One of the most striking aspects of this opening section is its God-centredness. He is the father of mercies(v3), the God of all comfort (v3), the God who raises the dead (v9), who delivers his people (v10), who gives grace (v12), who is faithful (v18), who fulfils his promises (v20), who establishes us (v21) and gives his Holy Spirit (v22).
Simplicity and godly sincerity
2 Corinthians 1:1–2:13
Greeting
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
God of All Comfort
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 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. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 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. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, 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. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.
Paul’s Change of Plans
12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand— 14 just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you.
15 Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16 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. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? 18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
23 But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. 24 Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.
For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. 2 For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? 3 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. 4 For I wrote to 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.
Forgive the Sinner
5 Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you. 6 For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, 7 so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8 So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. 9 For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. 10 Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, 11 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.
Triumph in Christ
12 When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, 13 my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.
This transcript has been automatically generated
Well, welcome to Corinth. Corinth is one of the key cities of ancient Greece with a flourishing port. Of course, it’s in a particularly strategic place, and Corinth, by the time this letter got there, had become a centre of trade as well as industry. It was a melting pot of the Mediterranean people groups and languages. I guess it was a multicultural centre very like London in its way in the first century.
And what I want to do first of all this morning is to get quite a bit of background clear, because 2 Corinthians is one of those letters that if you don’t get the background, there’ll be lots of things in it that are really difficult to piece together. So I’m going to spend a little bit of time in Corinth, in the church in Corinth, and then in Paul’s relationship with them by way of introduction. And then we’ll come to the passage. In the year 146 BC, old Corinth was razed to the ground by the Roman armies, and many of its inhabitants were sold into slavery, and it lay derelict for decades, in fact for a century, before it was rebuilt by Julius Caesar nonetheless, and it became new Corinth around about 50, 60, BC. Now when this letter gets there, it’s 100 years later, and by now New Corinth has become glitzy, uh, popular centre of life and activity across the whole Roman Empire.
It’s the capital of Achaia, it’s a thriving commercial and cultural hotspot, and it’s renowned for its many, many different religions and temples, all sorts of diversity. One historian says there are as many temples in Corinth as there are restaurants in London. I find that a bit hard to believe, but you get the point. There’s lots of diversity religiously, and it’s also famous for its sexual liberality. So in the ancient world, if you said someone was a Corinthian, it meant they were living an immoral life.
Of course, not all Corinthians did, but that’s the reputation that the city had. Sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it? But I want to sharpen our focus onto the church in Corinth with whom Paul had a long and quite complicated complicated relationship. And because this is the most personal of all the letters we have written to churches in the New Testament, we do need to get a feel of the background and the context that produced this inspired scripture, for that is what it is. And if you studied 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians together, you’ll find there’s quite a lot of help in this respect.
But I’ve written some notes for you to look at in the study time under the heading, What’s Going On in Corinth? Because I thought it was important to try to get background clear in our minds. Please don’t look at them now, but I will just give you a brief summary of them. Paul was in Corinth for 18 months around 50, 52. That’s when the church was planted.
After the 18 months, he goes off to Ephesus, and news reaches him in Ephesus that there are problems in the church in Corinth. He writes them a letter. That is the first letter, but it’s not 1 Corinthians. In all, he wrote 4 letters. Rather complex, this.
We have 2 of them, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. But the first letter that we don’t have was a letter he refers to in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, where he says, I wrote to you previously telling you not to associate with sexually immoral people. Nothing seems to have changed, so he sent a second letter, which we call 1 Corinthians. And in that letter, he calls on the church to deal with this case of incest, which was being tolerated by them, and also with other issues which are going wrong in the church. And he deals with some questions that they have asked him about what to do.
And if you want a strapline for 1 Corinthians, my own version of the, um, melodic line of the book is that gospel spirituality is characterised by self-sacrificing love. 1 Corinthians revolves around that theme. Gospel spirituality is characterised by self-sacrificing love, the way of the Lord Jesus. Well, after the first letter, he sends Timothy to monitor the response, and it’s not positive. So Paul decides to visit Corinth.
