Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians

I. Introduction
A.Read 2Corinthians 1:1–2 
B. Last week we spoke about the author of this letter, the apostle Paul, A.K.A. Saul of Tarsus.
C. Paul’s thirteen epistles
1. James and Jude wrote one.
2. Peter wrote two.
3. John wrote three, as well as a gospel and the book of Revelation.
4. Luke wrote his gospel and the book of Acts.
5. Nine of Paul’s epistles are shorter (no more than six chapters).
a. The other three were longer: Romans (16), 1Corinthians (15) and 2Corinthians (13)
6. Paul is the most personal writer of the NT, revealing himself often.
7. As a result, whereas most of the apostles are left to us mysterious, we have enough about Paul to get to know him pretty well.
a. This is from God.
b. Paul: the one led by God to say, “Imitate me.”
D. Epistles generally don’t begin with a bang. But there’s still the word of God and we need to pay attention to them. There are four things I’d like to point out this morning as we begin this study.
1. ?The story behind this letter of Paul to the Corinthians.
2. ?Churches have problems
3. ?Corinth: Marching into the devil’s territory
4. ?The beauty of the greeting which Paul uses toward the Corinthians
II. The story behind 2Corinthians
A. I need to tell you a strange secret. It seems that Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians was not Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, but at least his fourth letter to the Corinthians. It’s Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians in the NT, and it’s Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians which we have, but it’s not the second letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
B. In his second missionary journey the apostle Paul was led by God through a dream to cross over the Aegean Sea from Troas (in Asia Minor - present-day Turkey) into Macedonia (in Europe) to preach Christ there (Acts 16).
1. Paul’s strategy was to plant churches in the large cities. And the Lord used him to plant several churches in Macedonia (present-day northern Greece), including Philippi and Thessalonica.
2. He then traveled south into Achaia (present-day southern Greece), preaching the gospel first in Athens and then moving on to plant a church in the city of Corinth (Acts 18), the capital and largest city of Achaia, where he remained for a year and a half (fall of 50AD to spring of 51AD), teaching God’s word to them, before heading back to Jerusalem.
C. Comparisons with Paul’s apostleship after visits from Apollos and Peter.
1. 1Cor.2:1–3 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom...I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.
2. These concerns turned into doubts after visits from the false apostles (2Cor.11:4-5, 12-13; 12:11-12)
D. During his third missionary journey Paul stayed for an extended time (about 2 ½ years) in Ephesus (in Asia Minor). While there it seems he received several reports from the church in Corinth of sin running rampant as well as animosity toward him.
E. To address these issues he wrote a letter (now lost — mentioned in 1Cor.5:9-11) and then the letter we call 1Corinthians. Further problems led Paul to briefly visit Corinth, a visit that did not go at all well.
F. After this failed visit Paul wrote a severe letter to the Corinthians, probably carried by Titus, another letter which is lost to us (mentioned in 2Cor.2:3-5, 9; 7:8).
1. The general aim of the “severe letter” was to arouse the Corinthian church to discipline ὁ ἀδικήσας, “the one who did the wrong,” and thus vindicate the ὁ ἀδικηθείς, “the one who suffered the wrong” (2Cor. 2:6, 9; 7:12). – Harris
2. Some say this severe letter is 1Corinthians.
a. Not many today
b. I can send you the reasoning if you email me.
c. The problem of lost letters
d. We know not all of Paul’s letters remain from 1Cor.5:9.
e. Lost prophecy
f. “To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia”
(1) 2Corinthians was meant to be widely circulated. Perhaps others weren’t.
3. He was very anxious about how they would respond to this letter, and even wondered if he had been too severe.
4. He eventually crossed the sea to Macedonia because he was so anxious to find out what happened.
5. Eventually he met up with Titus and got generally good news about the Corinthian response (2Cor.2:12ff.).
6. This is when he penned 2Corinthians, to express joy and relief in their response, to continue working toward a positive relationship with them, and urging further progress before he came to them to visit. .
