Please be seated. Turn in your copy of the scripture to 2 Corinthians 2. Today we’ll be looking at verses 5 through 11. Remember that 2 Corinthians is one of many of Paul’s letters to this church that finds itself in great trouble. We have two letters in the Bible there. We believe two letters that we do not have. Second Corinthians is a very pastoral letter. They all are, but it’s really Paul wearing his heart on his sleeve. Some of you will remember last week during the stormy weather, we considered Paul’s defense of his change of his travel plans.
He was going to come to Corinth and be with them on his way to Macedonia. And then he was going to go to Macedonia, swing back through Corinth and stay a while. But he chose to only come through on his way back because He says, if I come to you on the way there, it’s not going to be pretty. I’m going to come with a stick. He was so upset with the Corinthians over the, the many, many problems they were having. And so he chose not to come. And some said, see, he’s a wishy washy. He’s a, he’s a bad apostle. He didn’t come. And so he spoke of the amen of Jesus Christ. Man gives his word, but sometimes can’t keep it. But Jesus always. keeps his word.
And so to continue the thought of the amen, uh, we want to think today about, uh, in the church when there’s church discipline and the church declares a person to be forgiven that Jesus has a amended and therefore we should as well. And so we keep that in mind as we read verses five through 11. And before we read, let’s ask for God’s blessing. Lord, your word is a lamp to our feet. It’s a light to our path. Show us the way we ought to live before you and before our fellow man, and give us your help, we pray. In Christ’s name, amen.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2, beginning at verse 5, if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it to me, but in some measure, not to put it too severely, to all of you. 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. This is why I wrote, that I might test you and that I might know whether you are obedient in everything. 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 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan for we are not ignorant of his designs.
Think of the great commission that we read of in the end of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus is leaving earth. His earthly ministry is over. He’s headed back to heaven where he will sit at the right hand of God, and he will be the high priest who ever lives above to make intercession for his people. He’ll continue that high priestly prayer, praying for us and cheering us on in the Christian walk. But before he leaves, he raises his arms and like our weekly end of service benediction, he raises his hands, blesses his disciples and those who had been with him since the days of his resurrection.
And he says to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And so now he sends the church, go into the world, make disciples, baptize and teach everything that I have commanded you. And now the apostle Paul, an apostle strangely added by the resurrected Lord Jesus, who met him on the Damascus Road, this Apostle Paul, who was called to suffer for the sake of the gospel going to the Gentiles, is now on his third missionary journey. The church at Antioch has sent him into the world. They’ve told him to go. And while he goes to make disciples, to baptize and to teach. And that’s exactly what we read of in the life of the apostle in the Acts of the Apostles. He is sent by Antioch and everywhere he goes, he preaches, he evangelizes, he baptizes, and he teaches the church to be Christians and to be the church in the world.
And so remember the practice of the Apostle Paul, he would first go to the synagogue, he would go first to the Jew, and then if they listened, he would minister there. But if they did not, if they rejected him, he would go to the Gentiles. And so his job was to go and establish churches, preach the gospel. He himself would stay a while. Often he would leave men like Titus or Timothy behind to work in the church.
But the work of the church, the work of missions is most basically a word ministry. It is preaching. It is evangelizing. It is teaching. And it is has a twofold goal, convince and convert sinners to salvation and then comfort and build up saints in the most holy faith.
And so you read words in Paul’s letters that go like this. I came to establish you. I came to build you up. I came to put your feet on the ground and make you firm in the faith. Not only did he come to establish people in the faith, but he came also to establish the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was his apostolic teaching, which would take the newborn, newly birthed churches and put them into order. And he would raise up ministers and elders and deacons and work in the people to give them gifts and graces to serve the church.
Now, you know that in the life of any institution, in the life of any nation, in the life of any thing that is established, it will go through a formation, a deformation, and then it will need a reformation. And it was very soon after the formation of the church at Corinth that it went through deformation, both in the lives of individuals, but also in the life life of the whole church. And Second Corinthians is addressing some of those deformities, if we can call them that. He is addressing some of the immorality, some of the out of orderness that is taking place and plaguing the life of the Corinthians. Now, many of us understand church life because we have grown up in it. Many of us understand church life because it’s been a part of our life’s culture. But imagine a group of pagans in a very pagan part of the Roman empire like Corinth.
They’ve never heard of Jesus. They’ve never heard of the church. They’ve never heard of God’s call on Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. They’ve never heard of Jesus and his covenant love and blessings. And so church life would have been very strange to these Corinthians.
We assume it because many of us know it. But it would have been the absolute most strangest thing. Now, when Paul ministered to the Jews, they had the foundation of the synagogue. And when he ministered to the Gentiles, perhaps they had some idea of order from the Roman or the Greek court system or their Roberts rules of order. That’s not Roman, but you get the idea. They knew something about organization and public speaking and all the rest.
The point is that for the Corinthian church, The gospel brought them Jesus, but there was a lot of baggage for new life in Jesus to clean up. There was lots in their lives that they needed to shed in order to follow Jesus and to walk with him as disciples. Now, you understand that when the gospel is proclaimed and people understand they are sinners in need of Jesus. And they understand that Jesus lived and obeyed and suffered and died in their place.
