2 Corinthians 2

Today’s Passage: 2 Corinthians 2

This chapter is a man opening his mail drawer and telling you why he wrote what he wrote. Something ugly had happened at Corinth. Paul had gone there and it had gone badly, so badly that he calls it a painful visit and decided he would not put them through another one. Instead he sent a letter, and he tells us here what it cost him to write it: many tears, great distress, anguish of heart. The Corinthians had evidently read it as coldness. Paul says it was the exact opposite. Then he turns to the man at the center of the trouble and does something the church may not have expected at all. He does not call for more discipline. He calls for forgiveness, for comfort, for a public reaffirming of love, and he gives a reason that should sober every congregation that has ever handled a hard case: if we do not restore, Satan gets what he came for. From there the chapter moves outward. Paul tells of an open door for the gospel at Troas that he could not walk through because his heart was too heavy waiting for news from Titus, and then, in the middle of that anxious sentence, he breaks into praise. Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph. And the rest of the chapter is fragrance and aroma and the terrible weight of a message that smells like life to some and like death to others.

As you read, hold this: The love that once wrote through tears now commands forgiveness, and the God who leads His people captive in Christ’s triumph makes their very lives the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.

2 Corinthians 2:1–4 (BSB)

¹ So I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. ² For if I grieve you, who is left to cheer me but those whom I have grieved? ³ I wrote as I did so that on my arrival I would not be grieved by those who ought to make me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would share my joy. ⁴ For through many tears I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart, not to grieve you but to let you know how much I love you.

Watch how tightly Paul binds his life to theirs. He will not come, he says, because a visit that grieves them will leave him with no one to cheer him, for the very people who would comfort him are the people he would have just wounded. That is not self-pity. That is a man saying he has no source of gladness in this world that is independent of them. And notice the confidence in verse 3, which is a generous thing to say to a church that had recently let him down in public: “I had confidence in all of you, that you would share my joy.” He expects the best of them even now. Then comes verse 4, and it is one of the tenderest sentences in all of Paul. He wrote that hard letter “through many tears,” “out of great distress and anguish of heart,” and he states his aim in words that cannot be misread: “not to grieve you but to let you know how much I love you.” Sit with that for a moment, because it corrects two errors at once. There are people who think love must always be soft, and there are people who think faithfulness gives them a license to be harsh. Paul is neither. The severity was real and the tears were real, and they came out of the same heart on the same night. If ever you must say a hard thing to someone you love, let this verse be your pattern: say it, and let the cost of saying it show.

2 Corinthians 2:5–8 (BSB)

⁵ Now if anyone has caused grief, he has not grieved me but all of you—to some degree, not to overstate it. ⁶ The punishment imposed on him by the majority is sufficient for him. ⁷ So instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. ⁸ Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.

Here is the heart of the matter, and it is almost certainly the sequel to a case we have already read about. In the earlier letter Paul had confronted a scandal so gross that even pagan Corinth was shocked by it, and he told the church to act:

"When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of the Lord Jesus, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord." 1 Corinthians 5:4–5 (BSB)

Read the last clause of that with fresh eyes. So that his spirit may be saved. The severity was never the goal. The goal was standing here in front of us in 2 Corinthians 2, a repentant man who now needs the church to open its arms. Paul says the punishment “imposed on him by the majority is sufficient for him,” and the word means it has done its work; there is nothing more to squeeze out of it. And then he gives three commands in a row. Forgive him. Comfort him. And, in the plainest terms, reaffirm your love (κυρόω) kyroō, pronounced koo-ROH-oh. Strong's G2964, to ratify, confirm, make publicly valid. The verb behind “reaffirm your love” is not a soft word about feelings at all. Kyroō comes from the world of contracts and public assemblies. It meant to ratify something, to make it legally valid, to put the seal on a decision so that it stands. Paul uses the same word in Galatians for a covenant that has been formally confirmed and can no longer be set aside. So he is not asking the Corinthians to feel warmer toward this man. He is telling them to take a public, binding action: to decide as a body, and to let it be seen and heard, that this brother is loved and received. That is a striking thing to require. The discipline had been public, so the restoration must be public too, or the man is left in a fog, forgiven in theory and shunned in practice. Many a repentant believer has been left standing in exactly that fog by a congregation that never quite got around to saying it out loud. Paul will not allow it. Ratify your love for him, he says. Make it official. And if the Lord has ever ratified His love toward you, you know what it is worth to have it stated plainly rather than merely assumed. for him. Notice too how carefully Paul refuses to make it about his own wounded feelings: “he has not grieved me but all of you,” and even then, “to some degree, not to overstate it.” He will not exaggerate an injury in order to justify holding a grudge. Take this to heart wherever the church has to deal with sin. Discipline that never arrives at restoration has failed. It has become punishment for its own sake, and that is not what the Lord gave it for. The reason Paul gives is a shepherd’s reason: forgive him, “so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” A penitent man can be crushed by a church as surely as by his own sin, and there is a grief that swallows a soul whole. Do not let it. Get to him first. Paul says the same thing in another letter, and it is worth having in your ear:

