2 Corinthians 10:1-18 Tearing Down and Building Up
Over this past week our whole neighbourhood have watched the big house next door to the church be demolished. A 30-tonne digger and a series of trucks have been working from early til late clearing the site for a new development.
Our kids have watched the process unfold from the spare bedroom – mostly obsessed by the very big digger.
One thing that struck me was just how quickly the house came down.
It was one day.
Not even that.
Of that one day, most of the house came down in a couple of hours.
The house built in 1889 would have been a labour of love. I imagine it took months, perhaps years. Bricks, timber, tiles all lovingly crafted. Trees planted that took years to cultivate and grow.
And in one day the house came down, and one week later the whole site is simply dirt.
It seems that it is a lot more painstaking and time consuming to build something than it is to tear it down.
In today’s reading from Corinthians we reflect on this idea of both tearing down and building up.
As I’ve been reflecting on this reading over the week, I just think it has so much to teach us about how to navigate our way through the world today as followers of Jesus.
Globally, we live in destructive and turbulent times.
By this, I mean times in which we see a lot of chaos in our politics, fear and anxiety in our public discourse, the degradation of our climate, the fragility of democracy and serious threats to our common good. Not to mention a global pandemic in the mix.
These are times of upheaval and change.
We face a lot of challenges as a society and as a church.
It is true in the anxiety of all the changes we face that it is easier to tear down and hard to build.
It is easier to criticize than it is to be constructive.
Paul sees himself as a builder of the church and he talks in today’s passage of his struggles and confrontations as a leader. These struggles mean Paul must do some tearing down as well as building up, but his aim is always constructive.
I think we can learn so much about what it means to build and partner with God in today’s reading from 2 Corinthians.
A lot of what Paul has to teach us is about our posture, our mindset, and our way of dealing with conflicting ideas.
So, let’s explore this as we look at chapter 10 together.
There is a lot in this chapter, and Paul revisits some themes we have covered so we are focusing mostly on verses 1-12 today.
Here in chapter 10 there is a shift in the letter.
There is a clean break between chapter 9 and 10. Chapters 8 and 9 were about the collection for the Jerusalem church and they finished with a word of praise.
Then in chapter 10, it’s as if Paul starts afresh. He returns once again to the theme of defending his ministry against false teachers and troublemakers in the church at Corinth.
Because of the way the letter changes so abruptly here many biblical scholars think that chapters 10-13 are the major section of a separate letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians in response to the bad news he got wind of after sending Titus and the other messengers to the Corinthians with 2 Corinthians chapters 1-9.
Other scholars argue that this isn’t a separate letter but merely a shift in the argument back to the points Paul made at the beginning of the letter. Here Paul is even firmer, he really takes the gloves off and perhaps he is keen to finish with gusto.
Whatever the setting and context – the point is this: here in this passage Paul is once again coming up against his opponents who don’t think he is up to the task of an apostle.
These opponents Paul refers to sarcastically as “the super apostles.”
They were eloquent and persuasive teachers who focused on rhetoric and appearance, they were preaching a message that was out of line and a distortion of the gospel. One of the main issues seems to be that they couldn’t understand the depth of Jesus’ death on the cross and what it meant of follow a crucified Messiah. They emphasized human strength and power of God’s power demonstrated through weakness.
Just to get more of a sense of who these opponents are and what their issues with Paul are all about let’s jump ahead to verses 9-11.
9 I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters. 10 For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.” 11 Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present.”
Paul quotes his opponents saying essentially that his letters are powerful, but his presence and his speaking are weak and ineffectual. It’s as if they are saying that Paul is hiding behind his letters like a coward offering pot-shots at them.
Paul’s opponents essentially accuse him of being what we in the 21st century would call “a keyboard warrior.”
If you haven’t heard that phrase, the urban dictionary defines a keyboard warrior as
“A Person who, being unable to express his anger through physical violence (owning to their physical weakness, lack of bravery and/or conviction in real life), instead manifests said emotions through the text-based medium of the internet, usually in the form of aggressive writing that the Keyboard Warrior would not (for reasons previously mentioned) be able to give form to in real life.”
Replace “keyboard” with “parchment and ink” and you have the same accusation.
They say that Paul is only a tough guy in his letters because he is weak in person.
Paul’s weakness has often been a theme that his opponents have picked up and we have seen Paul defend in 2 Corinthians. His weakness and struggle, his trials and troubles, are for Paul, as we have seen, an opportunity for God’s strength to shine. So, in defending himself Paul comes back to this theme.
Paul insists that what he says in letter he also is willing to say in person. This is an important point in itself. Much harm can be done from a distance, but Paul has a relationship with the Corinthians.
Let’s look at the first couple of verses of this chapter to see Paul’s approach when confronting the accusations against him.
In verse 1 and 2 Paul comes across as strong. Verse 2 indicates he is willing to be bold when necessary.
Yet verse 1 reminds us once again that everything Paul seeks to do; he seeks to do it in a way which conforms to Jesus Christ.
