The Real Ministry of Real Love
May 31, 2026
Preached by Noah Gwinn
Discussion Questions
What is one example from your life where someone’s “hard love” ended up helping you grow, even if you resisted it at first?
The sermon described two tests: the “test of creed” and the “test of deed.” Which of those do you think Christians tend to neglect more, and why?
Paul tells the Corinthians to “examine yourselves.” Why is self-examination often harder than examining others?
Why is Christian community important for assurance, encouragement, and correction?
What stood out to you from the airplane illustration about faith and assurance?
How can someone distinguish between healthy conviction from God and unhealthy spiritual anxiety?
The sermon emphasized looking more at Christ’s perfection than our own imperfection. What does that practically look like in everyday life?
Why is prayer sometimes treated like a “last resort” instead of a first instinct?
Paul prayed for people who criticized and opposed him. What makes that kind of prayer so difficult?
How does knowing that Jesus is interceding for believers right now affect the way you think about prayer, suffering, or failure?
Paul ends the letter not mainly with instruction, but with blessing. Why is that significant?
Scripture Reading
2 Corinthians 13:5-14
5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! 6 I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test.7 But we pray to God that you may not do wrong—not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we may seem to have failed. 8 For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. 9 For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for. 10 For this reason I write these things while I am away from you, that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down.
11 Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All the saints greet you.
14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
For those of you who weren’t with us last week, I’ll reiterate something Pastor Benjamin said as he began his sermon. It’s become a custom of ours to suspend elementary and youth Sunday school classes each summer. There are a few reasons for that, which Benjamin shared last week. But since we recognize there are more younger faces in here than usual, something we have done for a few years is to provide sheets of paper so that we can draw an image that relates to something in the sermon, and then those drawings will go up in the hallway. So if it would help you to draw something, whether you are young or old, today we are going to draw a picture of someone that loves you very much. After the service you can drop those drawings off on the stage here and we’ll hang them up during the week.
Well, before we dive into our text this morning, let’s pray together.
Heavenly Father…
INTRODUCTION
The movie Remember the Titans tells the story of the football team from a school in Virginia that had just integrated an all-black school with an all-white school soon after the civil rights movement came to a close in the late 1960s. And in the movie, one of the most memorable parts of the story is the way Coach Herman Boone leads his team.
When the players first arrive at training camp, they hate each other. They are divided, defensive, proud, and unwilling to listen. But Coach Boone doesn’t respond by lowering standards or pretending everything is fine, he pushes them harder. He makes his players train together, suffer together, and actually confront what is broken inside them. At times, they feel like he is being too harsh, but Boone understands something important: superficial peace will never produce real unity. Avoiding hard conversations will never create real transformation. If the team is ever going to become what they were meant to be, they first have to be challenged before they can be changed. But by the end of the story, they realize that the very pressure they resisted had become the means of their transformation. Their coach loved them too much to leave them where they were.
That’s a unique kind of love. Because I think most of us naturally feel like love should mean affirmation, comfort, and reassurance. And sometimes it does. But real love is also willing to confront. Real love examines. Real love warns. Real love says difficult things when something important is at stake.
To say it another way, in our weakness, woundedness, and waywardness, we want easy solutions that require little but help much. But Paul understands something we often forget: love that neverconfronts may feel kind in the moment, but it can leave us trapped in what is destroying us. Hard love—truthful, courageous, grace-filled love—is often the very thing God uses to bring real, lasting transformation. Indeed, the only hope for us in our weakness, woundedness, and waywardness is to be met by real love.
That’s exactly the kind of love we encounter in 2 Corinthians 13. As Paul closes this letter, he doesn’t just give the Corinthians sentimental words or cheap encouragement. Instead, he tells them, “Examine yourselves.” He confronts them. He speaks with authority. At first glance, it can sound severe. But underneath every hard word is the heart of a spiritual father who desperately wants this church to experience restoration, maturity, and the presence of Christ among them. And those hard words make his prayers and his blessing in this passage all the more sweet.
So, as we take a look at 2 Corinthians 13 together, we’re going to get a window into the real love that Paul shows the Corinthians. We’ll see that real love confronts, real love intercedes, and real love blesses.
REAL LOVE CONFRONTS
First, let’s see how real love confronts. Look with me at verse 5.
5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!
Some of you here, when you hear the words “examine” and “fail the test” are cringing because you either just took final exams or you are about to, and either way a measure of anxiety could be rising to the surface. Others of us in the room may have to think a little further back to our school days, but I’m sure we can all remember the feeling of going into a test. Now, I also recognize that there are a few strange people among us who live for taking tests, but for most of us, going into an exam was not fun.
