We move now from Luke’s narrative about the apostle Paul to one of the most poignant, powerful, inspired epistles from the pen of the apostle himself. Here, and in the next few chapters, we’re going to look at some key passages from 2 Corinthians. It is the most personal, biographical, and passionate of all Paul’s canonical letters—and the richest insight into the quality of his leadership.
In the chronology of Paul’s life, his relationship with Corinth preceded the Maltese shipwreck by about a decade. Paul first came to Corinth during his second missionary journey, in approximately AD 50. The shipwreck episode we have already examined occurred after his third and final missionary journey was complete, around AD 60 or 61. So as a prelude to our study of 2 Corinthians, we move back nine chapters in the book of Acts and one full decade in time.
Paul wrote 2 Corinthians specifically to defend his apostleship and to answer some major threats to his leadership in the church at Corinth. So he opened his heart very personally on the matter of leadership. In many ways this one epistle alone would stand as a wonderful manual for leaders. If we worked our way systematically through the entire epistle, we could fill a very large volume with insight on leadership drawn from 2 Corinthians. That, however, would make this book far too unwieldly. 1 So my goal in the next few chapters is simply to narrow in on some of the highlights of 2 Corinthians, glean the major principles it teaches for leaders, and try to sense the heart of a true leader by seeing how the apostle Paul bared his own soul to those who were under his pastoral and apostolic care.
To set the context for what we are about to study, we need to know something about the city of Corinth, the church Paul founded there, and the circumstances that provoked Paul to write this particular epistle to that church.
Acts 18 describes how Paul first came to Corinth after his visit to the great city of Athens, where he had just given a defense of his teaching to the philosophers in the midst of the Areopagus, a court of the Athenian intelligentsia, named for the hill where it was located, next to the Parthenon (Acts 17:22–34). It was a forty-five-mile journey west along the coast of the Saronic Gulf from Athens to Corinth.
Corinth is located on a narrow isthmus that connects the mainland of Greece with the Peloponnes (the large peninsula that defines southern Greece). The isthmus is only four miles wide at its narrowest point, and that is where Corinth was strategically situated. Today there is a deep canal near Corinth that allows ships to pass. In the first century, however, ships were actually brought ashore, put on skids and rollers, and transported across the isthmus to the other side. All except the very largest ships traveling the trade routes between the Adriatic and the Aegean Seas usually chose this route, because the 250-mile voyage around the south of Greece was so treacherous and time-consuming.
From the most ancient times, Corinth was a busy trading center, boasting the best harbor in the Corinthian Gulf. But in 146 BC, the Roman army under Mummius destroyed the city and left it completely empty, selling all the surviving inhabitants into slavery. Corinth lay utterly desolate for a full century. A hundred years later, however, Julius Caesar rebuilt the city, populating it mainly with freed slaves. Thus Corinth in Paul’s time was completely Roman in culture. It became a resort town, always crowded, always busy, and always filled with travelers. It developed a reputation for debauchery.
The chief attractions in Corinth were pagan temples served by prostitutes. The pagan religions of the Greek and Roman world had made fornication into a religious sacrament, and Corinth became the focal point for that kind of profane “worship.” The entire city was filled with brothels. Row after row of them are still visible today in the ruins of Corinth. Ritual fornication had become so deeply ingrained in the Corinthian culture that in the first century, “to Corinthianize” was a synonym for sexual immorality, and “a Corinthian girl” was a euphemism for a prostitute. Everyone knew that Corinth was a city of unbridled vice. It was analogous to modern Las Vegas, except that its chief attractions were temples rather than casinos.
This was, perhaps, not an auspicious place to found a church. But Corinth also had a large community of Jews and an active and centrally located synagogue. There Paul found an open door for the gospel. “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Romans 5:20).
