Overflowing with Joy

We come this morning to 2 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 2. We'll be reading from verse 2 to the end of the chapter. 2 Corinthians 7. 2 through 16. This is the inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient Word of God.

Make room in your hearts for us. For we have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage. of no one. I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you were in our hearts to die together and to live together. I am acting with great boldness toward you.

I have great pride in you. I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn. fighting without and fear within.

But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus. And not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you. As he told us of your longing. your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more. For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it.

Though I did regret it. For I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice. Not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. for you felt a godly grief.

so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. whereas worldly grief produces death, For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you. But also, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment. At every point, you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.

So, although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong. But in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. Therefore, We are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. For whatever boasts I made to him about you, I was not put to shame.

But just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus has proved true. And his affection for you is even greater as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. I rejoice. because I have complete confidence in you. Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for Speaking to us in Scripture, help us to be good listeners. Listeners who understand and heed what you say. Lord, may we learn from the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. Witnesses like these first-generation Christians in Corinth. who erred but repented with a godly repentance.

May we learn from them. May we learn from Paul and Titus, who held true and faithful. Even when the pressure to conform or compromise or quit was strong. Lord, may we come to know the same joy and comfort and confidence that these early apostles and churches came to know as they followed your Son. as they made room in their hearts for your truth.

So, nourish our souls now with your truth, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, the chapter that we're reading today, considering today, portrays a Paul who is emotionally sort of all over the map. He's grieving one minute and then ecstatically joyful the next. He's regretting his actions in one breath and then defending them in the next. He seems to still be in some sort of confrontation with the Corinthian church at the beginning of the chapter, but by the end of it, he seems to be fully reconciled to them.

Now there are a number of possible explanations for these features of chapter 7, and I'm not really so sure that we can fully know what was going on in Paul's heart and mind. What we do know is that Paul was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when he wrote these words. And so what we have here is exactly what God wants us to have. I think that one of the effects of this sort of erratic tone in Paul is that it reminds us of the human frailty of Paul. and by extension to all of the apostles.

These men, to be sure, were great men. Called by God to be witnesses of Christ and the foundation of the church, but they were just men. With weaknesses, doubts, insecurities, all the things that us non-apostles struggle with. As mere men, the apostles were no doubt tempted to indulge in discouragement when the going got tough. It would have been easy for them to quit or compromise, to lower the standard or excuse away pragmatism, but we're going to discover that God's means are effective and trustworthy even in the midst of emotionally difficult circumstances.

God's means, even in the hands of imperfect, frail people, are effective and do not return void. Paul was not perfect, but he was God's appointed means of bringing the gospel to Corinth. And the means he employed to bring that gospel to them. his preaching, his writing. was true and it was authoritative.

And as such, the Corinthians needed to openly receive and heed Paul's ministry to them, which also meant that they needed to repent of the ways in which they had previously rejected Paul's ministry to them.

Now we know that all of Scripture is profitable for doctrine and reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness.

So what first century Corinth needed to hear, Grace Presbyterian Church needs to hear. As we delve into 2 Corinthians 7 and discover Paul's angst and regret and his joy and his comfort, as we observe Corinth's grief that led to repentance and ultimately reconciliation with Paul, We're reading our own story. We need Paul's admonition. We need to learn to repent. like Corinth did.

Now this chapter is sort of a hinge in the book of 2 Corinthians. It ties up loose ends of what has gone before and it prepares the way for what's coming next. And so there's a whole lot of threads to the story that all come together in these verses and it can sort of be hard to follow the train of thought.

So what I'd like to do is walk through the whole passage and sort of establish the storyline to the best of our ability. storyline that we've seen glimpses of throughout the letter. But we'll summarize that storyline and that will put us in a position then to see more clearly the point, the moral lessons to be learned and the pitfalls to avoid so that we can better apply those lessons and warnings to our own lives.

