2 Corinthians 13:11-14

It’s the chicken and the egg thing. Which comes first? There’s a cause and effect going on here in 2 Corinthians 13. Something has to happen first before the other thing happens. But which comes first? The perfection or the grace? The holiness or the love?

Our theology, our written beliefs as Reformed Christians, clearly spell out the right order. First comes grace, then comes perfection. First comes love, then comes holiness. The Canons of Dort, the Heidelberg, the Belgic, these confessions were written so that we get the order right. These documents were written when most of the church had the order backwards. First we must be holy, then we know God’s grace. First we must be pure, then we know God’s love. And our Reformed church fathers, and some of the mothers, too, set us straight and wrote it down. God’s grace leads us to perfection. God’s love brings us to holiness. Our theology is right.

Our practice, though, not so much. Will God love me when I don’t act holy? Will His grace still apply when I do those sins, you know, THOSE sins. We live with expectations. You must do the right thing and you must think the right thoughts and you must say the right words. It’s God’s job to spell out His expectations, which He did in His scripture. It’s our job to figure out how to meet those expectations. If we repeat the laws often enough, if we scold ourselves, and each other often enough, maybe they’ll sink in. Maybe we’ll hit our heads often enough and hard enough on those stone tables of God’s law that we’ll finally get it right.

And then, God will love us. Or at least, maybe, God will like us. We’ve reached that level where we’re good enough people for God to love, or at least tolerate. It took a lot of work, but we reached it, and now we can enjoy the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Though our theology gets it right, we put the cart before the horse. We get the egg without the chicken. We think it’s our holiness that leads to love, instead of God’s grace, love and fellowship that leads to our perfection. Especially as we read our text. Aim for perfection. Live in peace. And then, then the God of love and peace will be with you. If this is how we read these verses, we’re reading them backwards.

So let’s take a point by point look at these few small verses, and we’ll see our God, the triune God, the three Persons, our one God, bringing us to perfection. Last Sunday, we celebrated Pentecost, the work and gift of the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit works to bring us to God, the Triune God. He works to let us know the grace of Jesus, and the love of God the Father, to create a relationship, in fellowship with Him. So, after knowing the Spirit last week, this week we turn our attention to the Triune God. And we find that with the Triune God working in us, we are more and more able to love God, and we are able to love each other.

Paul is wrapping up his letter to the Corinthians. He’s had a lot to say to them, about living together in peace, about carrying the gospel to a broken world. He’s about to finish his letter, and as he finishes, he quick throws in some last minute encouragements. Verse 11:

Just this first one can shut us down for good. Aim for perfection? That’s impossible. Those of us who have perfectionist tendencies know what an awful burden perfection is. You can never reach perfection, and every time we fall short, there’s pain. We failed. What an awful expectation to put on people, to aim for perfection.

Except wait. This doesn’t happen very often, but this version of the Bible, the NIV, gets this wrong, and I mean really wrong. This verse we just read gives us a job to do, to aim for perfection. The expectation of verse 11 is placed on us. Work to be perfect. In the original, in the Greek, verse 11 actually says, "Be perfected. Be made complete." The command is passive, you’re receiving the action. You’re not doing the perfecting, the perfecting is being done to you. The expectation isn’t on you. The expectation is on…wait for it…God.

This is God’s work. It’s God work to expose the faults and replace them with strengths. It’s God who changes and transforms and sanctifies. It’s God who makes you perfect. You just need to let that happen. Don’t resist. Allow the changes. Be perfected.

The same thing happens with the next command. Again, in the NIV, the wording is a little strange:

Going back to the original, Paul is saying something more like:

Again, we’re the receivers of the encouragement. We’re receiving a call, a call to be led and controlled by God through the influence of the Holy Spirit.

And when God is controlling us and guiding us and perfecting us, that is going to show up in how we treat one another.

We will be perfected in our love for each other. In other words, we’ll get along with each other a lot better than we have in the past. We will start thinking in the same way, with the same goals, the same priorities. We’ll be more in sink. We’ll be of one mind. And it won’t be the mindset of the most powerful people in church, who want everybody to think their way. Our minds will all be one, and our minds will be the mind of Christ. Of course we’ll be getting along, we’ll all have the same mind, the mind of Christ Jesus.