Acts 18 tells the story of how the church at Corinth was founded. When Paul came to Corinth, he met Priscilla and Aquila, who happened to be skilled in the same craft as the apostle Paul: tent making (Acts 18:2–3). Paul stayed in their home, worked alongside them during the week, and then, every Sabbath, he would go with them to the synagogue and preach the gospel (v. 4). They became devoted, lifelong friends of Paul, fellow Christians, and colaborers with him in his ministry (cf. Acts 18:18; Romans 16:3; 1 Corinthians 16:19; 2 Timothy 4:19). Silas and Timothy soon joined Paul in the missionary work at Corinth (Acts 18:5).
A turning point in Corinth came when most of the Jews in the synagogue refused Paul’s teaching. “He shook his garments and said to them, ‘Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles’” (Acts 18:6). He moved in with a Gentile named Justus (who happened to live immediately adjacent to the synagogue). Of course, Paul kept preaching the gospel, but now the focus of his ministry was the marketplace and the Gentile communities. Some Jews did respond, including “Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, [who] believed on the Lord with all his household. And many of the [Gentile] Corinthians, hearing, believed and were baptized” (v. 8). That is why the majority in the Corinthian church were Gentiles from pagan backgrounds (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:2).
Corinth was one of the most fruitful mission fields the apostle Paul ever visited. As the church there was beginning to grow, Luke said, “the Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city’” (Acts 18:9–10). Paul’s evangelistic ministry continued for a year and a half before he met any serious resistance.
Then, around July of the year 51, a man named Gallio became the new Roman proconsul of Achaia (the southern half of Greece). The Jewish community in Corinth tried to seize the opportunity to make trouble for Paul. They probably thought they could exploit Gallio’s inexperience and convince him to imprison Paul or drive him from Corinth. “With one accord [they] rose up against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat [a place called the bema in the center of the Corinthian agora, or market-place], saying, ‘This fellow persuades men to worship God contrary to the law’” (vv. 12–13). Gallio wisely dismissed their charges, saying he had no desire to intervene in an intramural squabble over the nuances of the Jewish religion (vv. 14–15). “He drove them from the judgment seat” (v. 16). The chief consequence of the uprising was that Sosthenes (who evidently had succeeded Crispus as ruler of the synagogue when Crispus became a Christian), received a beating before the bema at the hands of the local Greek community (v. 17). That may have been an indication of the remarkable acceptance and trust the apostle Paul had earned even among the pagans in Corinth. (Amazingly, sometime after this episode, even Sosthenes apparently embraced the gospel and became a fellow worker with Paul [1 Corinthians 1:1]).
Therefore, Luke says, Paul remained in Corinth “a good while” (Acts 18:18), pastoring the church he founded. Only in Ephesus did Paul serve more time as pastor. The Corinthian church was therefore uniquely Pauline, especially and personally indebted to the great apostle for his leadership. They knew him well and had every reason to trust him, revere his influence, and remain loyal to him and his teaching.
Nonetheless, after Paul left Corinth, numerous and serious problems developed in the church there requiring skilled and strong leadership. When news of the problems reached Paul, he could not personally return to Corinth immediately, so he endeavored to lead them from a distance with a series of letters. We know that at least one letter from Paul to the Corinthians preceded the canonical first epistle, because Paul himself refers to that letter in 1 Corinthians 5:9, saying, “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people.” That note of caution may have been the only significant point Paul addressed in that letter, because its contents are otherwise lost. He also seems to refer to another non-canonical epistle in 2 Corinthians 2:4, which he wrote “out of much affliction and anguish of heart.” Those letters (although they certainly must have contained authoritative apostolic admonitions uniquely for the church at Corinth) were never meant to be part of Scripture for the church universal. The proof of that fact is that they were not preserved.
Paul’s New Testament letters to the Corinthians are two comprehensive books about church life. Their implications for leadership are profound.
The first epistle makes it clear from the beginning that in Paul’s absence, serious leadership problems had arisen in Corinth. The church was dividing into factions. People were saying, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:12). That spirit of division and conflict shredded the unity of the church, driven by envy, strife, and carnality (1 Corinthians 3:3). The problem did not stem from any failure in the leadership of Paul, Apollos, or Cephas (Peter). They were all godly men who labored as one for the same goals (v. 8) and all shared the same convictions (though they had differing leadership styles). The problem was carnality in the church, and Paul expressly said so (v. 4).
