Living Epistles: 2 Corinthians 3:2-3

I. CORINTH: A TRUE PROBLEM CHILD

Corinth was a church with enough problems to keep any pastor busy. Truth be told, I always chuckle a bit whenever I see a “Corinth” church (although I am sure that they are thinking about chapter thirteen, the nearly ubiquitous “love chapter”). From what I can tell, there were at least four letters exchanged between Paul and the church at Corinth as Paul tried to straighten them out on who he was, what he meant, and how they could be the church and do church (orthodoxy and orthopraxy). It is worth noting that American Christians have much in common with the church of Corinth.

The Corinthians had their share of problems, not the least of which was a seeming indifference about being, well what Christ called us to be, different. The folks in Corinth had pretty well slipped into their faith and brought with it all the trappings from their former lives as pagans. They had great difficulty seeing that their boasting, their excess, their immorality, and so forth were in opposition to the new life that Christ had granted them. Paul had received these reports from a trusted source he wrote to Corinth to try to turn things around, in turn they wrote back telling him to give it a rest, but Paul, not to be outdone, wrote to them again and this is where we get 2 Corinthians. This may account for the way that Paul seems to “hit the ground running” in 2 Corinthians. He adjures them to reaffirm their love for God and one another, and then, in chapter three he lays out this appeal to them.

You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; ³ being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

2 Corinthians 3:2-3 (NASB)

II. CAUGHT BEING GOOD

Paul says something time and time again that really chafes at the independent American in me. “People are watching, so be good…” Have you ever had someone say that to you?

Have you ever been caught being good? One time when we picked our kids up from children’s church they had stickers on their shirts that said “caught being good!” Now that’s a great feeling, much better than that one you get when you get caught sneaking a midnight snack or talking on the phone when you are grounded. A recent news story along the same lines caught my attention:

Excellent Driving, Now Pull Over: Calif. Cops to Reward Motorists With $5 Starbucks Cards

RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. — Happy holidays. Now pull over to the side of the road. Motorists may be in for a surprise if they spot flashing red lights in their rearview mirrors in this Sacramento suburb during the holiday season. Police are stopping law-abiding motorists and rewarding their good driving with $5 Starbucks gift cards. A traffic officer came up with the idea to "promote the holiday spirit and enhance goodwill between the traffic unit and the motoring public," police Sgt. Tim Curran said. Local businesses donated money to buy the gift cards. "They raised a substantial amount of money," Curran said. "They'll be pulling over a lot of people.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317215,00.html

III. AND YOUR POINT IS?

I don’t pretend to know all that Paul was trying to communicate here, but I believe that Paul understood something that, once it was brought to my attention, changed my life. Namely that in every situation in life, in every decision that we make, people are watching us; trust me, I am a pastor, I know this! However, once you have been identified as a Christian, as a follower of Christ, the stakes get higher. Now, not only is your character on the line, but so is God’s.

Now some of you are thinking, well, that’s easy then, I just won’t let anyone know that I have a religious streak. Isn’t faith a private and personal matter? It’s none of their business anyhow… right? Jesus said:

³² "Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. ³³ "But whoever, denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.

Matthew 10:32-33 (NASB)

Say it with me now: “hide it under a bushel…” “NO”. God expects us to get the word out. As Paul says in Romans 10:14, “…how will they hear without a preacher?” And by the way, you aren’t off the hook just because you are not on the payroll. We are all ministers of God. We are all a royal priesthood (1 Pt 2:9). We all have the responsibility to proclaim the Gospel. Jesus told us more than once that we are to proclaim the Gospel (Mt 28:18-20, Acts 1:8 etc.). So, that option is out.

IV. LAWLESSNESS

So then, since people know who we represent, what now? Do we live like the Sword of Damocles dangles above our heads? As if God is constantly watching and waiting for a chance to go in for the kill? Perhaps you have seen the Far Side comic where God is about to push the “smite” key on his computer. You might be doing that if that is what you have been taught. I lived that way for some time. I have shared before that I saw our family’s miscarriages as a reflection on my spiritually backslidden state at the time. But if that is what you have been taught, congratulations, this is your emancipation day.

V. 17 of the same chapter tells us that where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom (lit. liberty). That is more than just a catchy praise tune; that is meant to be a way of life for all God’s children. Liberty from the shackles of sin, but also from the shackles of guilt, and from the shackles of legalism.