And this is how this happens. Still in verse 11:

All of this happens, the increasing obedience, the encouragement, the peace between fellow Christians. This all happens because the God of love and peace is with us. Not "so that" the God of love will be with us." But His love for us turns into our love for Him, and we show that with ever increasing holiness. And His peace in us turns into peace with each other.

Which, remember, are the summary of the law. Loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, because He first loved us. And loving our neighbors as much as we love ourselves, because God first loved us.

And this love for God and this love for each can be seen in our actions, in how we treat each other. And that brings us to verse 12:

You knew we had to stop and look at this verse. We proclaim and we believe that all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, right? We know that we can’t pick and choose the parts of the Bible we believe, that we need to believe the whole Bible, right? But it seems that we, especially maybe Dutch, Reformed Christians have been just fine with skipping over this verse.

But don’t worry. There’s a way for us to hear and obey verse 12, to be stretched a little in our love for God and for each other, without getting all slobbery. Because verse 12 is just the visible expression of verse 11. Verse 12 is giving evidence of our being of one mind, of living in peace with each other, of really, actually loving each other. We can take the teaching of verse 12 and bring it into our time and culture. And when we do that, we are truly showing our affection for each other. Our love for each other is more than just a quick nod at each other. Our love for each other is more than just a quick handshake, and fast "how are ya?" Our love for each other is genuine. Our faces brighten up when we see each other. It’s good, it’s really good to see you. It’s a grip of a shoulder, a real connection. It’s, dare I say it, maybe even a hug? Greet one another with a holy hug?

Now, don’t worry about this if you’re not comfortable. Because just like with the other verses, you don’t need to figure this out. The expectation is not on you. It’s on God. You just have to go along with it. Just know that God will be working to bring us to the place where we really, truly love each other. And we show it.

And the way He does this, the way He makes all these changes, the way He transforms our love for Him and our love for each other, is spelled out in verse 14:

Do you want to love God with your whole being, your heart, soul, mind and strength? Do you want to, do you really want to love each person in your life, in your church, at work, in your neighborhood?

Then first we must know, we must experience, we must receive the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we will know the love of God. And then we will enjoy the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And when we know this grace, and then this love, and then this fellowship, then we ourselves will show grace, and we will love, and we will fellowship.

Because we can’t know God’s love and fellowship until we’ve first received God’s grace. We can’t get access to the gifts of God unless we first have come, confessing, repenting, and receiving the grace of Jesus. How can we understand God’s love, how can we be grateful for fellowship with God, unless we recognize how much we don’t deserve His love or fellowship. First, we get the sin out of the way. We watch as Jesus washes away our sins with His blood.

And as the clouds clear and the sin washes away, suddenly we’re glowing in the brilliant, blazing love of God. Since verse 14 mentions both Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we may think that it’s the Father, only the Father that really loves us. And yes, the Father does love us. But not just the Father. It’s God who loves us. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, who loves us with a love that can’t be turned off, that can’t be turned away.

And that love draws us into a relationship with God, through the Holy Spirit, that is deeper, more wonderful, more meaningful than any other relationship we have with anyone else. Our relationship with God, through the Holy Spirit, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, is even deeper than our marriage, our earthly family. Through the grace of Jesus, driven by the love of God, we come into a union with God.

And this grace, this love, this fellowship of God lead us to loving God and fellowship with each other. We don’t love God because we’re supposed to love God. Loving with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is not forced love, demanded love. God doesn’t get us to love Him by telling us, "You better love Me." No, God moves us to love Him by forgiving us, by paying for our sins, even when we still hated Him, by bringing us into this fellowship. Enjoying this grace, love and fellowship, we can’t help but love Him, overwhelmingly love Him. And as we grow in amazement and wonder and love for God, we will be perfected. Our love will change how we act, what our priorities are, where we spend our time and money, how we spend our day. His love for us and our love for Him will call us and encourage us to become more and more Christ-like, becoming more and more obedient, until we reach that perfection in heaven.

And this grace, this love, this fellowship leads us to love each other, and I mean really, really love each other. And not just those of us who are always nice and polite and like to do the things we like to do. When God draws us into fellowship with Him, we are drawn into fellowship with each other, regardless of our differences. And that fellowship is more than just going to the same church, or eating at the same places. We become family. We are brothers, we are sisters. Our eyes light up when we see each other, and yes, maybe we even hug. We are of one mind and heart.

Because we have this in common: we have known God’s grace. We have been loved. We have entered this wondrous fellowship with God. And it shows.