However, the division in the church reflected a serious leadership vacuum that had arisen in Corinth. After Paul’s departure, Apollos had capably led that church for a season (Acts 18:27–28; 19:1). But Apollos had also moved on to other mission fields, and sometime after that is when the factions arose.
It is obvious from Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians that their internal strife and other troubles all stemmed from a lack of wise and godly leadership in the wake of Paul’s and Apollos’s departure. The Corinthian believers were tolerating immorality in their midst (1 Corinthians 5:1). Believers were suing fellow Christians in secular courts (6:1). People in the church were flirting with idolatry (10:14), disrupting the Lord’s Table (11:17–22), and abusing their spiritual gifts. On top of that, someone in their midst was beginning to raise questions about Paul’s apostolic authority (9:1–8).
That powerful first epistle seems to have resolved most of the urgent practical issues in the Corinthian church, but by the time Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, a new and even more troubling attack on the peace of the church at Corinth had arisen, suggesting that a lack of strong leadership continued to be a major problem there. False teachers, claiming a higher authority than that of the apostle Paul, had come to town and were systematically undermining the church’s loyalty to their founder and Christ’s apostle. They raised new questions about Paul’s apostolic credentials and began to attack Paul’s teaching and his reputation for their own selfish agenda (2 Corinthians 11:13). They were clearly taking advantage of the leadership vacuum in that church.
Piecing together the clues in 2 Corinthians, here is what apparently happened next: Paul seems to have heard about the threat of false teachers in Corinth, so he left Ephesus (where he was then ministering) and traveled to Corinth to try to help resolve the issues there. He had promised them in the earlier epistle that he would visit (1 Corinthians 4:19; 11:34; 16:5), so he seized this opportunity to go. But the visit, under the circumstances, turned out to be a deeply sorrowful experience for Paul (2 Corinthians 2:1).
Apparently, someone in the church, influenced by the false teaching, sinned against Paul in a public and humiliating way—probably by defying him or insulting him. Paul seemed to refer to this individual in 2 Corinthians 2:5–8 (“But if anyone has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but all of you to some extent” [v. 5]). In 2:4, and 7:9–12, Paul indicated that the episode prompted him to write a strongly worded rebuke in a letter (another non-canonical epistle), which he sent by way of Titus (8:6, 16; 12:18–21).
After that disastrous visit to Corinth, Paul originally had plans to go there personally twice more from Ephesus—once on his way to Macedonia, and once on his way home (1:15–16). But something made the first of his two planned follow-up visits impossible, and that is why Paul sent the letter of rebuke with Titus instead (2:1–3). He was actually relieved when this happened, because he felt it would spare the Corinthians some grief (1:23)—a letter being less awkward than a face-to-face rebuke. Moreover, Paul himself did not want another sorrowful visit to Corinth (2:1).
Apparently, however, he had already communicated his intention for the double visit to the Corinthians, and when he had to abandon the initial visit, his critics in Corinth seized on that as another reason to accuse him. They claimed he was vacillating and untrustworthy (1:19–23).
When some time had passed since Titus had delivered the letter, Paul was anxious to hear back from Corinth. So he began his third journey there (“This will be the third time I am coming to you” [13:1]). He stopped first in Troas, where he hoped to encounter Titus. “I had no rest in my spirit,” he wrote in 2:13, “because I did not find Titus my brother; but taking my leave of them, I departed for Macedonia.” There in Macedonia (probably at Philippi), he did meet up with Titus (7:6), who brought the good news that the Corinthians had responded to Paul’s severe letter with hopeful signs of repentance: “He told us of your earnest desire, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more. For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it; though I did regret it. For I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though only for a while. Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance” (7:7–9).
