https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9-will-you-forgive-2-cor-2-9-10/id1628176611?i=1000575350262
Welcome to the Surpassing Worth. This is your host, Cole. We are in our series in Second Corinthians. We are now in verses nine through ten. So we’re making our way through it and the title of this episode is Will you Forgive? So let me read us our scripture for today and then I’ll pray and we will get right into it. This is why I wrote you that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ. Let’s pray. Father, I thank you for this text in your word and I think that you desire us to forgive as you have forgiven us. And that Paul’s example here in Corinth is that he would forgive others so that the Church may be restored. And I pray that we would learn from this Lord that we would see our own test of faith as a test to be obedient to you, to love you more and to become more like Christ. And I pray this in Jesus name, amen.
Okay, so really we’re going to divide this into two parts. One, the purpose in verse nine and then the power in verse ten. So we’re going to walk through it pretty straightforwardly. So verse nine Paul says, for this is why I wrote you that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. So he’s really giving us, as we’ve been seeing, the reason of his writing. If you remember from last week, Paul was encouraging the Church to forgive this man who had been causing disruption in their midst. He was calling them just as Paul was willing to forgive this man, that they would forgive and restore him. So it seemed as if this man had since repented from his ways and that now Paul was saying restore him back into the Church. This is how Christ has forgiven us, he forgave us of our debt so that he could restore us to the Father. So in the same way if your brother is showing repentance that you need to restore him back into your fellowship. So now Paul is saying in verse nine, this is why I wrote to you, this is purpose statement. So the purpose of his whole letter is that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. So Paul wanted to write to the Corinthians so that he could test their faith. I think this is something specific to his apostolic authority that Paul is an apostle and so he had the authority from Jesus being an eyewitness to his resurrection that he could call them to obedience to the faith. I think one of the main things we need to glean from this is that God does test us, that God does test our faith. So let’s look at this in a practical way.
This letter was written to test the Corinthian Church. So this verse, this very verse right here, verse nine, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient. And everything is itself proof as Scripture, that we are tested by the word of God. So one of our main applications here is that God’s Word test our obedience for our growth in Christ likeness, because these words were pinned by Paul to the Corinthians. They’re canonical. They’re scripture. They’re god breathed. And so, by implication, we know that these words which say that God test us for obedience to Him, that God’s Word will test us, god’s words are authoritative, and they do test us. They prove inwardly that God’s Word test our obedience.
So why specifically obedience? Why does God’s word specifically test our obedience to Him? I want to think about this practically. Obedience is action. It’s truthful and sincere devotion proven by action. So think about it. The Bible speaks a lot about our faith producing works. That faith without works is dead, says James. So obedience naturally follows them, is an outworking. It’s an outward manifestation of our inward faith. You can’t have true Christian obedience without a true inward faith and devotion to Jesus Christ. Otherwise, it’s just legalism. You’re just doing things to do them, to appease some higher power. But no, Christian faith is always rooted in a sincere devotion and trust in Jesus, which then outworks itself in true and sincere obedience to Christ. Just two scriptures to help. Here John 14:23. Jesus is speaking. He says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Notice that if anyone loves me, if you truly love Jesus and your devotion is to Him, then what follows naturally is that you will keep his word. That’s obedience, you will keep his word. Faith requires action. That’s kind of the main motive here. Is that the foolishness of thinking that an inward faith, just saying you have faith but not doing anything about it, trust requires action. I like to think about this a lot. I say this a lot. If you’re wanting to get married and you date someone and you propose to them and say, will you marry me? I mean, you’re almost declaring your faith and your love and you’re trusting that person to marry you. But what would happen if you said all those things and did all those things? You declared your faith for that person, but then you didn’t show up for the wedding, right? Your fate would be made void, it would be made null because you didn’t do the natural outworking of your declaration of faith by going to the wedding, by proving by obedience that you’re willing to marry this person. In the same way, we can’t say that we have faith in Jesus without a natural outworking of the fruits of his spirit in our lives of obedience of love for Him. If you love someone, you will naturally do things to prove your love for them. Not in a game to earn their love is in the case with our faith with Jesus, but is in a case to show our love for Jesus because of the love which he first gave us by giving us faith, by giving us grace to believe in Him. So the application here is that God’s Word test our obedience for our growth in Christ likeness.
So I want to ask you personally, what test has God put in your life to test your obedience to Him? I think mainly this comes to the Word. If we’re in the Word, we know that God tests our faith. He tests our obedience to Him. Over and over in Scripture, we see God testing the faith of those who believe in Him, from Abraham to Moses, all the way to the apostles with Peter and Paul. He tests them. And he does this because he loves us. He wants us to have a faith that is genuine. Listen to what James says in his book. His letter, he says, Counted all joy. My brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, various kinds can be anything in your life. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So what does testing of our faith do? It produces steadfastness, and ultimately it produces joy and ultimately perfection in Christ that one day we will be glorified when he returns, that we will be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. So God tests us because of this love for us, because he wants us to be made more like Christ. So this is Paul’s desire two. In verse nine, he says, this is why I wrote to you, Church, is that I wanted to test you as an apostle and know whether you are obedient and everything. And the main proof of their test in this case was were they willing to forgive this man? I think that shows a lot about our obedience to Jesus is if we are willing to forgive others who have hurt us because it shows gospel understanding of our situation that if Jesus has forgiven us of all of our sins, we should therefore be willing to forgive and extend forgiveness to those who hurt us. Especially in the case of if they have asked for forgiveness and they are brothers, sister in Christ, but even more so, even if they do not know Christ, we should be willing to extend forgiveness to display the love which Christ has given us. And it doesn’t mean that we don’t hold out to any parameters as to our relationship with that person, but it does mean that we in our hearts are willing to forgive and to remove the guilt that is in them because of their trespass towards us.