And if they come to him through faith, that he cleanses their sin. He washes it. Holy spirit comes in their lives and by the word, by the spirit, they will grow in grace. And it’s two steps forward, one back, it’s three steps forward, five steps back. The Christian life is a big struggle. And why is that? It’s because when we come to faith in Jesus, yes, our sins are pardoned.
And our sin nature is subdued, but each of us has within us what Paul calls in Romans seven and other places, the flesh, we speak of it as remnant sin. Robert Murray Machain, the Scottish preacher who was known to be a diligent minister, a godly man, wrote in his autobiography, the seed of every sin is in my heart. And as much as we hear of how godly a fellow this minister was in our church history, in our Scottish Presbyterian pedigree, as much as we revere him and he did many great things, he spends much of his biography speaking of the struggle he had with the flesh.
And so Paul understands that in the life of the Corinthian church, they’ve got lots of baggage to shed. They’ve got lots of unspiritual things that need cleaning up. And then once they become a Christian and these things are at work in their lives, the formation can quickly slip into deformation. And so his ministry among them is one of reformation. It’s what we think of when Paul writes to Timothy, his last letter of his life.
And he says all scripture is breathed out by God and it’s useful for teaching. It’s useful for reproof. It’s useful for correction. It’s useful for training and equipping the man of God so that he can do every good work. What Paul understands and what we believe understand is that the Bible shines a light into our lives. Hebrews 12 says God’s word is sharper. than a two-edged sword. It cuts to our joints and marrows. It shows us what we are and what we need to fix by the word and by the spirit. And so Paul, when he writes to Timothy, the writer of Hebrews, understands the word is the divine surgeon. It will do work.
And so Paul writes to the Corinthians, you need to get some things straight. And one of the things that he has written of is this particular believer who needs to be reclaimed. Now, the subject of church discipline rarely comes up these days, but we understand it from the point of, say, Matthew chapter 16.
Jesus is asking the disciples. He’s asking them, who do people out in the crowd say that I am? Some say Elijah, some say Moses, some say whoever. And then Jesus turns and says, but who do you? say that I am. And Peter says, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And God in Christ tells Peter, flesh and blood has not revealed this self revealed this truth to you.
It’s been revealed by the Holy spirit. And then that’s where we get the Catholic church, right? It’s a joke. Uh, you are Peter and we’ve got a few Catholics in here recovering. Uh, you are Peter and on this rock, I will build the church. And then it goes on to speak of what do we do in the church when someone sins against us? Well, we go to our brother, we tell him. If it works out, we’ve reclaimed. If it doesn’t work out, take another. And then ultimately we take it to the church. In our system of church government, we have a book of discipline that tells us how to take care of these things.
And some form of that must have been given to the Corinthians over Paul’s ministry. because there is a person in the church that has caused him great pain. And you’ll notice in our passage, he doesn’t mention the name. You get to the end of one of Paul’s letters and he’s throwing out names left and right. Say hey to this person, say hello to that person. This person’s been a great help. But here he is graciously vague and lots of ink has been spilled on who the person is that has caused Paul great pain. And the speculation is twofold.
It’s one, one is it could be the guy who was in first Corinthians, the fellow that was living with his father’s wife, the incestuous relationship. There’s that, that theory. And then there’s this other theory that there was a group of Judaizers who had shown up from Jerusalem and they had shown up to tell the Corinthians that Paul is just wrong. Paul is bad. And the theory is that, okay, this one fellow stood up and he basically said to the congregation, Paul really bad, don’t listen to him, you know, bad Paul, you know, follow me instead. And then there’s some that say it’s both. This guy in this bad relationship with his father’s wife was also the guy who stood up and said, Paul bad, leave him, you know, Don’t forget about him. So we just don’t know who. But here’s the point. Here’s the point of this passage from Second Corinthians.
This guy has caused Paul personally great pain. This guy has personally offended Paul. He did it publicly in the midst of the congregation. But Paul says, it’s not really me who has been hurt. It’s you, the church. And if you jump down to the end of our passage where he says, we shouldn’t be outwitted by Satan and we should not be ignorant of our designs, you know, Paul could say, yes, this person, you know, said I’m an income poop and all this stuff and he’s mean and I don’t like him and whatever. But Paul understands that it has caused the church. And remember Paul’s away from the church at Ephesus ministering and having another hard time over there. But Paul is saying, he’s caused me great pain, but it’s really caused you all great pain because it’s given the devil a foothold. It has opened the church up to the ways and the wiles of Satan. And so while this man has caused me great pain, Paul says, he has caused you all much more pain.
Remember in the Old Testament, when Israel left Egypt, they went through the wilderness, went through the desert, The second generation raised up in the desert is going to go in the promised land. The 12 tribes are going to take their inheritance. They’re going to fight for their allotment of land. And remember, the very first battle is with Jericho. You know, they march around for six days, march around on the day seven, seven times. They whoop and holler, walls fall down. And there had been a rule, kill everything and burn everything, destroy everything.