So we'll make sort of two passes through the chapter this morning. Two sermons for the price of one. First, we'll get the lay of the land, figure out Paul's train of thought, and secondly, we'll try and apply what Paul is saying to our own hearts and lives today. If I were to summarize the message of today's text in one sentence, it would be this. When we do things God's way, we get God's results, and they are always good results.

When we do things God's way, we get God's results, and those results are are always good. Let's jump in. The passage begins with an appeal. from Paul to the Corinthians in verse 2. Paul says, make room in your hearts for us.

We've wronged no one. We've corrupted no one. We've taken advantage of no one. Paul is repeating a previous appeal that he had made to Corinth to receive him as the authoritative apostle that he is.

Now this maybe strikes us as a power play on Paul's part. Maybe it sounds a bit manipulative. Hey Corinth, I've done you no wrong, so you owe allegiance to me. But we need to remember Paul's position. Jesus Christ made him an apostle.

Jesus Christ made Paul his personal messenger and the very mouthpiece of God. This is not Paul assuming more authority than he should, it's Paul doing exactly what God called him to do. If Corinth rejects Paul, they're rejecting Christ. And if they reject Christ, they're proving... their eternal condemnation.

It's actually then an act of incredibly humble love for Paul, who had already been blatantly rejected and disrespected by Corinth. to insist that they reconcile with him. It would have been far easier to just walk away and leave them to their own devices. Instead, he insists that they get back on the path of life. which in this case meant reconciling with Paul.

We get a glimpse into Paul's motivation in verse 3. He says, I do not say this to condemn you, Corinth. Even in Paul's appeal to Corinth, he ensures them that his motives are not to impugn or discredit them, but genuinely to see them become all that God intends them to become. He ties his success. and well-being to theirs.

You are in our hearts, Paul says, to die together and to live together. In fact, Paul is not only not motivated by animosity towards Corinth, he's overjoyed at the prospect of reconciling with them, so much so that he spends the next several verses revealing his heart and emotions to them. Verse 4, I have great pride in you. I'm filled with comfort. I'm overflowing with joy.

Paul's emotional transparency here perhaps makes us feel a little bit awkward, but Paul is being uncomfortably candid simply to prove the sincerity of his affection and love. He truly does love these people who have treated him so wrongly. In verses 5 and following, we Begin to get the story of how Paul's grief about Corinth began to turn into joy. And it began with a report that Titus brought to Paul. You'll remember that Paul had spent time establishing the church in Corinth, only to move on to other fields of ministry as was his custom.

But later he heard through the grapevine that Corinth was going backwards in their spiritual growth. Idolatry was creeping back in. Sexual sins were being normalized. And now false teachers. Super apostles were gaining traction in Corinth.

And in response, Paul, who was so grieved by Corinth's backsliding that he couldn't even bring himself to see them face to face. sent them a severe letter. He calls it a grievous letter in verse 8. And Paul was afraid that his letter might have burned a bridge and Corinth would never repent. But he sent it anyway, and he sent it through Titus, who was one of Paul's ministry partners.

Well, Paul went on to other parts of the region, preaching the gospel, planting churches, but the burden of what was happening in Corinth was overwhelming to Paul. He desperately wanted news from Titus about Corinth's response to his letter. But Titus was delayed. Paul describes in verse 5 the anxiety of waiting for news from Corinth. He says, For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within.

You see, apostles were not Stoics. Unaffected by the emotional ups and downs of ministry. The fight was real for them. Even apostles felt the weight and stress of Of uncertainty and setbacks, even apostles. needed the comfort that only God can bring.

Well, the sun finally comes out from behind the clouds for Paul in verse 6. He says, but God. But God who comforts the downcast comforted us by the coming of Titus. Titus finally caught up with Paul, and the news was great news. Corinth had been broken by Paul's letter and repented of their disrespect and rejection of the apostolic message, so much so that verse 7 says they longed for Paul.

Corinth had repented, and the repentance was indeed genuine.

So, Paul was now at liberty to share with them the upheaval that their little jaunt into sin had caused him. Verse 8, and this is where we see Paul as incredibly vulnerable. He's just an emotional basket case, it seems, over his concern for Corinth. Verse 8. For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it.

