2 Corinthians 3

2 Corinthians 3
Theme: How we invest ourselves in one another’s lives is how we commend ourselves to others

How do we put our best foot forward when we come into new social situations or start a new job, or join a new club or church? If nobody knows us, how can they trust us? How can they like us? How can they speak well of us? Trusting relationships can take years to build and if we are ambitious or acutely aware of the brevity of life or the rapid way in which the world around us is in constant flux and social situations are constantly changing, we don’t have time to be constantly building that kind of trust, (Because we want instant relationships now!) especially with the possibility that we may and often do fail and relationships break down.

So how do we commend ourselves to others? Can we just present people with our résumés? Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:1-3,

3 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some others, epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? 2You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.

An Epistle of commendation is basically a reference letter. In the early church it usually came in the form of a letter from a church authority in one city to the church in another city commending the character and authority of the carrier of the letter.

There’s an example of this kind of letter in Acts 15, when James writes the letter concerning Jewish practices in Gentile churches. In Acts 15:27, James writes, “therefore we have sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will also report the same things by word of mouth.” And so Judas and Silas took the letter to Antioch of Syria where, it says in Acts 15:30,
30 …they gathered the multitude together, they delivered the letter. 31 When they had read it, they rejoiced over its encouragement. 32 Now Judas and Silas, themselves being prophets also, exhorted and strengthened the brethren with many words. 33 And after they had stayed there for a time, they were sent back with greetings from the brethren to the apostles.

Now remember, Paul is writing this Epistle because certain men (whom he refers to as Super Apostles and describes as being servants of Satan disguised as angels of light) have come into the church in Corinth (which Paul started) and they had established themselves as leaders even higher in authority than Paul. Apparently they even had letters of commendation which they either forged, or they were written by the same enemies of Paul who had been causing trouble in Antioch as well as Galatia (the Judaisers).

Now my first thought when I read this was, “Paul, if you are claiming not to need a letter of commendation, then why are you writing 2 Corinthians anyway?” Isn’t hypocritical to write a letter of commendation claiming not to need a letter of commendation?

On the surface it may appear that way, but let me clear Paul of the charge of hypocrisy with two points:

1. First, 2 Corinthians is not a letter of commendation; it’s an apologetic letter (a letter of defense) written in the style of rhetoric common to judicial writing. Like a legal argument written by the lawyer on behalf of an accused client. And so Paul uses many legal terms and styles in this letter and it is written as if before a judge.

Obviously Paul would not need to be writing an apologetic letter if it weren’t the case that he was being accused of many things in his absence (which is usually the time when leaders are accused of things).

For instance, he was accused of being indecisive about his travel plans, in the ministry for the money, a bad preacher, not a true apostle and other things.

It seems clear from the context that Paul is answering a charge concerning his authority. Perhaps his enemies in Corinth were casting doubt and creating suspicion about Paul because, unlike the false apostles who had all their documents in place, Paul did not have a letter of commendation from any ecclesiastical authority. False brethren are good following the man made laws- we call them Pharisees- it’s the Law of the spirit (to love God with all your mind, soul and strength and to love your neighbour as yourself) that they have trouble following.

2. So Paul is not a hypocrite for writing a letter claiming not to need a letter of commendation because 2 Corinthians is not a letter of commendation, but an apologetic letter.
The second reason that Paul is not a hypocrite is that a letter of commendation is written by another greater authority (not a lesser) than the one being commended.

If anything, the fact that the Super Apostles needed letters of commendation is an indictment against them and not a check in their favour because it indicates their inferiority to Paul who did not need a letter of commendation because there was no one who had greater authority than Paul to write him a letter of commendation. The best that he could hope for (from a worldly perspective) would be a letter of commendation from himself. But he refused to do that because all he had to boast in was his weakness and boasting in trials and afflictions does not make a good letter of commendation.

Instead (in the style of an apologetic letter rather than a letter of commendation) Paul is going to bring in two witnesses before he turns to the objective evidence- i.e. the indisputability of his afflictions for the cause of the gospel. The first witness is the Corinthians themselves, he says, “You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men.” And really, this is an reference to the fact that God is the author of this letter of commendation. And if you have an epistle of commendation written by God then who needs one from any man.

If I were to come up with a man like that in our day in age and I think of someone like Billy Graham- the millions who have come to Christ through his preaching are his letter of commendation. But you do not need to be an international superstar evangelist to be someone who has this kind of letter of commendation- you might be a Sunday School teacher, a deacon, a janitor, or even a preacher.

God trumps all worldly regulations and codes. (We must never force God to submit to man made rules!). He writes his own letters in Christ Jesus according to the plans he made before the foundations of the earth.

The other witness is Moses himself. Paul is setting us up for the direction he is going to take this letter by comparing the surpassing glory of his ministry of the Spirit to the fading glory of Moses’ ministry by comparing his letters of commendation written on the hearts of the Corinthians to the letters of commendation which were, like the Law, letters of stone- letters that enslave, letters that kill. Paul is going to unpack that in the rest of this chapter and we will look at that over the next few weeks.

Application:
But this morning let’s get back to my original question, “How do we put our best foot forward when we come into new social situations or start a new job, or join a new club or church?”