G. “Second Corinthians, as outlined above, is a window into Paul’s soul and expresses his feelings about the Corinthians as he prepares to make his final visit to them.” – Barnett
III. The early churches had a lot of problems too. Some more than others.
A. The church at Corinth is a textbook case of a problem church.
1. The culture affects the church.
B. Churches of Revelation
1. One is commended (Philadelphia)
2. One is warned about persecution
3. Four are commended and chided
4. One is only chided
C. Paul’s epistles
1. Romans: Paul never there
2. Corinthians: big problems
3. Galatians: big problems
4. Ephesians: no big problems but warned that they’re coming
5. Philippians: no big problems
6. Colossians: Paul never went there
7. Thessalonians: no big problems
D. Churches have problems
1. Churches are full of sinners
2. Churches represent Christ and so get persecuted.
3. Churches grow and shrink
E. Fighting for the church
F. Not willing to let it go
G. We are all about seeking to build Christ’s church.
1. Not because we’re church people, but because we’re followers of Jesus.
2. And He is building His church. And so we join in.
H. Relationships: A Mess Worth Making by Tim Lane and Paul David Tripp
1. A sequel: Churches: A Mess Worth Making
IV. Marching into the wicked world
A. Why did Paul go to Corinth? Of course there were going to be problems!
B. Corinth was the NT version of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was Las Vegas, Amsterdam and San Francisco rolled into one. Sin city.
C. TV series on Lot and Sodom
D. If the gospel doesn’t work in wicked places, if it only works in places where people are civilized and well-behaved, then the gospel’s not true.
E. If the gospel doesn’t work in Corinth, then the gospel isn’t true.
1. The gospel works in cancer patients.
2. The gospel works in wartime.
3. Because the grace of the gospel is bigger than man’s problems.
a. It’s not like a way to help you feel better about life once your real needs have been satisfied.
V. Paul’s Greeting
A. 1:2 "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
B. This is Paul’s standard greeting. He uses the identical wording in five other epistles. But there is an interesting story behind it.
C. The traditional greeting in the Greek-speaking world (which included what was at this time the Roman Empire) was CHAIREIN, which simply meant "Greetings!" Paul turned this into CHARIS, the Greek word for grace.
D. To this he added the traditional Hebrew greeting, which was SHALOM (though since he is writing in Greek Paul uses the Greek word that translated the Hebrew SHALOM).
1. To say that SHALOM means peace is to say far too little. SHALOM meant peace, prosperity, well-being, wholeness.
E. So, instead of using the familiar greetings, Paul has Christianized the greetings of the Greek world and the Hebrew world and turned them into "Grace to you - and peace - from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
F. It was no longer good enough just to say hello to people. He wanted to wish them the grace of God.
G. And he rooted this grace and peace in “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
H. This is the gospel: we have received grace & peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I. Right at the beginning of his letter, Paul makes it clear what he’s after: he wants them to flourish in the grace and peace of Jesus. Ultimately, this is the answer to their problems.
J. Ultimately, this is what his letter is all about.
K. And this is what we need as well. Near the end of this epistle, Paul tells a story about wanting his problems to go away. He prayed but nothing happened. Then God said, “My grace is sufficient.” 

VI. Why 1Corinthians is not Paul's severe letter, by Murray J. Harris
A. Although it is not a view commonly held today, this identification of the “sorrowful letter” with 1Corinthians should certainly not be dismissed as unworthy of serious consideration (as Moffatt, Introduction 122 n. 2 and Plummer xxviii tend to do). An impressive array of scholars from Chrysostom and Theodoret down to Meyer (443), Lightfoot (Notes 202–4), Hughes (54–58, 270–71), Lampe (353–54), and Hyldahl (“Einheit” 299–302) endorse this view. Nevertheless, there are several compelling reasons for abandoning it (see also Furnish 164–66; Thrall 57–61).
1. 2 Cor. 2:6 and 7:12 suggest that the “letter of tears” as a whole dealt primarily with ὁ ἀδικήσας and the need for his punishment, which is patently not the case with 1 Corinthians, in which a wide range of issues is discussed, with divisiveness, not immorality, the first addressed.
2. 1 Corinthians does not seem to have been written in the place of a second painful visit (see, on the contrary, 1 Cor. 4:18–19; 11:34; 16:2–3, 5–7), as is demanded by 2 Cor. 1:23; 2:1, 3.
3. In 2 Cor. 2:10a Paul offers his personal forgiveness to the individual ( = ὁ ἀδικήσας), whom the Corinthians also are to forgive (2:7). But the apostle would scarcely have regarded a man’s illicit relations with his stepmother as a personal injury inflicted on himself and requiring his forgiveness, even if such action constituted a repudiation of his teaching. On the other hand, if the offense alluded to in 2 Cor. 2:5–10 and 7:12 was an act of public effrontery against Paul himself or against his acknowledged or delegated representative by some vocal spokesman of an anti-Pauline clique (see the commentary on 2:5–10), Paul’s offer of forgiveness becomes explicable.
4. If, in fact, ὁ ἀδικήσας (“the guilty party,” 2 Cor. 7:12) is ὁ τοιο τος (“this individual,” 1 Cor. 5:5), the case of incest becomes more heinous than 1 Corinthians 5 would suggest. On this view, the incestuous son was not “living with” (