2 Corinthians 2:5-11

Forgiveness for the Sinner
5If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you, to some extent—not to put it too severely. 6The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him. 7Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. 9The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything. 10If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, 11in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.


Dig Deeper
As a teacher, one of the things I used to tell my students was that when we hate someone, we give them power over us. We give them the power to control our thoughts, energy, and emotion. When they ignored someone who was taunting or mistreating them, that person lost any power they might have had over them. These students would spend so much time and energy hating other students, hating certain teachers, hating people from rival gangs, or hating people of another race, that they never stopped to think that they were actually giving these very people a great deal of control over them. The very people that they despised had been given one of the most powerful control that any human can have over another, the power to control their emotions.

Paul is operating on a similar principle as I had tried to give my students, but is going one step further. He tells the Corinthians here that as Christians, they should not just ignore but forgive and forget what has been done against them. There are times when people will wrong us, and that is certainly the case for Paul and the Corinthians, but if we hold onto to that hurt it will continue to have its bad effect on us. When we forgive, we take away the power of the other person to continue to hurt us. Thus, not only does forgiveness release the other person from their guilt, it also frees us from being continually hurt by their actions and having our emotions controlled by those who have hurt us.

Paul here specifically calls for the Corinthians to forgive someone in their congregation. In what we call Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he laid out principles of wisdom and church discipline, including the need to remove at least one believer from the congregation for a time. Now Paul is helping them find the balance between discipline and forgiveness. There is definitely a time for discipline. It would, in fact be dangerous and counterproductive to bypass discipline and go right to forgiveness. Yet, once discipline has been appropriately administered, the time for true forgiveness cannot be ignored either.

The first question that we need to attempt to answer is who Paul is talking about here. Some have speculated that he is referring to the immoral man from 1 Corinthians 5, but this doesn’t really fit the circumstances very well. Far more likely is that Paul is referring to one of the people who slandered him and his apostolic relationship with the Corinthian Church. After the majority of the Church had repented as a result of his “tearful letter” (2 Cor. 2:4), they took action against the offender who had influenced them against Paul. They presumably punished him for divisiveness, or even slander, by excluding him from the body, following the principles laid down in 1 Corinthians 5.

The action had its intended effect. At least offender had, if we are correct in our assumptions, repented for his actions and apparently wished to rejoin the community. Paul calls them to follow his example of not just enacting discipline when it was needed, but in extending mercy to those who had repented. Paul realized the flow of mercy should pass down to this man just as Christ had shown Paul mercy, Paul had then shown mercy to the Corinthians, and they should, in turn, show it to this man. Paul is worried that if they do not forgive him, the man will be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. It is time to release this this man from his guilt, but it is also time for them to be freed from his hurtful actions.

As we said, Paul desires them to strike the right balance between discipline and forgiveness through wisdom. This is particularly instructive for those of us who live in a culture where church discipline is almost unheard of because we don’t want to risk offending anyone. A church that does not practice proper discipline will spiral into disarray, while a church that does not practice appropriate forgiveness will congeal into a mass of rigidity and unmerciful behavior (Can we not say the same thing for individuals?). For Paul, Christians are a community whose lives are all bound together in Christ. What is true of one is true of all (1 Cor. 12:26). If one person is allowed to sin without restraint, it will adversely effect the whole community. If one person is not forgiven when they are truly repentant, it will also adversely effect the entire body.

There is a word of wisdom in Paul’s balanced handling of this situation that is instructive not just in cases of church discipline but also in our daily lives as spouses, parents, children, workers, bosses, etc. Discipline and genuine forgiveness must go hand in hand bound together by love for the recipient. Discipline without forgiveness is tyranny but forgiveness without discipline can be just as dangerous. If we approach situations with love we will see the necessity of both discipline and forgiveness and have the wisdom to know when it is time to apply them.

There are several amazing things about Paul’s feelings concerning this incident. First is that he feels that the real damage has been done to the Corinthians not himself. This would not be a necessary statement if it wasn’t a situation (like slander against Paul) that the Corinthians might have felt damaged Paul more than them. Paul feels, however, that in following the rebellion of this man, they were really injuring themselves. In addition, Paul is one that truly understands his life in Christ; he will not take personal offense when someone sins against him, for he died to his own life. How much stress and grief could we avoid if we could embrace Paul’s same heart to realize that we do not need to take personal offense when wronged because we have already agreed to die to self at our baptism. Paul was far more concerned with the spiritual health of the congregation and the condition of the offender than with his own feelings. This stands as a challenge to us to be resolved to imitate this aspect of the life of Christ that is so apparent in Paul’s character.

Second, is that Paul considers this whole ordeal to be a test. His “tearful letter” was written, in part, to see if they would be obedient in everything. Not just in administering appropriate discipline but also in forgiving when the circumstances were right. Paul is now challenging them to live up to that test and to embrace the opportunity to forgive others just as God had forgiven them.

Third, Paul’s words “if there was anything to forgive” appears almost as a passing comment, yet its implications are huge. Paul is the one that has been slandered here, yet he puts the onus of forgiveness on the Corinthians. Why? Because Paul has already forgiven the offender for what has been done to him. Yet, not only has he forgiven him, he doesn’t even remember if has forgiven. This is not absent-mindedness, this is the Christian discipline of forgetting once one has forgiven. This shows us the quality of person we are dealing when we talk about Paul.

Finally, Paul wants them to remember that the real enemy is not the brothers that were attempting to cause divisions between Paul and the Corinthians. No, the real enemy is Satan. He is the one who will use any scheme he can to create cracks in the Christian community. Satan would be equally pleased with a church that did not practice either discipline or forgiveness, so both must be administered with love in the appropriate situations.


Devotional Thought
In verse 10, Paul reminds us that everything is done in the sight of Christ. Do you really live your life as though you were in Christ’s presence all the time? Do you, at the appropriate times, administer loving discipline? Do you, at the appropriate times, truly forgive people? Make an effort this week to carry yourself, in all situations, as though you were under the gaze of Christ.