About Pain

2 Corinthians 1:12-2:4

Welcome! I thank you for coming. It takes courage to come to a message entitled “About Pain.” We are continuing on in our new series on 2 Corinthians. The title I have chosen is neither light nor pleasant-sounding, but I think it fits our passage. There are multiple kinds of pain, and we will see several of them in our passage today. At the same time, we will find much in this passage that is encouraging and building.

Last week, we looked at some background on the setting--the time and place of the writing of 2 Corinthians--and then we looked at the first 11 verses. Following a greeting in which Paul wished his listeners grace and peace, he went on to explain that God is the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our troubles. Led to pen this letter word by word by the Spirit, he talked about how the comfort God gives us is an overflowing comfort, and how, with that overflow, we are to comfort our fellow believers who are suffering. I shared how God’s ever-overflowing comfort reminds me of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand; as people took some bread and fish and passed on the basket, there was miraculously enough for all, with more left over than what existed in total when they started.

Paul went on to talk about severe hardships he had experienced in the province of Asia, and that they felt great pressure, far beyond what they thought they could endure. But then Paul said that this suffering had a purpose – it had helped them to not rely on themselves but on God. And he solicited their prayers and reminded them that prayer really is a form of help. And then he made the challenging statement that by going through this suffering and soliciting their prayers, God was using this to bring glory as He answered their prayers.

Here is how the passage continues:

Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God's grace. For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand. And I hope that, as you have understood us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus. – II Corinthians 1:12-14

There is a lot to talk about here. First of all, Paul is boasting. There is a lot of boasting in 2 Corinthians. Is this OK? What about I Corinthians 1:31 which says, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”? Is Paul boasting in himself or in the Lord here?

Well, look at the second sentence. “We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God’s grace.” How do you do something by God’s grace? It means it is done not by sheer will of self-effort or self-reliance but by dependence on God, by the power of God, by the gift of God. So I think pretty clearly Paul is not boasting in himself, but in the Lord’s work in his life.

Now be that as it may, we know that people should not go on boasting all the time, right? So when is it OK? That is a bigger question than I can answer here, especially because it will come up more as we continue through this book of the Bible. But let me say here that one reason one might boast that makes sense and seems appropriate is to defend oneself against baseless charges. As we will see, that is precisely what is going on here.

OK, so Paul is boasting, and it seems like it might be OK. Just what exactly is he boasting about? Paul is boasting that his conscience is clear. Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God.

Just what is the conscience? What does it do? How does it work? The Greek word is syneidesis. The prefix syn means with, beside, accompanying. Some English words (all based on Greek) that use this prefix are synchronize, which literally means with timing (kronos is time), and synthesize, which literally means with positioning (thesis is position or place – when you write a thesis, you are hopefully making a logical cohesive argument about something; it requires the proper positioning of facts and data using the rules of logic and rhetoric). Today, synchronizing means lining things up together in time and synthesizing means building things up from lesser things such as is done in chemistry. So syn means with.

What about the root of syneidesis? The root is eido, which means to know, or perceive, or see. So syneidesis means with seeing, or with perceiving. It is interesting that our word, conscience, has Latin roots that mean much the same thing; con means with, and science means knowing.

So what does Paul mean when he says that his syn-eidesis, his con-science, testifies that he has conducted himself with the Corinthians with holiness and sincerity? Well, the syneidesis is something inside of us that tells us the truth. It sees, it knows, and if we allow it, it speaks. In John 8, we have the situation in which a woman was brought in to Jesus by the teachers of the law and the Pharisees whom they said had been caught in adultery. If you remember, Jesus wrote something on the ground with his finger and then told them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:9 says (this is more clear in the Greek than in the NIV or NAS versions) that they left, being convicted by syneidesis, their conscience. In other words, at that moment, their consciences told them that they were not without sin. In Romans 2:14-15, we have this:

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. – Romans 2:14-15

In other words, people do not really need to be taught right from wrong in order to know what is right and what is wrong. Yes, there may be details they don’t know, but some things, like the Golden Rule, we just know because we have a conscience, a God-given something that tells us these things. God writes these things on peoples’ hearts, whether they know the law or not.