For I see that that letter grieved you, but only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. for you felt a godly grief.

so that you suffered no loss through us. So he sends this letter to Corinth and then he second guesses himself, but then he stops second guessing himself when he sees the good effect that it had on Corinth. You know, when you love someone. Their emotional state, their spiritual state, their circumstances affect you and affect you deeply, don't they? That's how love and affection work.

That's why our emotions are not a good gauge of whether we're doing the right thing. Had Paul let his emotions dictate his apostolic ministry. He would have hit unsend before Corinth ever got this severe letter. And if he had done that. They would have never repented.

Instead, Paul did the right thing, the difficult thing. The pastoral thing. and prioritized Corinth's spiritual well-being over his relationship with them. In other words, he made their standing before God a higher priority than their affection for himself. Not only were Paul's emotions not a good gauge of what the right course of action would be, Corinth's emotional state was not a good gauge of what the Lord was doing in them.

They were at first grieved by Paul's letter. Grief hurts. Grief is something we want to avoid at all costs. Surely a grief-inducing letter from an apostle is not a good thing. But this emotional response was exactly what God intended for them because it led to repentance.

Verse 9, I rejoiced not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief. Church, sometimes undesirable emotions are God's means of driving us to do the right thing.

Sometimes undesirable emotions are God's means. of driving us to do the right thing. At this point, Paul sort of pauses and elaborates on the relationship between painful emotions and God's work of grace in our lives. Verse 10, for godly grief. produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.

Whereas worldly grief produces death. You see, not all grief is equal. Grief can be godly or worldly. Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Worldly grief produces death.

Godly grief will be accompanied by visible evidences of godliness. Paul lists some of those evidences in verse 11. And this evidence of godly repentance is proof of Corinth's innocence. Look at the latter half of verse 11. At every point, you proved yourselves innocent in the matter.

Now Paul's affirmation of Corinth's innocence doesn't mean that they had not sinned against Paul. They had. What Paul is affirming is that their repentance is a demonstration of the fact that they truly belong to Christ. Come judgment day, they would be cleared of all wrongdoing. They would be declared innocent by grace.

And the sincerity of their repentance now. was evidence that they would be credited with innocence then. They would be credited with righteousness on Judgment Day. How incredibly gracious this is on Paul's part. He's seeing Corinth as they will be.

Not as they are. It's a tangible demonstration of how God in Christ sees us. Verse 12 is an important piece of the puzzle. It shows us the selflessness of Paul. We've already seen back in verse 3 that Paul's motives in being harsh with Corinth were not to condemn them or.

Get his frustrations with them off of his chest.

Well, that same selflessness is demonstrated in verse 12, where Paul says that his motivation was not pragmatically to fix what was wrong in Corinth. He says it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong. Nor was his motivation to prove to himself that he was an effective apostle. Paul was not doing what he did as God's minister in order to feel good about his skills and his influence and his importance in the kingdom of God. Look at what he says in the latter half of verse 12.

I wrote to you in order that your earnestness for us. Which is to say your earnestness for Christ and the gospel. might be revealed to you. in the sight of God. Paul wasn't looking for self-affirmation.

He wanted Corinth to see for themselves that their lives possess the evidence of the grace of God. He wanted to afford them the benefits of the assurance of salvation. Once again, this demonstrates incredible selflessness on Paul's part. and something that we should emulate. As we represent Christ, as we labor in His kingdom, we, like Paul, ought to have the salvation of others and the evidence of that salvation be the driving motive of ministry.

rather than our own recognition, our own credit for having been faithful or effective or right. Finally, we see Paul's vindication in verses 13 through 16. Paul's driving motivation was the spiritual well-being of Corinth. Nevertheless, there was comfort and joy and vindication to be enjoyed by Paul himself. The minister who loves Christ and the gospel first.

Also, experiences great joy and comfort when Christ and the gospel are received by others. There's an apostle, Paul. Had expectations of his apostolic ministry. He had expectations that he would succeed as an apostle. In fact, he had more than mere expectation.