And he makes what chapter 2, verse 1 calls a painful visit. Things get worse on that visit. There’s opposition to Paul. It’s not rebuked by the church leadership. It seems as though he left with things very inconclusive and somewhat ruptured.
He goes back to Ephesus and writes letter 3, which is described in our letter in chapter 2, verse 4, where he says, I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and many tears.
Not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love I have for you. Letter 3 is usually called the letter of tears. Some people call it the painful letter, others call it the severe letter, which Titus took to Corinth. And the details of what happened are in chapter 7, which we’ll get to on another morning. After that letter, the 3rd letter reaching Corinth, Titus comes back to Paul with good news and bad news.
The good news is that there has been repentance, that the matter of the immorality in the church has been dealt with. The man has repented, he’s been restored, and the church has repented of its failure to deal with it. But the bad news is that the church has received incomers who make great claims for themselves that they are superior apostles to Paul. And they are causing division and encouraging people to turn their back on Paul and therefore to turn their back on the gospel that Paul preached. And that is what prompts letter 4, which is this letter that’s in front of us now.
Now, if you found that a little bit confusing, my apologies, but if you read the blurb a little earlier, I think it’ll all come into focus for you. But it’s important to get this right. So this isn’t just a letter written off, you know, I’ll send a note to the Corinthians. No, this is the climax letter, the 4th letter in a long series of interaction that Paul has had. And he writes this letter, as he says in chapter 13, to prepare for his 3rd visit, which is imminent.
Now, 2 Corinthians is not an easy letter to analyse, but the basic structure is clear. And because it’s such an exciting and helpful letter, It has this revelation of Paul’s heart and how he reacted to the growing hostility towards him and the ministry of the gospel, which had brought about the church in Corinth that he had planted several years earlier. So it seems that many in the congregation were out of sorts with their apostle. And as I say, there was this growing movement to push him out of influence among them, and to accept the new apostles, so-called, who had invaded in his absence. And the way they did this was to question Paul’s legitimacy.
They said they have better credentials than he did, and he therefore defends by a rich and heartwarming exposition of the gospel. He defends his ministry and he refocuses the church on Christ crucified, risen, and enthroned on the gospel of the Lord Jesus the Christ. Apostolic ministry, he says, is authorised by Christ alone and elevates Christ alone. And it is not dependent on the power of the leader’s personality. This is what the incomers were trading on, or upon the spiritual experiences they were boasting about, or about being commissioned by the right ecclesiastical authorities.
All of that he deals with. No, he says apostolic authority is based on the message that I was determined to know among you when I first came, that is the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified. So I want to suggest to you that it’s a key letter for us in 2023. Mind you, every time I do a Bible book, I always think it’s the most important book in the Bible, but I do think this is a key book, uh, in an increasingly secular and hostile environment. With our gospel ministry and gospel ministers under attack from within the churches very often, and certainly from an avowedly atheistic culture.
And we have to ask ourselves, how are we to respond? What are the battles we must engage in? And how are we to do that in a godly way that is both uncompromising and transparently Christlike? And this letter will help us enormously with those questions as we ask ourselves, and this is in private study and the discussion groups, what will this look like in our everyday lives in the city, in our family, in our neighbourhood, for our children in the classroom at school? What do we need to know and hang on to as the non-negotiables of our faith and practise?
And how can the gospel itself equip us and empower us to keep on keeping on as we seek to live lives of— well, I’ve given the title for this morning’s talk, Simplicity and Godly Sincerity, which is a quotation from verse 12 and which sums up, I think, Paul’s concern that we would live lives of simplicity and godly sincerity, uncluttered, with settled focus, persistent and persevering. Well, all this is 2 Corinthians, so it’s a letter for us. There are 3 big sections which are the main ingredients of the letter. Chapters 1 to 7 are mainly Paul’s apologia, his defence, if you like, his justification of himself and the ministry that God has given him. And we’re going to spend 3 mornings on that, God willing, days 1 to 3 on chapters 1 to 7.