Now when we sin, that conscience speaks in our hearts. It tells us we are wrong, that what we are doing is wrong. And if we don’t stop doing what is wrong, it produces guilt and shame, and it causes pain. We live in a world filled with sinners – there is no one who isn’t a sinner, except for Jesus – and so we live in a world filled with people filled with pain. Apart from Christ, people do many things to try to stop the pain. Our society, and every society goes to great lengths to provide people with things that try to stop the pain. Drugs and alcohol are one way to deaden the pain. Entertainment is another way. Brainwashing yourself to believe that your conscience is clear or that you have no conscience is another way – you find this in many eastern religions. And to a degree, these things can work. You can sear your conscience, but there are side effects. One common side effect is death. Ultimately, the worst side effect is that you prevent yourself from calling on Jesus to save you, and thus the consequences are eternal.

Some verses that speak to what we can do to our conscience are these:

To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. – Titus 1:15

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. – I Timothy 4:1-2

If you sear your fingers with a hot iron, what will happen? You will lose the sense of touch in your fingers. The searing can destroy your nerve endings, and you will no longer be sensitive to what you touch. In the same way, over time people can do the same thing to their conscience; they can end up becoming dead inside, dead to the voice of right and wrong.

Now even as believers, we all still struggle and we all still sin, although if we are living by the Spirit, we should be growing in faith and in character. We should not be living in pain. And understand that when we come to Christ in repentance, He cleanses our conscience. Hebrews 10:22 says your heart is sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience. Hebrews 9:14 says

How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! – Hebrews 9:14

But still, going back to our passage, what Paul says here is strong: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God. Paul says, I have a clear conscience about what I have done with and for you.

Just as the conscience can cause pain, it can also encourage. It can say, “No, you haven’t done anything wrong.” Now we need to be careful; we can self-delude ourselves; because of this, our conscience is not infallible. But in the context of a life living day-by-day in fellowship with Jesus, spending time in His word, in prayer, in devotion to Him, confessing our sins, in the context of such a life it is possible for your conscience to reliably tell you that you have not done something wrong. Now let’s look at the passage again:

Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God's grace. For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand. And I hope that, as you have understood us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus. – II Corinthians 1:12-14

Why is Paul writing this? Again we need to go back to the context of the letter. Paul had spent one-and-a-half years in Corinth, and then left. After he left, people (you could call them wolves) came in who wanted power of their own. To corrupt the church, to lead them astray, they had to discredit Paul. And so that is what they did. Based on the ways Paul responds in this letter, we can learn the ways they attacked him. And here it is clear that they must have attacked Paul’s character. Paul’s response is, “I have a clean conscience before God. My dealings with you have been holy – that is, set apart, not for personal gain or power but for your good – and they have been sincere – we are not putting on a show, being hypocrites, doing one thing in front of you and another away from you.” Paul goes on to say, “We hope that you too can boast in what God is doing in us, just as we will boast of you.”

I have to tell you a little more about that word sincerity. The Greek word, which I won’t try to pronounce, means to be found pure when held up in the light of the sun. Imagine you are buying some cloth and you are in a shaded stall. The shade makes it dark and hard to see, so you take the cloth out and unfold it and step out of the stall to examine it in the light. If you were told the cloth was high quality, you can now examine it for yourself in the sun and see if it was true. In the same way, you don’t tell if a person is sincere by what he says, but by what he does. Paul was saying that his life proved his sincerity. And by the way our word sincere comes from the Latin sin cera which means without wax. The connotation is the same. If you are trying to sell a broken pot, you might use wax to cover the cracks. If all your customer did was look at the pot in that dark stall, you might fool him, but if he takes it out and examines it in the sun, he will be able to see what you have done.

We live in a world that so often accuses Christians of being hypocrites, that so often makes fun of Christians, that we are afraid to praise the works of anybody. Yes, there is sin. Yes, there are problems in the church – I mean the church as a whole. But there is so much good – there are people throughout the world whose lives are being transformed by God, who are sharing their faith and leading others to the Lord. There are countless people serving as pastors, and teachers, encouragers, and so on, using all of the gifts of the Spirit, and showing the fruit of the Spirit, and living by the Spirit. The world, as dark as it is, would be a much darker place if the Christians suddenly all disappeared. It is OK to boast in what God is doing among us, to boast in each other’s faith, love, goodness – somehow we have taken the warning about not boasting in ourselves to mean that we can’t boast in anything. Far from it! We should be boasting in the good we see in each other, because when we do so, we are boasting in God.

Paul is trying to assure his readers that he is just as he was when he was with them – he came to Corinth to give them the good news of the gospel and to build them up in the Lord; he had no other motivation or purpose. “And that’s still true,” he was telling them.

