by Michiana Covenant | Feb 14, 2017 | Women's Ministry
By Elizabeth Sunshine
A few weeks ago, for the second time I had the tremendous privilege of introducing a child to my church in Chinese. The Lynn family, who are members of our church, just adopted a daughter from China. Her name is Audrey. Since I studied Chinese in college and used it regularly for three years while working in Taiwan, they asked me to meet with Audrey before her baptism and explain to her what we were going to do.
I met Audrey on a Thursday night about four days after she arrived in the U.S and three days before her baptism. We wanted to recognize her as a member of our church in virtue of being part of a Christian household, just as we do babies born to members of our congregation. But Audrey is 10 years old, old enough to be confused about what was happening. She hadn’t learned anything about Christianity during her time in China. Honestly, I was really nervous about the meeting. Explaining baptism to a child with no background knowledge would be challenging in English, let alone in Chinese. But Pastor Wallace and I agreed that we didn’t need to go into great detail on the theology. Audrey will have plenty of time to learn about God from her family and in Sunday School. Mostly, for now, she needed to know that baptism was the church’s way of recognizing her as part of the Lynns’ family – and ours.
That evening Audrey’s father, brought her and her sister Ava (who was also adopted from China) to the Wallaces’ house. For most of the evening, Ava played with the Wallaces’ two youngest children, and Audrey sat on her father’s lap and watched. It was obvious that a few times she thought about joining them, but she didn’t get up. Pastor Wallace commented, “It’s clear that she’s watching everything and trying to figure out what her place is in all this. And right now, her place is right there, on her dad’s lap.”
Pastor Wallace eventually started talking to Audrey, and I translated. I told her who we were, that she was going to go to church and be baptized on Sunday, and that that was the church’s way of recognizing her adoption. She seemed to be listening, but she didn’t say anything or look directly at me.
Then I said, “The church is another kind of family, and when we baptize you, we’re saying that we want you to be part of our family.”
At that moment, she looked up and gave me one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen. She understood. That moment alone would have made all the years I spent learning Chinese worth it.
On Sunday, I stood up front with Audrey as she was baptized to explain what was happening. I didn’t try to translate everything that was said; much of it wouldn’t have made sense to someone who didn’t know the Bible anyway. But when the congregation stood up to receive her I told her, “These people are promising to support you, love you and pray for you.” Then I told her, “Your parents are promising to pray for you and to teach you about God.” Then I said, “The pastor is going to baptize you to make you part of our family.” On Thursday I had told her the pastor was going to put water on her head. In retrospect, I should have mentioned that he was going to do it three times. She was a little shocked, but she came away smiling.
That Thursday night, Pastor Wallace asked Ava whether she remembers her baptism. She broke into a big grin and said, “Yes!” I hope that Audrey will also look back on her baptism as the moment we received her into our family and God’s.
I certainly appreciate the reminder that when I hadn’t done anything to earn it, God accepted me into His family and said to me, “You belong here.”
by Michiana Covenant | Sep 25, 2016 | Ginger Wallace, Women's Ministry
This is the question in the minds of many parents of small children as they struggle to parent in the pew. The answer to this question is pretty simple: those parents were YOU at one point. Those children were not born quiet and obedient!
A child’s natural, normal behavior is somewhat like a puppy: everywhere at once, peeing in the wrong places, chewing on the wrong things, barking/talking at the most inappropriate times! And in a similar way, it’s about training, lots of training. And lots of wondering if it’s even worth it…
The difference to keep in mind that it IS worth it, because they were created in the image of God and were baptized into His family, children can praise their Father, they can glorify HIm!
We are created in a beautiful way. Created in the image of our God! But tainted by SIn–But Redeemed by the blood of Jesus! This “sin” thing really messes with us, it twists something beautiful into something messy and hard–for right now. It confuses us and makes us doubt that we can change–or that our children can change. But remember that the promise of deliverance is for you AND your children. And that God gives His Word to all of us for knowing Him, for understanding Him and for Enjoying Him.
A few years ago, I was still struggling through toddlers beside me in the pew thinking ”What’s the point here?”. Why should I have my kids who don’t understand any of this in Worship with me? “Why am I in Worship?” I had conversations with friends, I listened to sermons (well, parts of sermons…I still had to leave during the service for kid-related reasons) and the thought came to me, “We come to hear the Word, we come to know and love God, to respond to His love to us with voices of confession, of thankfulness and of Praise.” All the rest, the sitting still, the snacks/no snacks, the Do-you-really-need-to-pee-or-do-you-just-want-out, the to spank or not to spank, all this was not the point, the point was, “These are children of God, the way that children learn and grow is to hear their Father’s voice so they can be like Him–so they can see His Power, know His love, feel His Grace.”