Then we’ll spend our 4th morning on chapters 8 and 9, which are mainly Paul’s requests for the completion of the collection that he’s making for the poor Christians in Jerusalem. May seem a strange thing to come in the middle of the letter, but we’ll explore that when we get there. And then the last 2 days, 5 and 6, are the last 4 chapters, 10 to 13, which are Paul’s refutation of the pretensions of the invaders whom he ironically calls the super apostles. So those are the major sections, and I’ve divided it into 6 because I want to be able to cover the whole letter in exposition. Not, of course, in detailed exposition of every verse.
We’ve got our private study and our group discussion times, but that will help us to apply the letter and the major ideas to our own lives. But what I’ve tried to do in the material for the private study and the discussion groups is to give sort of prompts to applicatory working through of the material in more detail so that we don’t just store it up in our minds but pray it into our hearts and lives. And I will do as much exposition as I can, but in detail, but obviously not in such a way to overload you so that we can’t see what’s happening But I do want to say that the nourishment of Scripture is usually in the detail. And therefore, although we can’t do the whole thing in detail, we do have enough time during the week for us to read and think about all the verses. And I’m keen that we don’t just have a bird’s-eye view.
Now it’s a weakness in preaching, isn’t it, when a church does bird’s-eye view preaching? 6 Sundays on Job, 4 Sundays on Ephesians, 3 Sundays on the Sermon on the Mount. All you get is a bird’s-eye view. We need to come down, we need to focus, we need to see clearly the detail. Sometimes we go too fast, maybe we sometimes have too much, but let’s ask God to teach us this week and enable and help us as we grow.
Now today’s section then, turning to 1:1 to 2:13, does have a discernible structure. After the usual greeting in the first 2 verses, Paul begins with praise in the form of a traditional Jewish blessing. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Barakallah is the word, that’s the traditional start of a Jewish blessing, and that blessing goes from verses 3 to 7. What he’s praising God for is highly relevant to the themes and purpose of the letter.
Remember, this is his 4th letter. Verse 8 is the threshold to the letter, and it starts with a conventional formula, we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers. We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers. It’s saying, listen up, this is important. And what follows is an explanation of what he’s been doing since he left Corinth and why, because this is what is under attack.
So at the beginning of the section, from 1:8 onwards, he’s talking about the affliction we experienced in Asia. And at the end of the section in 2:12 and 13, he’s talking about the fact that his spirit was not at rest in Troas. And he talks therefore about the way in which he has been afflicted in his gospel work, probably by opposition of various sorts, certainly about his uncertainty as to what was happening in Corinth. And so they act as a sort of bookends really to the unit. It’s like an inclusio in which he explains why he changed his travel plans and why he wrote letter 3 the letter of tears, the severe letter that we no longer have.
So let’s just zoom in a little bit now on the detail into those sections. I’ve given the 2 titles, Reasons to Praise God and Reasons to Trust Paul. Think big picture. There is this painful rupture of Paul’s relationship with the church, that he was used to plant and the believers whom he greatly loved. So in these opening paragraphs, he is seeking to re-establish and strengthen the bonds between himself and his readers.
But the focus is not on Paul, the focus is on God. Do you see that in verse 3? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and the God of all comfort.
The problem then is not the focus. There is a problem, there are lots of them that are going to be dealt with, but he starts by focusing on God. And that’s actually the substance of the greeting too. If you just look back at the first 2 verses, Paul defines himself as an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. He’s not self-appointed.
He’s writing to the church of God that is at Corinth, in Corinth, and his greeting of grace and peace will come to them from God our Father and the Lord Jesus.
So here we have a really strong emphasis upon God and a strong emphasis upon unity in God. You see how he talks about Timothy, our brother, and then he talks about the, uh, about God in verse 2 as our Father. And then he calls about, uh, he, he talks about all the saints in Achaia and about our Lord Jesus Christ. See, what he’s trying to do is emphasise it’s not just Paul out there doing his apostolic work, but he’s at one with these Christians who seem to not want to be at one with him. And the strong emphasis is on the unity in God.