Because I was confident of this, I planned to visit you first so that you might benefit twice. I planned to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia, and then to have you send me on my way to Judea. When I planned this, did I do it lightly? Or do I make my plans in a worldly manner so that in the same breath I say, "Yes, yes" and "No, no"? But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not "Yes" and "No." – II Corinthians 1:15-18

Paul here is defending himself over a particular argument the false teachers and others who attacked Paul were using. What was the attack? They were attacking Paul’s integrity. They were accusing him of being untruthful, of being untrustworthy. They were saying, “Look, Paul said he would come, and he didn’t. You can’t trust or believe anything he says.”

Now Paul does not directly explain why he couldn’t come – not yet. Instead he deals with the implications. Just because he didn’t come doesn’t mean he is fickle, or that his word is worthless, or anything like that. When he said he was going to come, that was a real plan, not made lightly, but in all sincerity. And in that last sentence, Paul is addressing the deeper implications. It seems like maybe some of his detractors were saying that since you can’t trust his “yes” or “no” about coming, neither can you trust his message as a whole. The implication was that all Paul said about Christ might be just as unreliable. The false teachers tried to get people to follow their message by completely discrediting Paul.

By the way, in 1 Corinthians 16:5, Paul wrote that he would visit them after going through Macedonia, in other words, that he would visit them once. So what he wrote here is to say that look, he even changed his plans so as to see them even more, twice! Presumably they didn’t accuse him of these things when his plans changed to include more visits, because such a claim would be laughed at. But people were disappointed when he didn’t come, and so the false teachers exploited that disappointment and used it to turn people against Paul.

And so, Paul says, “Yes, my plans changed. But I did not change them lightly. And my changing my plans has nothing to do with my message, the gospel of Jesus Christ. This will never change.”

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not "Yes" and "No," but in Him it has always been "Yes." For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through Him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God. – II Corinthians 1:19-20

What is Paul saying here? He is saying, “Don’t doubt my message! Don’t doubt the gospel! My changing plans have nothing to do with the surety of God’s promises of salvation to those who put their faith and trust in Christ.” It seems that this is the real issue. The false teachers are using this to present a false gospel. Notice that Paul brings up both Timothy and Silas. I think he does this because it points out that the gospel isn’t “Paul’s gospel” – it’s Jesus’ gospel, the one and only gospel proclaimed by Paul and Silas and Timothy.

And “Amen” here means “yes.” It’s just as you hear in some more vocal churches, when the preacher gets the people fired up and he says, “Amen?” And the church replies “Amen!” “Yes!” And Paul is speaking of all the fruit he has seen in his years of ministry, in his travels, even in his persecutions; he has seen again and again that God’s “Yes” is always yes. Paul is saying, “We have seen God work and keep His promises, and to this we say, ‘Amen!’ – and God gets all the glory.”

Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. – II Corinthians 1:21-22

Note that there is the potential here for doubt on both sides – Would Paul be unreasonable in doubting that the faith of the Corinthians was ever genuine, given that they are giving so much credence to these false teachers? And as we have seen, the Corinthians are doubting Paul’s credibility. So Paul says, “No, God, who keeps all His promises, makes both us and you stand firm in Christ.” And then he goes on to describe three things God has done, and the “us” here refers to both the Corinthians and to Paul and his companions. This is so powerful! Paul never sets himself above the Corinthians. His description here sets them as equals. “We are the same,” he says, “in that we have been anointed, sealed, and Spirit-deposited.” And of course everything Paul says to the Corinthians also applies to us.

Anointed means that we have been commissioned to work for God. Just as David was anointed with oil when he was commissioned to be the future king of Israel, we are commissioned to be God’s ambassadors, messengers of the gospel. What about the seal of ownership? I don’t know what this can mean except that we now belong to God. We are His, and nothing can take us away from Him. Who can steal from God? Our salvation is secure. Our future is secure. And Spirit-deposited? This Greek word for deposit is a pledge. It refers to, for example, a down payment on a contract for the purchase of land. It also refers to a fine gift as a promise in marriage, kind of like the engagement ring is used symbolically today. It’s quite a picture, isn’t it – to have oil poured over us, to be stamped with a wax seal, and then to have a ring put on our finger? We are triple-promised to be the Lord’s!

