2 Corinthians
The Epistle to the Corinthians.
1. Comforted by God
3-7: the Father of mercies and God of all comfort
Being in one spirit and body means we share in sufferings and comfort together.
8-11: The heaviest trials are to make us rely on God's promise of eternal life. He constantly delivers us from perils. We must renew our hope.
We must constantly be giving thanks and praying for blessings.
12-14: A good goal -- to be so known as a blessing to other Christians that we come up in the account of their life as a gift they were proud to receive, just as I am so proud and glad to have received the blessings of so many Christians over the years
15-22: As teachers and fathers we should seek to be ready with many yes's. We don't want to be no, no, no people or vacillators. Just as God has given us so many gifts and so many yes's to the things that we ask of him.
The spirit working in our hearts is a sign of God's eternal seal.
We are anointed and chosen by him. It is God's work to bring us all together into Christ.
What does Paul mean by a second experience of grace? Specifically as regards his pastoral authority and trying to show mercy to the Corinthians for all the sins they've been caught in and need to be disciplined for?
2. Forgive and Reconcile
1-4: Paul's use of his pastoral authority caused pain and anguish in the Corinthian church.
5-11: The sinner in the church should be comforted and forgiven and shown love.
This happens all too often where someone in the church falls into terrible temptation and disgraces himself. Yet repents and wishes not to be cast out from fellowship.
Is the sinner he is referring to here the sinner from 1 Corinthians?
10-11: Strange thoughts here regarding forgiveness and the accusatory nature of Satan. What's going on here?
12-17: Christian life is like a parade. We are celebrating Christ. And the overflowing joy that comes from the work of God's spirit in our lives allows us to reach the unbelievers as well with a kind of sweetness that reminds them of life and allows them to set death aside.
But has God brought us to this full maturity of overflowing love?
We teachers don't want to just be peddling God's word as so many pastors do, cashing in their fifteen minute weekly homilies for a modest paycheck, but allowing our sincerity to reach the hearts of believers and unbelievers alike.
3. Ministry of the Spirit
1-3: Pastors should not build resumes or CVs. Pastors should have a list of people who they have taught, served, encouraged, loved, led to the gospel. They should be living testimonies of their teaching work. Degrees are worthless compared to living witnesses whose fruitful lives testify to the love and encouragement of the teachers who built them up.
4-6: Of course, no human teacher is truly qualified or so ultra-righteous as to inspire all the perfection and virtue that is required for Christian life. There is no law or tradition or mere scripture that accomplish this task. We could spend all day memorizing bible verses and lobbing them at our enemies. But the active work of the Spirit in the life of a minister is capable of true encouragement to the rest of the body, serving those of the New Covenant.
7-11: The law of Moses is a ministry of death. And it was glorious. The condemnation was necessary and good. But the work of the Spirit is a ministry of life, and by comparison the law and the rituals and the temple and all those temporary works are shadows.
12-18: Always something to keep in mind when considering Jewish or other non-Christian interpretation of the old covenant: they have a veil over their hearts. They don't understand what Moses is for.
Christ taught us the true meaning of the law and what its purpose was for -- to speak of him and to prepare the way for him.
Whether reading the scriptures or going out in life, we must prepare our hearts to behold the spirit.
Are you ready to see the Lord's glory? In the next life we will see Christ face to face. In this life we already can behold the power of the Lord through his Spirit. The Spirit is already at work among us. We pray his breath will grow very strong in us.
Many are happy to sign up for a religion. But few want to behold the glory of God.
This is transforming us into a godlike humanity.
4. Treasure in Jars of Clay
1-6: The preaching of Christ is not a matter of rhetorical cunning but frank and bold statement of truth. Some are ready to receive the light and some are not. It's that simple.
7-12: God uses weak and dying and old men to preach of eternal power. We suffer torments but the power of Jesus endures.
13-15: Only faith compels us to speak and extend knowledge of God's grace to everyone. The more all mankind increases in thanksgiving, the greater the blessing for all.
16-18: This good end is worth enduring many torments and annoyances and obstacles. Being a faithful teacher and bold speaker of truth means enduring much harassment, even imprisonment. Or simply weariness of constant labor until the body falls apart. But it is preparation for an eternal glory.
5. New Creation in Christ
1-5: There is a spiritual realm. Things on earth come and go but there is an everlasting kingdom being built. It is 'heavenly', that is, either among the stars, or in some kind of place beyond what we know to be the stars.
It is not just a home for us but a kind of body beyond what we understand to be the body right now.
How do we know such a glory is waiting for us? We taste the first fruits of it in the Spirit's work within us. There is already a resurrection in our hearts.
6-10: Christ will give a judgment of everything that we have done in this life, in this body.
11-15: Not sure how these thoughts follow.
16-21: Christ is reconciling the world with God. Christ is God's instrument of bringing everything back into harmony with him. The empires, the religious authorities, the ideas, the spirits, the angels, the animals, the nations, all things are being reorganized under his peaceful rule. Christ patiently endures all of the accusations and attacks of the world, even from those like Paul, and instead works to transform their heart.