I actually like to imagine that we are all gathered (ALL the saints–not just MCPC) in a big yard, we are in the sunshine that is perfectly tempered so that each is comfortable, and we are seeing Jesus and hearing His voice. And we don’t want to be anywhere else.
“Yet you are He who took me from the womb, you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.” Psalm 22:9
So here is a thought, if we can focus right now on listening, on hearing the Word — the Word will change us. It will change our children. Our job is to teach them to Listen. God’s job is to change their hearts. When your child talks during the sermon, motion to them to quiet their mouths, and Listen with their ears. (No one can really listen while they themselves are talking…!)
When the congregation is singing, or otherwise responding verbally to God, ecourage your children to do so as well. Expect it of them. We ALL do ALL of this together, corporate worship IS worship together.
If you are going through a time in your training where yor child is having difficulty restraining their tongue, then there are mutiple options available: You can take your child out of the service to speak with them about “listening, not talking”– and then return to service (the Quieting Room works well for this), or you can make use of the Training Room so that you can train your child in a setting that allows hearing of the Word for you/your child, but also keeps your childs voice confined to that room. While we want our children to worship with us and to hear the Word. We also want to be considerate to the rest of the congregation and enable them to hear the Word as well!
And remember: we are all doing this together. Ask those other familes, “How did/do you do it?”. Ask for assistance for during the service. There are teens/families who would love to sit close by to help as needed. I used to have a friend sit with me every Sunday, she would hold the newest baby, and I could train the toddler. This is what family does. We walk through this together.
by Michiana Covenant | Aug 9, 2016 | Resurrection, Theology, Video Games
Looking for the Resurrection of the Dead: The Starting Point for Finding the “Lost Boys”
[The following guest post from Ryan Davidson (a former deacon at MCPC) advances the conversation started by Samuel James and Carl Trueman regarding the “Lost Boys.” — Peter Wallace]
Looking for the resurrection of the dead may actually be the most important apologetic task set before the church today. Because in that hope is an affirmation of the reality of humans as essentially *embodied*. One’s body is not a cage to be escaped from or a restraint to be discarded. God made us with bodies, and it is only with bodies that true human flourishing is possible, in this life or the next.
I don’t have a linear argument here, just observations about three contemporary cultural phenomena which I believe are tied together in their denial of–or at the very least blindness towards–this fact of human nature. All of them have to do with the internet.
We’ll start with video games, because that’s where the “Lost Boys” article starts. I did not find the James piece compelling, but I must also register some dissatisfaction with some of Trueman’s analysis as well. Video games as an activity have their problems, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But there is definitely a sense in which a lot of the criticisms of video games could apply just as well to activities various authors find laudable. Chess is “only a game,” but it’s long been recognized as a “legitimate” intellectual past time. It produces no more concrete material benefits to its participants than video games do for theirs, but somehow it doesn’t tend to garner the same sort of criticism. To the extent that a person can spend too much time on video games (which one certainly can!), it would seem to me that one would have to say the same thing about chess. Only one doesn’t hear that argument made all that often. It may be that chess just isn’t all that popular, so it doesn’t get the same kind of attention from the commetariat. But I have to think the disparate treatment is also a function of *taste,* and I’m just not willing to credit any serious ethical distinctions which are founded upon taste.
Because there are definitely ways in which video games can be a positive component to healthy human communities, and these generally have to do with bringing people together in shared love of the same activities. For instance, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a lot of people used video game consoles as party activities. Mario Kart. Goldeneye. The first Halo. Various Wii games even today. And the almost innumerable rhythm/music games, culminating with Rock Band. Up to four people could play these at once, and if you traded controllers almost a dozen people could be involved over the course of an evening. True, there are ways of spending an evening that are more beneficial in the long run, but there are also far worse things to do. The basic fact is that we’re talking about anywhere from two to a dozen people, all in the same room, having a good time together. If it’s a video game facilitating that, what of it?
