I Stayed Away Because I Cared (2 Corinthians 1:23-2:4)
Today’s Word
[The Letter Written in Tears] (NIV)
23 I call God as my witness—and I stake my life on it—that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth.
24 Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm.
Chapter 2
1 So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you.
2 For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved?
3 I wrote as I did, so that when I came I would not be distressed by those who should have made me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would all share my joy.
4 For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.
Background
Yesterday’s passage climbed to a confession: in Christ there has never been a no. A man defending himself ended up worshiping instead. Today the letter comes back down to ground level. We are talking about travel again. Why didn’t you come?
But the answer has a different texture this time. Earlier Paul insisted he was not a careless man. Here he tells them why he stayed away. And to say it, he reaches for language far heavier than the subject seems to require: I call God as my witness, and I stake my life on it. That is courtroom language, an oath. If what I am telling you is false, let God take my life for it. When a man swears like that over a change in his travel schedule, the schedule was never the real issue.
To understand what happened, you have to unfold the history between Paul and Corinth. On his second missionary journey he spent a year and a half in that city and planted the church there (Acts 18:11). Later, settled in Ephesus, he answered reports coming out of Corinth with the letter we call 1 Corinthians. That letter did not settle things. Paul crossed the water in a hurry and went to Corinth himself. Acts never records this visit. Scholars usually call it the painful visit.
The evidence that it happened sits inside today’s text. It is the word another in 2:1. If he resolved not to make another painful visit, then there had already been one. During that visit someone publicly insulted him (the story continues in 2:5-11), and the church did not deal with it. Paul went home having fixed nothing.
That is why he postponed the third visit. The word he chooses is spare. In Greek it is pheidomai, a word from the army and the courtroom: to hold back a blow you could land, to defer a penalty you could impose. If he had come then, the collision was certain. Going and setting everyone straight would have been the faster route, and he did not take it. His absence was not indifference; it was restraint. He did not stop caring. He stopped walking so the relationship would not break.
Then, having said it, he immediately qualifies it. Verse 24. Not that we lord it over your faith. It is a sentence written in a hurry, waving off a misunderstanding before it can land. I spared you is one short step away from I stand above you. Paul refuses to let that step be taken. I am not your master, he says. I am a fellow worker for your joy.
In chapter 2 a letter appears. I wrote as I did. I wrote you with many tears. The letter he means is not the one we are reading. After the painful visit Paul wrote a separate letter and sent it with Titus. It is usually called the severe letter, or the tearful letter, and we do not have it. What it accomplished only comes out in chapter 7. Until Titus found him with the news, Paul could hardly breathe.
So this paragraph is a letter talking about a letter. Paul is explaining the state he was in when he wrote that hard one: out of great distress, out of anguish of heart, through many tears. The man writing the rebuke wept first. And he pins down its purpose in a single line. It was not to grieve you. It was to let you know how deep my love runs.
The shape of the whole letter is laid out in an introduction to 2 Corinthians, and the paragraphs just before this one are here: When Plans Change, Faithfulness Remains (2 Corinthians 1:15-18) and In Him It Has Always Been Yes (2 Corinthians 1:19-22).
Key Words Made Simple
- I stake my life on it: Literally, upon my soul. Paul puts God in the witness box and offers his own life as the forfeit if the testimony is false. He rarely writes this way. The formula measures how badly he wants this particular misunderstanding cleared.
- Witness: Greek martys, the person in court who confirms what is true. The word for martyr grows out of it later, once people began confirming the truth with their lives.
- To spare: Greek pheidomai. A military and legal word meaning to hold back a blow you are able to strike, or to defer a punishment you are entitled to impose. It does not describe weakness. It describes power deliberately not used.
- Lord it over: Greek kyrieuo, to master, to rule. It shares a root with the word Jesus used when he said the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over their subjects (Mark 10:42). Paul will not stand in that position.
- Work with you: Greek synergos, a fellow worker. Not the one giving orders from above but the one pushing alongside. Paul returns to this word again and again when he describes his own office.
- Stand firm: A perfect tense in Greek, describing people who took their stand and are still standing. Even while correcting them, Paul begins by granting that they are upright.
- Grieve: Greek lype, a word covering both sorrow and pain of heart. It and its verb form appear repeatedly in chapter 2. Sorrow is the note that keeps sounding under this whole section.
- Anguish of heart: Greek synoche, from a word meaning to press narrow. A tightening in the chest, the feeling of being squeezed. In Luke a related word describes people at their wits’ end before the roaring of the sea.
- The tearful letter: The name given to the letter Paul wrote after the painful visit and sent with Titus. It has not survived. What we know of it comes from 2:3-4 here and 7:8-12 later.
- Made up my mind: Greek krino, to judge or decide. His absence was not a sulk or an impulse. It was a conclusion he reached after weighing it.
Expressions Worth Noting
- “I call God as my witness, and I stake my life on it” (1:23)
- An oath in the middle of a travel explanation. It looks out of proportion until you notice what the travel actually stood for.
- Motive cannot be proved. Only I know why I did what I did. So Paul summons the One who reads hearts. That is the last place a misunderstood person can stand.
