their consciences at the very beginning.
Notice how Paul does this. He sees no deviation from his normal pattern of behavior. As always, he seeks to be an open, transparent person who is not trying to hide anything, who is not resorting to guile or manipulation--what Paul calls, "fleshly wisdom." Apparently, he has done something to offend some of these Corinthians. He wants them to know that, as far as his standing before God is concerned, his conscience is clear.
Then he hopes to make them understand. That is what verse 13 means: "We write you nothing but what you can read and understand." He is going to try to clear this up. He hopes that they will be able to grasp it fully as he explains it to them, because he longs to restore a mutual sense of pride in one another. This is what believers ought to keep constantly striving for, a clearness of relationship with each other. It is important to notice that Paul makes a real effort to clear up this misunderstanding. Some people adopt the attitude, "Well, I am just going to forget it and hope the whole problem will disappear." But the trouble is that it usually does not disappear. Misunderstanding can be hidden in the heart; you may think you have dismissed it or forgotten it, but actually it is festering away, smoldering like a fire that refuses to go out. Sometimes, unexpectedly, it bursts into flames; suddenly, you are angry at someone and you hardly realize why; but it is because something has been left unsettled. Everywhere in the Word of God we are taught that, as Christians, we must not let things lie unsettled. If we are upset about something or feel someone is upset at us, then we have to do something about it. That is what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: "If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:23, 24). Clear relationships are tremendously important. When they are neglected, strife, schism, division, hurt and pain in a church are the results.
Now Paul explains the problem that caused the misunderstanding:
Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a double pleasure, I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans like a worldly man, ready to say Yes and No at once? (2 Corinthians 1:15).
The problem, obviously, was that one of Paul's travel plans had met obstacles; he had been forced to abandon "Plan A." It had involved leaving Ephesus, where he had been living, crossing the Aegean Sea directly to Corinth, and visiting them to help work out the problems they were having in the church. From there he had planned to travel by land up through northern Greece into Macedonia, to the cities of Thessalonica and Philippi, where he had planted churches, and to return again to Corinth, thus giving them what he calls here the "double pleasure" of his visit. He then had expected them to help him take ship from Corinth to Jerusalem to bring the gifts of the church to the poor starving saints there. This was his original plan, "Plan A," but he did not do it, as he tells us.
A Change of Plans
I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may speed me on my journey, wherever I go. For I do not want to see you now just in passing; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries (1 Corinthians 16:5-9).
That was "Plan B." It involved Paul's going directly from Ephesus into Macedonia and working his way down the coast at last to Corinth; then, after his visit there, the Christians would help him on his way to Jerusalem and Judea. Now to us at this remote date, his change of plans seems an awfully silly thing to get upset about. After all, transportation was difficult and uncertain in those days. Communication was even more so; there was no way he could let them know of the change of plan. Yet it is apparent, from verse 17, that they were upset about this and their accusations were coming strong against him. (Titus had probably brought him word that there were some who had accused him of being fickle and changeable and unreliable. There was a group in Corinth who opposed Paul anyhow, and they were quick to seize on this as proof of their charges that he behaved just like everyone else, that he was an unreliable individual.)
Paul suggests, too, that some were actually saying he lived just like a worldling, a non-Christian, doing whatever was convenient, not bothering to try to keep his word in any way. It is always interesting to see how these letters, written in the first century, find such a remarkable correspondence to what goes on in our lives today. One of the major problems among Christians, especially younger Christians, is that they have not yet seen this truth: what ought to be characteristic of Christians is faithfulness to their commitments. If you say you are going to be somewhere, then either be there or let someone know why you cannot be there. It is amazing (and discouraging sometimes) to see how many Christians, even older Christians, will say they are going to do something, or be some place, and then never show up, never let anyone know, and show no sense of responsibility for fulfilling the promise and the commitment they made. Such conduct, Paul makes plain, is the characteristic of a "worldly man," of a non-Christian. It shows no sense of the faithfulness, the responsibility a Christian ought to have.
Yes or No
Paul now begins to explain what the true situation was. Unfortunately, his explanation is interrupted by one of those unhelpful chapter divisions we sometimes see; the passage actually falls into two major divisions: 18 through 22, and then 23 through verse 4 of Chapter 2. His first word is a wonderful statement of the divine provision for Spirit-led guidance:
As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No (2 Corinthians 1:18).
Notice he does not say, "Yes or No." There is nothing wrong with saying "No" sometimes. One has to say "No" to many invitations to make a commitment. But if you say "Yes," then intend to fulfill it; that is what Paul is saying. Or if you say "No," then mean it. Jesus said this, didn't he? "Let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; Anything beyond this comes from the evil one" (Matthew 5:37, ML). As Christians we must learn to keep our word on these matters. What is wrong is to say "Yes" but mean "No." It is wrong to tell somebody you are going to be some place when you really have no intention of being there. It is wrong to say you will do something when you have no intention of doing so. Conversely, it is wrong to say you will not do something when you have every intention of doing it.
Paul goes on to explain where he is coming from:
As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God. But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has commissioned us; he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee (2 Corinthians 1:18-22).
Let us look at this for a moment, for it is a great theological statement. Paul is basically saying that no Christian can give a Yes and No commitment. That is contrary to the nature of a Christian, because it is contrary to the nature of God. God is not like that; he is faithful, Paul says. When God says "Yes," then it is an eternal "Yes." He will never take it back. When God says "No," he means "No." He never says "Yes" and means "No." Paul is saying that God's promises are always positive promises. Have you noticed that in the Scriptures? In Christ, it is always "Yes," Paul says. Whatever God promises, and you come to him in the name of Jesus and ask for, the answer is always "Yes." That is what he is saying, ultimately; it is "Yes," for God's promises are for blessing, not for cursing.
This is very clear in the great verse in John 3 where Jesus said, "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17). Now there will be condemnation, but that is not God's intent or purpose. The promises never offer condemnation; they deal with salvation; they are offered to us to deliver us. Jesus did not come to kill; he came to revive and to give life. "I am come," he said, "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). God does not come to reject, but to restore. I have always loved that great word of the prophet Isaiah, where he is picturing God at work. He says he comes "to give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness" (Isa. 61:3). That is the positive activity of God (Isaiah 61:3).