Unfortunately, contemporary gaming culture has actually moved *away* from the things that made that possible. Multiplayer games are now almost exclusively played over the internet, with no two players ever being in the same room in most circumstances. So any communal camaraderie which might have emerged in the context of four-plus guys on a couch is *gone.* People act as if this is no different from having everyone in the same room, but it *is* different. It’s no longer something that four embodied human beings are doing in the same physical space. It’s something that four brains in jars could do just as well as actual people, and the experience is the worse for it. Only no one really seems to notice that, or if they do no one seems to think it’s a problem.
Related to that is the phenomenon of people describing online interactions as “communities.” I see more and more of this on YouTube, as content creators describe their subscriber bases as “communities,” sometimes extending that to the people that subscribe to a group of channels (e.g., channels devoted to gaming, baking, comedy, cosmetics, whatever). And they’re not limiting their meaning to purely the exchange of ideas about the subject matter. Academicians have long spoken of the “academic community,” but what I understand that to mean is limited to the development and advancing of particular academic conversations. Two scholars trading insights and/or blows on the pages of academic journals over a period of months or years, with others chiming in from time to time as appropriate. There’s certainly something to that, but in the academy anyway, no one seems to think that this is anything but professional. None of the participants view their interactions in that format as being of any personal, relational significance beyond the subject matter under discussion. But YouTubers talk about “being there for each other,” doing “great things” beyond the immediate subject at hand, supporting each other, etc. All the things one would expect to hear occurring, not to put too fine a point on it, in the local church. There is most certainly a place for exchanging ideas on the internet. But people are increasingly starting to view it as the equivalent of–even a *replacement for*–embodied communities.
I find this increasingly disturbing. These interactions necessarily exclude any real involvement with the participants’ bodies and are greatly impoverished for it. It doesn’t matter how emotionally satisfying one finds one’s interactions on an internet forum to be. Unless those relationships exist outside the internet, in “meat space,” as the cool kids say, none of those people are going to bring you a meal, bail you out of jail, stand in your wedding, watch your kids, call you for a ride to the airport, or basically provide any means of tangible, embodied support for you. The internet can act as an extra layer on top of existing relationships, but it cannot be a *substitute* for physical interactions in the real world. And people are treating it that way, often without even knowing they’re doing it.
Only some people *do* know that they’re doing it, which brings us to the third phenomenon: people at war with their own bodies. Now we’re talking some often deadly serious issues, e.g., the ongoing “gender identity” nonsense, body image issues, physical illness, more exotic/fantastical practices that even most internet natives find amusingly wacky. Less seriously, we’re talking about people who are just physically awkward/shy, who for whatever reason haven’t learned how to be comfortable in their own bodies, let alone around other people’s bodies. People like this often deliberately an consciously turn to the internet for the social connections they can’t/won’t/are afraid to make in person. This has a number of vicious effects, not least of which is the creation of echo chambers in which people with similar/related issues can talk to each other without any external, corrective input and, to quote a phrase, “glory in their shame.” I do not think it coincidence that the exponential rate at which LGBTQ issues went from unspoken, to spoken, to mainstream seems to have started right around the same time that the internet became widely available in the home. People identifying as LGBTQ have never represented more than a low single-digit percentage of the population, rendering it almost impossible for more than one or two people to get together in the same physical space outside of the largest cities, where the sheer scale of the population made it abundantly clear just how distinct a minority they were. All of that goes out the window on the internet. One can immediately connect with an arbitrary number of like-minded people, to the exclusion of all others, making it very easy to forget or even outright deny the validity or even existence of other viewpoints.
But my point here is not primarily political, as much as it is to call attention to the fact that a *lot* of people out there have *very* negative relationships with their own bodies, and the format of the internet permits an outlet for that kind of thing. Prior to the mid-1990s, anyone who wanted to talk to more than one person at a time really had to get out of the house and go do it. This necessitated interaction in the flesh, and even attempts to form affinity-based communities could not get around the brute facts of distance (limiting the number of people that could be involved) and the existence of other persons (whose presence cannot be denied when walking around downtown). I think this had two effects that prevented these issues from coming to the attention of both the church and the wider culture. First, because these people were so dispersed throughout the population, it was pretty easy to just ignore them as “that one guy.” Can’t really do that anymore. But second, and more positively, the mere fact that you just had to *go outside* forced a lot of people to deal with their issues, willy-nilly. When it is impossible, as a practical matter, to avoid the reality of one’s body, one either comes to terms with it (and moves on with one’s life) or doesn’t (see Oscar Wilde). Now, there are a ton of people out there who are not only refusing to deal with the fact of their bodies, but even starting to insist that they, as human persons, should not be subject to the physical fact of their bodies. They don’t *feel* like they’re male, they’re going to insist that you treat them as female, biology be damned. Or less militantly, people with body image problems can spend all of their time commiserating with other people with similar issues, allowing themselves to be consumed by that issue instead of basically growing up and moving on to other things.
