We’re feeding on 2 Corinthians, where Paul is having a very difficult time and writes on the very edge of depression. So today here’s a second anchor, for us in such a situation! Faith, the last part of ch2 shows us, includes a life-choice to trust in the goodness of what God’s loving sovereignty promises to bring about through us his children. One example (from Paul’s own life, obviously) is in our witness; though it applies to many other things.
Like we’ve said, Paul has real fears that he’s been a failure; other people in Corinth are doing plenty to help him feel that way; and in 2:1-11 especially he’s involved in a pastoral situation of that delicate kind where one can never feel over-confident. Yet in 2:14 he achieves this cry of confidence: `Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ, and through him spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him!’
In Christ, as he had told Corinth earlier (1 Cor 15:58), our labour really cannot be in vain, in the long run; we can trust Jesus that there will surely be something to show for our pains. However: that `something’ isn’t always growth and the spread of new life; actually, he says unexpectedly, it may even be `death’ (2:16). What does he mean?- for this can be hard, if we haven’t yet learnt to live by trust rather than by sight.
The application of management thinking to spiritual ministry has taught us all to look for visible, measurably positive results. I remember an occasion when we met with a funding group who wanted a statistical projection of just how the numbers of believers in our Belarussian work would grow if they backed us. It sounded daft (ministry has so many unpredictable variables) – and yet my own heart surely craves the same. I see in myself a longing to know that the Christian groups I work with are growing; something visibly positive, something I can see, to prove I’m not wasting my time. The trouble is that God doesn’t always work this way. `Here am I, send me’, Isaiah prayed in one of the Bible’s great missionary passages (Isaiah 6:8-13), and found God giving him a most unattractive message to proclaim (v9). `Then I said’ (not at all surprisingly) `”For how long, O Lord?”‘ Well, actually, said the Lord, until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and until the land is utterly forsaken (vv11-12). Oops… Measurable results, in the ministry of the old testament’s greatest prophet…
Father, have mercy on my weakness, I doubt I could cope with something like that. But please help me to be faithful. Only faith can relax in the kind of results God promises. What God guarantees, Paul says here in 2 Cor 2, is that, as we `spread the fragrance of the knowledge of him’ (a strange, thought-provoking phrase!), the gospel of Jesus will bring its true fruit, one way or the other. If we do what we’ve been given to do, then those crucial encounters will indeed result that determine eternal destiny; but it will be both `among those who are being saved, and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life’ (v15-16).
It’s true that, longterm, and over the years, God’s norm for us will definitely be fruitfulness. (John 15:5-8.) It’s true, too, that if for a time we see no fruit, it can be wise to evaluate with trusted friends as to why. Nevertheless if human freedom is genuine, we cannot demand that the response we get, even from work well done, should always be positive. If the gospel of Jesus is fully presented, many will actually reject it; that happened with Jesus’ preaching too (John 6:60-66, and cf Matt 10:12-15). (Paul likewise knew what it was like to have to write `Everyone in the province of Asia` (where he’d invested so much) has deserted me` (2 Tim 1:15).) So we will be liberated both from a sense of failure, and from the tyranny of visible, measurable results, as we really believe in a God who longterm `always leads us`, as longterm he did Jesus and Paul, `in triumphal procession’. Such a confidence – that `always’ – will anchor us and enable us to carry on. (Is that a stupidly optimistic way to talk? No: it’s trusting God; When we’ve done what God has called us to do, in God’s eyes that’s triumph. And we won’t lose heart if like 1:10 we `set our hearts` on what God is doing and on his `Well done!` That’s faith, and if we choose to grasp it, it’s deeply liberating!)
So Lord, please help me to do my part; and to trust you for what follows…