V. DEADLY SCRABBLE WORDS

I am afraid that there are two great scourges of American Christianity that for the most part have gone quite unchecked. Think Ecc 11:9. One is antinomianism and the other is legalism. Antinomianism is a Scrabble^TM word for “no rules” or “since I am saved, everything goes!” Should we sin all the more that we might be given more grace? (Rom 6:1) This is a misapplication of liberty and it was rampant in at least one of Paul’s churches.

I agree with my friend Darryl Schafer that this is probably the greatest threat to our generation of Christians. We seem to think that Paul’s exhortations of liberty: “don’t ask don’t tell” (1 Cor 8, Rom 14), “everything is permissible” (1 Cor 6, 10), mean that we are to “chase the desires of [our] hearts“. However we have to read on to where the elder generation camps, “and know that for all these things you will face judgment…” (Ecc 11:9, cf. 12:14, Mt 25, 1 Cor 10, Phil 2, et al.)

For our folks and their folks, the error has been decades of holier than thou and watch out because he’s watching you. Surely, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prv 1:7: and by-the-way, even if you have heard me preach that that really means “respect”. I’m taking that back. You should have a healthy fear of a being(?) that can flood the earth, bring fire from the sky, and swallow his enemies in the sea and the earth). And the eyes of the Lord are everywhere (Prv 15:3) and he will bring every deed into judgment (Ecc 12:14).

Here’s the kicker though. Just like antinomianism breeds lawlessness, legalism breeds lawlessness. The lawlessness of legalism is either that

1. people get so fed up that they walk away from the faith because they can’t keep all the rules (in my legalistic days, that was something I saw constantly as I pressured kids in my youth ministry to live up to standards even God thought were impossible) and the other way that it is lawless is that it

2. ignores the New Law, the perfect Law of Love and Liberty (Jas 1:25) Rom 13:8-10, Gal 5:14, Jas 2:8). In other words,

The irony, of course, then is that legalists are the worst law-breakers in all Christendom. They not only miss the point, but they keep others out of the Kingdom as well (Mt 23:13)

VI. I WON’T LET YOU GO

Paul has put his blood, sweat, and tears (quite literally I assure you!) into helping these people “see the light” and he is not about to surrender them to the darkness of lawlessness or legalism. But beyond this, he wants what any pastor wants, moreover what God wants, namely for people to see Christ when they see them. You have heard the old saying, “You may be the only Bible that someone ever reads…” Paul tells us to be on the lookout. To be aware that we are a letter, first a letter of commendation for their ministry, and second a love letter to all humanity saying “This is what God can do!” God can heal a marriage, God can redeem an addict, God can heal a body, God can free a prisoner, God can deliver a Wiccan, God can turn a taker into a giver, a liar into a preacher, God can save a soul and set a life right like none other!

In Matthew 25 Jesus tells us, “you did X/you did not do X therefore you are saved/damned”. Paul says in Eph 2:8-9 that we are saved by grace through faith, but he also tells us that we are His workmanship created for good works in Christ. He also tells us that whoever endures to the end will be saved. In other words, two of the marks of Christian are good works and endurance. We are not really saved by our works, but we are proved by them (Jas 2:20), and furthermore, we endure because we are saved (by the way, we are also elect because we are saved, but that is another sermon).

Paul has tried to communicate all this at least once before in 1 Cor 11:1 where we are told: “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.” In other words, if you want to know how to be a Christian, do what I do, go where I go, tell and laugh at the jokes I do, so on and so on. This is not a statement of arrogance, but a statement of fact, “I follow Jesus, if you want to know what He wants you to do, follow me.” But more than what we do, the question is one of WHO WE ARE. Whereas in the OT, holiness was about conforming to God’s law, in the NT holiness is about conforming to God’s nature. 2 Cor 5:17 tells us that we are new creatures, what do we have to show for it? Next week we will address this in more detail.

Over the years, this world has had some really, really lousy impressions of Christianity thanks to many poor examples and some wolves in sheep’s clothing that have given us all one black eye after another. It is time for us all to make conscious efforts to demonstrate the Gospel. As they say, ”Don’t just go to church, be the church.” Indeed, this is what we need more than anything. People are so tired of being told what to do, they want to see it in our lives.

Paul is trying to say not only that we are delivering the most important message ever, but that we ARE the most important message ever. A good sermon may be challenging, a good argument may be persuasive, a good book may be thought provoking, but a changed life is undeniable. That Jesus Christ has come to change not only the world, but the very nature of the human heart, to save our souls, that is the message; His life, His death, His resurrection.

Will you help Him get the message out?