I think that looking for the resurrection of the body has the potential to be an incredible counter-agent for these related phenomena. It requires us to insist that *humans* *are* *embodied.* We do not look to be “freed” from our bodies, as so many people (understandably!) do. But looking for the resurrection of the body also requires us to acknowledge the *brokenness* of the body. No, we do not seek to be “freed” from our bodies, but inherent in looking for resurrection is, or ought to be, an acknowledgment that it is just as possible to be at war with one’s body as it is within one’s soul. “Who will save me from this body of death?” is not *merely* spiritual, even though it certainly involves that. The church has the capacity, if it puts its mind to it, to directly engage these people’s hurts. We don’t really expect the sick to be healed in dramatic fashion anymore, but we *do* fully expect our bodies to be *restored.*
This is why I find James’s and even Trueman’s pieces to be do disappointing. Neither really seems to wrestle with the fact that so many people feel so disconnected from or even antagonistic towards their bodies. Which is sad, because such seems to be arguably explicit in Genesis 3, or at the very least strongly implied. It’s ironic really: in criticizing cultural phenomena that are fundamentally Gnostic in their denial of the importance or even the reality of the human body, neither author talks about the body seemingly at all!
I would hope the above would resonate fairly strongly with the work of James K.A. Smith out of Calvin. “Desiring the Kingdom” is one of the most important books I’ve read, highlighting how fundamentally *embodied* Christian worship is, most obviously in the sacraments, but even just in the fact of coming together in one room, breathing the same air, singing together, touching, moving, standing, sitting, all of the overlooked but essential elements of Christian liturgy. And of course, we can hardly leave this subject without a mention of the horrifyingly absurd phenomenon of “virtual church services,” up to and including the abomination that is the “remote” administration of the sacraments (BYO bread and wine).
All of which to say that I think that these phenomena revolve around a single issue, the fact of the human body, which the church is uniquely positioned to address. The church can and should counter these ways of ignoring or outright denying of the significance of the human body by not only drawing attention to the body by engaging humans as corporeal beings in its liturgies, but by offering the only thing that goes beyond mere amelioration of the pitfalls of our incarnation: the power of the resurrection. This, I believe, is the message contemporary culture is longing for. To paraphrase Smith, one cannot satisfy a fire in someone’s guts by pouring water on their head. People with adversarial relationships with their bodies do not need information. They need the bread and the wine–the Body and the Blood–as divinely empowered foretastes (in every sense of that word!) of the life of the world to come.
Ryan Davidson, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
by Michiana Covenant | Jul 1, 2016 | Theology
“Persons Act, Natures Are” – Maximus the Confessor and the Trinitarian Debate
Peter J. Wallace
It was good to see Lewis Ayres comment today. I had some of the same concerns about the blithe use of “Nicene” – and a tendency on the part of many participants to talk as though all of the words we are using here are obvious in meaning.
The debate over the meaning of the Nicene Creed continued for several hundred years. Chalcedon, after all, sought to explicate the meaning of “was made man.” And particularly, much of the discussion of the two wills of Christ took place three hundred years after Nicea!
For myself, I spent a decade wrestling with the Trinitarian and Christological controversies before I finally discovered Maximus the Confessor. (I’d like to say that now everything is perfectly clear to me – but then Maximus would box my ears for denying the mystery of God!).
Maximus the Confessor was a seventh century theologian who helped formulate the doctrine of the two natures of Christ – particularly in the Monothelite controversy. The Monothelites claimed that Christ had only one will and one energy. (He also wrote a glorious exposition of the liturgy – the Mystagogia – you can get a sense for it here).
What we affirm in the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian definition is that the second person of the Trinity is the one person of Jesus Christ.
In the 6th and 7th centuries the Monothelites claimed that there was one theandric energy and will (and by “theandric” they meant “pertaining to the God-man”). They said that in Christ the two natures had come together, constituting an indivisible unity, discerned in a single energy and/or will. Their goal was laudable: they wanted to resolve the schism between the Chalcedonians and the Monophysites (though, in fairness, there were a lot more than two parties in the debate).
