Paul met with furious opposition when he brought the gospel to Corinth (Acts 18:1–17), but the Lord told him not to fear for He had “many people in this city.” Over eighteen months he built up the believers there. They came short in no spiritual gift, but after he left they boasted in their God-given abilities and fell into disunity. Within a short time they allowed serious sin to develop and go unjudged among them. This led him to write his first letter to them in the most solemn terms.

Today’s verse shows the pressure and anxiety he experienced as he wrote it. To use his own words, he was “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). Though wayward and guilty, they were “saints” (1 Cor. 1:2), and this motivated and guided his stern rebukes: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov. 27:6). But he feared they might react negatively and went to Macedonia to get as close to them as possible, desperate for news of them from his fellow worker, Titus (2 Cor. 2:13; 7:5–7).

When Titus told him that their response was positive, Paul was overjoyed and promptly wrote them his second letter assuring them the first one, though corrective, was not designed to injure them (2 Cor. 7:8–9). It is difficult to do that if the parchment or paper—or today we might say, the keypad—is wet with tears of love. Rather, he wanted to win them back for the Lord, longing for their restoration to spiritual well-being so that he might have happy fellowship with them again (2:3).

May God give us grace in our thoughts towards one another when things go wrong in our relationships so that our communications might have the same result! Amen.