The only thing they were supposed to take was the stuff that would have served in the tabernacle. Well, remember Aachen. saw and coveted like a robe. It’s like a fancy bathrobe. And he saw and coveted some precious metals. And so comes back to the camp, buries it in the, and puts his rug over it in his tent.
They go out the next day or so into battle against AI and they get whooped by a little bitty country. Remember they said, Oh, don’t take everybody. This will be an easy one. Well, they come back and like 36 guys are dead, lost the battle. What’s going on?
And Moses, is confronted by God, somebody has done something wicked, call the people to account. And so you begin to get the weightiness of Aiken’s sin and how it affected the whole congregation. And remember, they called Aiken out by name, they called out the tribes, tribe by tribe, and then it came Aiken’s turn. Aiken, tell us what you’ve done.
He says, I coveted, I stole, it’s under my rug, go get it. Remember they took Achan and his family and everything outside the camp and they destroyed them and the coveted items that had brought a loss of battle and kept God’s presence from going out.
And so you have this weightiness of something like Achan in the mind of Paul when he says, yeah, this guy caused me pain, but I’m over here in Ephesus. I got other pain over here. You guys have had a Paul or a cloud hanging over your church because of this guy’s sin. And apparently they had taken his advice. They had called him out as a church and said, you can’t do this. It’s wrong. It’s not biblical. All the rest.
Sometime Paul made a visit to Corinth and he refers to it as the painful visit. He also read another letter, which is referred to as the painful letter. And apparently he was going head to head, toe to toe with this guy, not going well. That’s why he doesn’t go to Corinth on the first leg of his missionary journey. Number three, he sends Titus instead.
And maybe Titus has come back to him and said, all is well. Now the gospel has worked. The work of the congregation and discipline has run its course. It has done its work. Um, This man is remorseful. This man is repentant. This man is showing the fruit of obedience. But Paul, Titus likely tells him there’s some people that they want to hold it over his head.
And so Paul is writing and saying, if I have forgiven him, you should. And whoever you forgive, I forgive. Remember what Jesus told Peter, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. Whatever is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven and vice versa. If Jesus does it, we got to amen it. If you do it and it’s biblical, then God amens it.
And so he says to the congregation, forgive this man, comfort him and reaffirm your love lest he drown in excessive sorrow. And so he says, comfort this person. Likely they would have read the scripture to him. They would have given him the promises of God. Every Sunday we have a confession of sin, but we also have an assurance of pardon. So we comfort with scripture. We reaffirm our Christian love, our brotherly love. But Paul says, OK, so you decide not to do it. Well, what of Jesus? What of his sacrifice? Or what of the man and the excessive sorrow he is under? It’s overwhelming and it’s closing in on him.
But even more, what of the designs of Satan? Satan seeks to outwit the people of God and he seeks to destroy the church. If you’ve ever been in a church that’s full of turmoil, it’s not a happy business. But sometimes it’s a necessary business to suffer through the hardships in order to see wonderful things come out on the other side. But sin is a nasty business. Satan wants to deceive, devour and destroy not just Christians, but his church.
And he attacks individuals in their sinful and fleshly desires. But he also sows discord within the church. And you can imagine the church at Corinth was easy pickings. You can imagine the church at Corinth was a place where it was easy for that tender of a rotten culture to ignite and to burn.
And so one of the challenges we should consider from a passage like this is we should remember that Satan hates what we’re up to. He hates that we love God. He hates that we worship God. He hates that we live for God. He hates that each of us desires and in a way to to follow after the Lord in obedience. And he hates that one day God will rescue and redeem us. He had us on the ropes. He had us imprisoned in darkness and in sin. But Jesus has come and rescued us.
And Satan cannot stand that thought. And so one of the things the church ought to take care to hear in this passage is Satan is at work and he wants to have us for lunch. And so each of us should be careful about our own personal walk with the Lord. But the church as a whole ought to take care that there is not a foothold for the devil. For what is the witness of the people of God when they are in disarray? Think of what we read from the book of Daniel. Daniel prayed that the Lord would rescue Israel because the time was up.
Our punishment should be at an end, Lord, he says. Second thing is you’re a forgiving God. But third and most important is you have rescued us from Egypt. You have rescued us from the hand of Pharaoh and brought us into this land. And what will the world say of you, God, if your people continue in reproach? And so we ought to think of our ministry to one another, reclaiming the brother who is caught in sin, the sister who is caught in sin, as a way to protect the name of Jesus, but also protect the souls of those for whom Christ has died.
Let’s look to God in prayer. Our father, you know where we live in this world, where Satan prowls about looking for someone to deceive and devour and destroy. You know where we live. We live in the realm that has an evil one who wishes to wipe away the church of the living God. And we call on you, Jesus. You are the divine warrior.
And we call on you to come quickly and to soon crush Satan under your feet. Your kingdom come, Lord, and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we ask in Christ’s mighty name, amen. We want to conclude our worship with a song, God and the gospel of his son.