Live in the Living Room, not the Courtroom
May 24, 2026
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Discussion Questions
As an icebreaker, what experiences do you have in actual courtrooms? What did you learn?
What is something meaningful that you do in your living room?
Do you think our broader culture is more prone to “lose” the living room or the courtroom? Why? How does this affect our relationships inside the church?
Look back at 2 Corinthians 5, specifically v. 21. How does the legal work that Jesus did in the courtroom affect our relationship with God? What are the two sides of this legal work? (Hint: look up the fancy theological phrases of justification and imputation of Christ’s righteousness and explain what they mean in simple terms.)
Have you ever thought about your relationship with God starting in the courtroom and then moving to the living room? What is helped by this? What could be a challenge or pushback to this way of thinking? Do you live most of your Christian life thinking you are in God’s courtroom or living room?
What’s a practical way you can move toward other believers in the living room? Are there certain people you can’t assume the best about? Why is that?
If you have a situation that requires a church courtroom and church discipline, how can you go about that in a way that honors God and tries to restore others?
Scripture Reading
2 Corinthians 12:11–13:4
12:11 I have been a fool! You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing.12 The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works. 13 For in what were you less favored than the rest of the churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong!
14 Here for the third time I am ready to come to you. And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. 15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? 16 But granting that I myself did not burden you, I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit.17 Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you? 18 I urged Titus to go, and sent the brother with him. Did Titus take advantage of you? Did we not act in the same spirit? Did we not take the same steps?
19 Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you? It is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved. 20 For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish—that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. 21 I fear that when I come again my God may humble me before you, and I may have to mourn over many of those who sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality that they have practiced.
13:1 This is the third time I am coming to you. Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 2 I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again I will not spare them— 3 since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you.4 For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.
It might not feel like summer yet, but today, with Memorial Day tomorrow, we start our summer pattern of pausing our elementary and youth Sunday school classes. We want to give teachers a break. I think of the leader who said he could keep doing youth ministry for a decade for three reasons: the break in June, July, and August. Breaks are good. But we also want families to worship together. We didn’t want young disciples to grow up here, be launched into college, and have never actually been in “big church,” just classes. We didn’t want that, so in the summer we invite everyone here.
Our preachers will try to remember that there may be more younger listeners. We’re also going to have our “draw a picture” papers to help people listen, for those who like that help. You can just lay them on the stage, and we’ll hang them before next week. This week, the picture you might want to draw is of something meaningful that you do with your family and friends in the living room. Let’s pray.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
For hours and hours this week I keep asking the Lord what language he might give us to describe the central dynamic in this passage. After agonizing and praying and agonizing and praying for hours, I landed on the language of living rooms and courtrooms. Both rooms have an important function. Sometimes people take shots at lawyers and courtrooms; I won’t do that at all. Both rooms matter. The important work that happens in courtrooms can affect what happens in the living rooms—and vice versa. But the courtroom is not the living room, and the living room is not the courtroom, and we need to know the proper place of each without confusing them.
The central idea of this passage is that God wants most of our Christian life to be lived in the living room, not the courtroom. I’m using it as a metaphor. I’ll explain.
The courtroom is the place of fault-finding, assigning blame, and awarding punitive damages. The courtroom is for prosecution, for defense, for judgment. Those are not bad things. But assigning blame, prosecution, defense, and judgment do not necessarily carry the idea of relational warmth and people who actually like each other. The judges’ bench and the coffee table are both important pieces of furniture, but they are different.
Living rooms are the place for laughter and for tears. Living rooms are where conversations about struggles and heart issues can happen and should happen. In the courtroom, people can and do pray, but they are often different sorts of prayers than those offered in living rooms. Living rooms are about invitation. “Come on by this afternoon,” we might say. “We’d love to have you.” Courtrooms are about summons. “Be here at 9 am on Tuesday, May 26,” reads the subpoena. Again, both rooms matter and play important roles in the Christian life.
