Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Lent 4, 30th of March, 2025
Today’s reading from Paul’s Second Letter to the church at Corinth, or at least the second letter of his to the Corinthians that we have, is full of quotable quotes. We frequently use the two verses about our reconciliation with God through Christ in Declarations of Forgiveness. The verse about all those in Christ being a new creation is a suggested Bible verse for the service at a cemetery or crematorium. The Uniting in Worship II ‘Service of Healing for Those Whose Marriage is Ending or has Ended’ (did you know we had one?) also suggests using it as part of the letting go of the marriage relationship. These are well-known words.
Today’s reading may offer us the comfort of familiarity, but it was written because the church at Corinth had problems. Paul founded the church, but after moving on, he heard from Chloe’s people that the community was divided. (1 Corinthians 1:11) The church also had many questions for Paul, and it was in response to those divisions and questions that Paul wrote the First Letter to the Corinthians, from which we heard last week. That letter did not solve all the problems, or there would be no Second Letter to the Corinthians in the Bible. A group of people that Paul referred to sarcastically as ‘super apostles’ (2 Corinthians 11:5) moved in and were undermining everything that Paul had done. Paul had to justify himself to the very church he founded – hence the letter we hear from today.
There were two reasons for Paul’s problems with his community. First, Paul had promised to make two visits to the church at Corinth, on his way both to and from Macedonia. But then he changed his mind and did not come. He had broken his promise; how could the Corinthians trust him? So Paul writes to them: ‘Do I make my plans according to ordinary human standards, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been “Yes and No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not “Yes and No”; but in him it is always “Yes”.’ (2 Corinthians 1:17b-19) Paul explains that he changed his mind to spare them a painful visit, having just written them a painful letter – one that has not survived, but one that Paul says he wrote ‘out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you’. (2 Corinthians 2:4)
It was not just his failure to visit that was causing Paul problems. Paul also lacked the powerful presence that the Corinthians had come to expect of apostles. The super apostles were saying: ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.’ (2 Corinthians 10:10) I find it so reassuring to know that even the Apostle Paul was seen by some people to be weak and contemptible. Paul is sarcastic about his apparent weakness: ‘For you put up with it when someone makes slaves of you, or preys upon you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or gives you a slap in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!’ (2 Corinthians 11:20-21)
This is the context of the passage we hear today. While justifying his ministry to the Corinthians, Paul explains to them what he believes, and why that means that they should be reconciled to him. The super apostles are convincing the Corinthians to judge Paul by human standards, but Christians are no longer to judge anyone by those standards. ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.’ Paul’s unimpressive presentation does not matter. Paul himself once judged Jesus by a human point of view, saw a Jewish teacher executed by the Romans, and persecuted those who followed him. But after his conversion Paul recognised in Jesus the Christ through whom God had reconciled the world to Godself. Having been reconciled to God through Christ, Christians, including Paul, are to be agents of reconciliation themselves. It is as one of Christ’s ambassadors that Paul is now speaking to the Corinthians, urging them to be reconciled to God. If the Corinthians continue to judge people by a human point of view, ignoring what God has done in Christ, then they are not just unreconciled to people like Paul. They are unreconciled to God.
‘From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ We say this; we believe it; but it is so hard to live it. Like the Corinthians we have had God’s message of reconciliation entrusted to us, we are ‘ambassadors of Christ,’ but, again like the church at Corinth, the church today is full of divisions and the same sort of quarrelling that Chloe’s people reported to Paul. Paul tells us that we are to regard no one from a human point of view, but we do still judge people by their appearance and what they do, just as the Corinthians judged Paul. He writes that we are the righteousness of God, but we are all too aware of our trespasses.
It may help to know how many other Christians have struggled with this. I have recently become the owner of a four-volume collection of The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, and leafing through it, I found Wesley quoting today’s Bible reading and musing on his own state, whether he truly is a ‘new creature’. Wesley decided that he was a new creature in his judgments of himself, of happiness and of holiness; his designs; his desires; his conversation (which he said was ‘seasoned with salt, and fit to minister grace to the hearers’); and his actions, which were all devoted to the glory of God. But Wesley then writes:
St. Paul tells us elsewhere, that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, joy, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, temperance.” Now although, by the grace of God in Christ, I find a measure of some of these in myself, viz. of peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, temperance; yet others I find not: I cannot find in myself the love of God or of Christ. Hence my deadness and wanderings in public prayer: hence it is, that even in the Holy Communion, I have frequently no more than a cold attention. Again: I have not that joy in the Holy Ghost; no settled lasting joy: nor have I such a peace as excludes the possibility either of fear or doubt.[1]
That John Wesley, in examining himself, could not find love of God or of Christ, or joy in the Holy Spirit, and that he frequently had only a cold attention in Communion, I find both astounding and encouraging, in the same way that the context of this passage is reassuring.
Paul is writing not to a perfect church, but to a church in a mess, and yet he still calls on the Corinthians to live out their calling as ambassadors of Christ. John Wesley was able to write that, ‘upon the whole, although I have not that joy in the Holy Ghost, nor the full assurance of faith, much less am I, in the full sense of the words, “in Christ a new creature;” I nevertheless trust that I have a measure of faith, and am “accepted in the beloved”.’ If Paul can still tell the Corinthians that they are a new creation, if Wesley can be certain that he has been ‘accepted in the beloved,’ then we, too, can be certain that for us, ‘everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ Like the Corinthians, it is our calling to be ambassadors for Christ. We cannot avoid answering God’s call by claiming to be unworthy. We may be all too aware of the ways we fail and fall short, but through Jesus we have become the righteousness of God.
And if our sense of unworthiness does paralyse us, we simply need to remember Jesus’ teaching that God responds to sinners with the compassion of a father who runs to greet his erring son, embrace him, and celebrate his return. This is the God we worship, the Prodigal Father whose arms are always open to welcome us. Amen.
[1] John Wesley, Journal, Friday, 6th of October, 1738.
Rev Doc Geek 