He had the promise of Christ, that Christ would build his church through the foundation and testimony of his apostles, and neither Corinthian idolatry nor the gates of hell would thwart that process. And so the chapter concludes with Paul's expectations and hopes being vindicated, being realized. Verse 14, whatever boasts I made to Titus about you, I was not put to shame. Your repentance, Corinth, proved true. And it brought comfort.

Enjoy. to Paul.

So, how does this episode in the life and ministry of Paul apply to us today? We are not apostles. trying to lay the foundation of the church. We're not flirting with literal super apostles and temples of idol worship like Corinth was.

So how do these verses apply? Uh two us.

Well, the principles in play in 2 Corinthians 7 have not changed. God's apostolic witness is still God's apostolic witness. Just now it's written down in scripture for us. Our rejection of that witness still puts our souls at risk. Allegiances to people and doctrines that run contrary to the gospel are still out there, tempting us to doubt God's word and run after belief systems and worldviews and values and behaviors that cater to our own idols and blind us, like Corinth.

the dangers we're putting ourselves in. When we do things God's way, we get God's results. And those results are always. Good. even when emotionally they don't feel good.

Let's consider then for a moment our relationship to God's way of doing things. What is our posture to God's means. It would have been so easy for Paul to give up on Corinth. or to stoop to less than godly means. Here he was, having to compete with all sorts of worldly means that appealed to Corinthian tastes and norms.

But what does he do? He insists that the church in Corinth stop being enamored with their own idols and make room in their hearts. for the message and ministry of the apostles. What Paul wrote as an apostle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was the word of God. For him to compromise the call for Corinth to submit to that word.

Out of Niceness or cultural sensitivity or fear or pragmatism. would be to short circuit the whole process of kingdom building in Corinth. The divinely appointed means of advancing the gospel and revealing God's saving presence to the hearts and minds of people is the proclamation of the word. Along with the example of love and selflessness in the lives of those doing the proclaiming. Do we, like Paul, rely on God's means, God's way of doing things?

in our labor for the kingdom. Or do we betray a self-confidence? A self-centeredness, a self-reliance through a dozen little compromises and concessions.

Now we need to be careful here because we are not apostles in the sense that Paul was.

However, we have opportunities, don't we, to be God's messengers. Little A apostles. in our parenting. In how we offer counsel to our friends, in how we go about the task of evangelizing unbelievers. We are God's messengers.

In your ministering to others and influencing them. Are you compelled to point them to your own wisdom and experience and knowledge? Or are you compelled to point them to the truth of God's word? even when it requires a severe rebuke. a grievous conversation.

Maybe a period of uncertainty in your friendship for a time. This isn't severity for the sake of severity. Severe words can be spoken in love. Paul shows us how. Are we willing to take relationship risks in order to demonstrate our reliance, our confidence in the sufficiency and authority of God's Word?

The flip side of this Concerns our reception of God's means when we're on the receiving end of God's means. Not only should we rely on God's means in our ministering to others, like Paul, we should also, like Corinth, submit ourselves, our lives. to God's means. You know, we, like Corinth, are prone to find fault with God's means rather than admit our own faults. My parents don't understand.

My husband doesn't deserve my submission. My pastor doesn't know my situation. God's word doesn't address my particular problem. And on and on we go, making ourselves the exception to the rule. Friends, that really is just an attitude of self-sufficiency and unbelief, isn't it?

As if ours is that one extreme situation that God's word just doesn't quite adequately address. Corinth could have easily continued down the path of saying. Paul, your message doesn't work in Corinth. We are Greeks. We need sophistry and eloquence and polish.

Your idea that Christ and him crucified is enough. That just doesn't work here. But they admitted to the error of their ways and submitted to the gospel. contrary to the sensibilities of their own culture. Doing things God's way brings about God's results.

And those results are always good. We need to do things God's way. Secondly, we should consider the beauty of God's results presented to us here in 2 Corinthians 7. For Paul, those results were comfort and joy. And Paul stood firmly on what he knew to be the right answer for Corinth's Regression in the faith, and as a result, they repented, they returned to the Lord.

