Supposing you were a doctor with unlimited
resources. You go to a remote tribe with
a vaccine that can cure a sever illness that has ravaged their community. But they treat you with suspicion and will
not approach you. In fact, worse still,
they think their own tribal medicine is sufficient and are too proud to ask for
your help. How do you feel as you watch
them die?
But supposing that some do come to you for help. You have unlimited resources and so no
shortage of medicine. Surely it makes
you happy to treat them. After all you
have come that they may have life. Those
same people come back every time they get ill.
Surely it always pleases you to help them. You never get tired of treating them.
Dane Ortland uses this picture to show the delight God
takes in forgiving us. He quotes the
Puritan, Thomas Goodwin, who says that ‘Christ gets more joy and comfort than
we do when we come to him for … mercy.’
Our joy in being forgiven is not as much as His joy in forgiving. When someone lovingly addresses sin in our
lives or we speak loving correction into the life of others we are pointing
them to the path of joy.
Background
There was someone in the church at Corinth who was
committing a serious open scandalous sin.
Paul had told the church to discipline this man. But they would not. Maybe the man was difficult and defensive,
they were afraid. Maybe they thought
they were being open and tolerant in accepting the man as he was. The truth is that they weren’t encouraging
him to repent. They were supposed to
help bring him to his senses in order that he would come to Christ for
restoration.
Paul had written to them about this, in a letter we do
not have. They changed their mind. Titus has just told Paul the good news that
they disciplined the man and that he had repented. That is the purpose of church discipline! Paul is over the moon! You see Christians
can’t treat each other with emotional detachment. That is our first point.
These Corinthians have a great hold over Paul’s
happiness or sorrow. ‘… you are in our
hearts, to die together and to live together’ (4). They can bring him encouragement (4). They can bring him joy (4). He also fears for their spiritual well-being
(5). He feels downcast or depressed when
they refuse to walk closely with Jesus (6).
They have even caused him to cry (2:4).
Paul does not exercise professional detachment because they are not his
job, they are his family. How is our
love for God’s people?
Paul calls them to respond to his love with love. ‘Make room in your hearts for us …’ (2). He wants them to love him like he loves them! Love longs to be received with an open heart! Our security is to be in the love of
Jesus. We seek to impress Him even when
that might lead to others being unimpressed.
But love is not indifferent to others.
Love can never say, ‘I couldn’t care less what they think!’
What impresses me most about Paul’s love for the
Corinthians church is that there is lots of grace and forgiveness in it. He had always acted towards them with the
best of intentions and they had responded to him with hostility, yet he didn’t
become bitter. He didn’t give them the
cold shoulder. In love we are to pursue
those who have wronged us. Sometimes we
will have to put a distance between ourselves and them, but we will still be
bringing them before God in prayer. I
remember in a pastoral care class in theological college where someone pointed
out that it is difficult to keep hating someone you are sincerely praying for. Let’s put that to the test!
One of the emotions that the Corinthians stir in Paul is
godly pride (4). Godly pride is rooted
in seeing God at work in people.
Parents, remember to rejoice in what really matters. The apostle John writes of his spiritual
children declaring, ‘I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are
walking in the truth’ (3 John 4). Their
grades and trophies will not follow them into the next word. They have little long-term significance. Teach them that the along thing that matters
is how they walk with Jesus.
This leads us to our second point: Christians must care about the spiritual
well-being of others.
I think that one of the reasons we talk so much behind
people’s backs is that we haven’t the courage to talk to their faces. We can be frustrated with someone’s behavior
but we won’t tell them. We don’t speak
to them but we speak to everyone else about them. That is not loving because it doesn’t give
them the help to change. It doesn’t care
about their spiritual health.
Paul had commanded the church to address a man about
an area of serious sin in his life.
Perhaps this man was defensive and angry. So, they were afraid to discipline him. But that is not vulnerable love. Love seeks the spiritual well being of
others. They were to confront him so
that he might repent and that this stain on the reputation of the bride might
be removed.
Now we don’t have to address every issue, for love
covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).