When to Say "Amen"
Now, according to the statement here, all this is available to us in Christ. We actually begin to experience it when we say "Amen" to God's promise. This passage is rather obscure in the King James Version, where it says, "For all the promises of God in him (Christ) are yea, and in him Amen"--as though Christ is saying both the "yes" and the "Amen." But the Revised text makes it clear that it is God who, in Christ, says, "yes," and it is we who are to add the "Amen." That is why I love to preach in black churches. I get a lot of "Amens." It can be dull preaching to white people when they just sit and look at you. It is encouraging to get an "Amen" once in awhile, because it is a way of saying, "I agree. I believe that. I accept that. That is for me." What the text is saying here is that God gives you a promise in Christ. There are hundreds of them, and he offers you something in every one. You read one and you say, "That's for me, Lord. I want that." On this basis you obey the qualification or the commitment that the promise demands, and the promise begins to be real in your life. It is we who say the "Amen." God's positive supply actually appears when we obey from the depths of our being and say a resounding 'Amen" to what he has said. The way to find God's blessing, then, is to respond to his promise by stepping out on what he says, taking it to yourself, and saying, "Lord, that is mine. Amen, I believe."
How to Say "Amen"
Paul adds that, by the presence of the Spirit in our lives, God has provided the means to understand and live by this promise. Paul adds that God has provided for our understanding of this promise by the presence of the Spirit in our lives. As you meditate on the promises of God, the Spirit of God is given to you to teach you what it means and how it applies to you. That is the work of the Spirit. He is not given to us so that we may have a good feeling now and then or to take us to heaven when we die, though he does all those things. He is given to us to open our minds to understand how the promises of God affect us and what God is saying to us in them. His teaching is always in line with grammatical rules and interpretative principles; the Spirit never denies that; he understands the rules of language, grammar, and so on, and it is helpful to us to know them. But nevertheless, it is ultimately the Spirit of God himself who brings a promise home to us and makes it alive to us, and who then offers to empower us to accept the gift.
Many times we are faced with a promise of God, but because we are sinful creatures we do not want to receive it. Many times I have had the experience of knowing that there was something God wanted me to do (or perhaps not to do), and I did not want to obey him. I knew there would be a promise of relief, or help, or blessing if I would do it, but every fiber of my rebellious flesh cried out against doing it; and I found it difficult to make myself do it. Well, that is where the Spirit comes in. A non-Christian would simply not do it. Non-Christians live by their feelings: "Whatever feels good I give myself to. Whatever does not feel good I do not want any part of." That is the way of the world, but a Christian is not to do that. He is to obey God. If he has difficulty doing so he is to rely upon the fact that the Spirit of God is in him to give him ability to act when He wills to act. When you choose to obey, the power to do so is always given by the Spirit of God. You can do what God wants. This is what Paul is bringing out here.
Let us now link this with the context. Why did Paul change his plan? That is what the Corinthians wanted to know. Why did he say he was going to come directly to Corinth, and would come twice to the city, but instead did not come directly--going by way of Macedonia--and came only once? Because the Spirit of God opened his eyes to see factors in the situation that made him change his mind. He could see that the great promises of blessing that God had for this church at Corinth would only be fulfilled if he did not come directly to Corinth, but instead went to Macedonia and waited for Titus there. So, convinced by the Spirit, in obedience to what he saw of the Spirit's teaching, and with a clear conscience, Paul changed his original plan and went to Macedonia instead of Corinth.
Report to the Boss
In verse 23 of chapter 1, on through verse 4 of chapter 2, he tells the two things the Spirit showed him that made him change his mind. This is a practical passage on how the Spirit of God works to help us understand. Here is the first reason that Paul gives:
But I call God to witness against me-it was to spare you that I refrained from coming to Corinth (2 Corinthians 1:23).
That is reason number one. He did not come because he wanted to spare them.
Not that we lord it over your faith; we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith (2 Corinthians 1:24).
Moreover, he refrained from coming so that they would be free to act as the Lord directed, and not as Paul said. Now this is a very important principle, because here the apostle is challenging one of the widespread misunderstandings in the church in our day. Paul says, "Look, I am not your boss. If I had come to Corinth the way I had originally planned, after having already paid you a painful visit, it's very likely that my powerful personality, my strong will, my position as a respected apostle would have put such pressure upon you that you would have obeyed me--but without the conviction that I spoke for the Lord. So I did not come, in order that you might preserve freedom to do what God wants, not what I want." If he had come he would have given them the impression that he had authority over them. But that is not true, he says, "We are not lords over your faith. We are not your boss. We have no authority to tell you what to do or what to say or how to act, but rather" (and in a beautiful phrase he puts it), "we are helpers of your joy." That is wonderful, isn't it? Paul sees himself as a fellow worker, standing alongside them, helping them to understand what God wants so they would enter into the joy of the Lord. But he is not their boss.
One of the major problems the church is facing in our day is the widespread tendency to misunderstand the nature of authority and leadership within the church, to regard someone as the ultimate boss, getting directions and permission from him to do anything. If we Protestants are right when we say to the Catholics that God never intended to have one man, a pope, over the whole church, it is no improvement if we place one in every church.
Leaders in the church are not bosses. This is a common misconception. Many churches look to the pastor but you never see that term in Scripture. There are pastors, but never the pastor. Churches are not to look to the pastor for authority, for permission to exercise spiritual gifts. We do not have to ask our pastor whether we can teach in our home or not. We do not have to go to the pastor to get permission to use our spiritual gifts. The pastor does not give them to us. The Lord does and we are responsible to him for the exercise of those spiritual gifts, not to the pastor. The pastor is our helper; he is there to encourage us and to help us to understand what these gifts are, how to recognize them, but we are not responsible to him for exercising our gifts. He is responsible to his Lord to help us put them with others and to maintain unity within the church, but not to govern what ministry we have. That comes from the Lord himself. He is the head of the church, the body.
Hardly any principle or concept in the church is more misunderstood today than this particular concept. Peter says that elders are not to be "lords over God's heritage" (1 Peter 5:3). That is what Paul is referring to here. We are not lords, he says; we do not lord it over your faith. The word "heritage" in 1 Peter 5:3 (kleros: "inheritance") is the word from which we get our English word, "clergy." It is interesting, is it not, that Peter is telling the men whom we call "clergy" not to lord it over the real clergy, the laity. It is the people who are ministers of God. It is the people who are to carry on the work of the church and exercise its ministry out in the world, in every place. It is not the right of anybody to be boss in the church. As Jesus himself put it, "one is your Master, and all you are brothers." We are to help one another.