In this passage Paul makes one more appeal to the church to live the majority of their Christian lives in the living room, not the courtroom. Sadly, what was happening to them, and what can happen to us, is trying to live in the courtroom, which causes all sorts of problems. We can visit courtrooms when we must, but they are not the place God wants us to live together as his people. So, I want to go back through the passage to show you what I mean.
1. Live most of your Christian life in the living room
By way of reminder, Paul has planted this church in the ancient city of Corinth. He spent eighteen months there, working essentially a construction job so he could be their pastor and teach them the faith. Even though they owe him everything they have in Christ, since he was the one who brought the message of Jesus to them, this church and Paul have had a rocky relationship.
The most recent bumps came because several false teachers persuaded some of the church to turn against Paul. These false teachers, which Paul ironically calls “super apostles,” teach that super Christians and super teachers live prosperous, triumphant lives. “Jesus rose from the dead, so don’t worry about taking up your cross,” they might have said. “And anyone who’s a good Christian teacher,” they would have said, “can speak to big audiences and command big speaking fees, unlike this Paul guy.”
Paul has been working through these issues for several chapters. And the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of chapter 13 is something of a final appeal. The way to summarize his final appeal is to say that he hopes to move the conversation from the courtroom to the living room, unless he forces them to go to court. Look at vv. 11–13.
11 I have been a fool! You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing. 12 The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works. 13 For in what were you less favored than the rest of the churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong!
You see the problem in the opening words when Paul says, “for I ought to have been commended by you.” Others are badmouthing Paul and the church does nothing. Think about it like this. Imagine someone badmouths you in the foyer with lies, and your best friend comes and tells you about it. And you say, “Hey, best friend, that stinks that they said lies about me. But what did you say?” And your best friend says, “I didn’t say anything.” “Why not?” you ask. “We’ve known each other for a decade. I baptized you. My son did an internship at your company. We’ve been on vacations together. You ought to have commended me.” That’s the situation Paul finds himself. He’s not so much worried about the false teachers. He’s worried about the church that he loves and ought to have loved him. (I got this illustration from Trent Casto’s commentary.)
And yet he says in v. 12 that he deals with them in “utmost patience.” What an encouragement. Utmost patience is a living room virtue we all desire to receive. Sure, if you have everything in your life just perfectly together and it’s always been that way, then, yeah, you might not understand why patience is so wonderful. But for those who can look back just five years or ten years and see the ways that God has matured you, you can probably be thankful for the patience other Christians have shown you.
One of my preaching mentors told me he wanted to go back to everyone who had endured his first hundred sermons and thank them for their patience. That’s how I feel here. We don’t think highly of patience in the living room until we know we need it. But when we know we need it, we’re thankful for this living room virtue. Paul is confused and worried that they are not more thankful.
Look with me at vv. 14 and 15. We’ll see other benefits of living most of our Christian life in the living room.
14 Here for the third time I am ready to come to you. And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. 15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?
These are the sorts of statements that belong in the living room. Paul went out of his way not to be a burden to them. He raised support and worked a second job so that he could serve them. He saw them as his children.
Maybe some of you know something about laboring for those you love and working a second job, providing for others at a cost to yourself. And of course it’s hard, but there’s a gladness to it as well. That’s why Paul says, “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.” Perhaps you can think of people who have done this for you. In saying it this way, he’s saying that when he serves, he’s not constantly looking at his watch. He’s not guarding his wallet because he loves them.
I’ll read that wonderful line in v. 14 again: “For,” he writes, “I seek not what is yours but you.” He’s not seeking to get their money (i.e., “what is yours”); he’s seeking them—their heart, their joy, their laughter, their tears, their prayers, their warmth, their friendship, their faith, their encouragement, their conformity to the image of Christ. Paul is not viewing them as giving units or manhours or whatever. They are people he loves. This isn’t what takes place in the courtroom. Courtrooms seek to assign damages and responsibility. It’s not wrong, and, in fact, this is good. But that’s not how God wants you to live most of your Christian life, constantly looking at your giving calculator to see if others are worthy of your sacrifice. Do you want others to do that to you?
