Let's pray. Oh Lord, we ask you to hear our prayer now. Open our minds. Let us understand the truth of your word. Come to us now as you have promised and speak to us in the preaching of the word. Make our faith to grow greater. Our love for you to be deepened. because of the things that we see and we learn here in the Word of God. And help me, guide me faithfully to proclaim your Word as it is in truth. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Have you ever been in a situation or witnessed a circumstance something like this? The telephone rings and you pick up your phone and you answer it. only to realize that the person calling is someone with whom you are having a dispute or who's been offensive or has caused irritation to you in the past. What do you feel like when you realize that that person is calling you? And usually, how does the conversation go? Maybe it's a family member with whom you disagree over something, such as family finances. Perhaps it's a neighbor who has initiated a property dispute or refuses to remove all of the trash that's out in his garden or allows his dogs to terrify the neighborhood. Maybe it's a contractor who did shoddy work on your house. There could be many possibilities. But seldom do these conversations go well. Often they start out heated and they get hotter as they go along. And how did he end? What's the result of these kinds of conversations? Well, oftentimes anger and bitterness and sinful recriminations, hard and harsh words that are spoken back and forth. Now, sadly, and probably for you, that's a reminder of something that you face just as it is for me. For most of us, we can remember when we experienced or we witnessed this kind of thing. And it's not really a very good memory, is it? It's not something that we like to dredge up from the past. Well, Paul's second letter to the Corinthians is in some senses like one of these conversations. And we are only able to listen to one side. It's like sitting in the room while someone else endures one of these trying discussions on the telephone. But it is just like this. Think about it. In this epistle, Paul must address deep troubles in the Corinthian church. He must defend his own ministry. He must describe the depth of the multiple troubles that he has endured. He must call the Corinthian church to repentance. He has to plead with them for reconciliation and much, much more. The Corinthians had criticized Paul. They'd been overzealous in their practice of church discipline. They'd viewed the apostle as secondary and perhaps even as an object of scorn because of his troubles. They were proud, miserly, self-centered, willing to accept other pseudo-apostles over Paul, and this epistle is full of these problems. It reads very much like one of these difficult telephone conversations. And yet, it concludes with the fullest and most extensive word of blessing that is found in all of Paul's letters. Murray Harris closes his commentary on 2 Corinthians with these words. He says, It is a singular paradox that a letter so full of indignation, remonstrance, and gyrating emotions should conclude with the most elevated Trinitarian affirmation in the New Testament, couched in the form of a benediction addressed to all the members of a factious church. Dr. Harris is exactly right. While our experience of difficult conversations often ends in hard feelings or shame or further conflict, Paul concludes his hard letter to this church with words of blessing, words of prayer, words of hope. They are directed to the Corinthians based upon his Trinitarian doctrine and applied to all of the believers without exception. Here is genuine Christian love presented to us in a delightful form. In these final words of 2 Corinthians, we have a beautiful benediction. Now maybe we should pause here. Let me ask this question. Do you know what a benediction is? We need to have that clear in our minds. Many churches close their services with one. A benediction is a word that we use, but maybe we don't always understand. Well, benediction is simply an English form of a Latin word that means a word of blessing. It's not the same as a doxology. though it's easy to confuse these two words. Let me try to distinguish them for you. A doxology is a brief expression of praise that we offer up to God. For example, in the close context here, in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 31, Paul issues a doxology. He speaks of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever. That's an example. A doxology is a word of praise that we speak to God. It's something that comes from us, that is offered to God, but it originates with us. A benediction is exactly the opposite. A benediction is a word of blessing that is spoken to us, not from us, but a word that is spoken to us. It's a word that comes from God's representatives and it expresses a desire for God's bounty to come upon us. We include benedictions in our worship services so that the last word that we all hear is a word of blessing from the Lord given to all of us as we depart. So a doxology is a word of praise that originates from us and is offered up to God. A benediction is a word of blessing that comes from God through his messengers to us. You see how they're exactly the opposite. Paul frequently employs benedictions. Every one of his epistles both begins and ends with a benediction, with a blessing. In his greetings, in all of his letters, he'll say something like this, some variation of this, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's really familiar, isn't it? Because as you've read Paul's epistles, you've read those words. If you notice, every time he begins, he says something to that effect. Likewise, in his farewells, at the end of all of his epistles, he always expresses a blessing to his recipients. That's how he ends every one of them. This is the longest. Some of them are very brief. Grace to you. But in every one of them, there is a benediction that follows along to conclude his writing. Now, Paul doesn't do this simply out of custom. It's not the way that you begin and end a letter. The way sometimes we greet people with, how are you? And we always respond, good, but we don't even think about what we're saying. Rather, Paul begins and ends his epistles in this way because he genuinely wishes God's people to know the things he expresses and to grow in the grace of these things. He wants people to know God. Paul's desire is for Christians to live with a deep understanding of the spiritual realities which are at the very root of their lives. They must know God, not just know about Him. but really and truly comprehend his grace and walk through life with an absolute dependence upon their Lord. And so for that reason, he places benedictions at the entry and at the exit of all of his epistles. Now, let's take a look at how he closes this epistle. Verse 14 is what we have in mind this morning. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship be with you all. Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. These are very familiar words. Now it's interesting that they pick up themes that are present throughout the entire letter. I've given you the very briefest of surveys of the problems that are present in the letter. As Paul addresses these difficulties in the Corinthian church, he reminds them or he asserts to them the necessity of grace to overcome, of grace to repent, of the need of love for one another, of the need of fellowship by the Holy Spirit in their midst. It's very interesting, isn't it? As Paul concludes this letter, there is a very real sense in which this benediction looks back. and it presents ideas that are drawn from the epistle. Paul here, in many ways, is summarizing what he has said throughout. Corinthians, you need to repent by the grace of God. Corinthians, you need to love one another by the grace of God. Corinthians, you need to see these things dominant in your life as a church. But what's especially interesting about verse 14, though it sums up all of these previous things that Paul has said, it's not a backward-looking benediction. It actually points the Corinthians forward. Paul, at this point, wants to send them into the future. Now the reasons that they needed grace and love and fellowship are obvious, but Paul at this moment is not calling upon them to dwell on the past and on their sins, but rather to seek the remedy. and to know its blessed fruits. The last word that they hear as this letter is read to them. Now, I try to imagine the Corinthian church. I don't know what they would have looked like. I don't know what their meeting place would have appeared as, but I try to imagine them gathered together. The news came to them during the week that a new letter from Paul has come. And on the Lord's day, they meet together for worship. And one of the elders of the church stands up and he reads them the entire letter. What would it have been like for them to hear these words, words that are difficult, words where Paul challenges them, words where Paul speaks directly to them, and yet the last thing that they hear is this word of blessing that comes from the apostle. Yes, indeed, the Corinthians have a great deal of repenting to do, but even that repenting must be done in the proper context And this explains that context. Now let's think through what Paul says in this short little verse. This benediction is full of deep, profound, and in some ways inexplicable things. It speaks about the Trinity. It speaks about grace and love and fellowship or communion. This sentence is an overflowing, overwhelming source of comfort and help. Notice first with me that this is a Trinitarian blessing. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. You know, the authors of the epistles and all of the books of the New Testament were clearly Trinitarians. They might not have used that word. It develops a little bit later in the history of the church, but clearly they were Trinitarians. Sometimes you'll read in commentaries or in theological book statements that say, well, Paul wasn't himself necessarily a Trinitarian. That's a development that came later in the history of the church. I say that's nonsense. Here we have an author, a Jew, a man who is firmly raised and believed in the concept of one God. The first thing that Paul would have known as a little boy growing up in a Jewish home was the Shema. Those words from Deuteronomy chapter 6, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. Paul, that was the bedrock of his life and he would have believed that with all of his heart, soul, strength, and mind. And yet here we have this Jewish man who is an intense monotheist, writing clearly and speaking about God who is three persons. In 1 Corinthians 8, 4-6, Paul repeats for one time, and he does this many times in his epistles, he repeats this concept that there is one God. He states it clearly and he states it plainly. Paul recognizes the reality of monotheism, that there is only