We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also. (2 Corinthians 6:3-13)
As we have seen already in our study of Paul’s Corinthian correspondence, Paul was apparently misunderstood and even maligned by the very people who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he had brought to faith in Jesus Christ. It is one thing to be misunderstood and maligned by people who don’t know you, it is quite another thing to experience this sort of treatment from people who, in one sense, owe their life to you.
Yet, Paul remains humble. He wants to make sure that he is putting no stumbling block in the way of the Corinthians truly coming to faith in Jesus Christ. He doesn’t want his ministry to be discredited, not because he cares about the Corinthians’ opinion of himself, personally, but because he cares about their spiritual state.
Paul reaches out to the Corinthians, in this section of his letter, like a father pleading with rebellious children. Paul obviously loves the Corinthians, and he wants them to love him in return.
Thus, Paul opens his heart to the Corinthians and shares with them the deepest struggles of his life, so that they might be moved to a better relationship with him and with God in Christ. In unburdening his heart, Paul basically tells the Corinthians three things. He speaks of the hardships, the helps, and the contrasts of the Christian life. First, let’s look at the hardships.
Hardships of the Christian Life
This whole passage that we are considering today is beautifully structured. I am indebted especially to William Barclay for his analysis of the structure of these verses and I will be using that analysis freely in my comments.
Paul may have been inspired by Stoic rhetoric, for there are some similarities reflected here. Not only does Paul have three major points about hardship, helps and contrasts, but under each major point he has three sub-points, and three sub-sub-points under each of those!
Under the heading of the hardships of the Christian life, Paul speaks first of what we might call internal conflicts. He mentions three: troubles, hardships, and distresses.
The word translated as troubles is one that we have talked about before, it is the Greek word θλῖψις. The word can be translated as pressure. It is sometimes translated as trial or tribulation. There are certain things that weigh on a person’s heart and can even crush the life out of them.
The second word, translated as hardships in our text, can refer to physical or emotional pain. There are certain pains that are inescapable in life. Everyone knows something of sorrow, and every human being must experience death.
The third word that Paul uses, translated in our text as distress, literally means a narrow place, like one encountered when climbing a mountain. It refers to a narrow place from which it seems difficult to escape. Today, in English, we talk about being between a rock and a hard place. Such situations cause a great deal of anxiety.
So much for the internal conflicts of the Christian life. There are also external tribulations. Again, Paul mentions three: beatings, imprisonment, and riots.
Paul experienced physical beatings because of his faith in Jesus Christ. Many of the early Christians endured beatings. Many Christians still experience this today. But as has often been said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” The suffering of the early Christians did not bring an end to the movement but served to spread the Gospel.
We don’t know for certain how many times Paul was in prison. Clement, the Bishop of Rome in the late first century, tells us that Paul was in prison no fewer than seven times. The book of Acts lists four imprisonments: in Philippi, Jerusalem, Caesarea, and Rome. Again, many Christians have experienced the same treatment as Paul. Many have given up their freedom rather than abandon their faith in Jesus Christ.
Paul experienced riots on at least three occasions in response to the Gospel, once in Thessalonica, once in Ephesus, and once in Jerusalem. Again, Paul has not been alone in this. John Wesley was one who experienced the violence of the mob more than once in response to his preaching.
A third kind of hardship of the Christian life that Paul mentions is the sheer effort required to be a Christian. In our Wednesday morning men’s Bible study, Bud Rowles has mentioned time and again that life takes effort to be lived well. This is not just true for Christians, but for everyone. So, we should not be surprised that the Christian life takes effort. It is not a life of ease. Paul mentions three aspects of this effort: hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger.
The word Paul uses for hard work refers to the kind of toil that brings one to the point of sheer exhaustion. It takes everything one has, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to serve Christ. Paul worked hard not only in preaching the Gospel, travelling hundreds of miles on foot and by boat, but he also labored at tentmaking to support himself.
Paul also talks about the effort of sleepless nights. His concern for the churches he planted was so great that he probably spent many a night in prayer. When he was in jail in Philippi, he spent the night with his companion Silas in singing hymns to God.
Thirdly, Paul mentions hunger. Paul may be referring to the fact that he went without food out of necessity because of poverty. Or he may be referring to the fact that he voluntarily fasted as a devotional practice along with prayer.
