About this sermon
Paul writes to the church at Corinth about a man whose sin was widely known and who had been disciplined. Now that he has repented, the church must forgive and comfort him so he is not overwhelmed by sorrow, and reaffirm their love for him. Forgiveness displays God’s mercy, mirrors what Christ has done, and restores the sinner. Every believer could have been that man. Forgiveness also keeps Satan from outwitting the church, for his schemes aim to divide and destroy.
Sermon transcript
Our selection of scripture this evening comes from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. A church plant that Paul was intimately involved in. A plant of a church in an area very similar to ours at a crossroads of water. I don’t know if you know anything about Corinth, but at Corinth, there is a canal today that’s cut through the rock.
There’s no locks there. But back in ancient times, they created a roadway that went up the one side of the Isthmus and down the other where they used to drag the ships from the one side from the, I think it’s the Adriatic Sea to the Aegean Sea or vice versa. And so this was a place of commerce. This was a place of Greek culture. This was a place where people from all different parts of the world mingled.
This was a place in which Paul planted a small church. And of course, in a place like that, which might be a place like Pittsburgh, there, of course, are adverse forces with them. And one of the most adverse forces that you can have in a church is if somebody’s sin is widely known. It’s, in some people’s eyes, a horrific sin.
And Paul wants to write to this church about this man or this person. and he wants to talk about forgiveness. And so with that in the background, let’s read what he has to say in this message, which is entitled, Forgiven in the Sight or the Eyes of Christ.
Verse five of 2 Corinthians chapter two, You know, they teach you at seminary, wait until you hear all the pages, stop flipping. So I used to just dive right into it, but I did forget to tell you the exact verse, didn’t I? Yes. I’m older in some ways, wiser, but in that way, I still need to remember what my professors told me. Listen to the word of God now.
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. You see, before I even go on, the sin of one affects everybody else. That’s exactly what he’s saying. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough. So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him, for this is why I wrote that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything.
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, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs. So far the reading of God’s word. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, it has been for your sake in the presence or the sight or the eyes of Christ. Have you ever heard of Good Riddance Day? Somebody came up with a day that we should celebrate in New York City that came up with this called Good Riddance Day.
And the organizers of this event encouraged people to write their grievances down and then throw the list of their grievances into shredders, symbolizing the act of letting go of painful memories, bad experiences, foolish mistakes, bad relationships, this is what they say, dumb choices, long-held grudges that had been gunking up their insides. This is why they wanted to have a good Rinsday. Participants could use a sledgehammer in case the shredder didn’t provide enough emotional release. One blogger clearly loves the idea. I think this is becoming one of my favorite holidays. Today’s the chance to say good riddance to something and I’m making quite a list. Now there’s something irresistible about this idea, isn’t there?
Sometimes we need to say good riddance to the pain and the hurt of the past. And to do that, we’re going to have to find some courage, aren’t we, to let go of that kind of anger, to say farewell to our bitterness, and to cast off our malice towards those who have hurt us very deeply.
We must learn to forgive. And until we do that, We can never go forward. I like that. We must learn to forgive. We’ll always be learning to forgive. As long as we live in the past, we will be chained to the past. And the people who hurt us deeply will win a double victory once when they have hurt us for the first time and twice when we refuse to let go and to move on.
Now I made a survey of the congregations that I have served, informally I would add, over the years. Merely asking people what scriptures needed the most attention or what topic or biblical subject constantly kept cropping up. And when I surveyed some people recently, only one topic was repeated. And that topic ended up receiving the most votes. And here it is, drum roll please.
It was how to handle anger and bitterness. Or how can we love one another as a church when there is so much baggage? Or bitterness? Or anger? I remember being flabbergasted at the results because we’re all supposed to be Christians, aren’t we? That’s the mark of a Christian, to forgive. And so I asked one of my pastor friends, this is while I was back in Vermont, why that topic came in number one just about all the time. And with characteristic wisdom, he replied, I guess it’s because our people have a lot of anger and bitterness. It almost felt like saying, duh.
We all struggle, don’t we, with broken relationships. People hurt us. People have painful words for us. Deceitful actions, they betray us. Friends turn against us. Unkind words are said about us or about our loved ones. Now, in this passage, we have someone who has been called by commentators, the great offender. He is within their church. We don’t know exactly who the man is or exactly what he did, but it must have been bad. Following things seem to be true about us as human beings. We always need forgiveness and we always have someone we need to forgive.
