Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Living an Awe-Filled Life | New Testament 2 Corinthians 2

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

How often do you really think of what Christ has done on the cross? Does Jesus's death and resurrection impact your day-to-day life? The way you live? The way you speak? The way you experience life? Tanya uses 2 Corinthians 2 to describe how Jesus changes everything. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Corinthians 2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. I just overheard a real-life middle school conversation where a group of kids were talking about another kid who wasn't there. At first, it sounded like they were all friends, and the absent friend, well, was just a missing part of the friend group for the day. But then one of the kids turned on the missing friend and started talking about the way he chewed his food at lunch. And then another one piled on and said they thought he picked his nose. nose, and then finally another one claimed that he left his snap unopened.

Well, that must have been the final straw because the remaining few finally said, well, I don't like him either then. Then what? I thought they were all friends two minutes ago. Did things really turn that fast over chewing, alleged nose picking, and an unopened Snapchat? Poor middle schooler, yet another victim of crowd mentality and misguided loyalty. As my own middle schooler would say,

it's complicated. You could say Paul and the Church of Corinth have a complicated history. He instructed them to discipline someone within their church who was in need of correction, and instead they shifted their allegiance to that person and away from Paul. After all, it didn't look like Paul's life was going that well. Why was he suffering so much if he was a true apostle of the risen Jesus Christ? Shouldn't someone who was truly operating in God's will

and with God's power have more to show than suffering and persecution. So now, as Paul writes, 2 Corinthians, well, the pendulum has begun to swing in the opposite direction. Not in the ways you might think. Paul's life was still hard and would continue to be so. But the church heard his message, and they responded in obedience. They did discipline the original offender, and then they went all in on their loyalty to Paul, showing it by not forgiving the person who committed the original offense, even though that person was repentant.

All of this, well, it shows us that the struggles and conflicts we experience, they're not new. You and I know this to be true, as we live more like middle schoolers than we often want to admit, even in our churches. But Paul does have an answer for the inevitable conflicts and challenges. Actually, he has the answer. the gospel, or in other words, the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord. Now, this announcement does not in itself offer a better life experience, but a new life to frame our experiences.

The only experience guaranteed by Jesus and his summons to follow him is that of carrying the cross. As we look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 2, we see evidence of Paul carrying the cross, so to speak, as he relates his struggles with inward anxiety. In verse 12, he wrote, When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was open for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest,

because I did not find my brother Titus there. So when Titus didn't show up as expected, Paul was anxious. Was Titus safe and well? Was the church doing okay? Did this change in plans indicate a lack of support for Paul and his ministry? we understand what it's like to experience inward anxiety when things don't go as planned.

We come up with all kinds of scenarios about what could have gone wrong. It's in this very framework that opens the door to candid discussion about struggles, both inward and outward in the Christian life, that Paul gets to a verse that reflects the main theme of this whole letter. He says, but thanks be to God, who always leads us in Christ's triumphal, session, and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. For to God, we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

To some, we are an aroma of death leading to death, but to others an aroma of life leading to life. Who is adequate for these things? For we do not market the word of God for profit like so many. On the contrary, we speak with sincerity in Christ as from God and before God. Now it's interesting amid his struggles that Paul chooses to use a metaphor to describe the Christian life that would remind us to something like the modern Super Bowl or the World Cup. But we have to understand what this metaphor would have meant to the Corinthians and the first century Christians to understand the impact that it can have on our challenges even today. So when he says, but thanks be to God who always leads us in Christ's triumphal procession.

and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. Well, we can read these few verses and just go about our day like I did the first time thinking it's just another metaphor and not really digging in to all that it suggests that we ponder. Let's slow down. Let's let this one soak and sink in because there's deep truth revealed in these verses that if grasped can free us to live victoriously, even now, while the circumstances of our lives are still, shall we say, complicated. So there are two word pictures buried like treasure in those verses, a triumphal procession and an aroma.

Now, when Paul talks about Christ's triumphal procession here, the first century Christians would have pictured the parades that were held in Rome to honor victorious Roman generals when they returned from battle. It was like the Super Bowl of their day. When a general took his army off to fight a foreign war and came back the winner, he could beseech the Roman governor to hold a parade in his honor. Then the general would ride in a chariot while the Romans lined the streets to watch him go by with his soldiers and all the loot and the captives that they won in the battle coming along behind.

Now here's what's cool. If the Roman citizens who had been held captive and enslaved by that foreign country that had been defeated, well, if they had been freed in the general's victory, then they could also come back and march. in the parade to celebrate the end of their captivity and the rebirth of their freedom. So when the smell from the burning incense came wafting out from the crowd and it hit their noses, it would have carried with it the sweet smell of freedom with life before them as they marched. But there were others who didn't have that kind of experience. For the foreigners, now captives of Rome, theirs was a smell of death.

When they smelled the incense, a few would experience the worst kind of death as they were sacrificed to the Roman gods as a way to thank them for the victory. And the others, well, they would have a life of slavery before them, marching further into captivity step by step in the streets of Rome. So Paul draws on this visual to help the Church of Corinth understand what Christ has done for them. Christ is the true general, the grand marshal of the parade. His victory over death has changed them from captives and slaves into free citizens of God's kingdom. Paul himself, well, he thinks of himself as one of these citizens, now freed by the general and marching with new freedom and life before him. He had been enslaved by sin and self-righteousness and sentenced to death in a foreign land,

but now he's free and has life in the kingdom of God. Even the hardest things he will face in this kingdom cannot alter the freedom he's been given in Christ. Now don't you think if you were one of those Roman citizens that had been held captive by a foreign king that every day you woke up as a free citizen, you would look at your hands, look at your feet, remind yourself that it's really true.

You really were free. Your life was proof every living moment that the general had been successful, had been victorious. You would thank him. You would tell your story over and over as you lived out your freedom and new life. Don't you think Paul wants us to see our lives in God's kingdom with the same kind of awe and power, with the same awe of what Christ has done and the same power to reflect his triumph to the people we encounter every single. single day. But that's not how we feel every day, is it? And that's not the way we think about our life when people say things about us, when people shift their loyalties. And that's not how we wake up to our to-do list in the morning. And that's not the way we approach the conversation

we have with people at work or school throughout the day. Remember what we said earlier, that the gospel, or in other words, the announcement that Jesus is Lord over everything does not offer the believer a better life experience, but it does offer a better way to experience life. I think Paul wants them to understand with this metaphor that the turmoil they experience is part of something temporary, not eternal. Can you imagine having someone dump a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle on your coffee table and then take the box away, telling you that you have to finish the puzzle only with the pieces, You have to sort them out and put them together with no idea of what it's supposed to look like.

How different would it be if you had that box sitting up in front of you while you were doing the puzzle? How different would your understanding of what worked together and what the pieces were making be if you had the box to look at? Instead of looking at our struggles or other people's struggles as random or as evidence that something is, is wrong. How can we work together through them to show the rest of the world what's being made right? What the creator has promised will be restored in his victory over sin and death. In Revelation 215, we have the same words the prophet Isaiah gave. It says, And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also, he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, it is done.

I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, to the thirsty, I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars. by the way, that's all of us without the gospel. Their portion would be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. Now, for those who have heard and believe that Jesus is Lord, the triumphal parade is the aroma of life. There is no second death, for Jesus has taken the sin that would have sent us there to the cross.

This is the truth that frames our life experiences day in and day out. And it's a beautiful and humble way to live. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.