6. Do Not Be Unequally Yoked
2 Corinthians 6-10: note to self - could be helpful to do a deep study of these chapters to dive into a new ethic of interchurch finances, international church loans, home ownership, asceticism, church identity vs. national identity - 'unequally yoked'
1-2: The day of judgment is not yet here but the day of salvation is here. All must know.
3-10: We must be careful in our preaching of the gospel not to put obstacles in front of people -- or at least, any other obstacle besides the stumbling block that is Christ. So the teacher must be willing to endure sufferings and act in the greatest love and purity. For the sake of this great prize.
11-13: Openness and sincerity should characterize our church discourse.
6:14-18: people often interpret this as having to do with marriage, but Paul doesn't mention marriage specifically. the most obvious connection is religiously because he is talking about idolatry and defilement of body and soul. and that of course really does have legit application to marriage. not to mention temple prostitutes. what would the other applications be? business? also temple feasts.
What else could Paul mean by unequally yoked?
7. Godly Sorrow Brings Repentance
1-4: Be righteous. Be at peace. Some in the Corinthian church were perhaps accusing Paul of misbehavior.
5-9: He didn't want to make them feel bad but he did want to spur them to repent of their grievous sin.
10-13: Wordly depression leads to death. It is to be sharply distinguished from the grief that takes hold of us when we become more conscious of our own sin and misbehavior. It is better we have some heartbreak now and reject our awful unspiritual conduct, than go our whole lives grimly enduring the consequences of refusing to obey in love, and extinguishing all the Holy Spirit moved in our hearts, and then finally face the judgment of Christ for having wasted all we were given to do.
Many people hold on to their melancholy and bitterness because it feels right and necessary to do so. But if it does not lead to repentance and joy, then it is of no use. Instead, we should mourn and lament all the backwardness of our hearts and greedily seek the joy that comes from the passage of Christ's Spirit through us.
14-16: Love and peace between all.
8. Generosity Encouraged
1-7: Some churches are fierce in their commitment to generosity. If we have all the faith and knowledge and love, we should have generosity too.
8-15: Congregations should work to make sure that the needs of their congregation are met. And then, if there is abundance, they should seek to give to other congregations with needs.
16-24: What's Paul's point about the financial matters here? And why isn't he giving the names of the brothers besides Titus?
9. Cheerful Giving
1-5: Financial matters...
6-15: The nature of money and its relationship to different organizations of people across the land has changed quite a bit from the time of the early church. Yet overall there is still abundance and need. God sees how you are or aren't being generous: with your time, your energy, the way you use your money or your debt.
People in the church should be under serious financial care. They should be trained to be shrewd with their time, labor, and money. Their debts should be alleviated. It is our pleasure to give good gifts to the saints, material and spiritual. In doing so we become vessels of God's grace.
Many of the poor are very dysfunctional and with dysfunction comes loneliness. While we may not always be able to train them into being sound stewards of their life and resources, we can still be a comfort to them in their the loneliness of their chaos and foolishness.
10. Paul’s Defense
1-6: We are not waging a fleshly war. Our goal is to take every thought captive to obey Christ. This is done through the work of the Spirit and prophetic boldness, not through cunning words and weedling persuasions. Faith and love alone allow our mind to find the patterns of thought that are necessary to fully seizing on the truth and building up more faith and love; otherwise, the truth is veiled and we wander along dark pathways of pointless intelligence that never reaches what it was meant.
There are vast landscapes in our mind that have not yet been taken captive to Christ. We must carefully review our own thoughts and the thoughts of others and preach the gospel to them. This does not instantly make us perfectly wise or knowing all things, but creates in us the conditions by which we can understand truths that were behind withheld from our grasp.
7-18: Paul defends himself. Overseers are given authority to build up the flock. He's not trying to throw his weight around just to be a bully or be obeyed.
Different teachers comparing or measuring one another is fruitless. God raises up who he needs to accomplish the work of ministering to his people.
15-16: Paul seeks to enlarge his 'area of influence' in order to expand how far the knowledge of the gospel reaches.
Yet, he acknowledges there are other teachers who have other areas of influence. Who does he mean - the other apostles? Other pharisees?
Paul's thoughts on this, if we understand it correctly, can perhaps help clarify how we should think about disagreements in different church tradition between different teachers, or about the relationship of the church to other religions.
Interestingly, the word Paul uses here translated as 'area of influence' is the KANONA - the canon, the rule, the sphere, the standard.
11. False Apostles
The idea of the superlative apostles could be connected to modern day health and wealth teachers and churches that use the word 'authentic' to brand themselves. I think that's a helpful way of looking at it. There are some people who just want to make money off of selling righteousness or false ideas of righteousness. (I think that could be connected to simony & Simon Magus stuff as well.)