So the mighty apostle Paul himself clearly acknowledges this. He says, "That is why I did not come. I did not want to disturb that relationship. I did not want to preempt authority over you that belonged only to the Lord himself." As he himself put it in Romans 14:4, "Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand." I love Phillips' rendition: "God is well able to transform men into servants that are satisfactory." Paul recognizes this.
No Desire to Wound
For I made up my mind not to make you another painful visit. For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? And I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. For I wrote you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you (2 Corinthians 2:1-4).
The Spirit led him to see that he had already caused pain enough by his letters and painful visit. Paul is like a skillful surgeon. A surgeon must cut, but a good surgeon cuts only as much as is required. He derives no joy out of cutting people's bodies open beyond removal of the tumor or the cancer or whatever. As soon as that is done, and thoroughly done, he stops, because he does not like to create pain. That is what Paul is saying here. "I wrote to you a sharp and painful letter." (Whether this is 1 Corinthians or another lost letter is a debated point; I lean toward the latter view.) At any rate, Paul says, "I have already caused you much pain by what I wrote. The Spirit has shown me that if I came again I would just cause more pain; that might be quite unnecessary, so I did not come, because," as he puts it so beautifully, "I don't want to cause you pain. When you hurt, I hurt. Who is going to make me glad if I unnecessarily cause you to hurt? I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears." What a beautiful picture of this great apostle writing with the tears flowing from his eyes. "I want you to see that behind the writing and the sharp rebukes there is no desire to hurt you, but a great heart of love, unwilling to let you miss the love and the joy of God. That is why I wrote."
This is a marvelous picture of the spirit in which we ought to handle misunderstandings. Not to hurt in return, not to retaliate, not to try to get even because someone has misunderstood us, but to explain it as plainly and simply and clearly as we can, always with the intention that, if there is anything hurtful to be said, it will be as minimal as possible, affirming our love and our concern for the individual involved. That is the way Paul did it.
2 Corinthians 2:5-17
Thus far, Paul has addressed two problems in the church at Corinth: personal stress and misunderstanding. Now he turns our attention to the third concern: when discipline in a congregation should end.
But if any one has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure--not to put it too severely--to you all. For such a one this punishment by the majority is enough; so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him (2 Corinthians 2:5-8).
The focus of this discipline is a matter of scholarly debate. Traditionally, it was linked with the problem of incest attacked in 1 Corinthians. But since Paul had both written again (in one of the lost letters) and paid them the "painful" visit (mentioned in 2 Corinthians 2:1), it seems to many (and I include myself here) that the matter of incest had probably been handled, and another situation, perhaps a rebellion against the apostle's authority, is being resolved here. The point is that some form of discipline had been exercised; and now Paul is urging that, since the man had repented, it is time for a change of attitude toward him. This is a very helpful study on what a church ought to do when someone responds to discipline.
We have already seen in other passages that the Lord Jesus is the one who instituted a form of discipline within the church:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone (Matthew 18:15).
This is always the first step and will keep a congregation happier and more at peace than anything else I know. I have the joy of serving in a congregation like that. Few are aware of it--because this kind of thing is not publicized--but it is happening all the time in this congregation. Hardly a week goes by that someone does not act on that basis. Someone goes to a person he feels is out of line with what Scripture says and tells him his fault. Then usually, as Jesus went on to say, what should happen, happens:
If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
That is all that needs to be said about it.
But we are not to go to one another in areas where we merely feel irritated because someone is doing something differently than we would do it. We are to point out only those areas the Word of God has said are clearly wrong. Then, if there is resistance and unwillingness to face what is clearly wrongdoing, we are to take one or two others with us. Thus there may be witnesses to the discussion, just as Jesus said, with the hope that this will help the one concerned; the objective of discipline is not punishment, but recovery and restoration. If that approach is refused, then the third step is to tell it to the church, with the expectation that everybody in the congregation who knows the individual will go and plead with him to reconsider, to face the trouble and admit it, so that peace can be restored.
Evidently, that is the level to which this church had come. Whatever the problem, the man had resisted correction until it had to be told to all the church. (Paul is referring to that when he says, "For such a one this punishment by the majority is enough.") The church had acted and had been successful in carrying out this discipline.
Some may ask why such action is necessary. It is because, as Paul says:
If any one has caused pain, he has not caused it only to me, but in some measure--not to put it too severely--to you all (2 Corinthians 2:5).
Wrong actions are always hurtful, not only to a few people, but to everyone. Nothing is more deceiving than the attitude many people take today of, "Well, this is only between me and another person. No one else is being hurt by it." That is never true in a church. As John Donne has well reminded us, "No man is an island." While true of all humanity, in a church we are even more a family, and it is impossible for there to be strife and hurt and grievance between any two individuals that does not begin to spread and touch others as well.
I have been in churches where feuds had developed to the point that one family group would not speak to another. The whole church had been paralyzed spiritually; nothing was happening out in the community, no testimony of love and restoration was going on, and the church's effectiveness had ground to a halt. It happens many, many times: discipline must be carried out on a wider basis. In Corinth, it had already happened; it had already worked; this man had repented. He had admitted that what he had done was wrong, and had demonstrated it by what I like to call, "the mark of repentance." Paul urges them to comfort him that he may not be "overwhelmed by excessive sorrow."
The Mark of Repentance
This mark is the sense of sorrow, of remorse that you have been the instrument by which many have been damaged in their faith or in their feelings. We are often taught today that if you do something wrong, all you have to do is go and say to somebody, "Yes, I did that," and then expect forgiveness at once. Certainly we should forgive right away, yet the sign of true repentance is sorrow for hurt that's been caused. This is a quite different spirit than what we see at times today where people get angry if they are not forgiven instantly.
The mark of genuine repentance is that we do not really believe anybody ought to forgive us, that what we have done is hurtful, and we do not think we deserve forgiveness. Forgiveness is always freely extended to someone who does not feel he deserves it; and that is what is clear here. We can see this, if we look ahead to chapter 7, where Paul refers to this very incident again and the congregation's treatment of it:
For even if I made you sorry with my letter I do not regret it (though I did regret it), for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for awhile. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting; for you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death (2 Corinthians 7:8-10).
Thus the mark of repentance is grief and sorrow over what is done. This man had come to that point; therefore it was time to end the discipline.
