There’s a bit of a controversy surrounding a new Romeo and Juliet movie that will be coming out sometime in the future. It’s not a film or a controversy that I want to particularly dwell on. Because I don’t know about you, but in high school I had to read and then watch Romeo and Juliet. As a teenage boy, I didn’t really care for it. As a husband, I still don’t care for romantic movies in general and I try to avoid them like the plague. However, I do like a few romantic comedies. “Fever Pitch” with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, is a decent one, because the focus is actually the fanaticism of Fallon’s character with the Boston Red Sox, and I feel like the romantic story is secondary to it.
Recently, I’ve watched several movies where the love aspect comes to the story at different angles. One is an animated movie entitled, “Onward," which is about two brothers going on an adventure to reunite with their lost dad, and they only have twenty four hours to do it. Another one is a story about a husband who looses his wife to cancer, and the last loving act she does for him is buying him a dog. That dog is then brutally killed by some Russians, who steal the man’s car. In response, he goes on a revenge spree for four movies. It’s called John Wick, and it’s a modern day love story that I can get behind.
But seriously, love stories are ingrained in us, from movies, to books, to songs, and poems. The love of husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and family, are intricate to who we are as people. It’s when love is absent, that relationships and societies fall apart.
And it’s this idea of love that sets the foundation for our summer series, where this summer, we’re going to tackle the New Testament letter of 2nd Corinthians, and possibly a couple other smaller Pauline letters. So if you have your Bibles, we’ll be in 2nd Corinthians starting in chapter 1, verse 1. But as we begin to talk about 2nd Corinthians, we need to know a little background information, so that we can put what we’re studying into its proper context.
Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, a fanatic who once fought against Jesus’ people, came to his Lord and Savior on the Damascus road. He then went on to establish the Corinthian Church on his second missionary journey, and spent about eighteen months teaching and preaching in the church. He left the newly established congregation, and eventually wrote them a letter that has been lost to time.
Following this letter, Paul received word that there were problems going on in the church, and was asked to address those problems. So Paul wrote his second letter, which we refer to as, 1st Corinthians. This letter focused on two major problems. The first of these major problems was the interpersonal relationships, which included following a certain teacher, like Apollos or Paul, and a situation where the richer Christians were not waiting for the poorer Christians to arrive so that all may share in the Agape meal or Lord’s Supper together. The second major problem was how the church was conducting its corporate worship time. There apparently was chaos happening, with people speaking out of turn with tongues and prophecy, and there not being any testing of the prophetic word.
To deal with these two problems, Paul calls the church to unity through recognition of the uniqueness in the body of Christ, and it’s need to work with each other. This is done through love and the centrality of the resurrection. While other things, such as what food to eat, are matters of conscious and should be treated with extending grace to each other.
After that letter was sent off, Paul eventually stopped off in Corinth on his way to Macedonia. But the visit wasn’t good. There Paul was confronted by a member of the church that was later found out to be influenced by outside teachers trying to change the teachings of the Gospel. Paul was severely hurt by this confrontation, because the Corinthian Church didn’t stand up for him.
Leaving Corinth, Paul wrote another letter that he he mentions in 2nd Corinthians chapters 2 and 7. This letter Paul states he wrote, “out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears….(v.4)” This letter, like the very first letter to the Corinthian Church, is lost. It was this sorrowful letter, that Paul sent with Titus back to the Corinthian Church. It troubled Paul so much that he actually couldn’t wait at the designated spot that he was to meet his friend Titus on his return trip. Instead, Paul met Titus earlier and learned that the Corinthians had in fact took his sorrowful letter to heart and repented of their ways. For Paul, this was a result to celebrate.
The letter that we now turn our attention to and that is called, 2nd Corinthians, is a fourth response to the situation, and one that is both joyous at the Corinthians’ change of heart, and instructive in rejecting the teachers that are trying to pull the Church away from Christ.
It’s with that background that we pick up the letter of 2nd Corinthians in chapter 1, starting in verse 1, where we read the greeting,
1 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.
This opening, put side-by-side with 1st Corinthians, show that they are almost identical in their greeting. In both, Paul introduces himself as an apostle of Jesus by the will of God. This sets up everything that follows. First, Paul is an apostle and so has a certain authority that comes with such a calling. Second, this calling isn’t from a group of people, but from God himself. This is important, because it’s his apostleship and his authority that is at the center of the false teachers’ claims to reject the Gospel that Paul preached.
Following this, Paul mentions other workers in the faith. In this particular opening he mentions Timothy, someone, who himself will receive a couple of letters from Paul later in life.
What’s interesting is how Paul speaks about the Corinthians as a Church. In 1st Corinthians, Paul addresses them as those who are sanctified by Jesus and that they are saints with the larger Church and with Paul as well. This language sets up Paul’s first recorded letter about calling the Corinthians to a local unity, which is then shared with the greater Church.
The way in which Paul addresses the Corinthian Church in the second recorded letter, is a little different. The unity is being restored, so Paul extends his greeting beyond the local body of Corinth to the region. It would be like us speaking to Phoenix and including all of Arizona.
Paul ends his greeting identically, with extending grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
From here on out, the letter is basically divided into three sections. First, Paul desires to comfort the Church and not be harsh with it. Second, Paul’s desire that the Corinthians understand his heartfelt love for the Church. And finally, Paul’s need to address the false apostles that are trying to pull the Corinthians away from the true Gospel.
Because of the up and down emotions that Paul communicates throughout this letter, some scholars believe that this was actually a series of smaller letters collected together and sent out. As I personally read through it, it seems to me that Paul is writing in the most emotionally open that he has ever been, which comes out of the deep hurt and love he has for the Corinthians. Most of Paul’s letters are theological in nature, and so there’s a sense of detachment when he’s dealing with these more intellectual ideas, even though he adds his passion into it.
In this letter however, he is dealing with an emotional issue that has been grinding on his life for a while. It makes passages of weakness later on in the letter more impactful, when we realize how open Paul is being with the Corinthian Church.
And so 2nd Corinthians gives us insight into who Paul is as a lover of God’s people, something he has tried to get the Corinthians to realize in the past that they need to be. This letter is one that will lay bear what it means for a person to actually look at God’s people, look at his Church, and desire that they be unified under the grace and peace of The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
For us today, 2nd Corinthians, isn’t going to break theological grounds. We’re not going to see deep thoughts of how one views God as we would in Romans, or how we understand Jesus as divine in Philippians, or how we as Christians are to interact in personal relationships as we would see in Ephesians, or even how we as the Church are to conduct our worship as we would see in 1st Corinthians. No, what we will see in this letter, is how deeply we are to love God’s Church, for the sake of each other in comforting it, and the hurt that comes upon us when we see the Church walking away from its first love.
Today, I want to challenge you to look at your past church experiences this week. How have you been comforted by the Church? How have you been hurt? We probably all have stories. I didn’t like that the pastor said that. I was saw people gossip and spread rumors. I needed help, but the church turned it’s back. Or I was in a bad place and the church helped me. We all have these types of stories.
So as we prepare to read through and learn the big picture of 2nd Corinthians, we must prepare our hearts for the love that God wants us to have for each other and his Church. As Paul mentions in Ephesians 5, “…Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…(v.” Let us be those who are willing to do the same.
Let us be those who love God’s Church so much as he does, that we too would write such a letter as 2nd Corinthians, with our hearts laid bare for the people of God we care about so much. Amen
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