2Co 2:5 Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused
it not to me, but in some measure--not to put it too severely--to all of you. 2Co
2:6 For such a one, this punishment by
the majority is enough, 2Co 2:7 so you
should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by
excessive sorrow. 2Co 2:8 So I beg you
to reaffirm your love for him. 2Co 2:9
For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are
obedient in everything. 2Co 2:10 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, 2Co
2:11 so that we would not be outwitted
by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.
Paul teaches us some needful things about having a forgiving
spirit in this section of 2 Corinthians.
Let me mention a few of them. He
is encouraging the church to accept back someone who has sinned and probably
has led the charge against Paul in some way.
Paul has forgiven him since this man has had a sorrow that has led to
repentance and he is encouraging the rest to also forgive the man. Evidently some have decided he needs some
further punishment. Like we all tend to
do, they would like to hold it over his head for a while longer and use it to
lord it over him in some way. This,
after all, is a great way to look more spiritual than the one who has been
caught in a sin. Never mind that the
only difference many times is that they have been caught whereas we have
not. We never want to miss the
opportunity to look more spiritual than someone else. Please read that as being facetious.
The main point he focuses on is that when it comes to our
relationships with others, whether in the church or any other place, our first
consideration must always be the Lord and how our actions affect his name and
work. We see this in vss. 9-10 where he
sees whether they will forgive one who has confessed his sin or not as a test
to see whether they will be obedient in all things and in vs. 10 where he
reminds them that all this is being done in the presence of the Lord. It is imperative that we not be guided by our
emotions and pride in how we act toward others but instead what would bring
honor to the Lord.
Joseph and is an example to us. Can any of us image being sold into slavery
by our own family members? What was his
motivation to forgive? If he wasn’t a believer
chances are his brothers would have been justified in their fear of being executed. I believe Joseph knew the Lord
and understood what no doubt he had been taught by his father about the Messiah
coming through the twelve sons and he also knew from his dreams that they were
going to serve him someday. He forgave
because he knew that there was a bigger picture to think about that was far
more important than even the horrible injustice done to him and to be honest I
doubt we think anything is worse than our feelings many times. Probably, if we thought about it for a moment,
we would have to admit that our words and attitude each day have more to do
with how we are feeling than how much we are rejoicing in Christ at any given
moment.
Joseph is a type of Christ and we learn that Jesus suffered
unjustly for the joy that was set before him.
Part of our Christian duty that we do because we love our Savior is to
cause ourselves to think biblically even in moments of anger and injustice to
ourselves. Gen 50:20 As for
you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about
that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. This is a look into Joseph’s thought process
and should be our goal as well. What we
are not given liberty to do is to think and act out solely on emotions.
So Christian forgiveness is a great way to show the love of
God in our lives. And one way we do this
is formal, real closure. We forgive as
we have been forgiven by not holding it over someone’s head. John tells us that displaying such love
proves our faith in front of this world, Joh 13:34 “A new
commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you,
you also are to love one another. Joh 13:35
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love
for one another." Jesus said that
love is the greatest commandment; therefore to not show love for each other in
forgiving one another and putting forth a real effort to have a good
relationship with each other must be considered one of the worst of sins.
Forgiveness proves our love because if we love him we will
keep his commandments. Are we willing to
do the hard things? Are we willing to
swallow our pride and prove that we love Christ supremely? Verse 9 reminds us that none of this is
optional. The Corinthians were to prove
their love by disciplining and by forgiving and restoring. Discipline alone might just be a display of
our self-righteousness but if we forgive we show that we had the right
motives. If we are sitting there
justifying why we won’t repent or forgive then that is sin; we can’t pick and
choose when to be obedient.
Finally, Paul backs up his words with actions that show his
motivation in 10-11. He knows that
Christ is watching. And then he gives
one final reason why we must take these things so seriously, because this is
one way that Satan can disrupt the Lord’s work.
Notice, this is done not so much by introducing sin in the church in
this case but by the unforgiving attitude of those that “didn’t sin”! When we are controlled by pride and emotions
we have been outwitted and have become a tool of Satan.
No comments:
Post a Comment