Historically, Bible commentators have connected this passage with the man Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, who was sleeping with his father’s wife. It’s quite interesting. I picked this apart of your confessional this evening, but it seems to have worked out, didn’t it? Paul instructs them to come together as a congregation and put that man out of the church in 1 Corinthians 5, having been cut off from the Christian fellowship, so that he might eventually come to repentance. Then if that man’s in view here in 2 Corinthians 2, then the excommunication clearly worked, because the man repented and wanted back in the church, but the congregation refused to take him back. And that may well be this background here.
And so may I ask you a question, which is harder, to judge sin or to forgive sin? Which is harder? To take a stand against sinful behavior or to believe a man has truly changed his ways? And it seems to me that both are equally hard in our day and age, but for different reasons. Sometimes people equate Christians and their forgiveness as leniency.
But that’s not one of the true marks of the church, is it? In the Belgian Confession, there are three marks of the true church. One, true preaching of the word. Two, pure administration of the sacraments as far as we can do that. And I believe we do that. Both of those things are the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And number three is discipline. Administering church discipline. In other words, we take that part of discipling seriously.
Someone’s going down the wrong road. We say you’re going down the wrong road and you need to get back on the road. or we’re going to have to help you with that. And the way we help people with it is we bar them from the Lord’s table. And eventually if they refuse, we excommunicate them from the church.
And excommunication is not bad. It just means You can’t live in the sheep pen anymore with the shepherd and his sheep. You have to live outside the fence where the wolves are for a little bit. You can come back in on Sunday and listen to the gospel, but we’re going to treat you as if you have no faith at all. That’s what excommunication is. And that’s what happened in this case. which is harder to judge sin or to forgive it. I think both are equally as hard because both require courage, both require wisdom and love.
And we need the Holy Spirit to show us the way forward. We are never, and let me repeat this, never more like Jesus Christ than when we forgive those who have sinned against us. I’ll repeat it. We are never more like Christ than when we forgive those who have sinned against us. And so as we survey this passage this evening, let’s note some benefits of forgiveness. Number one, forgiveness displays God’s mercy.
Proverbs 27 reminds us that wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. Probably better translated like this, wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. And what does that mean? You see, when we discipline those who we love, we may be perceived as an enemy and not as a friend. Sort of like parents who say, this hurts me more than it hurts you. Boy, did my mother like to say that, as she gave my father the ability to give me a swat.
When my parents were disciplining me, I never really believed that. Mostly because I could sometimes be very mischievous and sometimes downright disobedient. And the punishment never seemed to bother them as much as it hurt me. But of course, I was not an objective observer. You think it’s funny, but at the time I didn’t.
Here we come to a tricky issue, one for which there are no absolute answers. How do you know when the punishment is enough? I say it’s tricky because all parents understand that all children are different. And what works for one may not work for another. I’ve heard parents say about certain children, usually boys, nothing we did seem to bother him. and of other children, usually girls, all I had to do was look at her and her heart was broken.
So in dealing with these matters, we need courage and tact and grace and wisdom. Paul wants the Corinthians to know that what they had done was right, but now the time has come to forgive and to receive this man back into the fellowship of the church. And when we do this, forgiveness displays the mercy of God. Consider David’s words in Psalm 103, which we read this evening as our call to worship. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, and he will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever. Sometimes we mistakenly think that if we forgive, we’re going soft on sin.
But if God treated us the way we sometimes treat others, we would never be forgiven at all. Have you ever known anybody who just loved to argue? I think we all know people who want to keep a quarrel going just because they’re angry. Maybe not even at us. But God is not like that. He’s willing to end the quarrel right now and welcome us back home. Sometimes the real problem is we want to keep fighting.
We love that fight more than we love the forgiveness of Christ. Truth be told, we think we’re better than the guy who made all those stupid choices. But let me repeat this once again, we are never more like Christ than when we forgive those who have sinned against us. So forgiveness displays God’s mercy. In other words, we don’t get what we deserved. Number two, forgiveness restores the sinner.
Have you ever thought about the prodigal son in that that whole story that Jesus tells about that. Maybe if you’re like me, you identify yourself with the son who asked for his inheritance and then blew it all. He was just glad to come back to his father’s house. Have you ever identified yourself with the other brother? He’s doing it for the same reason. He says to his father, well, you never killed a calf for me. He’s waiting around as he does his work for his father to die too. The other son just made his father dead by taking his inheritance before he died.