one God and that only this God is to be worshipped. Yet here this Jewish man who was raised with this bedrock theology places three persons on equal footing in a blessing that comes from God. He's not speaking about three gods. He's speaking about one God who is three persons. Paul doesn't have an incoherent, inconsistent, and contradictory theology that at one time can say there's one God and another time can say there are three gods. By using this language, Paul is telling us that he is a Trinitarian, son, father, and spirit. It's a little bit out of the order that we typically use when we speak about the Trinity, but Paul here presents to us the three persons of the Trinity, of the one God, as working together to bring about salvation for his people. The doctrine of the Trinity is profound beyond our comprehension. One of the fathers of the church, Gregory Nazianzus, has a beautiful statement about his own reflection on the doctrine of the Trinity. He said this, no sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three. No sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that beautiful? He thinks of the one and it brings him to the three. He thinks of the three and it brings him back to the one which will do what bring him to the three, which brings him to the one and it goes on and on in a beautiful meditation of the glory of God here in the clearest language in a New Testament writer. We have a statement of the Trinity, and we have a statement of the doctrine of the Trinity beautifully expressing the desire of God for the growth and the good of his people. Our confession of faith, you may remember in chapter two, paragraph three, when it speaks about the doctrine of the Trinity, says that this doctrine is the foundation of our communion and comfortable dependence upon God. everything that we would know about God, all of our communion with him, all of our interrelationship, all of our conversation, all of our worship to him is based upon the doctrine of the Trinity and all of our comfortable dependence. I want to live my life in comfortable dependence on God. All of that is dependent on this doctrine. The Holy Trinity, blessed forever in majesty and in glory, works as one to bring us to eternal life. Now we need to be careful here as we read this verse because Paul is not teaching us that these are works of the members of the Trinity acting individually. That is that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who gives us grace and he wants us to think about that individually. or that the love of God the Father comes to us from God the Father alone, or that the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is simply the work of the Holy Spirit. In fact, if we thought in those terms, we would contradict many other texts of Scripture that speak about things such as the grace of God the Father, or the love of Jesus Christ. Rather, Paul wants to focus our attention upon a wonderful truth as he expresses himself here, this Trinitarian truth. From one perspective, it is only by the grace of Christ that the Corinthians may know the love of God the Father and the blessings of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. That may be why the order is this way, a little bit different to what we normally think. It might have been different, and sometimes scripture emphasizes the love of God first But here Paul is seeking to help the Corinthians out of their trouble and he begins by turning their attention upon the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Think about the pattern that Paul follows. First he speaks of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's interesting that he uses his full name and his title at this point. Charles Hodge in commenting on this text says that Paul employs the full name and title of the Lord Jesus to speak of three things. When he speaks of him as Lord, he wants to turn our attention to his divine nature. This one is really and truly God himself. When he uses the name Jesus, he wants us to speak to think of his human nature. That name that was given to him in his birth, he is really and truly one of us. He shares the fullness of our humanity. So he is God and he is man. When he uses the word Christ, he speaks about his office, that he is the long-promised Messiah, come in the fullness of time to bring redemption to his people. You see, it's interesting that not only do we have a full statement of the Trinity, but we also have a high doctrine of Christ, a high Christology, as Paul puts together these full terms. He might have said, the grace of the Lord be with you, or the grace of Christ, or the grace of Jesus, but he didn't. He chose to put all of these words together to turn our attention to this fact, our savior in the fullness of his identity as the God man, the one who descended from heaven and took upon himself our flesh to be our Christ, to be our Messiah, to fulfill all of the promises of the old covenant. He loves his church and he lavishes his grace upon that church. That's why Paul speaks in these terms. Grace, of course, is God's favor, God's unmerited love, those mediatorial blessings that were purchased for us by our Savior on Calvary's cross. These things flowing from Christ our Savior to his needy people, people who need nourishment, who need food, who need water, who need protection. Grace is not a physical commodity, but grace is an essential spiritual virtue. And grace is something that was purchased at the cost of his own life, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. Grace of Jesus Christ. Think with me here, not this time about the Corinthian church, but think about Paul as he's writing this letter. Maybe even better. Think about Paul on his knees before God with the Corinthian congregation in his mind. He knows their names. He sees their faces. He knows the places in which they live. He is there on his knees. He's crying out to God. And what does he ask for? He asks for copious measures of grace to come down upon them from the God man their Savior from the eternal one who humbled himself and became man in order to redeem them. It's a very moving picture, isn't it? That's how Paul cries out. It's a simple prayer, but it is amazing when you think about it. Grace is to the life of the believer what water is to the soil. Without it, there is no growth. There's only barrenness and emptiness. For the Corinthians, with all of their troubles, troubles with Paul, troubles with each other, troubles with the world. For the Corinthians, with all of their troubles, Paul seeks the blessing of grace, showers of life-giving grace. You see, for the Corinthians, grace is the doorway to the future. Grace is the blessing of bringing forth good fruit. And here Paul says grace comes from the Lord Jesus Christ, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. But Paul doesn't stop there because he moves on in the second place to speak about the love of God. When New Testament writers use the word God, most commonly they are referring to the father. Clearly that's Paul's intention here. The grace which comes from Christ helps us to know the love of God. This reminds me of the words that our Lord Jesus spoke in the upper room to his disciples just before the end. You remember John 14 6, I am the way, the truth and the life. And how's the rest of it go? No one comes to the father, but by me. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ helps us to know the love of God. Paul here is not talking about our love for God, but rather he is speaking of the enormous love that God has for us. Grace alone allows us to know something of the fullness, of the depth, of the love that God has for the Corinthians and for us. He is not an aloof and far away God, but rather he is a God who is overflowing in love, who has given us Jesus Christ through whom we come to him. He initiated the grace of the gospel by sending our Lord for us, and we come to him in return through our Lord, and he grants us this love. How do we describe the love of God? It's beyond parallel and above comparison. The Apostle Paul says that it surpasses our knowledge. Now, he tries to describe it to us, and he expresses it to us in spatial terms in Ephesians chapter 8. He speaks about the length, and the breadth, and the height, and the depth. He uses these kinds of words to try to give us some concept of what it is. And he prays that we might know it. This eternal, unchangeable reality that God is love. And here in 2nd Corinthians 13, 13, 14, this simple phrase, the love of God points to that amazing reality. God is love and his love demonstrated by Christ's grace is something that we are to know. And as the Corinthians bathe in the love that God has for them, they will be transformed and they will learn to love like him. You know, the scripture asserts that it is our task, our responsibility, maybe I should say our privilege, and maybe that's a better way to put it, to delight in God's love. Jesus prays to the Father for us in John chapter 16 because the Father loves us. Paul says in Romans chapter 5 that the Holy Spirit sheds the love of the Father into our hearts. You see, this is a marvelous truth and it is an enormous blessing. What better benediction could be offered up for these Corinthians and for us that all would know the love of God revealed to them in Jesus Christ, the Lord, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. And thirdly, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Here is the third member of the Trinity, the one who is sometimes neglected, but the one who is an essential part of this wonderful benediction. Now we need to understand what Paul is saying here. We could read this to say something like the fellowship that we have with each other because of the Holy Spirit. We could read this this way, but that would miss the point that Paul is seeking to make. In the other two cases, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, Paul's desire for the Corinthians is that they would know blessings that come from heaven, Christ's grace and God's love. For that reason, it seems probable that the same kind of idea is present here, that Paul is carrying this through. So then the koinonia, the fellowship, the blessing or the communion of the Holy Spirit is the blessings brought to us by the Holy Spirit, the fullness of spiritual blessings lavished upon us by God, the fruits of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Probably Paul is speaking here about things like the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5 22 love joy peace patience kindness gentleness goodness faithfulness self-control and all of the rest of the things that the Spirit does in making us like Jesus Christ and and preparing us to live in the heavenly world of love in the presence of the glorious triune God. That's what the Corinthians needed. You see, that's the resolution of their problem. That's how they will be able to overcome the difficulties in their church, in their