So he states his apostolic authority by the will of God, that he’s been sent because God has sent him. It’s divine in origin. He states that, but he doesn’t assert it at this point. Instead, he wants to encourage them to join with him in blessing God for all that he and they have experienced of his mercies and his comfort. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort.
And I think this shows us right at the beginning of the letter that unity will be restored if there is a common dependence and submission to God, and if there is a united thanksgiving for the multiple mercies that God has given to him and to the Corinthians and to all the saints in Achaia and further afield. So unity is restored by God and the gospel being at the centre of everything. That’s always true, of course, in relationships within the church. Some of you may have read a book by Richard Baxter, who was a 17th-century Puritan pastor and theologian. A man of extraordinary ability and godliness.
In 1656, he wrote a book called The Reformed Pastor. And in that book he says, when a controversy blows up which threatens the unity of the church, the local congregation, which is of course what was happening in Corinth, when a controversy blows up, what do you do to meet it? And his answer is, you raise a larger controversy. That is the controversy of the gospel. In other words, you say to people, are you prepared to allow the gospel to suffer, the gospel to be brought into disrepute, the gospel to be less effective than it would be because your disagreements about things that are subordinate to the gospel are breaking up the unity of the church?
And I think that’s what Paul’s talking about here. It’s unity in God, unity in the gospel that brings us together under the divine authority and the comfort and mercies that flow from it. So let’s look at the 2 reasons then to praise God. Firstly, in verses 3 to 7, because of his comfort. Now that word comfort, either as a verb or a noun, occurs 10 times in this paragraph.
And it’s each time the same word. It gives us the English word we sometimes use, Paraclete. You may have heard the Holy Spirit described as the Paraclete. The Greek verb means somebody who comes alongside to help you, to assist you. It’s used, for example, of a teacher putting her hand over an infant who’s learning to write, and she says, shape the letters this way, she comes alongside and empowers the child to write the letter.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit and the comfort therefore comes from him, the Paraclete. In the Gospel of John, the Lord Jesus uses the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this way. He talks about sending another Comforter. ESV has Helper. NIV translates it Advocate.
Another paraphrase translates it counsellor. But the idea is that he comes to you, alongside you, in order to help you. That’s where the comfort comes from.
I’ve been told, though I’ve not checked it myself, that on the Bayeux Tapestry there is a picture of the English soldiers running out of the battle scattered, and it looks as though they’re, you know, they’re finished. But the next caption it’s a bit like a cartoon, isn’t it? The next caption shows the same soldiers now in serried rank marching back into the battle, and behind the last soldier in the line is a bishop wearing his mitre with a spear prodding the soldier in the rear. And the caption reads, the bishop comforts his soldiers. So that’s biblical comfort, you see.
It’s strengthening and equipping to keep going. We think of comfort in terms of a nice cup of hot chocolate on a dark night with your, you know, winter’s evening, put your feet up by the fire. Well, okay, but comfort really means with strength, and it has this idea of strengthening that is applicable here too. So Paul begins by thanking and praising God that he is the source of all comfort in all affliction. And he explains why in verse 5, for as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
Trials then for Paul are sharing in Christ’s sufferings, even to them being overflowing. But when the sufferings overflow, he says, so does the comfort. For the abundant trials lead him to experience freshly and more deeply the abundant grace and mercy, help and comfort that come through the life of Christ within us. But there is a wider purpose than just comforting Paul. Look back at verse 4, 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.
So sometimes when we face the trials and we experience the comfort of God in them, of course, as we turn to him, we then have a testimony, don’t we, about how faithful he’s been, which can be to the benefit of other people when they’re going through the afflictions. And verses 6 and 7 explain that. If we’re afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. And if we are comforted, it’s for your comfort. Which you experience when you patiently endure the 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. So as he talks to them about how God has strengthened and helped him, he’s using it as a testimony to encourage and help them. And this hope of verse 7 is unshaken, whatever the suffering. Because for every believer who turns to Christ in the midst of our suffering, God’s comfort is always experienced. We can praise God because it’s for our good, and we can praise him as we prove his faithfulness that it will be eventually too for the benefit of others as we share our experiences and encourage them to do the same.