It was in these circumstances, immediately after he heard the encouraging report from Titus, that Paul wrote 2 Corinthians. As we have noted already, the letter is the most intensely personal, passionate, and pastoral of all Paul’s epistles. It is clear from the text that Paul knew there was still much work to be done in order to clear away the confusion the false teachers had sown in Corinth. He needed to defend his own apostleship, and he needed to deal with the leadership vacuum that had generated so many difficulties for the Corinthian fellowship.
Paul was loyal to the Corinthian church, and he wanted them to be loyal to him. Thus in the tone and substance of this great epistle, a tenth vital principle of leadership emerges: A leader cultivates loyalty.
This was no selfish longing for personal veneration (2 Corinthians 12:11). He wanted them to be loyal to the truth he had taught them (vv. 15–19). That is why, despite Paul’s own intense dislike for boasting and self-defense, he vigorously sought to vindicate his apostleship against the lies of the false teachers. And therefore, as he modeled his own devotion to the Corinthians, he openly appealed for their loyalty to him as well. This is one of the central themes of 2 Corinthians.
Loyalty is a great virtue. We often forget that simple truth in the cynical age in which we live. Our society is so rife with corrupt leaders and so hostile to the concept of authoritative truth that loyalty is often perceived as a weakness rather than a merit. Rebellion and defiance have been canonized as virtues instead. “Who can find a faithful man?” (Proverbs 20:6).
Leadership Principle #10
A LEADER CULTIVATES LOYALTY.
But Scripture exalts loyalty. Loyalty is owed, first of all, to the Lord and to His truth, but also to those who stand for the truth. Second Chronicles 16:9 says, “The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.”
Loyalty is a fragile thing. David prayed, “Give my son Solomon a loyal heart to keep Your commandments and Your testimonies and Your statutes” (1 Chronicles 29:19). Solomon himself urged all Israel, “Let your heart therefore be loyal to the LORD our God, to walk in His statutes and keep His commandments, as at this day” (1 Kings 8:61). But Solomon’s own moral downfall came because “his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David” (1 Kings 11:4; 15:3).
Disloyalty is among the most repugnant of all evils. Judas sinned because he was a traitor. He had no loyalty to Christ, although he had been a privileged friend and close companion for years. No sin in all of Scripture is more despicable than Judas’s traitorous act of treachery. Jesus Himself classed Judas’s wickedness as more wretched than that of Pilate (John 19:11).
What do we mean by loyalty? Authentic loyalty is not blind devotion to a mere man. It is, first of all, an allegiance to truth and duty. But it involves devotion to the obligations of love and friendship as well. It is among the most godly and godlike of virtues, because God Himself is eternally faithful (2 Timothy 2:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:24; 2 Thessalonians 3:3).
Loyalty is essential to leadership. The wise leader cultivates loyalty by being loyal—loyal to the Lord, loyal to the truth, and loyal to the people he leads. Nothing is more destructive of leadership than the leader who compromises his own loyalty.
I have a very hard time hearing criticism of people who are under my leadership, because I am committed in my heart to being loyal to them. My instinct is to defend them. I always seek to give them the benefit of the doubt. My love for them includes an earnest desire to assume the best of them. After all, that is how love is expressed: “Love suffers long and is kind . . . is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7).
You see that dynamic at work in Paul’s dealings with the Corinthians. “I am jealous for you with godly jealousy,” he wrote (2 Corinthians 11:2). And when he wrote to them with a severe rebuke, he said, “I did not do it for the sake of him who had done the wrong, nor for the sake of him who suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear to you” (7:12).
Leadership is all about motivating people to follow. Therefore everything in leadership hinges on the leader’s relationship to his people. It is possible to motivate people simply by sheer force, but that is not real leadership; it’s dictatorship. And it never really achieves the goals of leadership. That can be accomplished only by a loving loyalty.
That’s true in marriage (where loyalty and faithfulness are obviously so crucial); it’s true for pastors; and it’s true for leaders at every level. I have taught leadership seminars for the police department, the fire department, and to hundreds of the sales staff in the nation’s largest auto dealership. At the core of the values I try to get them to see, so that they can lead people effectively, is the virtue of loyalty to those above, beside, and below them in the structure.
