Family Chapel

After the people return to the Promise Land, they prioritize practices that lead to renewal. While renewal is ultimately an act of God's sovereignty, God has graciously invited us to participate in certain practices that help cultivate renewal. In our passage we see three such practices: joyful obedience to God's Word, corporate worship with God's people, and honest lament in God's presence. May we prioritize these practices to better experience the work of renewal in our lives!

Paul is warning and assuring the Corinthians that in his third visit he will come with the power and strength of Christ in dealing with sin to enact church discipline. Therefore, he exhorts them to examine themselves. Through Paul's warning to the Corinthians, we will see the need for self-examination, the power for self-examination, and the hopeful result of self-examination.

As Paul is looking to wrap up his letter and make plans for his third visit to them, he makes his final plea to restore his relationship with them along with his final warnings. He emphasizes his desire for them, their growth, and reminds them of his own sacrifices made on their behalf. Since our horizontal relationships with others are connected with and evidence of our vertical relationship with God, Paul makes this horizontal appeal for restoration before he will call for a vertical examination of their faith in Christ.

To extinguish the boasting of the false teachers (who were boasting in their ethnic identity, ministry accomplishments, and spiritual experiences), Paul beats them at their own game. But more than boasting in his strength, Paul is eager to boast in his weakness - the frailty of human life in a fallen world. And the reason for that is two-fold: weakness humbles us out of our prideful delusion of self-sufficiency, and weakness invites us to rest in the grace and power of Christ's sufficiency. Through God's gift of weakness, we get to destroy pride and display Christ.