Of course, the purpose of the whole process of discipline at any stage is to bring somebody to recovery. The minute he achieves that it is time to end all the sanctions and degrees of pressure being applied, and begin to extend forgiveness and restoring love. That is what Paul pleads for in verse 8:
So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him (2 Corinthians 2:8).
Since correction is never to proceed from anger alone, but from love, the appropriate purpose is to reaffirm love. Paul suggests how that should be done when he says, "you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him lest he be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow."
The Process of Restoration: Facing It
Now, because this man had reached this place, Paul goes on to give us a statement of what restoration involves:
For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Any one whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, to keep Satan from gaining the advantage over us; for we are not ignorant of his designs (2 Corinthians 2:9-11).
There are three things of great importance in that paragraph which help us to understand how to bring people to restoration. The first one, as Paul clearly indicates, is to begin with a faithful confrontation. He says, "I wrote to you to see if you would obey"--not obey Paul as we have seen, but obey the Lord. It was not the apostle giving orders; he was only calling attention to what the Lord had said. Their obedience, therefore, was not to him but to the Lad. And it always is. No man has a right to give orders in the church, but only to call attention, as a brother, to the orders the Lord has already given. The Corinthians had obeyed; they had done what Matthew 18 required by telling it to the church.
That is always a painful and difficult thing to do. One of the reasons so many churches are rife with splits, divisions, and problems today is that their leadership seems to be made up of gutless wonders who have no moral courage and who are not willing themselves to act in obedience to what the Scripture says. When the church of which I am a part has had to take action of this sort, threats of lawsuits and of bodily harm were sometimes made against the eldership if we acted. We had to resist reproof by many people in the congregation who misjudged the situation, who thought it was wrong to act the way we did. It has sometimes taken courage to stand and obey the Word of God. But as Scripture says, "the effect of righteousness will be peace." If you will act rightly in love, and frontally with courage, the result is peace; such was happening in Corinth. The place to start, therefore, is with a faithful confrontation. And as in the church, so with our individual difficulties. If we have a difficulty with someone, we must do what the Lord says: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone" (Matthew 18:15).
Forgetting It
But equally important is the readiness to forgive when a person has acknowledged that what he or she did was wrong or sees, with grief and sorrow, the hurt it caused. Then we are to instantly restore such a one, in the second step of restoration.
Here again the church often offends. One of the frequent causes for hurt and damage to individuals in the church today is an unwillingness to forgive things in the past that an individual has cleared up long ago. Take divorce, for instance. In many places where people have gone through a divorce, even with biblical grounds, it is treated as the unforgivable sin, worse than murder, adultery, or anything else. Those involved never come back to any level of acceptance or leadership. But that is wrong, and great damage is done because of it. If it is true that Paul himself had personally been insulted by the individual in question, notice how freely he extends forgiveness:
Any one whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:10).
There are no hard feelings, no recriminations, no "well-I-can-forgive-but-I-can't-forget" attitude. Such reveals a lack of understanding of what forgiveness is. Forgiveness, basically, is a promise that you make; it is a promise you make to three different individuals. This is true always, in every case of forgiveness. First, it is a promise that you make to the individual who has offended you and now has repented, in which you are saying to him or her, "I will not let my attitude toward you be governed any longer by this offense. It has been put aside. My treatment of you from here on will be as though this had never happened." It is a promise you make never to bring it up again. In marriage many problems go on for years and years because we tend to go back and dig up all the past, an indication that it has never been forgiven. Some mates don't get hysterical, they get historical! That is the problem, and it creates a problem.
Second, it is a promise not to pass it on to anyone else. When a matter is forgiven it is to be forgotten. Now it may be that everyone knows it, because, as in this case in Corinth, it had been told to the whole church. But what it means is that no one throws it at the person again or holds it over his head or reminds him of it should any further difficulty occur. It is a promise to drop the matter, leave it in the past, and never bring it up to anyone again.
Third, and probably most important of all, it is a promise to yourself that when your memory goes back to the offense, as it will occasionally, you are not going to allow it to seize hold of your heart and make you angry all over again. The minute it comes back to remind you put it aside as something that belongs to the past; you are not going to dwell on it. It is a promise, therefore, to repeat your act of forgiveness, no matter how often the memory comes up. That is what forgiveness is; and Paul is ready to do this.
The reason, of course, is that Paul himself had been forgiven. People tell me sometimes, "Well, I just can't forgive in this case. The person said he was wrong, and has asked me to forgive him, but I just can't do it. It hurt me too much." Well, this is a revelation to me that the person has never realized how much he himself has been forgiven already. The basis for Christian forgiveness is always, "Forgive, because you have been forgiven." If you cannot forgive, it is because you have forgotten that you were forgiven. Paul says this to the Ephesians: "Be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you" (Eph. 4:32). That means we are not to be self-righteous and condemning, assuming the attitude, "Well, I could never do a thing like that." In the eyes of God you have already done worse, and been forgiven for it. The basis, therefore, for extending forgiveness to others is "Freely you have received, freely give" (Matthew 10:18).
Anticipating the Accuser
The third step in restoration, brought out in verse 11, is the need to keep Satan from gaining an advantage over us, for Paul says, "we are not ignorant of his designs." It is Satan who keeps bringing back to your mind the hurts of the past; he keeps interjecting them back into a situation. He is trying to get hold of you through the situation and wreak havoc with you and your loved ones. It is Satan who makes the leadership of a church quail at confronting some situation and say, "Oh, let's not get involved; let's forget it." That is Satan. He is seeking to gain an advantage over the whole congregation, to dilute their testimony and render them powerless in their effect on the community. He will bring it up again whether you like it or not; he will interject the same situation into circumstances in the future and you will have to face the same issue over and over again.
That is what Paul means when he says, "we are not ignorant of his designs." When an arsonist is loose you can expect fires; they are going to break out all over the place. We have an enemy who is like that, and when you have an enemy you can expect casualties. When you are engaged in warfare you can never decide that you will have no more casualties, because the enemy is there; he is the one who keeps it going. We often say in American history, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." That is true in the spiritual realm as well. We are Christians in a battle. The enemy is constantly trying to take advantage of the situation. Only as we recognize this will we realize that the thing which defeats him is to extend full forgiveness when there are broken relationships among us. That is what keeps Satan from gaining an advantage over us. Elsewhere, Paul says, "Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Settle this matter before nightfall, before you go to bed. Don't carry it over to the next day and thus give opportunity to the devil" (Ephesians 4:26, 27). When we let it go on and on, unresolved, we are giving the devil an opportunity to get hold of everyone involved, to create more problems and eventually turn the whole church upside down.
