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CONNIE: “A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies,” wrote a famous author. But the Bible has even better advice. Join us as we study 2 Corinthians and the Ministry of Reconciliation.
Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 70 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko.

LONNIE: Thanks for joining us today, as we continue our journey through the Bible. We’ve come to 2 Corinthians—a book that’s a very personal letter from the apostle Paul to one of his favorite churches.

CONNIE: The Corinthian church may have been one of Paul’s favorites, but it wasn’t an easy church to pastor, was it?

LONNIE: Well, certainly not—at least at the time that’s covered in this biblical book. Apparently after Paul left, some other Christian leaders came along and started bad-mouthing Paul, and it got to the point where the people didn’t respect him at all anymore.

CONNIE: Well, not only that—they had a complete falling-out with him, didn’t they? They were picking apart his looks, his mannerisms, his writing style . . .
LONNIE: Just about everything about him. But we’re going to be focusing on Paul’s response to this—how he sought, and achieved, reconciliation with some people who really didn’t care to be reconciled to him.

CONNIE: It’s an amazing story, and one that we can learn from as we try to improve our own interpersonal relationships. And to get us into the book, we’ve invited Dr. Ivan Blazen of Loma Linda University to join us again, to talk with Ken Wade about the meat and message of the book of 1 Corinthians.
Let’s listen, and learn.

KEN: Dr. Ivan Blazen, I want to welcome you back to our program again as we talk about the book of 2nd Corinthians.

IVAN: Thank you for the welcome. I’m glad to hear you on the phone.

KEN: You know, as we were talking about this book, when we talked about 1 Corinthians, that letter of Paul is really all about the church. It focuses on the church and what should be done in the church. The focus here in 2 Corinthians is a little bit different though isn’t it?

IVAN: I think it is different, but both letters deal with similar things, but in the second letter Paul focuses upon himself, upon his sufferings and so on. Because he’s been having a hard time with this church, and I think that he is appealing to them to open up their hearts as he has opened his heart up to them. So it is very personal, and we get a lot of insight into Paul in this letter.

KEN: There might be some insights here too perhaps for a Christian worker, pastor, or someone who is having difficulties in the church.

IVAN: Absolutely! You know, this book talks a lot about; even from the first chapter, about the sufferings of Paul. He talks about his sufferings in Asia 3 years ago, he lost the spirit of life itself and his ship was sinking. But, God who raises the dead raised him up. I would think that a pastor that read that could say, “You know, I may be feeling really down, but the Lord who raises the dead can raise me.” There is a section in the 4 chapter that really emphasizes that, where Paul, making use of the motifs of the death and resurrection of Christ and applying it to his own ministry. I think that we can apply it to ours as well. It says, “We are afflicted in every way,” that’s the death part, “But not crushed,” that’s the resurrection part. “Perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus. So this is the picture of Paul. But it is also the picture of ministers, and it is the picture of the people who bear the gospel witness. Often this can happen.

KEN: I believe that passage goes on to say, “We bear in our bodies the death of Christ, and that we might also bear life to you”.

IVAN: That’s right! He always says death and resurrection together.

KEN: One of the things that comes up a lot too is, Paul is looking for consolation. There has been some rough water passed between them. He’s looking for consolation, and I think reconciliation is a very important theme in this book too, isn’t it?

IVAN: Absolutely! In fact we have one of the greatest sections on reconciliation anywhere in the Bible and that is in this chapter. We have many verses there that we all recognize. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Not counting their trespasses against them.” We have this wonderful theological statement made in order to illustrate if God is reconciling us to Himself, then how can we stay out of reconciliation with each other, if we all belong to Him? That’s His great appeal.

KEN: His appeal is be reconciled. Because of the disputes, the accusations, I mean if you read this 2 Corinthians you can see kind of a hang-dog expression on his face. No matter what I try with you folks, all you do is complain.

IVAN: Oh absolutely! He mentions some of the things you were intimating. He didn’t look good; they didn’t like his physical appearance. They didn’t think he spoke very well; he didn’t have the highest rhetoric as they were use to. They think that he broke his promises; he said he would come back, but he didn’t come back. They had a whole list of charges against him. He wasn’t spiritual enough; can you imagine them saying that about this great leader. So he talks in the 12th chapter about being taken to heaven. You say I don’t have enough experiences! Well look at me, I was transported to heaven and I heard words that I couldn’t even utter to you, heavenly words.

KEN: So he’s almost in a defensive mode through out the letter, trying to win them back to friendship, to reconciliation with himself. He uses the example of how much Christ went through in order to reconcile the word to God. As kind of an example, you mentioned about his sufferings, that he’s willing to go through the sufferings of Christ if it will mean the reconciliation and salvation of these people.
IVAN: Right! I think it’s a very important verse, 2 Corinthians 6: 1, where he says, “We urge you not to accept the grace of God in vain.” What he means is, if you refuse to be reconciled with me, if Christians don’t live in reconciliation with each other, we have made the reconciliation of the cross a thing of nothing. It’s in vain.