- “It was in order to spare you” (1:23)
- Here is the reason at last. Not busyness, not a cooled affection. He knew that coming then would wound them both.
- Love does not only move toward people. Sometimes it steps back. Not saying it yet, not showing up yet, can be the loving thing.
- “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy” (1:24)
- Paul was an apostle. He had founded this church. He had every ground for pulling rank, and he sets the ground down.
- Then he names his goal, and it is not compliance. It is joy. That one sentence defines what it means to help someone in their faith.
- “By faith you stand firm” (1:24)
- Relations between Paul and Corinth are strained, and he still says they are standing. It is not easy to say that about someone you are in conflict with.
- Recognition comes before correction. People can only hear the second sentence once they have heard the first.
- “Another painful visit” (2:1)
- One word, another, tells you how the previous visit went. It failed, and Paul has not forgotten.
- He knew that the same approach would produce the same result, so he changed the approach. Instead of going, he wrote.
- “I wrote you with many tears” (2:4)
- The man writing the correction was crying while he wrote it. Readers can tell, eventually, the difference between words written in anger and words written in pain.
- And Paul states the purpose himself. Not to grieve you, but to show you the depth of my love. Hard words and a loving heart can live in the same letter.
What the Passage Says
- Paul’s absence was restraint, not indifference (1:23). He knew another visit would end in another collision, so he held back. Having no way to prove his motive, he calls God as witness.
- He immediately lowers himself (1:24). Lest I spared you sound like I rule you, he corrects the impression at once: not master, but fellow worker for your joy. Paul’s authority almost always shows itself by limiting itself.
- He refuses to treat them as people who have collapsed (1:24). In the middle of the conflict he tells them they are standing firm. Reconciliation usually starts with a sentence like that.
- He will not repeat the same failure (2:1-3). Because the last visit ended badly, this time he writes instead of arriving. And he ties his own gladness to theirs. His feelings are not running on a separate track from theirs.
- The purpose of the hard letter was love, not pain (2:4). He wrote out of distress, out of a heart pressed narrow, through many tears. The aim was never to make them submit. It was to let them see how much they were loved.
I Did Not See It Then, But Looking Back It Was Love
The first thing this passage caught in me was that there are two kinds of love. There is the love that stays beside you because it loves you, and there is the love that walks away because it loves you. The first one is visible. The second one is not.
Saying that someone leaves because they love sounds like a contradiction, and it sounds worse if you are the one left behind. Still, I think the one who leaves usually has a reason worth having, even when the one left behind cannot make sense of it. That is probably what the Corinthians felt about Paul. He did not come, and they did not know why.
Which led me one step further: God’s love can be like that too. Love that does not feel like love to the person receiving it. Love you only recognize looking back. I am walking through a stretch like that these days.
There was a road that looked, from the outside, like it had worked out. A door seemed to open, things fell into place in order, and had I gone that way it would have looked right to anyone watching. Who would not want to be seen following a call and having it go well? But God’s love and God’s plan were not there.
At the time I did not experience that closed door as love. I cannot claim now that I understand all of it either. One thing has become clear, though. The grace God gave me was not what my own wisdom had judged to be good. To my eyes that road looked best. In God’s eyes it was not.
Paul’s absence must have looked the same way to the Corinthians. Like affection cooling off. It was restraint. It simply could not be seen.
So this is where I have landed. Do not stand grieving the door that closed. And do not be afraid to knock on the next one. Standing in front of a closed door too long and being unable to knock on the next one amount to the same thing: staying put. I trust that God is leading me down the road that is most beautiful and good in his sight, the road I am actually meant to walk.
Of course the same question comes up in front of the next door. Is it really God who prepared this one? Do I just walk through? I have not heard the whole answer yet. But today’s passage makes one thing clear. Something not feeling like love right now does not mean it is not love. The people who received Paul’s letter only learned much later that it had been written in tears.
Living It Out
- Name one closed door. If there is a door you still grieve, start by admitting that you do not know all the reasons it closed. You do not have to understand something in order to set it down.
- Choose one door to knock on today. Standing in front of a closed door and failing to knock on the next one leave you in the same place. Pick one, however small, and actually knock.
- Write down one thing that turned out to be love. Find something that stung at the time and looks different now. The longer that list gets, the differently today’s closed door reads.
- Do one thing that will not be seen. Paul did not go, and he wrote, weeping. If there is someone you cannot approach right now, do one thing for them that they will never know about.
- Check your own state before you say the hard thing. If you have a correction to give today, pause first. Am I speaking because I value this person, or because I am angry? As When We Despaired of Life Itself (2 Corinthians 1:8-11) showed, the comfort we receive is the comfort we are meant to pass on.
Questions to Sit With
- Which closed door do I still grieve most? How long have I been standing in front of it?
- Have I ever seen the road my own wisdom called best turn out not to be the road God led me down?
- Is there something I did not recognize as love at the time and do now? What made me able to see it?
- Is there a door I am afraid to knock on? What exactly is making me hesitate?
- Am I loving anyone in a way they cannot see? If that love is being misread, what will I do about it?
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