A Painful Message

 

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

I am not sorry that I sent that severe letter to you, though I was sorry at first, for I know it was painful to you for a little while.  Now I am glad I sent it, not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to repent and change your ways.  It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have, so you were not harmed by us in any way.  For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation.  There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow.  But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.  Just see what this godly sorrow produced in you!  Such earnestness, such concern to clear yourselves, such indignation, such alarm, such longing to see me, such zeal, and such a readiness to punish wrong.  You showed that you have done everything necessary to make things right.  My purpose, then, was not to write about who did the wrong or who was wronged. I wrote to you so that in the sight of God you could see for yourselves how loyal you are to us.  2 Corinthians 7:8-12

In Paul’s first letter to the believers at Corinth, the tone was rebuking; he called them out on their gross sins and made it clear they were making him wonder if he’d made a mistake even considering them as believers.  It was a painful message.  Every preacher of the Gospel delivers a painful message, and more often than imagined.  Just ask any of the apostles.  Each of them suffered greatly because they didn’t hold back from declaring the truth.  Most were martyred, along with Old Testament prophets who declared thus saith the LORD.

In today’s passage, Paul is writing a follow-up letter to Corinth, a festival of joy over the report he’d just gotten about the response to his first letter.  True to character, Paul writes of how he sent the letter in sorrow, but, because of the Corinthian disciples’ repentance, and heaven’s approval, his sorrow over the pain his message brought, had turned into rejoicing and overwhelming happiness.

I met Alese Nixon in a nursing home in Asheboro, North Carolina.  She was the first visit I made to a church member as pastor at Bethany in 2005.  After introducing myself as the new pastor and chatting for a while, I began to inquire about her salvation – how she came to know Christ.  She talked of conviction as a young girl, decades before, and how she placed her faith in Jesus during a youth meeting.  I responded by saying how good it was to have that blessed assurance of God’s closeness and the assurance of Heaven.  She shot right back:  That’s right, young man, and if you want to go to Heaven too, you’d better change your ways! 

I conducted Alese’s funeral some months after that “pastoral visit” (and I’m not entirely certain exactly who was the pastor that day).  Her message about changing my ways stuck in my head, and has served this last decade-and-a-half to keep me from any kind of self-righteousness.  In my mind Alese is known as Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church…painful, effective, and able to leap tall buildings when it comes to cutting past any clergy arrogance, right to the critical issue:  Nobody is above rebuke; we all need it from time to time.

For You Today

If you tend to bristle over someone pointing out a rusty spot in your spiritual armor, my prayer for you is that you’ll meet one of Alese’s people.  It’s not that I’m hoping for a little pain in your life…unless, of course, that means it’s the one thing that will bring restoration of your relationship with God and his family.

So, the next time your pastor, or that nursing home resident gets your hackles up, think of Alese, and Paul’s joy.  The sermon is meant to bring all of it.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©