KEN: The gospel has to become practical in our own relationships to one another.

IVAN: Absolutely! That’s the bottom line emphasizes that he makes.

KEN: If a person reads 2 Corinthians they’ll find that maybe that 3 or 4 chapters are almost like that hard letter, that painful letter, and some scholars think that there are two letters in 2 Corinthians or more. Overall I guess we would sum this up as Paul’s reestablishing positive relationships. Did it work? You were telling me something about the church later on.

IVAN: Well, you always wonder what ever happened to this church. But there is a bishop in Rome at the end of the first century, in the nineties who writes a letter, his name is Clement, and he mentions the Corinthians that they were having some of the same problems that Paul worked with. So there was something inside of these people that they never quite got rid of, or a new generation arose that didn’t learn the lessons from previous times, and they needed to learn them again.

KEN: Well, I hope that as we study this, we will learn those lessons, and we can be reconciled with one another. Thanks so much for your insights, and thank you for sharing with us today.

CONNIE: Amen! That was the King’s Heralds singing “Sweet Sweet Spirit.

LONNIE: I think that’s the Spirit that Paul was hoping would take over and control the lives of the Corinthians. Because when the Holy Spirit takes control, it changes people. They become easier to live with, and as the Spirit moves on our hearts, we learn to forgive as God has forgiven us.

CONNIE: That’s a very important issue in 2 Corinthians—the ability to forgive. And of course it’s just as important today as it was 2000 years ago, and we have a great little book on that topic, called How Can I Forgive.

LONNIE: We’d like to share a copy of How Can I Forgive with you. Its part of the Bible Answers Library, and it’s short, but filled with practical help with one of the most important aspects of Christian life.

CONNIE: You can give us a call at 1-800-872-0055 and request a free copy of How Can I Forgive, and of course we’ll share our mailing address later, in case you prefer to write in. But right now, let’s listen to Lonnie’s message, “1 Corinthians—The Ministry of Reconciliation.”

The Ministry of Reconciliation

The Vice President of the United States and the former Secretary of the Treasury glared across the field at each other. Despite the heat of the summer afternoon, friends of the two men were trying to cool a pot that had been threatening to boil over for years.

In hopes that the cooler heads in the group would prevail, each man’s “second” met in the middle of the field to try to come to terms.

But the feud had gone on for too long.

Too many insults had been hurled from each side.

Neither antagonist was willing to back down or apologize.

The two men involved in the dispute were the Vice President, Aaron Burr, and the Secretary of the Treasury from George Washington’s administration, Alexander Hamilton—the man whose picture is on the American ten-dollar bill.

Imagine our current Vice President Dick Cheney facing off in a duel with former Secretary of the Treasury James Baker. That’s the kind of thing we’re talking about.

Back in 1804 there was no Secret Service to protect the Vice President, so the duel went on—I mean a real duel—with bullets, not words, and it turns out that Vice President Burr was a better shot than Alexander Hamilton. When the smoke cleared, the United States’s first Secretary of the Treasury was lying on the ground, mortally wounded. He died the next day.

For what reason?

Very little reason, actually. But the feud had festered for years.

Until it finally became a life and death matter.

Have you “been there, done that?”

I don’t mean, have you ever been in a duel with pistols. Fortunately, that way of solving political differences hasn’t been in vogue for quite a few years.

What I mean is, have you been at the point in your relationship to someone that it just seemed absolutely impossible to bring about reconciliation?

The apostle Paul had gone through a time like that in his relationship to the church at Corinth when he wrote the letter we know as 2 Corinthians.

This was a church that he himself had founded.

He had brought many of the people to knowledge of Jesus with his own teaching.

He had labored and struggled in Corinth for a year and a half, preaching, teaching, and ministering to the people there. You can imagine then, how disappointed he was when he heard a few years later that the church there had fallen to pieces—broken up into feuding factions.

In an attempt to settle things down, Paul made a hurried trip across the Aegean Sea from Ephesus and visited Corinth. But apparently the visit didn’t go well. People continued to criticize and cavil. It seemed he could do nothing right. If he wrote strongly-worded letters, that was wrong. If he visited and spoke softly, trying to woo his opponents, that too was subject to judgment and second-guessing.

The book we know as 2 Corinthians was forged on the hearth where this conflict raged. And it can teach us—from an inspired apostle’s perspective—how to deal with conflict and troubles in our own lives.

One of the first things you notice when you read through 2 Corinthians, is how often Paul refers to the suffering he’s been through. It begins right in chapter one: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NIV).

Because Paul has been through so much, he knows that God is able to bring comfort in trials, and he sees his own suffering as training to enable him to better help others. Wow! What a positive spirit. He’s not complaining or bemoaning his hard estate. What has happened to him has only driven him closer to his Savior, teaching him how to minister to others who have fallen on hard times.