I’m reading a book called Three Cups of Tea. It’s about Greg Mortinson, a man who grew up in Tanzania with his parents who were Lutheran missionaries in 1960’s. They built a hospital there not far from the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro- the Mt Kilimanjaro Medical Center. As a boy he had many opportunities to scale the mountain and so as he grew older mountain climbing became a passion and a way of life for him. In fact, he worked as a nurse to support his climbing addiction.
It was a passion that in 1992 brought him to the slopes of K2 of Mount Karakorum, the second highest mountain and perhaps the most dangerous climb in the world. It was during an attempt to return to his base camp that Mortenson became separated from the rest of his party and after spending a bitterly cold night on the side of the mountain with not much more than a thin blanket to protect him from wind and cold, Mortenson stumbled on a little known Balti village called Korphe in Northern Pakistan- Taliban country.

The people there nursed him to health and while he was recovering Mortenson noticed the children studying in a ditch because they did not have a school. Mortenson vowed to help build a school for the children of Balti. He returned to California and for close to a year he lived in his car while working night shift at a local hospital and raising funds during the day. Eventually, after three years and many set backs, Mortenson returned to Korphe. Not only did that infidel build them a school, he also built them a bridge spanning a river that had cut them off from the rest of civilization for 600 years.

Mortenson has faced poverty, starvation, loneliness, loss of friends, the Taliban, a Fatwa, threats against the students and families as well as teachers…. But his ministry has grown into the Central Asian Institute, a foundation that raises money to educate the girls of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Since then, over the period of the past 10 years he has built 78 schools to educate 38 000 mostly Muslim girls. Girls who once could only hope of being a little better than a Yak to their husbands are now setting their sites on becoming Doctors and Lawyers and Politicians.
Mortenson’s philosophy is based on the African proverb, “If you educate a boy, you educate and individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a community.” He believes that if the women are educated, less of their sons will be inclined to strap bombs onto their bodies and blow up innocent people in the markets. Mortenson could have had a comfortable prosperous life back home in the States, but he decided that living for himself was not an option- he’s invested his entire life into the people who have declared war on his nation. The Balti have a saying which is the title of his book: three cups of tea- when you have the first cup you are an honored guest, when you drink the second cup you are a friend and when you have a third cup, you are family. 38 000 Pakistani and Afghani children consider this infidel from America their family. How’s that for a letter of commendation?

What kind of letter of commendation are you writing in the hearts of your relationships are work, at school, at home, at church…?

I find that most people are too quick to right off relationships; they are unwilling to put the effort into building true lifelong friendships. Instead, most friendships are a pretense, as long as you fit into my plans, you are my friend, but as soon as you fail to fit into my plans, you are an obstacle to be removed. The Bible says, Faithful are the wounds of a friend. But I see most Christians turn their backs on people they call friends at the first sign of disagreement or conflict- that’s not friendship, it’s a pretense… it’s selfishness.

Last Friday during our prayer time I read Galatians 6 and it just about floored because of how relevant it was to what I had been preparing for this Sunday’s message,
Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. 2Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. 5 For each one shall bear his own load.

It as verse 2 that really stuck out for me and I know that bearing one another’s burdens has to do with accountability, but I also see another implication. First of all it does not say carry one another’s load, because verse 5 says each shall bear his own load. It says bear one another’s burdens. This is what it implies- PUT UP WITH EACH OTHER!

As Christians we are commanded to put up with each other. Not many wise, not many noble, God chooses the foolish things of this world and sticks us together in the church so that we can learn to deal with the worst examples of humanity and as long we refuse to forgive and persevere in relationships with broken sinful selfish people God will continue to bring them into our lives and they will follow us from one job to the next, from one school to the next, from one marriage to the next, from one club to the next, from one church to the next…

This week I have been working on relationship covenants and Thursday the elders and I signed a covenant of relationship that I hope will help us to fall out the pattern that has beset the Christian church that is so fractured and shattered by the inability of Christians to bear one another’s burdens.

I want you to keep us accountable to the things we agreed to do. Here they are:

As brothers and sisters in Christ, we covenant together for the purpose of co-labouring in the work of the gospel. We recognize that as fallen humans, we are prone to sin and misunderstandings that lead to quarrels and conflict. Therefore, in order to strive to maintain our unity in the spirit, we hereby agree to the following terms of relationship:

• We will always speak well of one another to one another and to others;
• we will not keep each other’s past failures alive by retelling them to others nor will we use one another’s past failures as a forewarning of future failure in other endeavors;
• We will give one another room to grow through risk taking and learning from mistakes;
• we will strive to direct one another towards Christlikeness and godly faithfulness and never become jealous of one another’s success;
• We will only use the internet and other electronic communication for transmitting information and mutual encouragement not for rebuking or complaints;
• we will not forward emails to third parties without permission from the author;
• we will assume the best intentions of one another when the persons motives are not clear or amiguous or negative motives could be assumed and seek to clarify with one another before speaking to any third party;
• we will pray regularly for one another;
• if we have a disagreement, or need for rebuke, we will first talk to each other and to no other person;
• We will not covet one another’s possessions or spouses;
• we will not entertain accusations against one another from other parties, but will direct those persons to speak directly to the one with whom they are having the difficulty (according to Matthew 18:15);
• We will recognize that as fallen men and women, we are all on a journey towards full understanding and that not everyone is at the same level of maturity and so we will be patient with one another when we have disagreements over minor or secondary issues of doctrine that are allowable within orthodox Christianity and not use every disagreement as an opportunity for controversy and conflict;
• when we have been sinned against by the other, and that person genuinely asks for our forgiveness, we will freely forgive them and put the matter behind us;
• we will not participate in any coalition of angry persons or factions in the church but will always seek Gods judgment in matters even if it means being wronged personally.
• We will ensure that all disagreements will follow the Biblical example of dealing with issues (knowing that issues will rise at times among the brethren and that it is a sign of health to have disagreements among the Body).