So let me encourage you this week to do that. You know, you have a testimony of how God has kept you recently, or of something that God has especially been doing in your life, or of some challenge that you faced, or some very big difficulty that you’re even shouldering now. Let’s share it with one another. Share what we do know of God’s comfort. That’s not boasting, it’s giving glory to God.
And we need to encourage one another that way. As we share the goodness of God in our own lives. It’s not so that other people become envious, but that they become greatly blessed by knowing that that God is their God too. Praise him because of his comfort. And of course, the comfort then speaks about the deliverance.
Praise him because of his salvation. So he says in verse 8, I don’t want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. That’s probably in Ephesus. It may refer to the riot that went on there. Could be plots against his life, could be attempts to lynch him, might be serious illness.
We don’t really know what it was, but whatever it was, the intensity weighed on him so heavily that he couldn’t even see the possibility of survival. That’s extraordinary, isn’t it? In verse 8, beyond our strength, we despaired of life itself. Indeed, We felt that we had received the sentence of death. So this is not just some little minor irritation.
This is a major threat to the continuation of Paul’s life and Paul’s ministry. Now, how do you cope when trouble like that comes into your life? Well, the second half of verse 9 gives us an answer, doesn’t it? 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. How can you cope with trouble like that?
By trusting the God of the resurrection. Because you see, Paul knew that if it was death for him, if he was departing this life, he would go to be with Christ, which is resurrection indeed, eternal life in his presence and ultimately in a resurrected body. And he also knew that God could step in and deliver him, rescue him, which as verse 10 says he did. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and he’ll deliver us again if that peril reappears or some other peril because God is unchanging. And so whether it’s in the immediate present or the remote future, his experience of God stepping in to deliver him means that there is an important testimony that he has to give.
He delivered us from such a deadly peril, he will deliver us. On him we’ve set our hope that he will deliver us again. But verse 11, you also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. And that’s a fascinating and very important, helpful verse, isn’t it? That the prayers of the Christians in Corinth have a significant part to play in the deliverance of Paul from the sentence of death or from whatever other trials and afflictions he faces.
And this letter gives 2 long lists of what that involved. So what he’s saying is, as you in Corinth put your faith in God, and pray for my deliverance, you will also share in the blessing of God’s answer because you will rejoice that he’s answered your prayers, and so will the many others who’ve been praying too. And together we will multiply our blessing and praise of God because he’s been faithful in fulfilling his promises and in answering our prayers. And it reminded me as I was preparing this how much we owe to those who pray for us and how much we need to pray for one another in any kind of trouble. Some of you will know our grandson Ollie.
Ollie is 17 now. When he was 6 months old, he was diagnosed with liver cancer, and the family at St Helen’s really gathered around in a wonderful way and prayed and prayed for Ollie, that God would be gracious, that he would grant him healing from this and that he would restore him to full, a full measure of health and strength. And not only the church at St Helen’s, that was wonderful in our own church family there, but our old church in Southampton and churches elsewhere and different places in the country and indeed in the world were praying for him. One church in Scotland particularly, which I’ve had some long-term links with, they were praying for him very intensely. And I was up there just a few weeks ago again, and one of the dear ladies who had prayed so long ago for him said, and how is wee Ollie?
And wee Ollie is now 17. But thank God, you know, their prayers were answered. She still remembered. So as I told her about wee Ollie now, this happened. She was giving thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted through her prayers.
See, that’s fellowship. That is real Christian fellowship. And the answer to trouble is to pray, not to criticise, not to withdraw, not to run away. Nobody said the Christian life is a bed of roses. Of course it isn’t.