I tell graduates of The Master’s College that they can be successful in any profession they choose if they do a few things consistently: Be on time, keep quiet and work hard, do what the boss tells you, have a positive attitude, and most important, be fiercely loyal to the people you work for and with.
Leadership hinges on trust, and trust is cultivated by loyalty. Where trust is born and respect is maintained, sacrificial, devoted service is rendered. Another way to say this is that our hearts have to be in our people, and our people have to be in our hearts.
Lord Nelson defeated Napoleon’s navy at the Battle of Trafalgar, thwarting Napoleon’s planned invasion of England. Nelson began that battle with the famous signal, “England expects that every man will do his duty.” He could demand such devotion because he gave it. In fact, that victory cost Nelson his own life. He cultivated faithfulness and mutual loyalty in his men. A few years earlier, after a glorious victory at the Battle of the Nile, he had written to Lord Howe, “I had the happy fortune to command a band of brothers.” That is the spirit of true leadership.
Paul was that kind of leader. His love for and loyalty to the Corinthians colors everything he wrote to them. Lots of pastors would have been tempted to give up on such a troublesome church. Not Paul. He was the epitome of a faithful leader.
Paul opened his second epistle to the Corinthians with an amazing expression of compassion and concern for them. He was writing at a time in his own ministry when he was suffering on many fronts. There was, of course, his intense grief over the problems in Corinth. Those issues weighed on him so much that he himself would testify, “I had no rest in my spirit” (2:13). On top of that, he constantly suffered almost unbearable hardship and persecution (11:23–33). Those sufferings were well-known to the Corinthians. But it is possible that the false apostles had used the very fact of Paul’s afflictions to cast doubt on his authority, claiming Paul’s hardships were proof that he was being chastened by God. So he set the record straight: God had comforted him in all his afflictions, and one major reason He had done so was to equip him to comfort them in their sorrows.
Paul wrote:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. Now if we are afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer. Or if we are comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope for you is steadfast, because we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so also you will partake of the consolation. (1:3–7)
Here we observe yet another indispensable principle of leadership: A leader has empathy for others.
Empathy is the ability to identify with another person so much that you feel what he feels (cf. Hebrews 4:15). It is essential to true compassion, sensitivity, understanding, and comfort.
Paul was the one who had been wronged by the Corinthians. Problems in that body had caused some of his sufferings. And yet Paul knew the Corinthians were suffering too. Some of them were suffering, as Paul was, for righteousness’ sake (“enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer” [2 Corinthians 1:6]). Others were feeling the pangs of repentance (7:8–10). Paul felt their pain, and he was eager to comfort them in all their grief. He assured them that his hope for them—his confidence in them—was steadfast. And his desire was for them to share in the consolation he enjoyed, just as they had experienced their share of suffering.
Paul had much for which to rebuke the Corinthians. And he did go on to reprimand them with some firm and necessary words at numerous key points in the long epistle. But it is significant that he began this epistle with such an expression of empathy for them. Despite their failings, he remained loyal to them and empathetic toward them.
Leadership Principle #11
A LEADER HAS EMPATHY FOR OTHERS.
Leaders must give their people room to fail. People need encouragement rather than scorn when they struggle. They respond to the one they serve when he has sincere empathy in their anguish and disappointment. People need to be built up when they fail, not further flattened. The wise leader doesn’t ever need to run roughshod over people. Leadership is ultimately about people, not just sterile objectives and strategies that can be written on paper.
That certainly does not rule out legitimate reproof and correction when needed (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16). But reproof and correction can be done—and should be done—in a context of empathy and edification, as Paul did here.
He was a faithful and compassionate leader, and his love for the Corinthians is therefore evident in every verse of the epistle. Such loyalty and empathy are essential for good leadership. Paul knew that, and as we shall observe in the chapters to come, it colored all his dealings with the troubled Corinthian church.