But Maximus rightly understood the problem: a “theandric” energy and/or will is neither divine nor human. If Jesus’ will is “theandric” – then his will is not very God of very God. Nor is his will truly human. Christ may not lack any natural property of humanity or divinity. “How again, if the Word made flesh does not himself will naturally as a human being and perform things in accordance with nature, how can he willingly undergo hunger and thirst, labour and weariness, sleep and all the rest? For the Word does not simply will and perform these things in accordance with the infinite nature beyond being that he has together with the Father and the Spirit.” (Opuscule 7, 77B)
Much of our discussion of “will” and “energy” have to do with our ordinary human experience of willing (deciding what to do) and doing (putting our decisions into practice). What does it mean that Christ has two wills? Certainly not that Christ is a split personality with his two wills debating over what he will do! Certainly the fact that he has two energies does not mean that he is going two different directions at the same time!
And so Maximus articulated his most central insight of Christology – namely, that persons act; natures are. Christ does not have two centers of deliberation. Rather, Christ has two “natural wills” – in other words, Christ himself (the second person of the Trinity) acts according to the principles of both natures.
As processes, energy and will proceed from one’s nature(s). But as result, energy and will are expressions of the person. If Jesus had no human process of willing, he would never choose to eat, because his divine will would have no need for such a decision. But the Son of God did choose to eat because his person willed to do so on the basis of his fully human property of will and energy. As Andrew Louth summarizes this, “the Incarnate Word possesses as a human being the natural disposition to will, and this is moved and shaped by the divine will” (Louth, p61).
But what does it mean for God to will? After all, we are used to deliberating and deciding (that is what we mean by “will”). But God does not need to “deliberate” (the term Maximus uses is “gnomic”). He does not acquire knowledge the same way that we do – and so God does not “deliberate” about what he will do. His will – like his knowledge – is intuitive and immediate.
[A note to my readers: scripture often speaks of God holding council, asking questions, deliberating, etc. But this is done for our benefit – not his. The God who knows the end from the beginning does not need to deliberate as to what he will do in the middle.]
When we talk about the two “wills” in Christ, we need to distinguish between the idea of “natural will” (namely, the principle of willing) and the idea of “deliberative will” (namely, the process of deliberation by which you and I go about willing). Maximus argues that “When the Fathers say that there are two natural wills in Christ, they mean that there are two natural laws, not two inclinations [gnomai].” (Op 3, 45B)
The natural will is “the natural appetency of the flesh endowed with a rational soul,” while the gnomic will is “the longing of the mind of a particular man moved by an opinion.” “For to be disposed by nature to will and to will are not the same thing.” (Op 3, 48A)
But think about the alternative. What if Christ has only one will? Well, if this will is natural (pertaining to his nature), then his nature is neither related to the Father or Mary. But if this will is gnomic (deliberative), and his one will is the will of the divine nature then the Godhead will be subject to passions – inclinations. Or if this one will is simply human, then he is not God. (Op 3, 56A)
[God is not subject to passions – he is not helplessly acted upon by others. He certainly has affections – emotions – but the “passions” ordinarily refer to the wild uncontrollable urges of the flesh.]
Therefore, Maximus insists that there are two natural wills in Christ. In other words, there are two principles of willing. But there is no deliberative will in Christ. After all, the divine will does not deliberate. God does not “debate and discuss” the question of what is best to do. As Maximus puts it, “this will is not at all deliberative [gnomic], but properly natural, eternally formed and moved by its essential Godhead to the fulfillment of the economy. And it is wholly and thoroughly deified by its agreement and concord with the Father’s will, and can properly be said to have become divine in virtue of the union, but not by nature. For nothing at all changes its nature by being deified.” (Op 7, 81D)
Some had suggested in Maximus’ day that within the Trinity, “there is a will for every person,” and therefore there are three [gnomic] wills in the Trinity. If will attaches to person, then it cannot be “natural” (pertaining to nature), but must be gnomic (deliberative), and therefore there would be deliberation and possibly even disagreement within the Trinity. (Op 3, 52C-D)
I fear that I may have lost some of my readers along the way. If you insist on trying to understand the incomprehensible God, you will find yourself in deep waters. The history of the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Incarnation demonstrates that no one has come up with exactly the right way to say it. Rather, there are a whole lot of very bad ways to say it, and only a few acceptable ways to say it. There are many ways of speaking that contradict what the scriptures teach about God and Christ. There are very few that do not! Hopefully Maximus helps us to remember that when we use language to describe God, we frequently are required to make distinctions that we don’t normally think about (e.g., the distinction between natural and gnomic wills).
