This summer we have chosen to spend seventeen weeks in the epistle of Second Corinthians in a series we are calling Treasure in Jars of Clay.

Paul’s history with the church in Corinth had been complicated.

After establishing the church (Acts 18:1-11), he had moved on to plant other churches. Sometime later he had received news of divisions and difficulties that had arisen among them and wrote two letters – a previous letter now lost (mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5:9) and the letter we now call First Corinthians. This letter had mixed results: some members continued to support Paul, others continued to resist him, while others wavered somewhere in between.

Paul returned to Corinth to address these ongoing problems in a visit he would refer to as a “painful visit” (2 Corinthians 2:1) but it didn’t go well. He left in discouragement and wrote them another letter now lost to us, often called “the severe letter” (mentioned in 2 Corinthians 2:4; 7:8-9). While it seemed to bear some good fruit (as reported by Titus) a group he calls “the super-apostles” had remained and sought to undermine Paul’s influence by discrediting him.

The things they taught and stood for were the antithesis of Paul’s gospel so, like a mama bear whose cubs were threatened, he wrote the letter we now call Second Corinthians to defend his apostleship and gospel ministry, to guard this church whom he loved from being led astray, and to prepare them for his a visit.

“The overarching theological message of Second Corinthians is this: in the new realm that was inaugurated when Jesus ascended and the Spirit descended, life and ministry are flipped upside-down such that God’s strength interlocks not with human strength and sufficiency, but with human weakness and pain (Ministry in the New Realm, Dane Ortlund).”

This unique letter among Paul’s many epistles has the potential to “deprogram or reeducate” us by “breaking the false assumptions common today about the gospel and what it means to be a Christian” as well as “helping us see through some of the devil’s deceptions that may have worked their ways into our own lives” (The Message of the New Testament, Mark Dever).

This Sunday will be our reading service.

To help us imagine the elders of the Corinthian church receiving this most recent letter from Paul, gathering the church on the Lord’s Day, and reading it aloud together, some of our Grace elders will sit together on the platform this Sunday and take turns reading our way through it. Then, after fifteen Sundays of preaching, we will conclude with a Reflection Service on the last Sunday in August.

You can find the schedule for this sermon series here.

Resources to help you go deeper in Second Corinthians this summer

• ESV Scripture Journals for Second Corinthians (In plain black or illuminated versions) will be available at a discounted rate of $3 at a table on the front patio for the first couple of weeks of our series.
• Ministry in the New Realm: A Theology of 2 Corinthians by Dane Ortlund would be a great little companion volume to this sermon series. You can order a copy at a reduced rate of $16.27 from our Grace Online Bookstore through 10 Of Those.
• Scripture memory and meditation: Each week we will suggest a short passage from the section preached for memorization and meditation. Look for these in our weekly Sunday bulletins and on our Grace Facebook and Instagram accounts every Monday.