Even Corinthians repent when God's means are employed.

Now, had Paul sought to minimize the blow-up with Corinth and keep things polite. He may have maintained a cordial working relationship with them. But he would have never experienced the deep joy of seeing God do what only God can do. Instead, he committed to God's means, and as a result, he, verse 4, overflowed with joy. And verse 7, rejoice still more.

And verse 13, rejoice still more. Let's apply this to our parenting. Parents, it's tempting, isn't it?

Sometimes to compromise what we know to be the best course of action in the rearing of our children. For the sake of Temporal peace. Immediate results, tranquility in the home. But the pathway that leads to overflowing joy that increases still more and then increases still more again. Is the pathway that insists on never veering away from the instruction and admonition.

of the Lord. If we're serious about wanting the joy that God's means bring, We have to take God's means seriously. In the case of Corinth, The result of doing things God's way led them from grief to true repentance. When it comes to dealing with the misery of sin, there are dozens of shortcuts to true repentance, aren't there? Therapy, medication, distraction, immersing ourselves in a secure buffer with friends and counselors who will tell us what we want to hear so that we can have the idols we want and still feel justified in it.

But when we resort to these man-made solutions, At best, we are simply just masking the real cause of our grief, and depression, and guilt. There's a worldly grief. It might be kept at bay and silenced for a while, sometimes for a long while, but eventually it will overwhelm and destroy. Verse 10, worldly grief produces death. Friends, don't settle for a temporary, immediate fix.

It ends in regret and death. The result of submitting myself to God's assessment of my life is also grief. It's grievous. But it's a grief that leads to repentance and a repentance that leads to justification and innocence and joy on Judgment Day. Listen to an explanation that I came across last week of the importance of this godly grief that Paul mentions in verse 10.

This commentator said, godly. is much more than an adjective thrown in for effect. Whether or not God is the qualification of our grief makes all the difference in the world and in eternity. Unfortunately, the downsized view of God that permeates so much of modern theology. Makes it increasingly difficult to discern whether our grief is genuine remorse for our offenses against the Holy Lord.

or whether it is mere embarrassment. or just a temporary sense. of loss. What that's saying is that we need to train ourselves to let God's glory and the enjoyment of Him be the trigger of our grief. Not the temporal, circumstantial setbacks that sin brings.

Godly grief. Is a grief that dreads the loss of fellowship with God more than the loss of man's praise and respect. Godly grief stems from a higher esteem of God than of man. And it leads to sincere repentance of sin. which leads to overflowing joy.

This is the result. of doing things God's way, the godly way. rather than the worldly way. The opposite of doing things God's way is doing things my way. And it's possible to preach and minister.

in my way rather than God's way. To go looking for comfort and affirmation in how I parent or how I do marriage or how I evangelize the lost or interact with colleagues at work in a manner that puts greater value on how it makes me look. than on how it conforms to the instruction of God's word. It's possible to repent and feel remorse about sin my way rather than God's way. to wallow in sorrow and regret.

as if that wallowing is a sufficient atonement for my sin. But Church Paul Paul's point in these verses is that it is only in doing things God's way that we experience God's results, and those results are always good. We must learn to make God and his pleasure. our frame of reference for all of life. One pastor said, we missed the point of this passage.

if we miss Paul's emphasis on God. Each of his statements about himself or the Corinthians ends up being a statement about God. Paul's feelings of comfort are God's comfort to him. The Corinthians' sorrow is godly sorrow. directed at pleasing God and being right with Him even over and above their own emotional health.

and happiness. When we do things God's way, We get God's results. And church, those results are always good. eternally. Good.

Let's pray. Father, help us to trust your means, your will, your providence. Your law, your goodness. Your atoning work through Jesus Christ your Son. And as we trust you and follow you without wavering.

As we do what Paul admonishes us to do and make room in our hearts for the apostolic witness, may we experience the overflowing joy. and comfort. that only you can give. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

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