Years ago, when Patty and I first came to Red Deer with our newborn daughter, Andrea, the church was in its earliest beginnings. That was over 41 years ago. After witnessing the church's amazing growth over 10 years, we resigned and moved to Seattle, Washington. Three years later, we were confronted with a very agonizing and significant decision that affected not only our lives but also two congregations. I was at that time leading a new church plant in the greater Seattle area, and seeing God bring people into his kingdom. Meanwhile, the church here in Red Deer had experienced a terrible conflict and was now without a pastor. I was asked to consider returning, which created a difficult, agonizing decision. As I was studying our text today, I gained a new appreciation for why Paul left Troas and the ‘open door’ of ministry there to discover what was transpiring in Corinth.

In addressing the criticisms levelled at his apostolic ministry, particularly his boldness in correcting the Corinthians, Paul explains the nature of true Christian ministry. When I speak of ministry, I’m not just speaking of Christian leadership or ministry; I also include the idea that each of us, who are followers of Jesus, communicates God’s message to others. This includes our communication with those we lead, parent, coach, and mentor. It is also the communication we share with one another, discipling and encouraging people in their relationship with God. At times, it means not only affirming and encouraging, but also correcting those we love, as we see sinful behaviour that is destructive not only to the individual but also before God and its effects on others. One of the most difficult things to bear is the criticisms from those we love, particularly when we are being misjudged when trying to speak into their lives.

Emotional suffering and anguish can be the emotional toil of having a meaningful relationship when we are being criticized for addressing issues. It certainly was true in the life of Paul, as we see from his letter to the Corinthians. What we also discover in 2 Corinthians 2 is the conflicted emotions between two significant elements in Paul’s ministry. We see Paul’s deep desire to know what is happening in the life of the church in Corinth in response to his latest letter correcting their sinful behaviour. He is also conflicted about what to do with the amazing opportunity in Troas, as the gospel is transforming people’s lives. Obviously, one situation was far more fulfilling and joyous, while the other left him in deep anguish and concern.

We may have experienced conflicting emotions when torn between two concerns. Some of you may be bearing the weight of caring for elderly parents, while at the same time navigating through your child or children’s teen years. Paul, in defence of his absence in coming to Corinthian, explains why he addressed them from a distance and the heart behind such a strong, direct, and confronting letter, in which he called for their repentance. Paul agonized over causing them pain, but then rejoiced over their proper, godly response to correction, renewing their expression of love for him.

The context for C. S. Lewis’ book, “Mere Christianity,” was drawn from a series of wartime BBC broadcasts on the Christian faith in which he spoke on the problems of suffering, pain, and evil from 1942 to 1944. You can then imagine when, in one broadcast, Lewis spoke on the issue of forgiveness. The book was published ten years later, in 1952. During WW2, 800,000 Londoners lost their homes to the Nazi ‘Blitz’. Night after night, hundreds of planes bombed not only London but also many other cities in the UK. Later, jet-propelled rockets turned civilians and their towns into the front lines, designed to put pressure on the government to surrender.

One address that Lewis broadcast was the Christian idea of forgiveness.

“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. …And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew? So do I. I wonder very much, just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death and torture. I wonder very much what I should do at that point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do—I can do precious little—I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made clear that if we do not forgive, we shall not be forgiven.

…we might try to understand precisely what it means to love your neighbour as yourself. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?

…my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. …In my most clear-sighted moments, not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So, apparently, I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man, or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time, I used to think this was a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later, it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life-- myself.

However much I might dislike my own cowardice, conceit, or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact, the very reason why I hated those things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them [sin] in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.”

If we could hate sin in us and in our world, yet still love people and ourselves, we would begin to understand the heart of God. That is the way of compassion toward others.