The promises of God to his people and the presence of God with his people set them apart as the temple of the living God. Therefore, those who trust in Jesus are called not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. They are a new creation and are called to live out their new creation identity in union with Jesus Christ.  

One of the hardest things to deal with in any relationship is coming to the realization that you love the other person more than they love you. Often, our first response to this realization is to pull back and seek to even the imbalances of love by loving less. In 2 Corinthians 6:11-13, Paul highlights the imbalance in love between himself and the Corinthians, but then he models for us another way to respond. In this message, we will consider why Paul’s response is so beautiful and how he was able to do it.

Suffering changes us. Suffering can make us angry and bitter as it hardens our hearts, or it can soften us by growing our patience and genuine love for others. Paul believed that the way God used suffering to soften him and increase his patience and genuine love for others commended the Gospel message that he proclaimed. In this passage, we will discuss some of the things that motivated Paul to endure amid great affliction.

When you picture God watching you mess up, what sort of face is he making? All of us have images of God that come to mind when we think about Him; the question is, are the images that come to our minds biblical? What about beautiful? Is the God we picture when we are going through difficult times a God that we find beautiful? In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul will tell us some of the things that make our God so beautiful, and he will seek to shatter some of the distorted images of God that we have projected onto Him.

2 Corinthians 5:17 makes the bold claim that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation! Then you might wonder, "Why don't I feel more like a new creation?" Listen to hear how this new identity in Christ assures us of his great love for sinners like us and empowers our transformation to be more like Jesus as we die to self and live for Christ.  

For most people, the heaviest thing they have ever endured in their life has involved suffering. The loss of a loved one, the betrayal of a friend, the rebellion of a child, or perhaps the death of a dream, but here Paul describes the heaviest suffering you can imagine as light. How can Paul possibly say that with a clear conscience? That is one of the questions we will consider in this passage.

 What compels us to persevere in loving hard-to-love people and to share the gospel with people who openly resist it? The Apostle Paul was compelled to preach the gospel and proclaim the praises of God in the presence of others, and his motivation for doing so is found in our passage today. May we also be a people who cry out with the Apostle Paul, "We also believe, and so we also speak!"