But we’re like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son. We’re no better than the prodigal son in that we’re all waiting. We’re all waiting for us to get our just due from the father because of the work that we have done. We think we’re better than everybody else. But deep down, the sins of others really disgust us to the point that we really don’t want them to repent. Forgiveness seems too cheap. It seems too quick. It seems too easy. After all, we’re the ones who played by the rules.
We didn’t ask for our inheritance early. We didn’t waste it all in a far country. And we’re certainly not ending up eating with the pigs. We’re not the ones who got into a bad marriage. Our kids never got hooked on drugs. We built our life around the church. We are good Bible-believing Christians who go to church, have a quiet time in our home, give a tithe, go on mission trips, and we pray every day. We’re not like those other people.
If you ask us, we’re all in favor of forgiveness on some theoretical level. But when it comes to someone we know and thought we could trust, someone who let us down or hurt us deeply, we’re not so quick to forgive. I’ve heard this so many times. I’ve even said it myself. I don’t forgive that easily. Well, listen to this theological truth. You can’t forgive at all unless you have Christ in your heart. Why would we want them back in our church?
Look at all the trouble they’ve caused. How little we understand the grace of God. How little we understand ourselves. We read the story of the prodigal son, we have to ask who is worse off, the son who left or returned? Or the son who never left but would not forgive his brother? In one sense, they are both in a world of hurt or trouble if they don’t love the father for who he is instead of coveting his stuff, which is what they did.
When we see someone being punished for their sin, we are to remember that we, too, are great sinners. And we should speak to ourselves this way. This is the way I was taught when I first became a sinner. when I first became a Christian because I was such a great sinner. I was born a sinner.
There but for the grace of God go I. I heard that so many times in Alcoholics Anonymous while I was trying to get better from that. When I saw someone in the gutter down in the bowels of Honolulu at the River of Life mission, waiting to come in to get some food or to get some clean clothes or to take a shower. That’s what I did when I first became a Christian with Pastor Pete, a Presbyterian minister in Hawaii. As he and my wife said, Tom, you need to go down there. And I did. And I looked and I saw. And I said, there but for the grace of God, go I. I am that man in that congregation in Corinth. In a thousand ways I am that man.
I have murdered in my heart a host of men and women. I have stolen their names and reputations and the things that I have thought and said about them. And what I have done against men and women, I have done still more and more worse things against God. And if I never actually committed murder or theft, well, I know in my heart well enough that it has more to do with the circumstances of my life that I didn’t do that than it has to do with any virtue that’s in me. with a different upbringing, with a different set of temptations, what would I have done and what would I have not done?
If there is no hope for forgiveness for the worst of sinners, then there’s no hope for any of us. True forgiveness restores the sinner. Look how Paul puts it in verses seven and eight. Now instead you ought to forgive and comfort him so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you therefore to reaffirm your love for him. By the way, notice an important fact. He doesn’t give you the name of the person. He doesn’t specify the sin. I think that’s a crucial point.
Love doesn’t smear anyone. Love doesn’t humiliate others. Or as Paul says, love covers over a multitude of sins. I’m reminded of a line from a song I used to sing in church a long time ago when I was a little boy. They’ll know we are Christians by our love. They will know we are Christians by our love. And that says to me, we will guard each man’s dignity and save each man’s pride.
And that’s exactly what Paul is doing here. Forgiveness restores sinners like you and like me. And forgiveness demonstrates obedience. Look how he puts it in verse 10. The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient and everything. Again, this has two sides. Will you be obedient in exercising discipline? And will you be obedient in offering forgiveness? In this case, forgiveness proves the genuineness of our Christian faith. Do you love enough to forgive when discipline has led to repentance?
Now I want you to understand that I know what repentance is all about. Repentance is about a journey. Repentance is about a period of time. Repentance is about a demonstration in the person’s life that their heart has changed. We can grant forgiveness today, but repentance we only see as their lives have changed. That’s why this is important. After the demonstration of a changed life comes to us, then it’s time to restore. Then it’s time to be obedient, not only to discipline and disciple in this way that we’ve been talking about, but also to forgive. You’re never as much of a Christian as when you forgive somebody else.
There comes a point when we have to let go of the pain and anguish and reach out with the love of God to say, you are forgiven in Jesus name. If God has forgiven me for my many sins, how can I not forgive you? And that’s because forgiveness reflects the character of Christ. Five times in verse 10, Paul uses the word forgive or forgiven. If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. For what I have forgiven, if there was anything to forgive, I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake. Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive. The man needs forgiveness. You need to forgive. And Paul says, I’m happy to forgive along with you.
