Ours is not an age known for noteworthy demonstrations of repentance. In response to the preaching of Jonah, The King of Nineveh left his royal throne, removed his royal robes, put on sackcloth, sat down in the dust, and ordered everyone else to do the same. In addition, he ordered them not to eat or drink, call urgently upon God and turn from their evil ways and violence (Jonah 3:6,7). The Ephesians responded to the preaching of Paul by bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of books on sorcery and burning them publically in the city square (Acts 19:19). Accounts and descriptions of the Great Awakening in America include numerous examples of significant public displays of contrition and confession. In our day, when a public figure falls from grace, they hire a team of PR experts to manage the fall out with carefully crafted and strategically placed words of apology primarily intended to soften the impact on their favorability ratings and commercial endorsements. As a result, few have even an inkling of the nature of true repentance. Paul’s urgent message of concern to the Corinthians had elicited a response of contrition and change, to such a depth and degree, that not even Paul himself had been fully prepared to receive it. In 2 Corinthians 7:2-16, Paul gratefully and joyfully recounts that response, in a valuable and much-needed example we’ll consider together this morning, in a message entitled “A Notorious Repentance”.

Christian faith does not lend itself to half-measures. In response to the covenant of promise that God made with Abraham, God told him, “walk before me faithfully and be blameless” (Gen. 17:1). God’s command to his people through Moses, later echoed by Peter was simply, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2). On one occasion Jesus turned to the crowds who were following him and said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes even their own life — such a person cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14:25). Christian faith, by its very nature, is not compatible with either lukewarm commitment or half-hearted obedience. And yet we try. Like many others, both before and after them, many of the Corinthians were attempting to straddle the illusory fence between belief and unbelief. But Paul lovingly, and yet firmly, calls them out. As we’ll see this morning, he concludes his lengthy appeal in 2 Corinthians 6:14 – 7:1 with an important and needed reminder, to them and to us, of “The Call to be Wholly Holy”.

Today it is a commonly accepted belief by many, if not most, that the success and well-being of the church lies in our ability to understand the needs and desires of the surrounding culture and adapt ourselves accordingly. Allowing the culture not simply to inform, but actually dictate our commonly held beliefs and practices. Many of the Corinthian believers were being drawn to just such a suggestion, and as a result, reluctant to affirm and embrace the truth as it was understood, lived out and taught by the Apostle Paul himself. Why are we, like them, so eager and willing to embrace that approach? And why do so many seem oblivious to the scriptural contradictions and spiritual ramifications of such a decision? In 2 Corinthians 6:14 – 7:1 we’ll take a good hard look at Paul’s answer, in a message entitled “Taking the World out of the Church”.

One of the most significant threats to our faith is the subtle temptation to go soft on the truth of scripture. It isn’t an outright denial or rejection of God’s Word, it’s a shaving off of the hard edges and an easing up on the personal demands in order to make it more accommodating to our lifestyles and conducive to our material aspirations. What Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. How serious is that threat to our faith? How concerned ought we to be about it, both for ourselves and others? If 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, “Reconciling the Reconciled”, is any indication, the tenor and strength of Paul’s appeal ought to make us sit up and take notice.

The faithful servants of Jesus are in it for the long haul.  They’re not fair-weather followers, like the seed in Jesus parable that fell on rocky soil and sprang up quickly only to last a short time until trouble or persecution came along.  The dearest and best of God’s saints have had a tough as leather quality about them that absolutely refused to give in or give up, no matter how tough the going may have gotten.  Think of Luther’s refusal to recant, “Here I stand I can do no other”, or Wesley’s refusal to be silenced when the Bishops forbade him to preach in their local parish churches, “The world is my parish” was his response.  Or George MacDonald’s refusal to resign his church no matter how many times the elders cut his salary.  But none were more tenacious than the apostle Paul himself.  The degree of his hardships and difficulties were matched only by the degree of his resolve and commitment to keep on keeping on.  In 2 Corinthians 4:13-18, “The Secret of Staying Power”, Paul unfolds the spiritual truths and Spirit’s work that shaped his perspective and enabled him to personally keep going in the face of such sustained and relentless suffering and opposition.

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Scripture Reading – 2 Corinthians 4:7-18

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The ministry which God had entrusted to Paul was nothing less than the direct, personal work, of the Spirit of the Living God.  Causing those who had been lost and spiritually blind to see and understand what they had been completely incapable of seeing or understanding before.  And, as a result,  setting them on a life-long journey of spiritual transformation, gradually, increasingly, changing them into the very image of Jesus Christ, from one degree of glory to another.  Paul strains for words and analogies adequate to express the sheer wonder and greatness of that work.  It should then come as no surprise that he was so conscientious to protect that work from anything that would harm, hinder, or in any way diminish it.  In 2 Corinthians 4:1-6, Paul describes “The Making of a Tamper-Proof Ministry”, as he shows us the importance of ensuring that our practice and practices of ministry are in keeping with that glorious work of the Spirit of the Living God.

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More often than not, God’s work is impeded not by the challenges and obstacles we perceive, but by our well-meaning attempts to overcome those challenges and obstacles by our own ideas and efforts. When Abraham and Sarah decided that they needed to kickstart God’s promise by way of Sarah’s servant girl Hagar, they didn’t further God’s purposes, they only hindered and complicated them, to their significant consternation and grief. The story of Jacob’s life was not that he didn’t believe in the promise of God, he just didn’t believe in God’s ability to pull off that promise apart from Jacob’s own personal reliance upon deceit and trickery. In the same way, the power-leaders at Corinth thought that God’s work would be significantly enhanced by their impressive array of ministry tools and resources. But Paul knew that not only does the ministry of the Spirit of the Living God not need such enhancements but that those tools and resources look pretty feeble and paltry in comparison. In 2 Corinthians 3:7-18 Paul specifically responds to their confident ideas and efforts with a full-throated endorsement of the glory of new covenant ministry, in a message entitled, “Oh, What a Ministry it is!”

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It should come as no surprise that those whom Paul describes as “Peddlers of God’s Word” would be involved in a fair amount of shameless self-promotion.  The power-leaders had come to Corinth armed to the hilt with impressive “letters of recommendation”.  Those letters were the ancient equivalent of being listed in Who’s Who, a way of distinguishing those people of notable or prominent standing.  They were a sure ticket into the circles of the influential and cultural elites.  And in flashing their fancy credentials, they were taking a back door shot at Paul’s lack of any such notoriety.  At one time Paul himself had belonged to those very same circles, but any access or letters of standing had suddenly dried up the day he met the risen Christ on the Damascus road.  As we’ll see this Sunday in 2 Corinthians 3:1-6, Paul takes sharp aim at this core aspect of their ministry, and instead identifies “The Only Recommendation that Matters”.

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In many ways 2 Corinthians is a tale of two leaderships.  Paul’s and the Super-Apostles, each of whom were vying for the hearts and minds of the Corinthian church.  Though both considered themselves to be Christian leaders, desiring to give pastoral oversight to a Christian congregation, their understanding of the nature and practice of Christian ministry could not have been further apart.  In beginning to draw that distinction, Paul makes use of a powerful metaphor, that of the Roman triumphal procession, to introduce one of the principal themes of his letter, power in weakness.  Through 2 Corinthians 1:12-17, “Sharpening Your Image of the Christian Leader”, we’ll have the opportunity this week to reconsider some of our conceptions, and possible misconceptions, about the true nature of spiritual leadership.

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