I call God as my witness that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth. Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm. – II Corinthians 1:23-24

What does Paul mean by this – to spare them? Back in I Corinthians 4:21, Paul wrote, “What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?” Now Paul was not being literal here, but the reason he didn’t come, according to II Corinthians 1:23-24, is that he wanted to give them time. This is addressed further in Chapter 7. But in a nutshell, Paul knew they were working on their issues, and he wanted to give them time to work on things. In I Corinthians he had told them what their problems were, and through prayer and perhaps additional information (letters) from those in Corinth, he felt led not to come, but to wait. And then he is quick to say that even he had come, he would not have been some kind of dictatorial figure, but would have been a co-laborer with them.

That last part I think is saying, “It’s not by us you stand firm, or don’t stand firm. It’s by faith you stand firm.” And I think the implication here was that as hard as it was for Paul to stand by and not come, he knew that the same God who gave him strength to walk for Christ, who enabled him to repent, who gave him power to grow, was available, just as available to them. And I do think this was hard for Paul.

Now before we read the last four verses of this passage, I want to talk about the Corinthians for a minute or two. It is easy to condemn them for all of their sins, including this rejection or distrust of Paul, but I need to ask, do you ever do the same thing? If you are a child, do you do this with your parents? If you are married, do you do this with your spouse? Do you ever do this with other members in the church?

Remember I Corinthians 13. It’s ironic that this was written to the very people Paul is addressing in this letter. Love is patient. Were the Corinthians patient about Paul’s not coming? Are you patient?

Love is not easily angered. I doubt that the same could be said of the Corinthians. What about you? In your relationships with your loved ones or your friends, what about you?

Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Not so the Corinthians. They were not defending Paul’s name, they were not trusting him, or hoping in him, and they were in danger of not persevering in their relationship with him. How about you?

So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you. For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved? I wrote as I did so that when I came I should not be distressed by those who ought to make me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would all share my joy. For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you. – II Corinthians 2:1-4

Paul here says that it would also have been hard to come. There was pain in staying away, and there was pain if he had come. And so we come at last to the real reason for the title of my message, “About Pain.”

It is so clear from these verses that Paul really loved the Corinthians. This is not a perfunctory “I love you” at the end of the letter. He loved them. He would do anything for them. The fact that they doubted him, that maybe they were even doubting their entire faith, that they could be doubting the gospel, was heartbreaking for Paul.

That Greek word for anguish only appears in one other passage, Luke 21:25, where Jesus talks about the signs of the end, right before the Son of Man returns in glory. Amidst the terrible wars, and the captivity of nations, the days of vengeance, men’s hearts failing them for fear, there is described the distress of nations. That is what Paul was feeling for the Corinthians. That word also refers to a constraining or seizing up – Paul is saying he felt so much anguish that it felt like his heart would fail.

I titled this message “About Pain” because I truly believe that the Corinthians serve as an “anti-model” for us, and Paul serves as a “pro-model” for us. We have already talked about the Corinthians. Do you understand that by not following I Corinthians 13, they caused Paul indescribable anguish? Do you understand that you have the power to do the same thing, to your family members, to your friends, and even to the church? Of course we don’t want to cause those close to us to experience pain, but we need to understand that it is so easy to do. When we take our eyes off Jesus, when we forget grace, when we forget the love of Christ, it is so easy to distrust, to think the worst, to spread discord. It is so easy!

But I also want you to think about Paul’s anguish. Paul serves as a model for you and for me. You may think this doesn’t apply to you, that you haven’t started any churches that have gone wayward. But if you have any children, this applies to you. Your love for your children should be like this. If you have other family members who don’t follow Christ, brothers or sisters or parents or aunts and uncles or cousins or anyone else, your love for them should be like this. Eternity is at stake! If you have good friends who are unsaved, you should love them like this.

Being a Christian is painful. We should love people so much that it hurts. Paul is our model. But even he is only a pale shadow of our real model – Jesus Himself. We are to pick up our cross and follow Him. He loved us enough to die on the cross for us. As for our love for the lost and for those wandering away - Jesus is our real model.

Now I want to leave you encouraged, not discouraged, so let me ask the question, “Why should we love people so much that it hurts? Can’t we just love them less?” The answer is that unless we love deeply, we will not experience deep joy, or deep peace, or deep contentment, or the deep longing – yes, longing is bittersweet, but it is at least as sweet as it is bitter – for our future eternity in heaven with Christ. God made us in His image. He made us to love deeply. Yes, with deep love comes deep pain, but the pain is temporary; the love is forever. He Himself will wipe away every tear, and then there will be no more sadness, but only joy.

The ransomed of the Lord [that’s us] will return. They will enter Zion [the new Jerusalem] with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. – Isaiah 51:11