The final element involved in restoration is always the spiritual awareness that we are in a battle, that we live in a crazy world under the control of a madman, so we cannot expect to settle it all once and for all. As an old movie once described it, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1 saw that title in Spanish on a marquee down in Latin America: "El Mundo es Loco, Loco, Loco, Loco"!). We deal with these problems in our own hearts; that is the way you turn off the attack of the enemy.
Some years ago I read about a mental hospital that had devised an effective test to know whether the patients were ready to go back into the marketplace again. The patients would be brought into a room where a water tap was flowing out on the floor, would be handed a mop, and be told to mop up the water. If they took the mop and just started mopping away, with the water still flowing, they would be put back in the hospital. But if they had the sense to go and turn off the tap first, and then mop up the water, the staff knew they were ready to go back into life.
There is no sense in trying to clear up a situation until we have turned off the devil's tap by forgiving that which has been acknowledged as wrong. If we persist in bringing it up over and over again, we are trying to mop up a situation where the water is still flowing. That is foolish; it cannot be done. That is why in many marriages, in many family relationships, and in some churches, these kinds of hurtful things go on and on for decades. Nobody has turned off the tap; nobody has forgiven one another and let it rest in the past, realizing that we all are in need of forgiveness continually. When forgiveness happens, then marvelous healing begins to take place. I could tell you story after story of how I have seen this happen. Whole congregations have been restored, whole family groups have been opened up when two angry people decide they will forgive at the smallest indication that injury has been acknowledged.
When Discipline Ends
Is there any more beautiful picture in all the Scriptures than the story Jesus told of the Prodigal Son? It is really the story of the old father waiting at home, watching the horizon and knowing that when his boy had reached the end and was ready to admit his wrongdoing, he would show up at the house again. At the first glimpse of his son on the horizon the old man runs down the road to meet him, his arms wide open. All the way home, the boy has been repeating his memorized statement: "I am no longer worthy to be called your son." But before he can utter a syllable, the old man has his arms around him and he is calling out for a celebration, to kill the fatted calf. Well, there was one who was not sorry, and that was the father. He was overjoyed, because he knew that his son would never have come back if he had not acknowledged his wrong. And he did not wait for the boy to admit that. He had already forgiven him. The very appearance of the lad on the horizon was enough to tell the father that his son was repentant, sorry for what he had done. And, "lest he be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow," the father forgave him from a full and free heart. Now that is God's picture of what he does with us.
4. Have You Got What It Takes?
2 Corinthians 3:1-11
I have often wondered how the apostle Paul would rate in ecclesiastical circles, whether he would be considered a success or not if he were carrying on his ministry today. It is hard to believe that a man who spent most of his time in jail, who never made enough salary to buy a home of his own, who never built a church building, never spoke on television, or even had a radio broadcast, who ran around so much that he had no permanent residence of his own, who frequently had to get a job to support himself, who admitted that he was a poor speaker and had a very unimpressive appearance, could ever be a successful pastor or minister. He just does not fit the accepted scheme of what makes for success in the ministry today. No wonder they had trouble with him in Corinth, and had difficulty believing that he was a real apostle.
That is what they were thinking when Paul wrote this letter, and that, perhaps, explains why chapter 3 begins with these words:
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts (2 Corinthians 3:1-3).
Convincing Credentials
It is amazing, unbelievable, that these people would ever think the apostle Paul needed a letter of recommendation when he came back to them. After all, he had led these people to Christ, and yet here imply that the next time he came it would be good if he brought some letters from John, or Peter, or James, or one of the "real" apostles. Paul is asking them, "Do you really mean that? Don't you understand? You are our letter of recommendation. Christ has written it on your hearts. He didn't use paper, or engrave it on stones, as he did with Moses on Mount Sinai. He wrote it on your hearts, and the ink he used was the Holy Spirit. "As for me, I'm nothing but the postman; I just delivered the letter. God did the work." Paul wants these Corinthians to understand that the changes which had occurred in their lives, the freedom they were experiencing, the deliverance from evil habits such as immorality, adultery, homosexuality, drunkenness, thievery-- "such were some of you," he said--all happened because Christ had changed them.
When I read the New Testament I am always impressed at the scarcity--in the Book of Acts and in the letters of Paul--of words concerning the church and its ministry. Those early Christians did not go around, as we do today, talking about what the church can do for you, or about the value of becoming a member of a church. We talk about that in our day, but they did not even mention it because they understood that the church does not do anything for anybody. It is Christ who changes lives. It is Jesus who heals a hurting heart, or touches a lonely spirit, or restores someone burdened with a terrible sense of guilt for the wretchedness and evil of his past. It is the Lord who forgives and changes, and Paul states that very strongly here. He wants the Corinthians to understand that Christ has written this letter, not he, and they are the witnesses; their changed lives are all the testimony, all the recommendation, he needs that what he is doing is authentic Christianity.
If we applied that test to our churches across this country today I wonder how many would have a recommendation in the eyes of the community around? The ones who would read this letter were the whole watching world, "known and read of all men," Paul said; "everybody can see that Christ has done something to you." The only effective witness the church has in the world today is the change that Christ has made: the people you rub shoulders with, the tradesmen you do business with, the people you talk to in the normal course of your daily affairs ought to see that change. That is the point. There ought to be such visible evidence of God at work in you that people will say, "What is this? What's going on? I know your name is Bill, or Jane, or Mary, but somehow I get the feeling I'm talking to Jesus." That is what these early Christians exemplified.
This moves Paul to go on and answer the question he had asked in the preceding chapter. Christ, he said there, always leads us in triumph. He saw himself as the commanding general, marching in triumph through the streets of Rome, having won great victories everywhere he went. In another beautiful figure of speech, he said that his ministry was like a bottle of perfume, the fragrance of which was spreading all through the world--the sweetness and fragrance of Jesus Christ himself. So Paul's question was, "Who is sufficient for these things? Where do you get the ability to have that kind of impact upon those around you? Do you get it from a school? Is it a special course that you can take? Is it a seminar you can sign up for?"
The New Covenant
Now he comes to the answer:
Such is the confidence (that is, the sufficiency) that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:4-6).