Our pastor-elder team has been reading a book about healthy Christian leadership, and as we discussed one of the chapters I mentioned that I’ve learned something about myself. Maybe you can relate. I’ve learned that when I’m most healthy as a Christian leader, I’m not mentally counting hours or nights out from the house or the number of hard conflicts at the church. It’s important to think about those things over the long run, to make sure a pastor isn’t burning out and working too much. I’m not saying you and I shouldn’t ever pay attention to billable hours. I’m saying that it can be unhealthy in the living room to keep a mental list of all the other ways you sacrificed. This is what Jesus meant when he encouraged us to give with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing (Matt. 6:3).
Would you feel loved if someone had you over for dinner and they showed you the receipt for how much dinner and dessert cost? No. You feel loved when someone gladly spends and is spent, not to get something from you but because they like you.
At various points in this series, we’ve pointed out that Paul is doing ministry in such a way that you’d be able to taste and see, even smell, the ministry of Jesus in his ministry. Paul says, “I seek not what is yours but you. . . . I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.” When he says that, hear not only Paul speaking to the church in Corinth, but hear Jesus speaking to you. Jesus doesn’t want your manhours; he doesn’t treat you as giving units. He is not seeking the stuff you have, but he’s seeking you: your heart, your joy, your affection, your friendship, your faith, your well-being. Our relationship with God may begin in the courtroom of the cross where we need and receive God’s forgiveness, but it moves to the living room. God doesn’t just love us in a forensic, legal sense, even though he does love us that way, canceling our debt. But he likes us too.
I’ll keep going. There are many more blessings to living most of our Christian life in the living room. Next, we’ll see that in the living room, we assume the best, rather than the worst. Look at vv. 16–17.
16 But granting that I myself did not burden you, I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit. 17 Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you? 18 I urged Titus to go, and sent the brother with him. Did Titus take advantage of you? Did we not act in the same spirit? Did we not take the same steps?
For this one you need to have more context. As I said, Paul hadn’t drawn a salary from them. But he did send others to raise support. He gathered support for poor churches in Jerusalem; the money wasn’t for him. Still, the super apostles had been whispering in the church’s ear that Paul was taking advantage of them, pretending to not take money, but then getting Titus to raise money for him. It’s a wild accusation. He reminds them that they like Titus and the other brother he sent, so why would they not like him, since they walk in step?
The point being this: They are not living in the living room, but the courtroom. They are cultivating the worst assumptions about one another, which is easy to do in a metaphorical courtroom where one person sits on one side, and you sit on the other, with your team of people, your stack of evidence, and your witnesses. But in the living room, when the Bible is open, and the Spirit is there, and there’s physical proximity and hospitality, it’s harder to assume the worst. In the living room, Christians work on our hearts to believe the best about one another.
And this leads to a culture of gratitude rather than grievances. Living in the metaphorical courtroom, without even being fully aware, causes us to traffic mostly in grievances and entitlement, and a culture of grievances and entitlement kills Christian community.
Think about it like this: When someone invites you into their living room, and they offer you coffee and dessert, you don’t complain and say, “This isn’t my favorite; I like brownies, not cookies.” No, we just say, “Thank you.” And it’s so crazy the things we think we are entitled to complain about in church; I’m not talking about the things that have substance. And trust me, I spend hours and hours working with leaders here trying to make everything better every week, and I like doing it. I love the progress we make. But we must remember that most of our lives together should have living room virtues.
When we’re impatient, when we’re not grateful, when we’re looking at our watch, when we’re thinking the worst about every other person, that’s not the kind of Christianity, not the kind of community, not the kind of living room that God wants for us.
Verse 19 is both transition and summary. Paul writes, “Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you? It is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved.” Paul asks rhetorically if they thought Paul was just mounting some sort of legal defense. But Paul says he’s loving and speaking to them in the sight of Christ and doing it for their upbuilding, not his. Then he calls them beloved. In other words, he’s not in a courtroom. He’s pleading with them for their upbuilding. In summary: Patience. Gratitude. Gladly sacrificing. Assuming the best. Upbuilding of others.