So one of our main tests of obedience to the faith is if we are willing to forgive others. This is just a specific test. There are many others that we could talk about in the Christian life, but that’s the one that Paul is talking about here in verse nine, the purpose of his writing. So now let’s move to the power. So verse ten says that anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ. This is a really interesting verse. It talks about the power that Paul has to forgive. So let’s think about this. Paul is declaring that anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. So by extension, he is allowing the church to hold the power of forgiveness. Because think about it, Paul is an apostle. He was an eyewitness to Jesus. He could claim authority for who to forgive. We see this all the time in Acts that the apostles declare forgiveness over people. They are by extension Christ representatives on this earth. But we know that Jesus himself has instituted the Church and that the apostles really were part of the foundation of that. But now the local church is the authority of Christ’s forgiveness upon this earth. Jesus says in Matthew 18 that if you bind or loose specifically in regard to church discipline when we are dealing with way, we’re brothers or sisters, that whatever we bind or loose in heaven and earth will be bound or loose.
So in the sense that Jesus has given the power, the authority of forgiveness to the local church. Now, I want to be clear here. It’s not that we ourselves as individuals just to get to go around and declare who’s forgiven or not. Of course that’s an individual matter between one man or woman and between God. We know that individual salvation, individual forgiveness is not granted by just our declaration. I want to be very clear there. Rather it’s that we as the Church do have the power when one has repented from their sins to uphold the truth of God’s word and the promise of God’s word over their life, that if they have sincerely repented from their sins and trusted in Jesus in that moment even after they’re a Christian, that we can declare them that per guy’s word that they are forgiven. Let me just read you two verses here. One John, one nine says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Listen to what scripture is saying. We as a church have this scripture for a reason and it’s to declare that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins. So that while we aren’t apostles by any means, we haven’t seen with our eyes the risen Christ. We do have the Scriptures and we are his local church so that we have the Holy Scriptures as the authoritative witness to the forgiveness of Jesus. And then just a second verse, really it’s a conglomeration of verses. Whereas Jesus says in the Gospels all the time, as he’s dealing with people with sinners, he says that your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more. That Jesus has declared forgiveness and that by extension, his apostles have declared the forgiveness of Jesus to the cross. And then by extension, the local church that God that Jesus has instituted has the power to declare forgiveness. Not that we can make people be forgiven as individuals. That’s not in our power. That’s in the power of the Holy Spirit to bring them to conviction of their sin and to repent. Whether it’s that when we see evidence of that in someone’s life, when a brother or sister has come to the faith and we know that they have repented from their sins, we can assure them through Scripture as the church of the forgiveness of their sins.
More so and specific to this context is that when a brother or sister in Christ does sin, as one John 2 says, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. So our goal as the local church should be to restore that brother or sister to the forgiveness of Jesus. Now, of course, it depends upon the Spirit working in their lives to bring them to that conviction. But as in the case of the Corinthians, this man whom Paul was talking about had repented and so he was calling the Corinthian Church to forgive this man, to restore them, to do their right duties as the local church instituted by Christ to forgive them, to really assure this man of his forgiveness before the Lord. So that’s one application from this is that while we aren’t apostles, we do have the Holy Scriptures which speak so plainly and forgiveness. So they alone are authoritative. But God has given them to us as a local church to assure others of their forgiveness before Jesus because of his shed blood on the behalf. Finally, just another application here I want to apply specifically to us. We need other brothers and sisters around us who can remind us of the kindness and mercies of God when we ourselves sin. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of this man who had sinned in the Corinthian Church. He had sinned, he repented. And now he is coming back to the church for fellowship and for restoration. When we are in this place, when we are this man and we recognize our sin before our brother or sister or even before the whole church, we need the church to come around us, to pick us up, as it were, and to remind us of the cleansing power of Jesus blood in our lives. Because the gospel is clear. Romans 8:1 says that in Jesus Christ, there’s no condemnation. You run to the cross, the same cross that forgive you at the beginning of your salvation and now cleanses you and forgives and restores even now. And we run to that. And we need the church. We need others around us. We saw this last week. It’s not a Jesus and me mentality. You’re not on an island, Christian. You need to be surrounded by Godly brothers and sisters in Christ who will uphold you, hold you accountable to your walk of Christ, but then also remind you of the sweet forgiveness that is found in him alone. We need each other. As Ecclesiastes 4:9 says, two are better than one. If one falls, how will he pick himself up? He needs the other person. So we need the local church to pick us up as well. So that’s the application here. I’ll leave it to you. Do you have Godly brothers or sisters in your life whom you meet with regularly, weekly? I’m not just talking about going to church on a Sunday morning, saying hi to people, then leaving, living your life under the shadows. But do you have men and women who are in your life who can hold you accountable, that can remind you of the forgiveness of Jesus when you do sin? And that like the church in Corinth, you can be restored to fellowship with God, in fellowship with other brothers and sisters in Christ. So one, will you forgive? Will you prove your obedience to Jesus through your willingness to forgive others? And then second, will you display that power of forgiveness through the Scriptures to declare that forgiveness to others, but also to know that forgiveness for you?