Paul names ways of being as a leader which are characteristic of Jesus and therefore for followers of Jesus.
He refers to the meekness and the gentleness of Christ.
Meekness and gentleness are synonyms working together to paint a picture of the compassion and care of Jesus and His ministry
Jesus himself presents as “meek and humble in heart.” (Matthew 11:29). Jesus’ yoke is easy, and his burden is light. He doesn’t lord his power over his disciples but rather gently leads and admonishes them.
In Philippians, Paul reminds us that Jesus humbly became human and bore the cross for us. The meekness and gentleness of Jesus is seen not only in his teaching and leadership but also in his incarnation and death on the cross.
Meekness and gentleness are at the heart of the character of Jesus and in imitating Him, Christians are called on to display these characteristics.
We see this in the New Testament:
-Galatians 5:23 – “gentleness” is a fruit of the Spirit.
-Ephesians 4:2 – “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness.”
-Colossians 3:12 – “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”
-Titus 3:2 – In a list of exhortation, we hear Titus encouraged “to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.”
As we consider the meekness and gentleness of Jesus, we see that at the centre of Paul’s ministry and way of doing things is an imitation of Jesus.
This is a challenge to the bombastic and proud opponents of Paul whose values are more shaped by their culture and worldview than they are by Jesus.
It is ironic that it seems Paul has been accused by his opponents as “walking according to the flesh” when it seems this is precisely what Paul’s opponents are doing.
In the way it is used here “walking according to the flesh” means to see things only at a surface level and miss the spiritual depth.
Paul goes on to challenge them by framing up what he really thinks is going on and where the true battle is happening.
(4-6) Divine weapons
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, 6 being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.
Paul when he finds himself in conflict with his opponents knows that his armoury is not his own strength or skill, but rather comes from God’s power.
Paul uses similar imagery elsewhere. In Romans 13 Paul talks about putting on armour of light, and in Ephesians 6 we hear Paul talk about putting on the whole armour of God.
Ephesians 6:14-18: Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.
Paul talks about the kinds of weapons a Christian has at hand. Notice they are all given by God and depend on God’s power, not our own.
In 2 Corinthians 10 Paul uses the language of siege warfare to talk about dealing with his opponents and engaging in spiritual battle.
Paul draws on the image of destroying defensive fortification.
We might imagine a large fortified city with strongholds and lofty towers.
The strongholds and towers represent arguments and “lofty opinions” as Paul puts it that draw people away from knowledge of God and stand in contradiction to God’s good purposes in the world.
In Paul’s context this meant his particular opponents. There were all kinds of philosophies and religious traditions that stood in the way of the good news about Jesus. Paul lived in and was preaching in a world full of idols and various philosophies.
Paul talks about taking every thought captive to Christ. He knows how important the battle of the mind is. This has always been the case.
Dallas Willard talking about the strategy of Satan in the temptation of Adam and Eve recorded in Genesis says this: “Thus when (Satan) understood to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with the idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being.”
Willard goes on to say: “The Gospel of Jesus directly repudiates all false information about God and, therewith, about the meaning of human life; and it works to undermine the power of those ideas and images that structure life away from God.”[1]
We see in 2 Corinthians that Paul seeks to deconstruct those ideas which draw people away from God. He uses the language of tearing down or destroying.
It’s worth us thinking about this today.
What are the strongholds in our churches and in our society that keep us from Jesus? What are the “lofty opinions” that draw our hearts and minds away from love of God and knowing his deep love for us as revealed to us by Jesus?
Paul seeks to remove any barriers, to destroy anything that gets in the way of the Corinthians knowing Christ. And yet, as we see in verse 8 Paul does this Paul knowing that his authority has been given by God to build up the church, not to destroy it.
Paul attacks ideas and opinions and arguments which contradict and undermine the gospel – he doesn’t attack people.
Rather he seeks to build them up.
This is just so important and gives helpful clarity when it comes to the clash of ideas in our society today.
In much of the disagreement we see happen in society things quickly denigrate into name calling and mudslinging. This can be seen in the comments sections of articles online which are never edifying reading. And it can be seen in the defacing of political billboards. The inability to see people beyond ideas leads to all kinds of destructive interactions.
This happens in the church too, and the conflict Paul is dealing with in Corinth is inside the church.
Paul doesn’t wage war on people in this passage, but rather on destructive ideas which lead people away from God, not toward Him. This isn’t about a competition of ideas or who is right, but rather about Paul wanting people to know Jesus.
There is a lot we could learn from Paul’s humility and his ability to lay siege to the ideas, not to the individuals behind them.
Paul models the gentleness and humility of Jesus, and above all he is deeply committed to the building up of the church.
Paul knows that the renovation of our hearts and our lives will mean some ways of thinking and ways of life will need to be torn down, but the point is always constructive. God is building his church in our midst, and we are called with Paul to be wise labourers with God.
Let’s pray…
[1] Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ”, 101-104.