The season of Advent is in the Christian calendar to help Christians prepare for Christmas. From the Latin word “Adventus” which means “longing”, it is for Christians to long for Christ to keep all his promises of the second coming even as we look back at the first coming.
We will take a pause in 2 Cor after this study. In this first part of 2 Corinthians, Paul has been addressing the suspicions and accusations that he is not a real apostle because of the suffering and afflictions that he has faced! Paul is laying out a defence of the apostles’ ministry to those who do not believe. He is trying to show them how he is truly legitmate.
Who comes to your mind when you think about the people who taught you the Bible, who showed you the gospel, and who first helped you see, understand, and believe in Jesus? Your parents, pastors, or church leaders may come to mind. Now, think about how they first helped you fall in love with God’s Word.
This passage in 2 Corinthians describes the heart of every such person who genuinely laboured and gave of themselves to make Christ known to you through His Word. It represents their hopes and desires for you, from their heart to yours. In the example of Paul, we will look at their motivation, their model for ministry, and hear the message they so desperately want to communicate.
Paul has been speaking about suffering and affliction. Last week, we spoke about how Paul was like the ant or bug that just wouldn’t give up no matter how hard you press it against the wall or the table. Paul writes in 2 Cor 4:8 that he was afflicted in every way, but never crushed. After, Paul spoke about how he suffers for the sake of the Corinthians, for them to know the gospel/ We discussed about how Paul’s priority is in speaking the gospel (2 Cor 4: 13) so that God’s grace extends, and that in turn increases thanksgiving to God’s glory.
Paul concludes in 2 Cor 4:16 that Christians do not lose heart amidst suffering, even in intense suffering like his. And we ended by talking about the how even as our outer selves are wasting away, our inner selves are being renewed day by day. This happens as we look to things unseen and eternal as we suffer, knowing that our suffering (described as light and momentary) is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory.
What are these unseen things and how can we be like Paul? Today’s passage is a continuation of Paul’s arguments.
Our passage starts with a “But”, signalling a continuation of an argument/point made in the previous verses. In 2 Cor 4:4, Paul has just said that Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. In 2 Cor 4:6, Paul then says that for Christians, for believers: God has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Paul uses the language of creation to describe how one comes to Christ, that is why later in 2 Cor 5:17, we see that Paul describes those who are in Christ to be a new creation.
This idea and context is important in helping us to understand today’s passage!
Today’s study is a short passage, but as we read it, we will want to pay attention to observe Paul’s heart and drive in ministry.
In today’s study, we’ll continue to unpack Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. The first part of the study will trace the idea of covenant ministry from the perspective of redemptive history. The second half will build on that foundation to work out the practical outcomes.
In our passage today, Paul is defending his ministry: defining what ministry success means, and showing us what are some marks of a true and genuine gospel ministry.
We have been walking through the narrative and circumstances of Paul writing this letter to the Corinthian church. We have read of how he had heard of the distress, tension and sin in the church. He wrote 1 Cor to them and heard bad news. Then he went down and had a worse experience. There was a painful visit that left him grieved. Paul then left them and wrote them a severe letter which he wrote out of much affliction and anguish. To let them know the love he had for them. So tonight’s narrative comes after having written that letter, and having Titus deliver that letter to them. This is Paul waiting for Titus to bring back news.
In this study, we will read of Paul’s heart for the church.
In this study, we’re going to deal with the issue of church discipline. This may seem strange and foreign to some of us, but let’s see what God’s word has to say about this issue!
What does it mean to be a shepherd of the sheep? Today’s passage is about the heart of Christ for His people.
The Bible uses the word “comfort” in thirty-one places, and more than half appears in 2 Cor. In just today’s passage alone, it appears for ten instances. Paul is sharing with the church in Corinth about the true comfort he has experienced amidst his suffering.
Today’s passage is very practical, because we, or our friends might need comfort. Often, we struggle to comfort sufferers and we don’t know how to help or what to say to them. How do Christians comfort and suffer?
Corinth was a strategic city in the Roman empire. It was a seafaring port with a diverse, cosmopolitan crowd. Many in the city, and also the church, were probably used to riches and power. We’re going to look at this second letter to the Corinthians in this series. Why are we doing 2nd Corinthians? It is a book that we hope will be like a bowl of hearty, healthy broth that can reinvigorate our hearts, just as it did for the Corinthian church.
This is the last study in our Doctrine of Scripture series. We started our series with a speaking God, and we went through some of the attributes of Scripture — sufficient, clear, authoritative and necessary. Then we studied about the Canon of the Bible, how we have the set of books in our bibles today. Last week, we spoke about how Scripture cannot be broken. And we come to this week, where we want to trace the storyline of the Bible, because we know that what God says will come to pass!
In this study, we will see what Jesus Himself thinks about Scripture! In this series on the Doctrine of Scripture, we’ve been spending so much time reading the Bible and understanding its characteristics, thus seeing what Jesus Himself has to say will also help us to understand the importance of Scripture too.
We’ve been seeing how Scripture sufficient, clear, authoritative and necessary. Since Scripture is this perfect word, how do we know that what we have in the Bible matches that standard? What then are the recognised books? That is what we will be looking at today.
In the past four studies, we’ve seen how the Bible presents God as a God who speaks. From beginning to end, He is a God who relates with human beings and acts for them using words. We’ve looked at the kinds of words God uses and some of the qualities of those words – the sufficiency, clarity and authority of Scripture.
In this study, we look at a fourth quality – the necessity of Scripture. His words are necessary; we cannot do without it. The purposes for those words cannot be achieved without those words. They are needed and we desperately need them.
The topic of the “authority” of Scripture raises questions about who has the right to tell us about ultimate reality, and how life ought to be lived. A good place for us to begin is to take reference from Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, and to see how He views the Bible. Seeing how He views the Bible, and how He responds to it should help us form our expectations about the Bible’s authority. Even more fascinatingly, the passage we’ll look at sees Him engaging with Satan, a competing authoritative source and how the Bible, for Jesus, was clarifyingly authoritative.
The clarity, or pespecuity of Scripture is something that we either take for granted or we accept as something that cannot be achieved. The latter could be a product of what our society tells us, that language is a construct and meaning is what we want it to be. Either way, these are norms that most of us live with. We have come to a place in our world where we accept that maybe God spoke, and maybe it has a meaning for my parents or friends etc, but we may not know if it has relevance for me today.
When we say the Bible is sufficient, we don’t mean that it is the bare minimum we need to get by. Rather, we are to think of sufficiency to mean that Scripture is all that we need to know God, for His purposes.
But, what is it sufficient for? We can’t just speak of the sufficiency of Scripture in a vaccum! Hence, we need to see the purpose of Scripture, and also examine how Scripture is sufficient for this purpose.
