What Paul Learned on Mission

Learning on Mission, with the apostle Paul. From my about-to-be-available 2 Corinthians, subtitle: Leading the Middle of Tension (that’s for sure) in the Everyday Bible Studies, with questions by Becky Castle Miller.

2 Corinthians 2:12–3:6; 7:2-16

2:12    Now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me, 13 I still had no peace of mind, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said goodbye to them and went on to Macedonia.

14      But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task? 17 Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God.

3:1     Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

4        Such confidence we have through Christ before God. 5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

7:2     Make room for us in your hearts. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have exploited no one. 3 I do not say this to condemn you; I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you. 4 I have spoken to you with great frankness; I take great pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds.

5        For when we came into Macedonia, we had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflicts on the outside, fears within. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort you had given him. He told us about your longing for me, your deep sorrow, your ardent concern for me, so that my joy was greater than ever.

8        Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— 9 yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. 10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. 12 So even though I wrote to you, it was neither on account of the one who did the wrong nor on account of the injured party, but rather that before God you could see for yourselves how devoted to us you are. 13 By all this we are encouraged.

         In addition to our own encouragement, we were especially delighted to see how happy Titus was, because his spirit has been refreshed by all of you. 14 I had boasted to him about you, and you have not embarrassed me. But just as everything we said to you was true, so our boasting about you to Titus has proved to be true as well. 15 And his affection for you is all the greater when he remembers that you were all obedient, receiving him with fear and trembling. 16 I am glad I can have complete confidence in you.

We begin in an odd place for this study guide. We begin in chapter two’s account of Paul’s experience. But that story of his isn’t finished until chapter seven. So we include both some verses from chapter two and some more from chapter seven. Here’s why: the whole of 2 Corinthians 1–7 assumes the crucial moment in the narrative at work in today’s reading. You will notice the word “comfort” in today’s reading, and that term gets turned up when we get to the first few verses of this letter of Paul’s. So, join us in beginning with the experience of Paul.

         Book learning and experiential learning complement one another. But they are not the same. What one learns from the experience deepens the book learning or drives one to the book for a wider experience. But book learning will not lead to the depth of learning that experience alone can teach. Take psychology, something I have some experience in because my wife, Kris, is a psychologist. She read books and took courses and exams. Then she did a practicum. Then she became a psychologist at a clinic. Her book learning was transformed once she had clients. I know this only in part because I once read a major book by someone named Theodore Millon on psychological disorders. I understood some of what he described, but I had no capacity to recognize the subtleties of actual diagnoses and utterly no idea of treatment for the person.

         On mission, with book learning both behind him and alongside him until his John the Baptist-like end of life, Paul learned the sorrows and joys, the ups and downs of ministry. Whatever he learned from scripture and from rabbis was radically reshaped by the experiences with new churches. Today’s reading takes us to the heart of the apostle Paul, the apostle, the pastor, the Christian, the down-to-earth real human. Paul begins a narrative about himself to open our passage (2:12-13), which he interrupts, only to resume some five chapters later, at 7:5-16. We have combined the two units because they form the immediate, emotional, pastoral context for the first seven chapters of 2 Corinthians. With these passages in mind, one can understand these chapters; without them, one cannot. To read chapters three through six well requires knowing chapter two’s conclusion in chapter seven. Make sense? I hope it does.

The plan, eventually fulfilled

         Instead of traveling to Corinth yet again (see Introduction, p. X), Paul wrote a letter, Letter D, also called the Severe Letter, and it is entirely possible bits of it survive in 2 Corinthians 10–13 (which may be the Severe Letter). In Letter D Paul was harsh, and he knew it. His emotions were torn to shreds wondering how the Corinthians responded and what they were saying. Titus took Letter D to Corinth for Paul with instructions to meet up with Paul in Troas. Titus read it and answered questions on behalf of Paul, and no doubt Titus pastored some very upset people. Paul planned another trip to Corinth through Troas, but when he got to Troas, no Titus. This is where we meet up with Paul in today’s passage. Once he arrived in Macedonia (northern Greece today), Titus arrived, and the whole world exploded into joy.