All of us stand desperately in the need of this grace that God offers us. It’s a gift we give to those who do not deserve it. Because it’s a gift given to those who don’t deserve it either, meaning us. We do not forgive because of anything the person has done and not because of their repentance that it has earned forgiveness.
We forgive because we forgive in Christ. I have forgiven in the sight or in the presence of Christ. You need to remember that. If you don’t remember anything else, Paul says, I have forgiven in the sight in the presence, in the eyes of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We forgive because we have been forgiven. We release others because Christ has released us from our sins. Love covers their sins because Christ’s love covered over all of our sins.
Forgiveness always flows this way from Christ to us and then to others. They will know We are Christians by our love. You cannot understand God’s love unless you go to the cross. You cannot understand the cross unless you see it as God’s love towards you. Man’s murder of the Lord Jesus Christ became God’s sacrifice. A terrible crime paid an impossible debt.
Listen to what Paul says to another church plan. And do not grieve the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you all along with malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
I love this verse and this hymn. See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e’er such love or sorrow meet or thorns compose so rich a crown? If you want to know what love is like, go to Golgotha and fix your eyes on the man hanging from the cross. Study what he did and you will know true love. and then go and do for others what God has done for you. And finally, this evening, let me say forgiveness stops Satan in his tracks. We forgive in order that Satan might not outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes.
And the word scheme speaks of a military strategy. I’m a military man at heart. I understand what this means. Satan has plans on your life. is the idea of an enemy force of commandos that are under cover of darkness and they slip behind the enemy lines.
They set up camp far in the rear. In other words, they’re in the church. And because we are sleeping, we never saw them coming. We didn’t see the scheme or the plan that was there. And that’s exactly what has happened to many Christians. We get angry without a cause. We are too quick to criticize. We avoid talking to certain people. We nurse a victim mentality. We slander others who have hurt us. We rip into innocent people. We say unkind things and then try to laugh it off.
Oh, just kidding. I feel like saying, no, you’re not. And you shouldn’t be talking like that. We refuse to meet with certain people. We think about those people day and night. We are consumed by bitterness. We know something is wrong, but we can’t put the finger on it. And the finger is on the fact that we won’t forgive.
I’ve heard this so many times. I can’t forget. I can’t forget. I just can’t forget. Well, can’t is an ability word. We all know that. Of course you can’t. Only God can forgive. Only God has the ability to forgive sin. Your problem is you won’t. That’s a desire word. That’s a will word. My will won’t forget. Of course it won’t.
Unless you have Christ you don’t have the ability to truly forgive and you won’t truly forgive unless your heart is changed. Even though this man had evidently sinned against Paul even, he seeks no vengeance. He calls no names. He doesn’t say, I’m so glad we are rid of that jerk. Instead he says, I forgive him as you forgive him in order that Satan might not get a foothold in our church.
Now here is true Christian maturity at work. This is exactly right. And I can say that because it’s God’s word. Forgiveness is God’s medicine for a broken heart. It heals the deepest wounds, it repairs what the devil has destroyed, and it opens the door to even greater blessings. Oh, that we might become great forgivers, or maybe even quicker forgivers. that the love of Christ might fill our hearts so that we, as we have been forgiven, might freely forgive those who have sinned against us.
And you say, I can’t do that. You don’t know what they did to me. Well, if God treated you like that, you’d be in hell already. I began this message by talking about the idea of good riddance. And the folks that conceive this idea mean well, but the best they can offer is self-improvement by shredding their grievances. And might I leave you with this this evening, that Christian faith goes further and deeper than anything you can imagine, because it bases everything on what Christ has done for you and me.
Having been forgiven so much at so great a cost, can we not forgive those who have sinned against us. Whatever forgiveness costs, and sometimes it costs you a great deal, it can never cost us what it cost Jesus when he hung on the cross. The Son of God dying for the sins of a rebel people, crying out, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.
We should dedicate our lives to saying farewell to anger, bitterness, blaming, finger pointing, self-justification in a critical spirit, and ask God to grant us fresh infusion of his grace in all our relationships. So we might be like Jesus now, this week, in the days to come, full of grace and truth, abounding in mercy, and quick to forgive. Shall we pray? Oh Lord Jesus, set us free from the corrosive anger that is sometimes harbored in our hearts. That your love might flow from us to a hurting world. Teach us anew. And with the power that only you can give through your Holy Spirit, to forgive as we have been forgiven. In Jesus’ name, for his sake, we pray all these things, amen. Our final hymn this evening, in gratitude for the word that has been given to us, comes from number 580. And would you stand to sing? It is well with my soul.
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