Knowing The Word in 2 Corinthians: Pain, Joy, and Love, 2:1-4

Pain, Joy, and Love

1 For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. 2 For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? 3 And I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. 4 For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.

These verses speak to the mental and emotional state of Paul as he wrote this “sorrowful” letter. The previous visit to Corinth had been painful, even though Paul had hoped joy would have been the experience of all of them. Love, however, includes rebuking and correcting. It is the kind of love God shows his people. Parents discipline and correct their children because they love them. Not to discipline and correct demonstrates antipathy, the opposite of proactive love.

O my Lord, I discern in my anger a sense of self-righteousness which is much too close to pleasure. And I think of you, Lord. You were never angry in your own defense, and you took no pleasure in anger: else why the Cross? But you were angry for God: you were angry with those who sold him as a commodity; you were angry with those who used him for their own status; or who treated him as belonging only to them.

O Lord, implant in me a holy fear of the wrong kind of anger, which ministers to my own sense of self-importance, or is simply an indulgence of my own frustration. Forgive me, Lord, for all such occasions.

Ruth Etchells