But if you forget everything else, hang on to that central insight of Maximus that persons act, natures are. Natures don’t do things. Persons do things — according to their nature(s).
All quotations from Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996).
by Michiana Covenant | May 12, 2016 | 2 Corinthians, Pastoral Practice, Repentance
In my preaching I have often distinguished between repentance and apology: repentance is where you turn from sin to God and admit your fault, while an apology is an attempt to defend yourself. I have usually said that an apology is appropriate for a mistake, whereas repentance is appropriate for sin.
But in 2 Corinthians 7:10-11, Paul commends the Corinthians repentance — and their apology! As soon as I saw this, it made perfect sense of so many situations of interpersonal conflict. Too often, when we confront someone about their sin, we simply demand repentance and refuse to hear any “explanation” (thinking that the explanation is being offered as an excuse). But Paul is demonstrating a different way. He wants to hear their explanation — their “apology” for their actions — because that will further open communication between them.
Think about how Paul says this:
10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
What is the difference between godly grief and worldly grief? John Chrysostom says it well: “Worldly sorrow…is regret for the loss of money, reputation, and friends. That kind of sorrow merely leads to greater harm, because the regret is often a prelude to a thirst for revenge. Only sorrow for sin is really profitable.” (quoted in Guthrie, 379)
Proverbs 9:7-8 says, “Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you.”
How do you respond when someone rebukes you? Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Verse 11 shows us what this looks like:
11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment!
Paul uses seven words to describe the Corinthians’ godly response: the first is “earnestness” – haste – being eager to deal with the problem.
But second, they defended themselves – being eager “to clear yourselves.” This is the word “apologia” – where we get our word “apology.” This word refers to the idea of defending yourself. An apology is a defense of your actions. When you apologize, you are explaining yourself. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you standing there.” “I’m sorry, I was reading a book and I lost track of time.” Those are apologies. If you tell your child, “Apologize to your sister,”you are telling your child to explain their reasons why they did something.
And Paul says here that apologies can be a good thing! Even when you realize that you have sinned, you may still need to offer an apology! You may need to say, “Yes, I was wrong – I sinned against you – and here’s the context to help you understand what happened.”
Paul does not give us all the details of what the Corinthians said to him – but plainly he was satisfied by the combination of repentance and apology that he received.
The third word – what indignation – is a much stronger word. It can refer to displeasure, annoyance, anger, even rage. The object of their indignation is not clear. Possibly they are enraged at the false teachers. Maybe they are upset at themselves for their own blindness. But godly sorrow will produce indignation in you. Godly sorrow will produce strong emotions in you!
The fourth word – what fear – shows how the Corinthians have realized the severity of what they have done. In v15 Paul will speak of the “fear and trembling” with which they received Titus. Why does the wise man love the one who rebukes him? Because the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom! Why is this person rebuking me? If this person is rebuking me out of love – then maybe I’ve missed something – maybe I need to hear what this person is saying.
The fifth word, “what longing” – is the same word used in verse 7 – where Titus told Paul of their longing for him.
And this is closely related to the sixth word – “what zeal” – which speaks of their enthusiasm for Paul – reflecting their dedication to the gospel and to Paul himself.
The final word “what punishment” focuses on the outcome: the word could be translated “what vengeance” or “what retaliation.” It has to do with the dispensing of justice. We saw back in 2:6 that Paul spoke of how the punishment inflicted by the majority was sufficient.
And so, at the end of verse 11, Paul says:
At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.
They were guilty. That’s why Paul wrote the severe letter! But now they are innocent! How can the guilty become innocent? By repentance! And by bearing fruit in keeping with repentance.
So how do you demonstrate godly sorrow? Well, when someone shows you your sin, you should respond with earnestness – promptly dealing with the sin – you should respond with an apology – explaining the situation (not to excuse yourself – but to clear yourself by specifying exactly what has happened); and you should respond with indignation, fear, longing, zeal – real emotions that express your concern that the relationship be restored! – and with “punishment” – with proper consequences that will demonstrate fruit in keeping with repentance.
And when you are confronting someone else, remember that if we demand only repentance — if we refuse to hear a person’s apology — then we are claiming to be higher than God (after all, even God asked Adam to explain himself!).
Peter J. Wallace