"Brothers, if someone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him with a spirit of gentleness. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted." Galatians 6:1 (BSB)

2 Corinthians 2:9–11 (BSB)

⁹ My purpose in writing you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything. ¹⁰ If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And if I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven it in the presence of Christ for your sake, ¹¹ in order that Satan should not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.

So the severe letter had been a test, and Paul says so openly. Not a trap, but a proving: would this church obey in the hard thing? They had. And now Paul throws his own weight behind their forgiveness without reservation. “If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him.” The apostle does not hold back a private reserve of resentment while the congregation moves on. He forgives with them, and he tells us where he does it: “in the presence of Christ.” That is the only place forgiveness is ever really transacted. Not in the strength of a generous temperament, but under the eyes of the Lord who forgave us first, which is exactly the ground Paul gives elsewhere when he tells the Ephesians to be tenderhearted, “forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.” Then comes verse 11, and it must be handled soberly. Paul says the reason for all of this is “in order that Satan should not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” Take it exactly as it stands. Satan is real, he is an enemy, and he works by strategy rather than by noise. And here, in this passage, the opening Paul names is not sorcery or spectacle. It is an unforgiving church. That is the scheme. He would be perfectly content to see a congregation defend the truth, discipline a sinner, win the argument, and then destroy the man it was trying to save, and destroy its own tenderness in the process. Bitterness held for good reasons is still bitterness. Paul had seen enough of the enemy’s methods to recognize the ordinary, respectable ones, and he says of another such opening, “do not give the devil a foothold.”

"and do not give the devil a foothold." Ephesians 4:27 (BSB)

2 Corinthians 2:12–13 (BSB)

¹² Now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and a door stood open for me in the Lord, ¹³ I had no peace in my spirit, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said goodbye to them and went on to Macedonia.

There is a great deal of comfort in these two verses, though at first they look like a travel note. Here is the apostle Paul, with an open door in front of him. He says so himself: “a door stood open for me in the Lord.” That is the Lord’s own provision, an opportunity at Troas that any preacher would give his right arm for. And Paul could not use it. Not because he was forbidden, and not because he had lost his nerve, but because “I had no peace in my spirit,” waiting for Titus and word from Corinth. A church he loved was in trouble, he did not know how his letter had been received, and the weight of it followed him across the sea and stood between him and the work. So he said goodbye and went on into Macedonia to find his friend. Notice that Paul does not scold himself for this in the telling, and he does not present it as a triumph of faith either. He simply reports it. Do not let anyone sell you a Christianity in which the faithful never ache. Paul ached, it slowed him down, and God was not finished with him. Which makes what comes next all the more astonishing, for the sentence he is in the middle of never gets finished. He picks up the story again in chapter 7. Right here, in the middle of describing his own restlessness, something breaks over him.

2 Corinthians 2:14–16 (BSB)

¹⁴ But thanks be to God, who always leads us triumphantly as captives in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him. ¹⁵ For we are to God the sweet aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. ¹⁶ To the one we are an odor that brings death, to the other a fragrance that brings life. And who is qualified for such a task?