But sometimes issues have to be dealt with. When this is the case we must speak the truth
in love. I remember asking John Samuel,
former pastor of Grosvenor Road Baptist, how to address a person about their attitude. He advised me to let them be in no doubt that
I love them.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend (Proverbs 27:6). We might not be living in open scandalous sin
but we all have areas in our lives where we need to change. We can be blind to our own faults. How are we at seeking correction? Are we defensive and angry when people point
things out to us? May God give us the
maturity to welcome such help.
Now we come to our final point: Love is rooted in the welcome of Christ.
The Corinthians finally changed their minds and
addressed the man about his sin. They
disciplined him and it had the desired effect.
He returned and received the welcome of Christ and His people. Now Paul gives us one of the most important
verses in the Bible on how repentance works.
‘For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without
regret, whereas worldly grief produces death’ (10).
Worldly grief is the pain of being caught. It feels shame for being exposed. It regrets the loss of face and people’s disapproval. It gets frustrated with the consequences of
what we have done. It is rooted in
pride. It doesn’t really care that we
have wronged God and there is no aching to change.
Godly sorrow recognizes that we have sinned against
the immeasurable love of God and have hurt people. In results in God-given repentance—a change
of heart that shows its reality in changed actions. It leaves no room for regret because it is
not so worried about the fact that we have lost face but delights that God is
so wonderfully forgiving.
Sometimes people will tell you that they can’t forgive
themselves for what they did in the past.
I think the real problem is that we are refusing to live in the joy of
God’s forgiveness. We are living with
regret. We feel they let ourselves
down. We are being proud. In His great sovereignty and mercy God uses
even our past failings for our good and His glory. Think of what Jesus said to Peter: ‘But I
have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen
your brothers’ (Luke 22:32). Peter
denied Jesus and repented. He was not to
spend the rest of his life filled with self-pity over what he had done, but was
to remind people of the wonderful grace of God.
One Sunday I preached on this text and mentioned that
God does not want us to live with the self-pity of pride. I went up to a friend who I know who
struggles with deep regret. I said to
her, ‘remember God wants you to let go of your regret.’ She looked at with me with tears in her eyes
and said, ‘I am consumed with regret.’ I
realized though that her regret was not rooted in pride, it was rooted in
love. A small lapse on her part led to
devastation for someone she loved. I
think I had been simplistic. How can she
deal with her regret? She needs to live
in the light of God’s forgiveness, she also needs to hope in God’s
sovereignty. John Piper writes, ‘There is nothing. There are no circumstances.
There is no past or present act that I’ve ever done that God can’t weave into a
tapestry that is good and beautiful. That’s the kind of God we have.’ I think that we need to deal gently with
those who have such regrets. We need to
ask God to help them trust that He will bring His good purposes to bear. We need to pray that through the ministry of
the Holy Spirit they might experience peace.
Love is rooted in the welcome of Christ.
Conclusion: To love is to be vulnerable
C. S. Lewis writes, ‘To
love at all is to be vulnerable. Love
anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make
sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.’ The love that is spoken of in these verses is
a love that rejoices in the spiritual well-being of others, will speak with
others about how they live and be open to the loving correction of others, and
delights in the welcome of Christ. It is
a vulnerable. If we care for each other
we are giving people the opportunity to make we rejoice or depressed.
The fact that the Corinthian Christians themselves
repented by being willing to address the behavior of someone in their church
refreshed the spirit of Titus. It also
demonstrated that Paul was right to believe that the Corinthian church was truly
a work of the Holy Spirit. Their
willingness to obey brought rejoicing to them all.
Do you want to bring joy to Jesus and His bride? Do you want to bring joy to those Christians
who have invested in you? Do you want to
experience joy for yourself? Then be living
a life of repentance! That repentance
longs for goodness to be seen in our lives and the lives of all God’s
people. It longs to delight the
bridegroom (Jesus) and His bride (the church).
Let’s not rival each other but delight in what God is doing in His
people! Are we causing joy in heaven and
in the church by our willingness to repent and change? I think a healthy Christian prayer life has
loads of ‘I’m sorry’ and even more ‘thank you for your mercy and grace’.
Let’s love Jesus by loving His people. Let’s the church in heaven and on earth
rejoice as we live lives of repentance.
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