life with each other, by knowing more of the Holy Spirit's work among them. The Word of God tells us all kinds of things about what the Spirit does. He reminds us of the words of Christ. He brings them to mind so that we live according to them. He glorifies the Son of God. He sheds the Father's love into our hearts. He bears witness with us that we are God's children. He seals us, assuring eternal life. He's the down payment of the heavenly world. He anoints us like the priests of old so that we might worship. He's the Spirit of adoption. These are the things that Paul prays that they might know. This is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, that the Corinthians might know these things ever more fully. This, too, is a great blessing. And I wonder who is able to quantify it, who can put a number on it, who can say that it is complete and filled. There's no way to do that. But that's what God, that's what God wishes for the Corinthians. Now there's one more phrase that we need to notice here, and that is at the end of this verse, Paul says, be with you all. We must not miss this last little phrase. Now there are two things that we need to notice about this phrase. First, grace and love and fellowship are not philosophical concepts. They have a source and they have a destination. They come from heaven and they come to God's people, to women and men like you and me. When Paul writes these words, be with you all, he's not arguing for an increase of their intellectual ability. but he wants them to know and to experience grace and love and fellowship. God's purpose is that these things will be known and experienced by us. That's the first thing that we need to notice here. It tells us that these are real things that we may know. But secondly, think about this. Paul includes the entire church in this benediction. These are the people who had rejected him, who had troubled him, who had followed others. And yet he pronounces these words upon all of them. None in the Corinthian church are excluded from Paul's desire that they might know these things. These words are intended for the church. These words are intended for God's people. These words are intended for us. Notice, these aren't rewards for good behavior. In fact, if they were rewards for good behavior, they couldn't be written to the Corinthians, could they? It would make no sense at all. They're not rewards for good behavior. They are blessings to seek for all of God's people. And no one who names Christ's name should be excluded from the prayer for grace and love and fellowship. These last words in the letter to the Corinthians are words of life and health and growth, and they are intended for all of us. They really are wonderful, aren't they? They're not the result of our good works. They go before anything that we do. They serve as the only basis upon which our obedience might flow. You know, reading the epistle of 2 Corinthians might be like overhearing a difficult conversation, but the ending sure is good, isn't it? It's very different. I cannot preach this text to you and tell you three ways to put these things into practice in your life. I can't tell you to do five things to receive these gifts of grace. In fact, let me say this. There's no law in this text at all. This is all gospel. This is all about the gospel. Without the presence and the power of God, we are nothing and we can do nothing. Even our duties, even the commands that he gives to us, must be based in his being and in his acts, in who he is, the foundation of our communion and comfortable dependence upon him. Yes, the Corinthians need to repent. Yes, they need to restore broken relationships. Yes, they need to do all of those things, but not in the strength of the flesh. not by themselves, not moralistically, by simply determining to obey the commands. They need grace and they need love and they need the fullness of the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. You know, we've only glanced at the surface of this deep reservoir of comfort and strength to know the splendor of our Trinitarian God to receive his grace to be unfolded by his love, to know communion with him and one another is far more than we are ever able fully to comprehend. But it is the gift that we may know now this is God's intent. And so we may go from this place blessed by the Lord, remembering that it all starts with him. And as we learn this lesson, And as we look to him for our life, more and more may it be that we see these things come to greater reality among us. And so go in peace and may the Lord's benediction be on you. Let's pray. Our father, we need these things as much as the Corinthians and perhaps more. Thank you for the forgiveness of sins that we have in Jesus Christ. Thank you for the grace that has called us out of our sins and given us new life. We pray for copious measures of that grace to be present among us. Thank you for the eternal love of God shed abroad through Jesus Christ. give us a far greater understanding of that love than we have ever known before. And may the Holy Spirit shower his fellowship upon us. May we know in increasingly growing measures, the work of the Spirit in our lives, making us more and more like our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, these words were inspired by your spirit, written to a Christian congregation, given to us. We know that this is your will for your people. Would you do it among us? We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.