Praise God for that word “but.” Paul is anxious, unsettled, unable to preach, hurrying up the coast after news, and out of the middle of it comes this: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us triumphantly as captives (θριαμβεύω) thriambeuō, pronounced three-am-BYOO-oh. Strong's G2358, to lead in a triumphal procession. Thriambeuō is a rare word, and it is a technical one. It does not mean to be victorious in general; it means to lead someone in a Roman triumphal procession. Everything in Paul’s picture depends on that. The one doing the leading is God. The ones being led are Paul and his fellow workers. And the position of those who are led in a triumph is not beside the chariot but behind it, in the line of captives taken in the war. That is how the apostle describes his ministry and his whole life. He was a man violently conquered on the Damascus road by the Christ he was hunting, and he never afterward pretended otherwise. He belongs to the Victor now, marched through the world at the Victor’s pleasure, displayed as living proof of what the Lord Jesus can do with an enemy. Hold this together with the anxious, sleepless man of verse 13 and you have the whole Christian life in one image. You may not feel like a conqueror. You are not asked to be one. You are asked to be a captive of the One who has already conquered, and He always leads. The word carries no exceptions: always. On the road you would have chosen and on the road you would not. in Christ.” He is looking at his own frayed and interrupted life and calling it a victory parade. Not because he felt victorious, but because of who is at the front of the procession. Christ has won, Christ is leading, and the route of the march is not Paul’s to choose. Then the incense. As the smoke of the triumph filled every street it passed through, so, Paul says, God “through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.” Your life carries a scent, and the scent is the knowledge of God, and it goes wherever you are led, including into the places you would not have chosen. But then he says something that ought to make us all go quiet. The same fragrance does not smell the same to everyone. “We are to God the sweet aroma (εὐωδία) euōdia, pronounced yoo-oh-DEE-ah. Strong's G2175, a sweet aroma, fragrant offering. Euōdia is a compound, and it means simply a good smell, a sweet savor. But it is not a word Paul picked at random out of the Corinthian marketplace. It is the standard word the Greek Old Testament uses, over and over, for the burnt offerings that rose from the altar as “a pleasing aroma to the LORD.” Every time a lamb was consumed on the altar of Israel, that phrase was attached to it. So when Paul says “we are to God the sweet aroma of Christ,” he has moved from the Roman street to the sanctuary, and he is saying that a life spent in the service of the gospel comes up before God like sacrifice on an altar. Paul uses the same word of Christ Himself, who “gave Himself up for us as a fragrant sacrificial offering to God,” and of a gift of money sent to him by a poor church, which he calls “a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God.” Consider what that means for the ordinary faithfulness that no one sees. The witness that seemed to fall flat, the kindness no one thanked you for, the hard conversation you had in tears: God is not evaluating the smoke by the size of the crowd that noticed it. It rises to Him, and it pleases Him, because it smells of His Son. of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an odor that brings death, to the other a fragrance that brings life.” Notice that the aroma does not change. The gospel is not one thing to one man and another thing to another. It is Christ, always and only Christ, and what differs is the state of the one who breathes it in. And notice the great mercy hidden in that sentence: Paul says “to God” we are the sweet aroma of Christ, in both cases. The faithful witness is pleasing to God whatever the hearer does with it. Then he asks the question the whole picture forces out of him: “And who is qualified for such a task?” Nobody. That is the honest answer, and Paul gives it a chapter later when he says our competence comes from God.

2 Corinthians 2:17 (BSB)

¹⁷ For we are not like so many others, who peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as men sent from God.

The chapter ends with a contrast, and it is a sharp one. There were men working the churches of the Greek world the way a trader works a market stall, and Paul says they peddle (καπηλεύω) kapēleuō, pronounced kap-ay-LYOO-oh. Strong's G2585, to peddle, to hawk for profit, to adulterate for gain. Kapēleuō comes from kapēlos, a huckster, a small retail dealer, the man with a stall in the market rather than an honest merchant with a warehouse. In Greek writing the word had picked up a decidedly bad smell of its own. It carried the assumption of the crooked trader: the one who waters the wine, weights the scales, talks up the goods, and takes whatever the customer will pay. Isaiah uses the related idea when he says of Jerusalem that her silver has become dross and her wine is diluted with water. That is the accusation. These men were not merely charging for the gospel; they were cutting it, thinning it out so that more of it could be sold and it would go down easier. And here is the thing to notice: a watered gospel always sells better than a strong one. It always has. The pressure to soften the cross, to leave out the parts that offend, to promise the hearer what he came hoping to hear, is not a modern temptation and it will not pass. Set against it the plain, costly honesty of verse 17 and be grateful for every faithful man who has ever handed you the word of God undiluted, even when it cost him the sale. the word of God for profit. He is not attacking men who are paid for their labor; he defends that plainly enough elsewhere. He is attacking men for whom the message is merchandise, who trim it and sweeten it and adjust it to what will sell in the room they are standing in. Against that he sets four short marks of an honest ministry, and every one of them is a mark you can use. In Christ: the man himself stands inside the Lord he preaches, not outside it as a salesman of goods he does not own. We speak: he says the thing plainly rather than hinting at it. Before God: he preaches with the awareness that his true audience is not the congregation but the Lord who is listening. With sincerity, as men sent from God: he did not appoint himself, and he has nothing to gain by shading the truth. Test what you hear by those four, and test yourself by them too, for they are not only for preachers. Anyone who opens his mouth about Christ over a kitchen table or a fence line is either handling the word of God as a trust or handling it as a commodity. And remember what the fragrance was in the verses just before. A man who is selling cannot help adjusting the aroma to the customer. A man who is a captive in the triumph of Christ simply carries the smell of his Lord wherever he is marched, and lets God decide what it does when it lands.