There are afflictions and troubles. We live in a fallen world. We all need help in trouble. And a praying group or church family is one of God’s greatest means of grace. And it may be in a prayer group in the city, in the ministry, early morning or later on in the day or whenever, but wherever we’ve got people that can pray with us and for us, the impact is to the glory of God and to the strengthening of his people.
So reasons to praise God, because he’s a God of comfort and he’s a God who answers prayer. A delivering God. He doesn’t always answer it the way we want to, but he always answers it according to his perfect will. Now lastly and quickly, reasons to trust Paul. He now moves from verse 12 onwards to his defence against the criticisms that he’s facing from the church in Corinth.
And there seem to have been 2 major objections at this point anyway. One was concerning the tearful, painful letter, which some people were saying showed that he didn’t really care for them because it was too severe. And the other is about his change of travel plans when he had said to them after his painful visit that he would come back to Corinth, but he didn’t do so. So this was used as evidence that really Paul is vacillating, you can’t rely on him. He’s saying yes and no in the same breath.
In terms of verse 17, he is making plans according to the flesh. So how does Paul defend himself? And more than that, how does he use this to teach us, his readers, about why he does what he does because of the God whom he serves? So I’ve put it that way in the 3 little points: his sincerity, reflects God’s grace. His ministry reflects God’s faithfulness.
His motivation reflects God’s mercy. See how he is a servant of this God. So just think for a moment about his sincerity reflecting God’s grace. Where Paul boasts, as he says in verse 12, that the testimony of our conscience is that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, That of course is not an empty boast. It’s not a sinful boast.
He has something he can rightly glory in. And it’s the clear conscience that he has before God, both in his behaviour in the world and as he says, especially towards the Corinthians. And that’s attested by that phrase simplicity and godly sincerity. Some translations render simplicity as holiness, and the reason they do that is because it’s about moral purity, about truthfulness, about integrity, about straightforwardness, that sort of simplicity. Nothing hidden, nothing sort of complex.
And with that goes godly sincerity, which means that actually it’s used about the sun shining on something so that you see it clearly and fully. You know, sometimes when the sun shines through a window, you see all the dust, don’t you? Well, there’s a bit there. You see all the dust and it shows you what’s there, which you didn’t see before, but when the light shines on it, then it is visible. And this is the idea of Paul’s life stands the test of the searching, transparent, searching light of God, and it’s transparent, it’s spotlessly pure.
Not because he is such a wonderful man. How do you get like that? How can you live a life of simplicity and godly sincerity? Verse 12, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God. By the grace of God.
So a life lived in such openness before God, That sort of life is not going to be thrown by the criticism of immature Christians. God is the judge. And friends, I think our problem is often that we are too worried about what other people may think or say of us and not enough concerned to live a life openly before the Lord that can be approved by him with nothing hidden. Nothing of which we are being ashamed. And that can only happen as the product of his grace, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God.
So when you’re up against it, the world says develop a thick skin, always look on the bright side of life, and the Word says be utterly open to God, lay it out before him, Live a life of simplicity and godly sincerity. That was how Paul lived, how Paul wrote, and his expectation is that they will fully acknowledge this to be true so that together on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ they can rejoice that he’s brought them both through. Verse 14, you did partially acknowledge us, because they did respond to his teaching as their apostle, But on the day of our Lord Jesus, we want to boast of us— the day of our Lord Jesus, we want you to boast of us and us to boast of you because of our restored fellowship under the grace of God, which enables us to live in sincerity and simplicity. Then his ministry reflects God’s faithfulness. And in verses 15 to 22, he deals with the question about his change of travel plans.
And he strongly denies that he said one thing and did another because he was vacillating or practising deception. Have a look with me at verse 18. As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. It’s a very strong statement, isn’t it? God is faithful, so my ministry, says Paul, reflects his faithfulness.