By the time he wrote this letter, Paul had achieved a certain level of reconciliation with the people at Corinth—through the ministry of his friend and traveling companion Titus, who had gone to Corinth to share Paul’s love and concern with the church.

And you know, there’s an important lesson for us in this “back-story” as well. We know very little of what Titus did or said while he was in Corinth, but it was through his faithful ministry that the relationship between Paul and the church members began to be mended.

It makes me think about my own self. Is there a situation that I might be able to heal by being willing to be the go-between. Often people who are at odds with each other have a hard time seeing past the supposed slights or offenses that have made them bitter. A faithful Titus-type friend can often insert himself or herself into the situation and help the two parties to better see and understand each other. Maybe there’s someone I could do that for. Or maybe, in other situations, I need a Titus to help me patch up a broken relationship.

Is the Lord by any chance calling you to be a Titus today? Or perhaps to seek out a Titus who could help put salve on a sore relationship?

We can discover other principles for mending bridges between people in this book as well. In chapter 2, “Dr. Paul” prescribes forgiveness.

But notice this. It’s now time to forgive the person who had sinned and caused trouble. But before that, the “doctor” had had to spend some time in surgery. He had written a letter that caused pain. He has prescribed punishment for the offender.

And only after the painful surgery has had its intended effect does he move on to suggest applying the balm of forgiveness to the wound. “This punishment by the majority,” he writes in 2 Cor. 2:6-8, “is enough for such a person; so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him” (NRSV).

This prescription for the individual represents the way that Paul wants to move forward in his relationship to the whole church. Put the painful time of reproof and correction behind. Move on to a time of forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation.

Because that’s what the gospel that he preached in Corinth—and everywhere else he went—is all about.

The great pillar that stands at the center of the message of this book is found in chapter 5, verse 19: “namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (NASB).

Almost everything that Paul says in the entire book is summed up in these words. He likens his own suffering to the suffering of Jesus on the cross—it was not pointless. It was all an attempt at reconciliation. In Jesus, God was working to demonstrate His love for His rebellious planet. And Paul is able to accept his own sufferings and struggles as a part of his own ministry to relay the love of God to the people of Corinth.

But there’s something more to be learned from the suffering of Jesus and Paul. And that is that each and every Christian has been adopted into the family of God, and now becomes an ambassador to the rest of the world.

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,” Paul reminds us in verse 18.

Having been reconciled to God, it becomes our privilege (and responsibility) to be reconciled to others.

In chapter 6, Paul goes on to point out that NOW is the time to be reconciled to God and to each other—don’t put it off. In chapter 7, he writes more about the “surgery” he had to put them through in order to begin the healing process. “For even if I made you sorry with my letter,” he writes, “I do not regret it . . . For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret” (2 Cor. 7:8, 10, NRSV).

The reconciliation process has been long, painful, and difficult. Human relationships are never pain-free. But Paul rejoices now that he had the courage to speak freely, and to cause a little pain that has led to repentance and reconciliation. But remember. He didn’t just rebuke and run. After there had been a little time for his painful letter to sink in, he sent Titus to pour some oil on the troubled waters. And through the twin efforts—through both surgery and salve—he worked out the difficulties. And then he himself went to them and continued his ministry among them.

In chapters 8 and 9, Paul takes up another matter with his friends at Corinth, and these chapters teach us much about Christian benevolence, for the people there have offered to help other Christians in need, and Paul reminds them of their generosity and encourages it—because he knows sharing will bind them closer to the body of Christ.

The last several chapters of the book are a goldmine of revelation about Paul himself. Here we see the apostle struggling—striving to find ways to help his Corinthian friends/foes begin to respect him again. Because of the tone of chapter 10-13, some scholars suggest that maybe these chapters form part of a different letter—one written before the conciliatory words found in chapters 1-9, but whether that’s the case or not isn’t terribly important. What’s amazing about these verses is the way that Paul opens himself up to the people—lays bare his heart—and asks them to do the same with him. In order that the relationship that’s been sundered can be repaired.

Here we see a man who is so intent on saving souls that he’s willing to do almost anything—short of denying his Lord—to win people’s hearts. He’s willing to boast, or to make a fool of himself, if it will make them respect him and his message more.

And finally, after all the struggles that have gone on, after all the reproof, recriminations, and repentance, the letter we know as 2 Corinthians closes with one of the warmest benedictions in the entire Bible. In fact it’s the benediction we use to close our program each week. Let me share it with you now in fuller context, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, as it reads in The Message Bible:

“And that’s about it, friends. Be cheerful. Keep things in good repair. Keep your spirits up. Think in harmony. Be agreeable. Do all that, and the God of love and peace will be with you for sure. Greet one another with a holy embrace. All the brothers and sisters here say hello.

“The amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of God, the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you.”

It’s a great ending to a letter that’s sometimes hard, sometimes soft, but always filled with the extravagant, overflowing love of God!