2. … And use the courtroom sparingly
While the living room is where God wants us to spend most of our Christian life, that doesn’t mean the courtroom is always wrong or has no place. Paul says this in the rest of the passage. Look at vv. 20–21 and then 13:1–3a.
20 For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish—that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. 21 I fear that when I come again my God may humble me before you, and I may have to mourn over many of those who sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality that they have practiced.
13 This is the third time I am coming to you. Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 2 I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again I will not spare them— 3 since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me.
You can see the language shift toward the courtroom. There is a list of evidence: quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. He worries that when he comes, they won’t find him as they want to find him, just as he won’t find them as he wants to find them. Then he speaks of evidence established by two or three witnesses. That reference may not hit us as quickly as it did them. But he’s saying, if I have to, we’ll slide the coffee table out of the way and bring in the judges’ bench, and I’ll put on a black robe and hold a gavel. The lines about two or three witnesses come from the Old Testament requirement for serious accusations (Deut. 17:6; 19:15). He’s saying that, in fact, Paul, Titus, and the other brother will come and put them on trial.
In writing those lines about two or three witnesses, they would have understood the allusion to Jesus’s prescription for solving serious problems in the church, what we often call church discipline. Jesus talked about going to our brothers and sisters when they sin against us, going to them to try to win them back. But if you can’t, then you bring two or three others along (see Matt. 18). Again, Paul is pleading with them not to go this direction unless they have to. But if they force him to, then he will.
Maybe I’ll put it this way for those who are younger. I’ve been talking about living rooms and courtrooms. But let me put it another way. If you’re talking to the principal of your school, the location of the conversation matters, doesn’t it? It’s one thing to be sitting in the cafeteria with all of your friends when you see the principal of the school and she goes through the lunch line and then she sits at one of those bench seats that’s too low for her, but she’s there: eating the same lunch as you with the same little plastic fork, just sitting there talking to you about your summer and what you’re going to do and if there’s a family vacation and who do you want to be when you grow up and what’s hard about home life right now, all of that. That’s one experience of the principal in the cafeteria.
It’s another, different experience of the principal when you’re called into her office. If you go to the principal’s office, even though she is the same and you are the same, it’s different. No one wants to live in the principal’s office.
And that’s Paul’s point. He’s saying that when he comes, he’s worried he won’t be able to sit in the cafeteria, but he’ll have to continue the conversation in the office. And we understand that. If the principal is at the lunch table and sees one kid bullying another or one kid copying another kid’s math homework, then it’s good and right for her to address it in her office. It’s actually an extension of her love, justice, courage, and faith, and of the legitimate use of her authority, not to let one kid take another kid’s lunch money. But, again, the role of the office, the role of the courtroom, should be limited.
It’s my fear, as I suspect would be Paul’s, that so much of our culture out there and so much of our church subculture in here wants to push most of our interactions together to the courtroom, to fault-finding, to assigning blame, to keeping track of billable hours, to listing grievances. I wonder how many marriages live and subsist in the courtroom. How many of you interact with your pastors and small group leaders as though you’re in the courtroom, not the living room? There is a place for that level of prosecution and defense, but when we try to live in the courtroom or live in the principal’s office, everything about everything falls apart.
And God wants something better for us. You probably want something better. Even if you’ve been hurt by the church, it’s your hurt that communicates your desire for something better. This passage is teaching us that Jesus wants something better. He was gladly spent and is spending for us to have something better. Maybe as we close, I could just encourage you to be attentive to what God might be laying on your heart in regard to others, and what steps you might be able to take. Perhaps it begins with saying, “I’m sorry.” And perhaps that will move the conversation to somewhere better.
I’ll invite the music team forward so we can have a time of response through singing. Let’s pray.
“Dear Heavenly Father. . .”
