Restoration

2 Cor. 2:8 "Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him."

Restoration. This is an amazing concept. Dictionary.com defines restoration as: "a return of something to a former, original, normal or unimpaired condition".

Here we have this guy in the Corinthian church who was really living in gross sin. The problem was that the Corinthian church was looking the other way and not doing anything about it. So, what did Paul say that they should do? "Deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." I Cor. 5:5 Pretty tough stuff. In other words, abandon this guy. Give him over to the evil one so that he will see his life destroyed but his spirit saved.

Apparently the church listened because this guy was being devoured by sorrow, pain and affliction. (v7) It looks like he learned his lesson and was repentent of what he had done. The question then was: "What do we do now? We booted him and now how do we handle this?" Paul's response: "Reaffirm your love for him." To reaffirm means to make your love valid - it even goes as far as visibly confirming it.

Paul saw what was going on in this guy's life. He sinned, he repented (was sorrowful) and now the church needed to respond by publically loving him, restoring him, building him up again and welcoming him back.

I have seen so much junk in my short lifetime in the church. I have seen people sin and fall and be corrected. I have seen some repent and I have seen others go their own way to the point where their flesh was destroyed. Sad stuff. Frankly, the church needs to be a hospital. We are all sinners. We all mess up. When that happens, surgery needs to take place. Cutting needs to occur. It can be painful. The thing is, when the correcting happens and there is genuine healing (repentance) we need to reaffirm our love. We need to restore. If the correcting was done publically the restoration needs to be done publically. We need to love those who have fallen and have gotten back up by the grace of God.

Sin in the church is serious. It needs to be dealt with. Love in the church is powerful. It needs to be visibly experienced.