When I think of the strenuous effort that Paul put into his Christian life and witness, I feel ashamed of my own paltry efforts. But it’s good that Paul is so blatantly honest with us about what the Christian life requires. It is important that he does not sugar-coat things. We need to count the cost before committing our lives to follow Jesus Christ.
Still, if all there was to the Christian life was hardship, who would want anything to do with Jesus? Thankfully, tough times are not the whole story.
God-given Helps of the Christian Life
Paul goes on to spell out the God-given helps of the Christian life. And again, he mentions three kinds of helps: qualities of mind, qualities of heart, and equipment for the work.
Paul mentions three qualities of mind and the first is purity. Usually, we tend to think of physical purity, or maybe emotional purity, but seldom do we think of mental purity. We live in a day when our minds are constantly being bombarded with information, images, and a lot of useless junk. Do we do anything to guard our minds from the onslaught? Sometimes the only way to counteract an external pressure is by an equal and opposite internal one. In Philippians 4 Paul urges us…
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
God wants to give us purity of mind, but we must receive the gift God wants to give.
The second quality of mind Paul mentions is understanding. The word Paul uses is gnosis. Gnosis is the kind of knowledge gained from personal experience. Gnosis connects theory to application. Paul was not a spouter of useless theological ideas. He was always taking theology and showing the practical application of it. His letters to the Corinthians demonstrate this repeatedly. Perhaps the classic example of Paul’s procedure is his letter to the Ephesians where he spends the first three chapters on theology and the last three chapters on application. Paul is almost always perfectly balanced. Would that we had the same balance in our day, but some Christian circles seem to focus on theology, others on practice, and seldom are the two brought together in harness.
The third quality of mind Paul mentions is patience. We talk about people being short-tempered. Patience is the quality of being long-tempered. We all need patience with three people: God, others, and ourselves.
In addition to qualities of mind, God gives us qualities of heart to help us along our Christian journey. The first quality of heart that Paul mentions is kindness. The word that Paul uses literally means “usefulness”. This kindness meets real needs, in God’s way, in God’s timing, and in God’s fashion. According to Barclay, kindness “puts others at their ease and shrinks from giving pain”.
Paul lists kindness as part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5:22. Thus, it is interesting that Paul talks here of the Holy Spirit as the second quality of heart that helps us along our Christian journey. The phrase that Paul uses here can also be translated “in the spirit of holiness”. This makes it easier to see how this could be a quality of heart.
If I think of holiness as moral perfection, I often find it hard to see how I have this as a quality of heart. But in the biblical sense, holiness means “to be set apart” to belong to God and to Christ. And it is the Holy Spirit who sets us apart. Thus, holiness is not something I achieve, but it is something that God does for me and in me.
I also like to spell holiness with a “w” at the beginning: wholiness. Holiness is all about becoming a whole, integrated person. But again, it is God who helps us to achieve this.
The third quality of heart that Paul mentions is sincere love. The word for sincere means to be free of hidden agendas. And the word for love is one with which we are very familiar. It is agape. Barclay defines agape as “unconquerable benevolence”. I like that. Agape always seeks the highest good in relationship to God, others, and the self.
The final set of helps for the Christian life that Paul talks about Barclay calls equipment for the work of the Gospel. Again, there are three elements. The first is truthful speech. This phrase can be translated as “the word of truth”. It occurs to me that God has given us a “word of truth” to proclaim from Scripture, but he also wants us to proclaim that word truthfully.
The word in Greek is ἀλήθεια. It means not merely truth as spoken but also truth of idea, reality, sincerity, truth in the moral sphere, divine truth revealed to human beings, and straightforwardness. In ancient Greek culture ἀλήθεια was synonymous with “reality” as the opposite of illusion.
And the word translated as “speech” in our passage is λόγος. John tells us at the beginning of his Gospel that Jesus is the logos, the reasoning power behind the universe, the one who created all that is. Ultimately, Jesus is the word of truth, and he is the one who we must proclaim truthfully.
The second piece of equipment God has given us to help us proclaim the Good News about Jesus is the power of God. Without his power we would be absolutely stuck, totally helpless. The Greek word for power that is used here is dunamis. We get from it our English word “dynamite”. God’s power is indeed dynamite that can explode and remove the strongholds of the enemy.