God is not yes and no concerning his promises. Look at verse 20, for all the promises of God find their yes in Christ. That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory. None of the promises has ever failed. So verse 21, it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and he’s the one who has also anointed us and put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
Now that refers to Paul, of course, as an apostle, but it also refers to every believer, doesn’t it? That God has put his seal on us, we are owned by him, marked by him, and he has given us his Spirit in our hearts now in this world as a down payment, a guarantee of all that will one day be ours. So Paul can be trusted because he’s empowered by a faithful God whose word is yes and amen. And we can trust that God too. And then lastly, his motivation reflects God’s mercy.
Verse 23 gives the real reason why he didn’t return to Corinth. I call God to witness against me, it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith. So that’s an important verse, isn’t it, for ministry? He isn’t a tyrant, he isn’t an overlord who must have his own way.
He works for their joy, and so he decides not to pay another painful visit to one Why? Well, because he doesn’t want to cause them and himself suffering. He wants to get things sorted out first. He wanted his coming, when it happened, to be a source of joy for them. See that in chapter 2, verse 3: 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. And that’s why I wrote out of anguish, that you would put things right and know through my letter, even though it was a tearful, severe letter, as verse 4 says, let you know the abundant love that I have for you. So he’s explaining, you see, all the misconceptions that they’ve had and the rumours and the gossip and the nonsense that’s been talked about him in Corinth. And he says, there’s one other reason I didn’t come. Verse 9, this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything.
Are you going to follow God’s way? Are you going to do what your apostle has exhorted you in the letter that he wrote to do, or are you going to go your own way? Now it seems that the letter, the severe letter, did bring about the change. It brought about the discipline of the immoral man. That led to his repentance.
And his repentance means that he must now be restored to the church. You see that in the following verses.
Verse 6, for such a one this punishment by the majority is enough. He was probably removed from the fellowship for a time. So that you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, Or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So don’t— you’re not to keep him out now that he’s truly repented. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.
So do that as well as doing the discipline. Verse 10, anyone whom you forgive, I forgive. What I’ve forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, that’s been for your sake in the presence of Christ. So it’s a great picture of Christian fellowship working properly. There is conviction of sin, there is repentance, there is forgiveness, there is comfort and love, there is mutual support, the one for the other, and there is this dependence then upon the merciful, forgiving grace of God.
And as I close, one last overwhelming constraint in verse 11. I also wrote the letter, he says, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his designs. So whatever’s going on inside the church in terms of the tidal to and fro and the disagreements and the problems, Paul is saying there is a greater enemy outside than can ever be within. And he will try to get inside and he will try to use his methods of division and pain in the church to set Christians against Christians.
And so destroy the work of God. And sadly, you see that happening even today in congregations, don’t you? And you find Christians who suggest that an unforgiving spirit is the only way to go forward in God’s purposes. But it isn’t, it wasn’t, and it won’t be. God is merciful.
So even though Paul was under such anguish about the Corinthians, that when he got to Troas and there was a wide-open door for the gospel, he couldn’t use it. He couldn’t use it because he was so disturbed in his spirit. But now that Titus has come with news that things are changing in Corinth, that there’s been discipline, there’s been repentance, now he can write this letter to confirm that and to lead them to prepare for his coming to them when all these things can be put right face to face and when God’s church can be renewed and strengthened.
Well, there we are, that’s the opening. I hope you have a good time in your study hour and a good time in the discussion groups and that we’re able to take this further. And let’s think about its impact on us and in the church scene today as well as learning what it meant for him. Let’s pray.
Thank you, our heavenly Father, that there is always so much to praise you for. We praise you for your comfort, that you are the God of all strengthening, that you come alongside us to help. Thank you that you are the God of deliverance, that you answer prayer, and that even if Paul had not come through that experience of near death, still you would have been the God who answered his prayer in resurrection life in your eternal kingdom. And we thank you, Heavenly Father, that you are a God of all grace. Help us to reflect that in our sincerity.
Of all faithfulness. Help us to believe and live on your promises. And your faithfulness towards us. And please motivate us by your mercy that we may be gracious, forgiving, and loving people, and that we may see your Church strengthened in every way to the glory of your name. Amen.
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