This is an all-important subject. It is my deep conviction that this is the one truth above everything else in the Bible which God wants his people to learn. If I had to list the most important truth in the Word of God, aside from the deity of Christ, I would say it is this truth--the new covenant, the new provision for life that God has given his people. But the one thing I find most lacking in the church across the world today is the knowledge and understanding of this new way to live.
Paul is talking about confidence; and everyone in the world is trying to get confidence. Every time you turn on television, or listen to the radio, or pick up a magazine, you are bombarded with suggestions on how to become a self-sufficient, confident, capable, well-adjusted person, able to handle life. There are all kinds of approaches, and almost all work on the same basis. Confidence, we are told, has to come from yourself. You have to somehow find in yourself the power to achieve and to be a success. You can build this up through courses you can take and skills you can develop. That is how you will prove to be a successful individual. The world understands, quite properly, that you must have a degree of confidence. People who lack confidence, who are unsure of themselves, and insecure, go bumbling through life and never make a good impression on anyone and are always losing and failing. Therefore, the great aim is to build up a deep sense of confidence.
Paul realizes he needed confidence, too. There is nothing wrong with that. God knows we need to have a sense of ability. But the great question is, where does it come from? When Paul answers that question, he says, "It doesn't come from me. There is nothing coming from us; everything comes from God." Therefore he takes no credit for anything. Read through the writings of Paul (and it is true of Peter, James, John, and all the other apostles as well), and they are constantly denying that their ability, their power, ever comes from them. "Not I," Paul says, "but it is Christ who lives in me." "I labor, I toil with all the energy which he mightily inspires in me."
This new covenant is entirely different than anything the world knows anything about. The world would say that Paul was a success as an apostle because he did his dedicated best to mobilize all his resources and abilities to serve God with all his heart. But if you asked Paul, he would never say that. He would say that there was nothing coming from him. And he is not just being modest; he means it. "I don't make that kind of a contribution at all," he says, "everything is coming from God. The ability that is evident in my ministry, the changes that occur in people's lives because of what I am and where I go have nothing to do with my natural skills or ability. It's all coming from God at work in me." In the old covenant Paul did his best on behalf of God; in the new covenant God does his best through Paul. What a difference that is! That is the great truth we need to learn.
An Impressive ResumŽ
Now that is a rather amazing claim, for the world for twenty centuries has recognized that the apostle Paul was an unusually competent person. He had marvelous gifts. Perhaps he had the keenest mind of all time. Anyone who reads Paul admits that he had a powerful personality and a zeal which were simply remarkable.
He tells us in the letter to the Philippians that he had counted on four things for success. And they were remarkable things. First of all, there was his impeccable ancestry. He was born into the right family and he belonged to the right people. "I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews, born of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day according to the Book." He could claim an ancestry that went all the way back to Abraham. The tremendous religious inheritance of the Jewish people was all his, he said. I know a lot of people who are counting on their ancestry for success. You can belong to a well known family, and even though there may be a lot of personal weak. nesses, even moral failures, evident in your own life, you can run for office and you will make it. Ancestry counts in this world, doesn't it?
As well as having an impeccable ancestry, Paul tells us also that he had a fantastic record of orthodoxy: "I am a Pharisee of the Pharisees." Now if any people ever gave themselves to careful, thoughtful, religious observance, it was the Pharisees. Scripture tells us that they tithed even the tiny little seeds they grew--cummin, mint, anise--and counted them out patiently, taking hours, so that they could give one out of ten to God. When they walked about on the Sabbath day they meticulously took care never to spit on the ground because that made mud, and that was mortar, and that was working on the Sabbath. So they carefully spat on rocks on that day. Paul says, "I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, taking care that I did not break any rules."
More than that, he had a record of incredible activity. He was the most zealous young Pharisee of his day. At an early age it is possible he advanced to a tremendous position of prominence by being granted membership in the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews, even though he was but a young man. He was zealous in his career against the Christian church, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter," pursuing the cause night and day to stamp out the whole Christian community. And finally, he tells us that he had an faultless morality. There was no charge you could level against him. His private life was just as clean as his public life. He was, before the law, blameless. So he counted on these: his keen mind, his brilliant record. He felt that he would be a success because of these things.
But as the record of Acts tells us, he had to learn through a very painful ten-year period that all this was absolutely worthless in getting God's work done. It would make an impressive performance record before the religious world of his day--as there are thousands today who are making impressive records, religiously, in the eyes of the churches in this country--but, as Paul had to learn, none of that was worth the snap of a finger in the eyes of God; it did not do God's work at all. If you want to change lives as Paul did, to upset whole communities, start people in new directions, give them liberty and freedom in the midst of guilt and oppression, you must learn what Paul learned, that it is nothing coming from you, but everything coming from God. God alone can do God's work. If there is no sense dependence on him for that purpose, it is a wasted, useless effort.
Now that is cutting pretty deep, if we judge the current religious scene in terms of what Paul is saying here, isn't it? But he speaks of a new covenant. The old covenant is, 'Here's a standard to achieve. Now do your very best to do it"-self-effort, to build up self-confidence. The new covenant is exactly the opposite. It says, "Just show up, present yourself. God will work through you; and what God demands, God himself will achieve, using you as the instrument of it. You will never get the credit for it; you can never say it was anything you did, or had, or were; it is God alone." That is why all through the Scriptures you find Christians denying that they were the explanation for what was accomplished, but that it was God himself at work. That is what Paul calls the new covenant; and God has made us competent to be ministers of it.
Now this is true of all Christians, not just apostles. We are all ministers of Christ; there is no special class set aside to be ministers. You too are called to be a minister of the new covenant, depending on God to be at work in you, not on your ability to do something for him. That is the truth revealed here.
A Prophecy Fulfilled
Jeremiah had described this new covenant in his prophecy long centuries before. He had said a day was coming when God would write his laws in people's hearts, not on tables of stone. It is the same law, but written in the heart, instead of presenting some external demand. God would live with them, they would be his people, he would be their God. They could draw upon his wisdom, his energy, his power and strength for any demand they had in their lives. He would instruct them by his Spirit, so that their eyes would be opened to see the real meaning of the things they learned. He would settle once and for all the question of their guilt. He would forgive their sins right at the very beginning; and they could rest upon God's constant washing and cleansing and forgiveness all through their lives. That is the new covenant as Jeremiah described it. It would change their whole motivation and outlook on life.
Perhaps with this very prophecy in mind, Paul now says something extremely important:
...not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6).