And speaking of the enemy, Paul reminds us that we are in a spiritual battle when he refers to the weapons of righteousness. Paul talks about weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left. Soldiers in ancient times would always carry their spear in their right hand and their shield in their left. This is probably the image Paul has in mind. He gives us a full picture of the armor of God in Ephesians 6. In that place he makes it clear that the shield in our left hand is the shield of faith and our one offensive weapon in spiritual warfare is the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.
The Contrasts of the Christian Life
Paul concludes this marvelous passage with nine contrasts of the Christian life. He begins with glory and dishonor. The word Paul uses for dishonor was normally used in Greek to refer to loss of rights as a citizen. It is as if Paul is saying, “I may have lost all the rights and privileges this world has to offer but I am still a citizen of the kingdom of God.”
The second contrast is bad report and good report. Paul knows there are human beings who criticize his actions and hate his name, but he knows that all that really matters is what God thinks of him.
The third contrast is genuine yet regarded as impostors. The word for impostor literally means a wandering quack! Paul knows that is what some people think of him, but again, all that matters is getting the genuine message of God’s truth out to people.
William Booth, the founder of The Salvation Army, once said, “If I thought I could win one more soul to the Lord by walking on my head and playing the tambourine with my toes, I’d learn how!”
The fourth contrast is known yet regarded as unknown. Paul’s fellow kinsmen who slandered him probably thought he was a “no-account nobody whom no one had ever heard of”. But those whom Paul had brought to faith remembered him with gratitude.
They say that if 9 people say nice things about you and 1 person criticizes you, then you will remember the one criticism and forget all the nice things. Paul did the opposite; he learned to focus on the positive and screen out the negative. It was the only way he could keep going in life as powerfully as he did.
The fifth contrast is dying yet we live on. On at least one occasion, Paul was stoned and left for dead. But he didn’t die. Instead, he got up and walked back into the town where his persecutors were living. That’s courage—the kind of courage only God can give you!
The sixth contrast is like the fifth: beaten and yet not killed. Things happened to Paul that would have knocked out many a lesser man. But these things did not kill Paul’s spirit. He knew the truth that Viktor Frankl spoke of when he said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
The seventh contrast is sorrowful yet always rejoicing. Paul had more reasons to be sad than most people, but he chose to rejoice anyway. In fact, he wrote a whole letter to the Church at Philippi all about choosing joy. I think Paul would have appreciated what my friend Tim Hansel used to say: “Until further notice, celebrate everything!”
The eighth contrast is poor yet making many rich. Paul certainly did not have much in the way of monetary wealth. According to Dr. Luke, Paul supported himself by making tents, perhaps sails, bought by the ship captains who took him by boat forward and back across the Mediterranean Sea. Paul said he had learned to be content in any and every situation whether well fed or hungry. Even though Paul did not have much in the way of this world’s goods, he made countless people spiritually rich.
The ninth contrast goes along with the eighth: having nothing yet possessing everything. Many people might have looked at Paul and thought he had nothing, according to the way worldlings evaluate things. But in truth, Paul had everything because he had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The Triumphant Word of the Christian Life: Endurance
Well, we have talked about the meaning of many words in this marvelous passage from Paul’s letter. And yet, there is one word we have not mentioned that towers over all the others. It is the simple word endurance. In Greek it is ὑπομονή. We might also translate this word as perseverance. When all else fails, this is the most magical weapon of a triumphant life—the simple God-given ability, when one has fallen-down for the umpteenth time, to get up once again and keep walking forward. That was Paul’s secret superpower in Jesus Christ—ὑπομονή, endurance, perseverance.
Paul’s statement of his hardships, his helps, and contrasts in this passage reminds me of the statement of another man who lived 1800 years after Paul…
In the spring of 1864, battle exploded on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia. After the fighting ended and the armies marched off to other battles, small groups of soldiers moved onto the field to bury the dead. One party came upon an unknown Confederate soldier. He lay amid the dead of the frontline.
Just before burying him on the field, the gravediggers made the usual search of the body. Inside the shirt pocket was a sheet of paper. On it this common soldier, a day or so earlier, had scrawled his final thoughts—a statement of what life meant to him.[1] He wrote…
I asked God for strength that I might achieve.
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked God for health that I might do greater things.
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy.
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for
but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among all men most richly blessed.[2]
[2] Tim Hansel, When I Relax, I Feel Guilty, Elgin, Illinois: David C. Cook Publishing Company, 1979.
Comments