2 Corinthians 13:11-14
Speaker Notes Paul Wants Them To Know God
2 Corinthians 13:11-14
Final Greetings
11 Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.
12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All God’s people here send their greetings.
14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
2 Corinthians 4:10-11
10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.
Ephesians 3:16-19
16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Revelation 21:3-4
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Morality by Jonathan Sacks, 2020 (Introduction, page 1)
A free society is a moral achievement.
Over the past fifty years in the West this truth has been forgotten, ignored, or denied. That is why today liberal democracy is at risk.
Societal freedom cannot be sustained by market economics and liberal democratic politics alone. It needs a third element: morality, a concern for the welfare of others, an active commitment to justice and compassion, a willingness to ask not just what is good for me but what is good for “all of us together.” It is about “Us,” not “Me”; about “We,” not “I.”
If we focus on the “I” and lose the “We,” if we act on self-interest without a commitment to the common good, if we focus on selfesteem and lose our care for others, we will lose much else. Nations will cease to have societies and instead have identity groups. We will lose our feeling of collective responsibility and find in its place a culture of competitive victimhood. In an age of unprecedented possibilities, people will feel vulnerable and alone.
Sermon by John Winthrop, April 8, 1630
For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make other’s conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his one people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways. So that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with.
Three Things related to Paul’s words about God
1 - This is a repeated desire that Paul articulates: The God of love and peace will be with you
2 - Think about the God that Paul reveals: He is the Triune God
3 - what are the attributes, the nature of God
The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything by Fred Sanders, 2010
The Good News of the Gospel is that God has opened up the dynamics of his Triune Life, and given us a share in that fellowship.
The Good News that Jesus brings is that God has chosen to accomplish our salvation by being Himself for us, by opening up His Own Life and bringing us into Fellowship.
Outlines of Christian Doctrine by Handley C. G. Moule, 1902 pg. 39
Nothing shines more radiantly in the New Testament than the eternal love of the Father for the Son (John 1:18; 5:20; 17:24, etc.)”
John 17:22-23
22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N. T. Wright, 2013 pg. 400-401
Perhaps the most important point is that Paul saw God’s messianic people as a family. They were siblings, brothers and sisters. We are used to that latter phrase in a fairly generalized sense, said (for instance) by a preacher or even a politician who is happy to use the language but who would be alarmed if the audience took up the implicit offer and assumed a real commonality of home, business and livelihood. That would accurately reflect ‘brothers and sisters’ is a first-century context, but hardly in today’s western world.
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And what the fictive family shares is koinōnia, one of those untranslatable words for which ‘fellowship’ provides one angle, ‘business partnership’ another, and ‘family solidarity’ a third, still leaving us with a sense that more needs to be said for the whole to be grasped.
Are Christians Supposed to Be Communists? by David Bentley Hart, (Opinion page, New York Times, Nov. 4, 2017)
I came to the conclusion that koinonia often refers to a precise set of practices within the early Christian communities, a special social arrangement — the very one described in Acts — that was integral to the new life in Christ.
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This delicate web of communes constituted a kind of counter-empire within the empire, one founded upon charity rather than force — or, better, a kingdom not of this world but present within the world nonetheless, encompassing a radically different understanding of society and property.
The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions by Arthur Bennet, 1975 (A Disciple’s Renewal, page 182)
O MY SAVIOUR,
Help me.
I am so slow to learn,
so prone to forget,
so weak to climb;
I am in the foothills when I should be
on the heights;
I am pained by my graceless heart,
my prayerless days,
my poverty of love,
my sloth in the heavenly race,
my sullied conscience,
my wasted hours,
my unspent opportunities.
I am blind while light shines around me:
take the scales from my eyes,
grind to dust the evil heart of unbelief.
Make it my chiefest joy to study thee,
meditate on thee,
gaze on thee,
sit like Mary at thy feet,
lean like John on thy breast,
appeal like Peter to thy love,
count like Paul all things dung.
Give me increase and progress in grace
so that there may be
more decision in my character,
more vigour in my purposes,
more elevation in my life,
more fervour in my devotion,
more constancy in my zeal.
As I have a position in the world,
keep me from making the world my position;
May I never seek in the creature
what can be found only in the Creator;
Let not faith cease from seeking thee
until it vanishes into sight.
Ride forth in me, thou King of kings
and Lord of lords,
that I may live victoriously,
and in victory attain my end.
Mark is the Senior Pastor of Park Street Church, Boston.