Emotional Paul

         The opening may sound profoundly unspiritual or unprofessional. Like having a pastor cancel his sermon Sunday morning because of a personal sorrow—with the audience overflowing and anticipating yet another good word from the Lord. Paul says he got to Troas “to preach the gospel of Christ” and he discovered “that the Lord had opened a door for me” (2:12). Instead of walking through that door into gospel mission work, Paul’s sadness, depression – “no peace of mind” – sapped his strength to preach. (In today’s passage I have underlined expressions of emotions.) His sorrow was over the absence of Titus. But behind that was the torture of not knowing how the Corinthians responded to his Severe Letter. Torn apart, he moved on to Macedonia.

         What happened when he got there was so utterly wonderful he interrupted his personal story for more than four chapters. We pick him up now at 7:5. First, he restates how he felt when he got to Macedonia. He was even more worked up: “we had no rest” and were “harassed at every turn – conflicts on the outside, fears within.” Sleep didn’t arrive at full rest. He felt a troubling pressure both externally and internally. All he wanted was a report from Titus about the Corinthians. Were they angry? Were they sad? Were they ready to bolt or revolt? Or did they take his warnings to heart and respond as Paul hoped? Were they back in good relations again? It is fair to conclude that Paul was traumatized by the way the Corinthians treated him. (More on this in chapters ten through thirteen.)

         His appeal to them to become vulnerable to him reveals more emotions: They have a big place in his heart (7:3), but he spoke with “great frankness” (7:4). He was encouraged by their response, which expression reveals what he is about to tell them when he resumes his personal narrative (7:4). His joy is abounding (cf. 7:7, 13, 16).

         But God… through Titus … “comforted us.” The word comfort reverberates in this letter, and we are about to return to the beginning of this letter to watch this term come into full view. That term in chapter one requires knowing our passage in chapter seven because it is chapter seven that gives rise to the comforts of chapter one. Emotions explode when Titus talks not only about the comfort he gives Paul but he learns, too, that the Corinthians were comforting Titus (7:7). “Comfort” is the emotion concept Paul uses for the feelings he was experiencing and the feelings he discerns that Titus himself felt. What Titus divulged to Paul was about their “longing” for him, their “laments,” and their “zeal” for him. Hearing this, Paul sits in a pool of joy (7:7; Second Testament).

         He’s not done with his emotions. As we drop down to verse thirteen, he continues with not only encouragement but “he aboundingly rejoiced at Titos’s joy because his spirit was rested by all of you” (Second Testament). He’s joyous because Titus is joyous because the Corinthians are joyous. A win-win-win situation. Two verses later Paul observes Titus’s “empathies” for them, and he finishes off with two more expressions welling up: “I am glad” and “complete confidence in you.”

         This is the real Paul. A Paul whose heart was so attached to this troubled group of believers in Corinth that he failed as an evangelist, could not do what God made possible to do, traveled with a torn heart, and then utterly exploded with joy when he heard good news from and about Titus and the Corinthians. How people responded to him mattered. His own harshness clearly was not vindictive but grief-born pastoral care. The stereotype of a stoic, that is a person “indifferent to pleasure or pain,” does not fit the character of Paul (Merriam Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stoic).

Lessons learned

         Paul did not simplify life by reducing suffering and hardships to God’s predetermined, inevitable plans humans are to grin and bear. Instead, by seeking to be faithful to God and by resiliently pastoring onward, Paul learned about God, about himself, and about others. I see seven fruits that grew on Paul’s pastoral ministry tree because of his difficult experience with the Corinthians. We discuss each briefly, but these can become wonderful moments for each of us to ponder what we are learning from difficult experiences.