Have you found what a law, a demand, does to you? Have you ever realized how it hits you? Recently, a young man told me about an experience he had. He got up one morning and was thinking about his dad, about how much he meant to him, how he loved him, and how aware he was that morning of all the things his dad had done for him. His heart was filled with a sense of gratitude, and so he determined that after breakfast he would go out, without his dad having to say anything, and out of the sheer delight of pleasing him, mow the lawn and wash the car. He came down to breakfast, and just as he was about to leave the table, his dad said to him, "Son, before I get back today I would like to have you mow the lawn and wash the car. I really want you to do this. I don't want to come back this evening and find that you haven't done it." Then he left for work. This young man said, "it changed the whole picture. It lust turned off all the incentive and motivation in my heart. I did it, but I had no further delight in it."
The outward law, making its demand upon us, awakens a sense of rebellion, as Paul describes in Romans 7. We all have it, we all dislike being told what to do. The external law invariably kills motivation. Many of us never seem to learn that lesson. We are constantly trying to order people around, make them do things out of pressure, little realizing that law is absolutely the kiss of death to all sense of desire and motivation within someone. This young man realized there was already a strong motivation, the most powerful of all, in his heart. He was all ready to mow the lawn and wash the car, and to delight in doing them, to feel a sense of joy in doing them, when it was a matter of gratitude for what his father's love and grace had meant to him.
This is almost an exact picture of what Paul is saying. The law, the demand of God in the Ten Commandments, a perfectly right and just demand of things we ought to do, nevertheless hits us always at the point of our rebellion. We don't like to be told that we have to do these things. But the new covenant is different. In it God has found a way into our hearts. Here he approaches us with the record of his love, of his willingness to die on our behalf, of his freedom to forgive us and to set us free from the guilt of our past, both the immediate past and the ancient past. Moreover, he makes us aware that he loves us, that we are approved of him, that he, in Christ, has already taken us into his family to stand dear to his heart, cherished by him. Having learned all that about us, then he tells us to serve him in whatever way our hearts delight in doing, and we go about it with an entirely different motivation.
A Splendor That Fades
To make this clear Paul gives us three contrasts. Though his language sounds a bit complicated, it is really very simple:
Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses' face because of its brightness, fading as this was, will not the dispensation of the Spirit be attended with greater splendor? (2 Corinthians 3:7, 8).
There is a kind of glory about the old covenant, an attractiveness, symbolized here by the brightness of Moses' face when he came down from the mountaintop with the tablets of law. But while God made Moses' face radiant, he also made the glory fade, because he wanted to teach something by that. It was a fading glory, a symbol of something that every one of us has experienced at one time or another. It is an attractive feeling to show how much we can do with what we have. Did you ever feel that? In sports, it's, "Give me a chance to show what I can do. Let me at it." In business every businessman feels the same thing. At every level of life someone can say, "I've been trained for that. I have the skills, I have the gifts. Let me show what I can do." We make a great impression. All to whose credit? Ours. We are the ones being glorified. Paul talks here about that feeling of attractiveness, of glory. But the record of history shows that everybody trying to live on that basis ends up a day late and a dollar short. It just never works. After awhile it all becomes dull, boring and routine, and death sets in. Paul is describing the ministry of death, the fading glory that does not last.
But when you discover the new principle, the principle of God-dependence, that in using your native skills, abilities, and training, God nevertheless will be at work, there is an excitement and a glory that is greater than the one you feel when you want to show off what You can do. It is not you, but God, who will accomplish things. That is a glory that surpasses.
In a second contrast, Paul says,
For if there was splendor in the dispensation of condemnation (which condemned us, which brings guilt to us) (2 Corinthians 3:9a).
Everybody who tries to live a life that is pleasing to God by self-effort always discovers that he never quite makes it because he never knows when he has done enough. A lady once said to me, "When I go to bed at night I often wonder if I had tried just a little harder maybe I could have done something that would have made God happy." But she never made it. Every night there was that feeling of "I didn't quite measure up today." That is the ministry of condemnation. It is the result of trying to do it on your own resources, by your own efforts. But Paul says,
If there was a splendor in that dispensation of condemnation (if it had a glory about it), then the dispensation of righteousness must far exceed it in splendor (or glory, or attractiveness) (2 Corinthians 3:9).
The Splendor That Lasts
Righteousness means being fully accepted, having a sense of being approved by God, of being honored and cherished by him. The nearest word I know to describe this is the word, "worth." God gives you a position of worth in his eyes. You don't have to earn it; you start with it. In the new covenant, God tells you, "I have loved you, I have forgiven you, I have cleansed you. You are my dearly beloved child. I intend to use you; you are part of my program; your life is significant. There is nothing more you can add to that. Now, on that basis, with the security of that acceptance, go back to your work." And you go with a sense of approval and security. Psychologists tell us that the only way we can function in the world today is with this sense of approval. If parents do not give their children a sense of security, they are torn apart by life, ravaged by whatever happens. And it is true of us as well. We need it all the time. We need this sense of being approved, accepted, loved, cherished. And this is what the new covenant gives to us.
Isn't that a greater glory than the anxiety of trying to earn your way into God's favor, feeling guilty because you never quite make it? This is so little understood in our land today that I know of churches where pastors feel their only good sermons are those which make the people go away feeling absolutely wretched and guilty. I know people who sit in a congregation and say, "Man, that's real preachin', pastor! I feel so bad; I feel so guilty. You really got to me today!" Good preaching? No, that is not where God starts. He starts with acceptance and security and love, and says, "Now, on that basis, operate."
Then, one final contrast to make clear the new covenant:
Indeed, in this case, what once had splendor has come to have no splendor at all, because of the splendor that surpasses it. For if what faded away came with splendor, what is permanent must have much more splendor (much more glory about it) (2 Corinthians 3:10).
Paul is talking about himself, looking back to the days when he counted on his background, his skill, his sharp mind and dedicated heart for success. He is saying, "I have come now to understand that God at work in me can do so much more than I could ever have done. I have come to understand that Christ's work in me is so much more effective than anything I could ask or think, that all the glory I once felt from my self-effort is nothing but a pile of manure (that is the term he uses in Philippians 3), compared with the glory of God at work in me. Self-effort has lost all its splendor. I don't try to psych myself up to accomplish something for God. I know that even in my feeblest weakness, God is able to work though me, and that is what I count on. What happens as a result is far more thrilling and satisfying to me than anything that ever happened before."
