2 Corinthians 2:2-8 part 4

2 Corinthians 2:7-8

I have been away from preaching for so long, I wonder how many can remember the topic that I left off on? Actually, we were in the middle of this topic and I promised I would preach into the New Year if the text would continue to grant the content (which it has). So here we are, two Sundays before the end of the year, and once again, to refresh our memory of the context, I will read 2 Corinthians 2:1-11.

So far, I’ve preached 3 messages on this text, and since our memories can be so short, particularly when it comes to the things of God, let me review:

First of all, while the topic of forgiveness is always relevant to the human condition, the current financial crisis makes it all the more imperative for us as we near the end of 2008.

Why is the current financial crisis so pertinent to the subject of forgiveness?

It is pertinent because the current crisis is all about debt and an inability to extend forgiveness. We as a nation and a society have borrowed and taken and indebted ourselves in order to accumulate things and pleasures and luxuries to the point that banks have run out of money to lend and borrowers have run out of credit to borrow and the atmosphere of indebtedness and inability to repay debt has resulted in the increased use of words like crisis, recession, bankruptcy, foreclosure and even depression.

But that’s just money. Can you imagine the immensity of the moral and spiritual indebtedness of our society? How can we quantify all of the unspoken “I’m sorries” and the withheld “I forgive you’s”-- not just out there, in the world, but in here (the church) and in here (my own heart)?

Husbands and wives, with years of pent up unforgiveness; Fathers and sons who haven’t spoken for years; siblings who would cross the street to avoid one another; next door neighbours, coworkers, church families….

Can you put those kinds of liabilities on a balance sheet?

I am sure that if economists worried about things like that we would have some index, or some stock ticker to tell us the national forgiveness deficit.

But it’s probably a good thing we don’t quantify the forgiveness deficit or place the value on it the way that God does, because, if we did, then words like depression and crisis would seem trivial in comparison to our moral situation.

Jesus revealed how self deceptive we can be when he told the parable of the steward who pleaded with his master to forgive him a huge debt and then turned around and threw another man in prison for failing to forgive a small debt.

But isn’t that what we do after we walk the sawdust trail and kneel at the altar before the king of the universe and repent and take hold of his grace and forgiveness for the infinite debt we owe him and then turn around and hate someone because they stole our spot in line, or got the promotion that we deserved, or spoke badly of us….?

As I spent time in this text I discovered that Paul was asking the church to do 3 things when he asked them to forgive the man who had wronged him:

First, he told them to turn from the punishment they were inflicting on him (the word occurs in the Greek and is only translated that way in the ESV). The application is that forgiveness is a process (not an event) and it often begins with recognizing that the grievances we hold against others are often sins that we cling to in our own hearts… the thing that I hate most about others are the things that I hate most about myself. The sliver in my brother’s eye is a log in my own eye. So I must first remove the log from my eye… I need to deal with my sin first.

It also means repenting or turning from my justifiable right to get revenge… to inflict punishment- so Paul says, you should rather turn (from your withholding of forgiveness) and forgive the man.

In my last message I really laboured on the word forgive. You remember that I highlighted the fact that Paul used an obscure Greek word that is translated forgive here and it is a Word that is etymologically connected with a word for which the Corinthians were very familiar, and one for which, because of its explosive nature, Paul would not use lightly. The word is Charizasthai which is related the word Charisma- implying that the kind of forgiveness Paul is calling for is a God given grace kind of forgiveness… a spiritual gift.
And this is so significant and empowering for us because we Christians often legitimately labour under an intense sense of guilt for not being able to forgive people who have committed appalling and heinous crimes against us and the people we love.

And the Christian life can become one of defeat instead of victory because we walk around with this shame of having been unable to forgive in spite what the Bible says about unforgiveness. We can’t forgive because we try to do it in our own power, but Paul is saying do it in the power of God! Which points us back the prerequisite of repentance, because God rarely works powerfully in our lives when we walk in Unrepentance; and it points us forward to the God empowering way in which we forgive, which is to comfort and restore love to one who wronged us.

This brings me to the question, “Can you comfort and restore love to someone who has wronged you if God is not working powerfully in your heart?”

Maybe that question is too theoretical, let me appeal to your subjectivity, “Have you ever been able to experience the liberating joy of being able to forgive someone in such a way as to be able to comfort and restore love to them without feeling God working in you to do it?”

Let me ask it again, “Have you ever been able to experience the liberating joy of being able to forgive someone in such a way as to be able to comfort and restore love to them without feeling God working in you to do it?”

With that, I want to bring something new into the mix this week and look at the first thing Paul calls us to do after repenting and then trusting the empowering work of the Holy Spirit to give us the ability to forgive even the worst monsters: Paul says, “Comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” Granted, all this guy did was maybe slander Paul and he willingly submitted to Church discipline. But do Paul’s words also imply that it is possible that the worst rapist, the worst child molester, the most evil genocidal dictator could ever be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow? Yes. Should we care? According to the Bible, Yes!

Remember Jesus as he hung on the cross, covered in the spit of the crowd who now stood before him pouring out their abuses and profanity? Why, if it were me I would have prayed, “father damn them for they know what they are doing!” And Hollywood could have made a movie about it and the audience would have sympathized with me and felt the same sense of condemnation- but Jesus didn’t do that… he prayed, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And Paul is following in his Saviour’s footsteps.

Why? Because God cares… and from his point of view there’s not much distance between me and Adolph Hitler, just a few degrees of opportunity.

Look, Paul’s the one who was wronged here- he’s the one who was possibly slandered, or wrongfully publicly confronted, by a member of the Corinthian church- by a guy who did not have his facts right. But Paul is more concerned about this man being overwhelmed by too much grief than he is about his own right to revenge.

“Well Paul was only slandered, he didn’t have to endure what I’ve been through” you might think. That’s true! You’re right- it is more difficult to forgive the murderer, the soldier, the militant extremist, the molester, the wife beater… than it is to forgive a slanderer (sticks and stones…)- but you’re not forgiving in your power. It’s a Spirit empowered ability to forgive the monster and comfort him.

Comfort is actually a key theme in this letter. Remember the first 7 verses of the letter? Let’s read it over again (read 1:3-7).

Here’s what Paul is saying there,
· God is the Father and therefore the source (generator) of comfort;
· He comforts us in tribulations;
· So that we can comfort others with the same God originated comfort!
· The more we suffer, the more God comforts us;
· And if we are suffering, it is so that the comfort that comes to us from God may be extended to you!
· Since you share in the suffering that all Christian experience, you share in the comfort too!
· Comfort each other!

And Paul isn’t just spinning out nice sounding religious talk; he moves right into a very personal example in the way he shows concern for this man who has wronged him by advising the Corinthians to comfort the man because Paul has also been comforted.

Where did Paul get that comfort? Of course it is from God, but look at 7:13: “Therefore we have been comforted in your comfort.” So in other words, the comfort that Paul is offering to the Corinthians, is the comfort that he received from them when he heard of their remorse for the way that they had treated him and so Paul extends that comfort to the very man who had caused him the most grief.

Let’s make this relevant to Christmas since this is the Christmas season. We all hear the cliché “give the gift that keeps on giving”- well, whether at Christmas, or any time in the year, the gift that truly keeps on giving is comfort. Comfort the one who has wronged you and you know what, because that comfort has its origins in God, it is an infinite comfort and it
will come back to you in ways that ………………


Benediction:

Finally, brethren, farewell. Become complete. Be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you (13:11).