         First, his experiences remind Paul that, as a follower of the crucified Christ, he is a defeated enemy, a “captive” or, as The Second Testament puts it, God is the “one always parading us” through the streets of the empire. He has been captured by Christ and the gospel, he has been put on mission, and his mission means he’s always being led around by the Spirit of God (2:14).

Second, Paul switches metaphors from being a paraded slave to a fragrant “aroma,” a term found several times (2:14-16). Actually, Paul uses two smelly terms, both probably evoking sacrifices offered in pagan temples: “good aroma” (2:15; Second Testament) and “fragrance” (2:14, 16). These smells, as it were, were life for believers but death to unbelievers (2:15-16). To one they smelled good; to others they stank. Guy Nave rightly points us to the power of sacrifice without glorifying suffering or diminishing injustices. He writes, “More than two hundred years of resistance contributed to the defeat of slavery in America. Decades of resistance contributed to the defeat of Jim Crow and racial segregation. Decades of resistance in South Africa led to the defeat of apartheid. While it is easy to become disillusioned by the continued social and economic oppression of black people around the globe, the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the successful struggles of black people throughout the world attest to the fact that oppressive powers cannot prevail forever” (Nave, 2 Corinthians, 313). Many, if not most, of those black leaders resisted out of Christian convictions, and took courage by pondering the resilience of the apostle Paul.

Third, Paul comprehends his unworthiness to the task, both because of his past rejection of Jesus and the church and because he knows his ministry and “competence” is all due to grace and the power of God (2:16; 3:5). He says this yet again in 3:5-6. One of my students, with whom I correspond often, signs off his letters with “All is Grace.” Indeed.

Fourth, Paul’s learned that he’s not to be a huckster of ideas, a profiteer of religious goods, or a brand on a platform. Instead, all he does is held up to the vision of God and his sentence is therefore complicated by its God-directedness: “we speak before God” and we speak “as from transparency, as from God in front of God in Christos” (2:17; Second Testament). He’s real, as we have already noted a few times. He’s not pretending, he’s not trying to be like his spiritual heroes, and he’s not fulfilling a role. He’s Paul, of Tarsus, convert to Jesus, called to the gentiles and learning day by day what an apostle is.

         We turn now to Paul’s fifth lesson learned from his mission experience. His only commendation is the embodied recommendation of the Corinthians living as followers of Jesus in Corinth (3:1-3). Paul puts on his platform, not himself, but the Corinthians. He says it this way: “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry.” I as a teacher, you in your ministry, need at times to be measured by the life of those in our care. That measure humbles each of us because each of us knows we’ve done well with some but not at all with others. One of the most painful experiences in ministry is when people choose to leave our church or, for me, when someone drops out of class. We can choose to ignore them and let them walk away or we can do some exit interviews. Griping occurs, of course, and leaders have to develop thick enough skin to handle criticisms. But we can learn from exit interviews (and student evaluations) about our weaknesses. If we listen only to those who like us, which is a constant temptation, but do not listen to those who don’t like us or who drop out of the class, we will not develop new wings and fresher ways. The embodiedness of the Corinthians plays off the term “letter”: they are not a written letter of recommendation but a living one, one written “with the Spirit of the living God… on tablets of human hearts” (3:3). What kind of letter of recommendation do our students and those in our care write?

         Paul knows it’s all by God’s grace (lesson three) but, and here’s his sixth lesson, knowing it is all grace does not mean he doesn’t have “confidence,” that is “persuasion with God” on the basis of what Christ has done for us and through us (3:4). He can look God in the eyes and sense that he is doing what God has called him to do.

