2 Corinthians 2:12-17--Triumph in Christ

2 Corinthians 2:12-17
English Standard Version

Triumph in Christ
12 When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, 13 my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.

​14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.

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The times and places mentioned here are unfamiliar to us, but this is probably Paul talking about his 3rd missionary journey.  I say that because Paul didn't visit Corinth for the first time until his second missionary journey, and it seems that Paul is still talking about his current travel plans, so this must be a later missionary  journey which followed much the same path as the 2nd missionary journey, only taking the southern loop from Antioch to Troas (visiting more cities on the coast of what is now Turkey that way) before crossing over into Macedonia to revisit the churches he had planted there on his second missionary journey.

It seems Paul had sent Titus on ahead of them and was expecting to meet up with him in Troas, but something must have happened to lead Titus to move along faster, and even though Paul wanted to stay and minister for a bit longer in Troas, it seemed clear to Paul and his team that they needed to pick up the pace so as to catch up to Titus.  This means that Paul was getting closer to visiting the Corinthians again as he would be coming their way after he visited the churches in Macedonia and northern Greece, and they would be one of his last visits before returning to Jerusalem.

Paul then says that even though this turn of events did not match his plans, God was not hindered in the spread of the gospel because wherever Paul went, he saw that God was already at work in preparing the people for the gospel and that there were disciples and believers in many places because the gospel was already spreading so that he was gathering where he did not sow.  Paul recognize that this must be the work of God and that God alone would get all the credit and all the glory for this.

Pau then said they are not like the false teachers and "peddlers" of God's word that try to use the Word of God to make a profit who are concerned with their fame and numbers--we see this to this very day that pastors care about numbers too much, specifically the numbers of seats that are filled and dollars that are in the offering plate.  This seems hypocritical and off-putting to many of the world who know that's not what the church and the gospel are to be about.  Some churches also focus a bit too much on their quantity of "decisions" made and they are quick to get people to fill out "decision cards" or to baptism them and issue a baptism certificate and they brag to each other in pride about how many conversions or baptisms they have seen this year, yet there is little to no emphasis on the quality of that decision or the long-term discipleship that goes with that decision.  What good is it for a man to "say the magic words" and then pass through the waters of baptism if he never truly believed?  Aren't we just replacing the sign of the covenant of circumcision with the sign of the covenant of baptism?  Did such works save the people of Israel who thought they had it made because they were circumcised and were "children of Abraham" and they had the Law of Moses?  No!  God said it was the heart that needed to be circumcised and that they needed to be born again to pass from death to life.  That's what Paul is talking about here--people passing from death to life.  That is the work of God and is not the kind of metric that most people would take the kind of time to be a part of or measure, because it's much easier to count and take credit for all the so-called "professions of faith," even the ones that are not genuine because there was no true repentance as evidenced by there being no fruit in keeping with repentance.  (Just think of all the people that have "rededicated" their life over, and over, and over, and over again.  Is that the kind of "saving faith" that we see preached in the New Testament?  While we may be told to get right with God, we are never told to give altar calls to ask people to rededicate their lives...the call that we always see in the New Testament is to "repent and believe."  There is no "easy believism" in the New Testament where you believe without first repenting.)

So then, do we still see the Spirit of God at work today to convict people to bring about repentance, or do we see a people that either think "I've done did that" or "I was baptized, so I'm good" (be that infant baptism or baptism as part of joining a church) or "I'm a good person" or even "I don't believe in God" and think they don't need the gospel.  Oh that we would pray for God to move among the people of the world to convict them and prepare them for the harvest of the living instead of the harvest of the dead.  Furthermore, we should pray that God would send laborers into the harvest to gather where they have not sown, and we need to be ready to say like the prophet Isaiah, "Here am I Lord, send me."  Wherever we go we may face situations like Paul where we don't have all the time that we'd like to have a full-length discipleship program and it may be necessary to entrust the follow-up to God and the others that He will bring along, or simply to trust the Holy Spirit to lead them in all truth--though it's even easier today to give someone your contact information and say "Email me, text me, or call me if you have questions, because you will have questions."  We must not simply want to do the "quick" work of evangelism where we 'save them and leave them" as this was never the model we were given.  From the very beginning of the Church, those who were saved at Pentecost stayed and followed the teaching of the apostles and learned daily.  We see that Paul would just go into a city and hold a "crusade" or have a "revival meeting" and then pack up and leave the next day--sometimes he got chased out quicker than he wanted to by those who were trying to kill him though.  His regular routine seemed to be to stay with people for several weeks, maybe even many months to make sure they knew the basics and had their foundation secure, then following up with them on multiple occasions by letter to answer their questions and correct false teachings.  He also seemed to make it a habit to revisit these churches and it was a team effort as he sent Timothy and Titus and Epaphroditus and others to pastor these churches and to not only pastor them, but disciple them.  We too must be in it for the long-game, because that's clearly the plan of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, as sanctification is not something that happens instantly, but something that happens gradually, but it is just as important to salvation as is justification or glorification.