That is the true Christian life. That is what the world is waiting to see in our day. We are all called to be ministers of this new covenant. It is God who is making us able, not ourselves. If we understand that, life will never be the same again.
2 Corinthians 3:12-16
In this chapter we begin what I think is one of the greatest passages in the New Testament. It actually begins in chapter 2, verse 14, and concludes with verse 2 of chapter 7. 1 believe it is the clearest explanation in all the Word of God of the secret of the apostle Paul's phenomenal ministry. I have discussed this section at length in my book Authentic Christianity because it has meant so much in my life, and because I have seen its impact on the lives of so many others. It is a splendid example of what genuine, true, authentic Christianity is. Yet, strangely enough, this great passage is but a parenthesis in the epistle--a digression on the apostle's part.
In Travail...
Waiting in Macedonia for Titus to return with news of the church at Corinth, Paul was feeling a great disturbance of mind, as we will see in a moment. Out of that disturbance grew this magnificent description of the power by which he labored and lived. It appears as a spontaneous outburst from the apostle's heart to counteract the sense of failure and despair he was feeling in his ministry at the time.
The background is found in verses 12 and 13 of chapter 2:
When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, a door was opened for me in the Lord; but my mind could not rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.
These brief words gather up a tremendous experience in Paul's life. He had gone to Troas from Ephesus to preach the gospel of Christ. This was his great joy everywhere. Wherever he went he knew he would find people sunk in despair, filled with darkness, their lives governed by superstition and fear, people who, without realizing what they were doing, had fallen into terrible, hurtful things that were destroying them. It was Paul's great joy to come with the good news of Jesus Christ, the one who understood the hurts of men, the Deliverer, the Healer of hurts, the one who had the power to touch human lives and transform them. Paul longed to preach the gospel to all the earth if he could, because it was such a tremendous thing to see the power of God let loose among men to set them free.
So he came into the city of Troas for that purpose, and a great door was opened for him by the Lord; that is, there was a responsiveness to his message and great opportunity to proclaim it. Hundreds, even thousands, of people perhaps gathered in the marketplaces or wherever they could to hear the word of the apostle. A church was already there and the city was stirred as Paul came to preach. Yet he was unable to take full advantage of it. His heart was so troubled, his spirit so anxious for news of what was happening in Corinth, that he could not minister. He was restless of spirit and troubled of heart; and he had to leave.
I think he could see, as he waited there for weeks and perhaps months, that all his labors in Corinth were about to fall apart. He must have been gripped by a great sense of personal failure. In the visits he had made to Corinth, in the letters he had written, there seemed no way to work out this terrible problem eating at the life of this church, threatening to destroy the work he had done. In the midst of that sense of failure, pressure, and anxiety, he was given a great opportunity, but he could not lay hold of it. So he left Troas and went up into Macedonia instead, hoping to find Titus there to bring relief to his troubled mind.
Now I do not know if any of you have ever felt that way or not, but I have. I know what it means to be called on to preach and teach the Word of God at times when my heart was so filled with anxiety and distress that I did not know whether I could open my mouth or not. I understand what Paul felt, and I feel many of you do too, as he so honestly shares this with us.
...The Triumph
Yet the next verse is astounding:
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere (2 Corinthians 2:14).
That is my favorite verse in all Scripture. What an outstanding expression of grateful thanksgiving for a powerful and effective ministry! And it stands right next to the verse in which he is confessing his failure and his weakness, his frustration and his despair. Now that is amazing, isn't it? Verses 14 through 16 give us a cry of grateful thanksgiving from the apostle's heart; verse 17 is a description from his own lips of his significant and effective ministry and yet they stand side by side with this admission of frustration.
Why this sudden reversal? Humanly speaking, the apostle's circumstances were dreary, dark and without encouragement. But spiritually, he says, on the basis of an understanding of how God works, he knew the circumstances were actually bright and glowing with great possibilities, and he was rejoicing. He calls it, "always led in triumph in Christ."
I think the Bible scholars are right when they say that Paul is thinking here, quite evidently, of the Roman Triumphs. It was a custom in the Roman Empire, when a conquering general returned from a successful campaign over one of the enemies of Rome that the Senate would grant him a Triumph. This would be equivalent to what we call a "ticker tape parade," such as New York City gives to honor a national hero. In the Roman Triumphs the conquering general would ride through the streets of Rome in his chariot, preceded by numbers of priests swinging pots of fragrant incense. Behind him would come the captives he had taken, being led to their execution in chains. Then there would come the generals of his army, the captains and the commanders of his forces. The streets would be filled with people shouting acclamations. Now that is what Paul says was going on at the same time he was feeling depressed, lonely, frustrated and discouraged in Macedonia. Is it not amazing that he would put those two things in juxtaposition?
The Fragrance of Christ
He further describes it as spreading the fragrance of Christ; the beautiful character of Jesus was becoming evident through this pressure on him:
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? (2 Corinthians 2:15, 16)
In the Roman Triumph, to the prisoners bound in chains following the conquering general's chariot, the fragrance of the incense was an odor of death; but to those who were part of the army, and to the citizens of Rome who had been spared a threat to the city, that same fragrance was a fragrance unto life. Paul applies that to himself. He says that as he goes about preaching this good news that Jesus is alive and can free men and deliver them from their inner torments and pressures, a fragrance of the life of his Son rises up to God. Wherever Paul went, God could smell the sweetness and beauty of Jesus in what Paul was doing.
But more than that, it was also a fragrance of Christ to men. A fellow-pastor once told me of a funeral service he conducted for a man who had received the Lord not long before his accidental death. One small group there was upset by what he was saying about the freedom and the new life in Christ. They stood there, sullen and angry; and they wrote him letters about it afterward. To them that service was a fragrance of death unto death; they did not like it. But others were rejoicing in the hope and the freedom that Christ had given this man, despite a life of failure. To them that message was a fragrance of life unto life. At that point we are always dealing with blank, stark reality. This is what Paul is talking about. Wherever he went he said people were either helped on to freedom and life in Christ, or they were angered, their opposition hardened, and they were driven further unto death. But nobody took him for granted. He made an impact wherever he went. Paul describes his ministry in those terms.
What does this all mean? Surely it means that the world was unimpressed by the apostle Paul. When he traveled around the Roman Empire preaching this great message, he was never received by the Chamber of Commerce; no reporters fol