         What Paul learned most he saved until chapter seven, which fittingly is our seventh lesson (7:8-15). He learned that the hard thing about pastoral care can be saying the hard thing with the right motive. He had been direct, firm, and even tough. But he was not vindictive, punitive, or retaliatory. Those with power can be tempted with each on a regular basis. The problem in ministering to people is problem people. Many of us wish they’d go away. Paul told them what he thought was going on. Some no doubt were angered by what he said, but in humility they seem to have embraced Paul’s rebuke of “the one who did the wrong” with a pastoral eye on “the injured party” (7:12). That person probably led the divisions, or at least the opposition to Paul (see Introduction, pp. XX-XX). Paul’s goal was “godly sorrow” that led to “repentance” (7:9-10). On the tree of Corinth, the godly sorrow leading to repentance produced branches with an abundance of fruits: “what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done” (7:11). They listened in humility and openness, they learned, they embraced, and the embrace of the truth of God was used by the Spirit of God to transform their culture. They learned to pivot from their previous divisive ways to embrace the way of the cross as embodied and taught by Paul and Titus (see McKnight, Barringer, Pivot).

Appeal

If Paul were teaching a class of future leaders in a church, he’d tell his story and what he learned in order to form young pastors in the work of ministry. He knew the Book of books but it was experiential learning that led book learning inside to the heart. Which is why in 7:2 Paul makes his biggest heart-felt appeal: “Make room for us in your hearts.” Or, as in the Second Testament, “Make space for us.” He knows there are some hard things about ministry. Judy Diehl discusses the necessity at times of confrontation, which when done well is “distressing, potentially divisive, and agonizing” (Diehl, 2 Corinthians, 261). Her advice, gleaned from 2 Corinthians, includes being firm, affirming what is good in the people, being accurate and honest, knowing the facts, following up, being gentle while being firm, reflecting Christ always, and using discipline only when all else fails (262).

What can be missed in this “Make room for us in your hearts” is how it was shaped by Paul’s attempts to persuade the Corinthians. Making room is more than an emotional tug of the heart. The heart is more than the center of one’s feelings. The heart is as much mind as it is emotion. Paul’s letter was an act of persuasion if it was anything. What can be missed then is the clarity and compelling nature of chapters one through seven. Three and a half centuries later one of the most electric speakers in the history of the church, whose sermons are still read today, John Chrysostom, was known because he “had the hearts and ears of the entire population [of Syrian Antioch] wide open for him.” Notice the combination of “hearts” and “wide open.” How did Chrysostom compel such a large audience? One of his biographers, J.N.D. Kelly, wrote that his persuasion was so powerful because of the “clarity of his diction (said by a contemporary ‘stylist of grace,’ one Isidore of Pelusion, as ‘unequalled’), the simplicity and picturesqueness of his imagery, and, above all, the sureness with which he, as a speaker of rare charisma, was able instinctively to touch their hearts and consciences (Kelly, Golden Mouth, 82). I shall break down that very long sentence into bits. Paul, like Chrysostom, could persuade the Corinthians if his aim was the heart, if his words were clear, if his imagery captured the imagination, and if he could touch the people where they lived. I suspect Paul, though not with the educated finesse of a Chrysostom or a 1^st Century orator, scored well on each point.

But Paul had learned that ministry is more than preaching and more than persuasion. Kelly observes above that Chrysostom had personal “charisma,” which was not slick or tricky. Genuine ministry is personal, relational, and it all springs from love or it falls flat. Paul vulnerably discloses to them that they “have such a place” in his heart and so much so “that we would live or die with” them (7:4). The real Paul needed love and affection from those he loved.

Paul was a heart. Persuasive at that.

Questions for Reflection and Application

1. What does reading Paul’s personal story up front like this help you understand about the context for 2 Corinthians?

2. What is your impression of this very emotional portrait of Paul?

3. Before reading this section, how much had you thought about Titus? How does this increase your understanding of Paul’s ministry network?

4. If you were measured as a minister, in whatever context you serve, by the lives of those in your care, what results would you see?

5. How could you let your heart lead you in ministry?

J.N.D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom – Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995).

Scot McKnight, Laura Barringer, Pivot: The Priorities, Practices, and Powers that can Transform your Church into a Tov Culture (Carol Stream: Tyndale Elevate, 2023).