Finish this sentence for me: “This is going to hurt me… (more than its going to hurt you).” That is a lie that parents have been telling since the beginning of time.
What is true is that as a parent, one of the most painful things to witness is to see your children in pain. Paul served as the spiritual father to the church at Corinth … not simply an evangelist who won people to Christ, started a church, and then left town with no concern for the people he left behind. He cared so deeply that he wrote letter after letter to this church, filled with instructions for Christian living.
And Paul understood that to love someone means to do what is best for them…not what was easiest for him. And so, his care for them involved a mixture of comforting and encouraging words, and also words of correction and admonishment. And this is exactly where we find Paul today.
It’s easy to tell someone to add Jesus into their life and that he’ll make their life better. It’s quite a different thing to call someone to lay aside sinful patterns of living in order to truly follow Jesus. But make no mistake, repentance is a central theme in the Bible, and the lifestyle of a Christian should be a lifestyle of repentance.