Pushing Through The Pain Of Relationships Series

I want to start off this morning by directing your minds to an encouraging place. I want you to think about the worst smell you have ever smelled. That’s an exciting thought, isn’t it? For me, I don’t even have to think about it. Growing up, I was a dockhand at a marina on Lake Michigan and we had a fish guts dumpster behind one of our buildings for the charter boats to dump their fish carcasses when they were done cleaning their catch for the day. It was awful. It would only get emptied once a week and in between the sun would bake that big dumpster and it was difficult to get within a hundred feet. In fact, it was so potent that if you accidently got too close and caught a whiff of the horrible smell, it would permeate the lining of your nose and you would smell it for hours…it was horrible.

Have you ever noticed that a smell, good or bad, can take you back to a place in time? And for me, whenever I smell fish of any sorts, it wakes up my gag reflex and I’m immediately transported to a hot summer day at North Shore Marina. Here’s why I’m sharing this story this morning…because when something is rotten, the smell permeates EVERYTHING and EVERYONE becomes aware of it. And within the body of Christ, if there is anything rotten that travels far and wide between Christians, it’s conflict. In fact, many of you are probably nursing current wounds that happened at the hands of another professing Christian. And sometimes the pain hurts so badly – the smell is so rotten – that it begs the question—Are relationships a mess worth making?

Well, if the apostle Paul were preaching today, he would answer that question with a resounding YES. So let me invite you to turn to 2 Corinthians again today as we continue in the series we launched last week. And last week in the first half of chapter one, we saw that God really does have a purpose for the pain in our lives…that he uses affliction to draw near to us, to equip us to comfort others, and to reset our hope in him when it feels like all hope has been lost.

This week, Paul is going to help us navigate the potential pitfalls in relationships. And if relationships are the vehicle through which discipleship happens (which we’ve taught over and over), then we need to lean into what Paul is teaching this morning starting in the second half of chapter 1. And since today we’re going also going to look at all of chapter 2, let’s just start by reading verses 12 & 13 to start off.

1:12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand—

I don’t want to gloss over that last part of verse 13:“I hope you will fully understand.” Paul is writing here to try to restore a relationship that has gone south due to some misunderstanding that have taken place. Aren’t you glad that never happens anymore? All of Paul’s letters to the church at Corinth (starting back with 1 Corinthians) were a result of the problems within the church where they had forgotten (maybe ignored is a better word) the things that Paul had taught them. But right away in this current letter, it’s being exposed that they had problems not with just what Paul had taught them, but with Paul himself. They were being influenced by a group of false teachers, who are referred to later as “super apostles” and the church members decided that Paul was not as impressive as these NEW leaders who were flying around in the private jets and being driven around in limousines. And as a result, some within the church were now calling Paul’s teaching into question too?

We’ve all heard the phrase “there’s nothing new under the sun.” This letter is Exhibit A. They didn’t like Paul’s message and the solutions he was proposing to their trouble, so they did their best to discredit the source. This is exactly why I get so disgusted with the current state of politics where instead of attacking problems, we have learned to attack people…people made in the image of God. And this tactic is just as prevalent regardless of which side of the aisle you identify with…it’s everywhere. And it’s not just politics…this attitude has permeated our schools, and our sports, and even our churches (this week I had to shut down the commenting on one of our LHC FB posts). So, in an odd way, we should be a little encouraged by the fact that even Paul, who I would argue is the most kingdom-minded person who has ever lived, experienced the pain of fractured relationships.