To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 1:1-2 “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Sometimes it’s so easy to think about the wonderful ways the Bible speaks of God’s love for us, but forget that it is this same love that God wants to demonstrate to the world through us.  That’s certainly one of the messages Paul is conveying as he writes his second letter to the Corinthian church.   In his opening statement to them he says this: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

The Corinthian church had been a church filled with problems.  In Paul’s first letter to the church he confronted those problems.  He rebuked them for their many sins which included such things as sexual immorality (including incest), factions and divisions, lawsuits of one believer against another, and false teaching.  He was grieved by their conduct and told them so.  Yet, in his first letter, just as in his second one, his salutation includes his desire that God’s grace and peace would be shown to them.  However, it’s one thing to wish for grace and peace for others from God, but another thing to actually demonstrate grace and peace ourselves towards others. 

Grace: God’s unmerited favor.  It’s a wonderful thing.  It’s so wonderfully demonstrated to us with these words: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8).  But in Paul’s salutation to the Corinthians, he doesn’t just expresses God’s grace towards them. In spite of their many failing, he also expresses his own heart. He desires to show them grace. In spite of how they had, in so many ways, turned away from him and his teaching to other things that were the opposite, he still loved them and wanted God’s best for them.  And he also wanted peace with them.  He not only wanted them to know the wonderful “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1), he also wanted them to have peace among themselves and peace and fellowship with him, personally, rather than the division and conflict that they had demonstrated in the past. 

So is that what we desire for others in our life?  Are we eager to demonstrate grace towards them when they disappoint us? Do we desire peace when they give us every reason to fight or to turn from them and go our own way?  As Jesus taught us in Luke 6:32-35, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.”  That’s what a life of grace and peace towards others looks like, for that’s the kind of grace and peace God has demonstrated toward us. 

May God help us to do just that, and to follow the wonderful example of the apostle Paul as he followed the example of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).