But just to back up for a second, let’s ask the question, what is the purpose of a test? To keep the school imagery going, why would a history teacher or a math teacher assign a test? We were tested in school to make sure that the things that had been taught to us were actually in us. Could we remember the year the civil war ended? Could we remember the Pythagorean Theorem? And while it doesn’t always work out this way in school, the idea would be that if you had paid attention, studied, and put in the work, that would show itself when testing time came.
And so Paul is basically saying to the church in Corinth, “we’ve spent lots of time in class. Time to sharpen your #2 pencils and make sure that Christ is in you. It’s finals week.” And for some of them, the feeling of anxiety that we all know so well that comes from feeling unprepared for a test—for some, that lump in their throat would have been all consuming. Because what is made a bit more clear in the original Greek is that Paul is not just saying, “Examine yourselves” but “yourselves examine.” This whole time, there has been a faction within the church in Corinth, led by the super-apostles, that has been, shall we say, “examining” Paul. He’s been under the microscope. Critiques have been levied against him, his character has come into question, his calling as an apostle has been under attack…. And here Paul turns it back on them to essentially say, “you’ve been examining me, now it’s time to examine yourselves. Put yourselves under the microscope. Do you actually have Christ in you?”
This is such a great move because Paul firmly believes that many within this church are truly believers. They truly do have Christ in them. This is why, later in this passage, he refers to them as brothers and sisters (v. 11). This is a term he only uses for those within the household of faith. So when these Christian brothers and sisters examine themselves to see whether they are in the faith, and whether they have Jesus Christ in them, they will be encouraged when they see that, yes, they do!
But yet he also knows that there are some who, if they examine themselves, will find that they are not in the faith. They do not have Jesus Christ in them. And the goal for Paul is not to leave these people in condemnation but to use his words to act as smelling salts and wake them up to the reality that they need Jesus. There is an opportunity here for the church in Corinth to win some souls.
So, Community Evangelical Free Church, how are we doing? We are all very good at examining others about all sorts of things, but how are we doing at examining ourselves? And if we do examine ourselves, what do we find? To make this a bit more personal, if you examine yourself, what do you find? Are you in the faith? Do you have Christ in you? How do you know? What evidence is there of the presence of Jesus in your life?
Now, here’s the thing. Just like those who are fully prepared for an exam in school can still have anxiety about going into a testing room, there are some Christians who are truly Christians that deeply struggle with assurance of their salvation. For some this is a lifelong struggle. And I know with a church the size of ours, there are almost certainly some of you sitting here this morning in deep turmoil about whether or not you’re a Christian. And I don’t want to leave you in that kind of turmoil. So, how practically do we test ourselves to see if we’re in the faith? Let me propose a twofold test: the test of creed and the test of deed. I’ll take these one at a time.
The Test of Creed
First, the test of creed. This test asks, “what do I believe?” How do I know that I’m a Christian? This is where the Sunday school answer is actually pretty helpful. What do I need to believe? Well, I need to believe in Jesus. I need to believe the gospel. But maybe for a moment we can spell that out a little more clearly, both for those here who are not Christians and for those who have been Christians for so long that the word “gospel” has become like white noise
What is the gospel? The gospel is the good news story of God rescuing his creation. The story that you and I are sinful and broken beyond repair, but out of an abundance of love for us, God sent his very Son to bear our brokenness, our sin, our guilt, our shame, and the punishment for our wrongdoing on the cross, dying in our place. And then three days later he rose from the dead, triumphing over death itself so that anyone who comes to God with open hands, believing that Jesus accomplished all of that for them will be made totally new. Of course, there is so much more to say, but these are the broad contours of the story that, as Christians we build our lives upon.
This is how the apostle Paul summarizes the gospel in 1 Corinthians:
“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you…. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:1a, 3-4).
And so the test of creed asks, do you believe that? Do you believe that you are sinful and broken beyond repair? So much so that you aren’t just sick and in need of some medicine to make you well, but you are dead and in need of resurrection. Do you believe that Jesus, the son of God, died on the cross for you? Do you believe he really raised from the dead? If you can answer yes to those questions, you are doing very well on the test of creed.
The Test of Deed
So we have the test of creed, but we also have the test of deed. If the test of creed asks, “what do I believe,” the test of deed asks, “how do I live?” The Bible is very clear that we can’t just internalize belief and pretend like everything is ok without our lives looking any different. Our lives need to reflect the change that has happened internally.
The apostle James says it this way:
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?... 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!... 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:14, 19, 26).
James’ point is that faith is absolutely necessary, but that true faith will show itself in the way that you live. He says, essentially, “even the demons have good theology!” The demons may be able to fudge their way through the test of creed, but they cannot ace the test of deed.
And so, what are these deeds that we should be looking for? What does the fruit of the Spirit of God at work in the life of a Christian look like? Well, Paul is very clear about this in a different letter to a different church. He says, “22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control…” (Gal. 5:22-23a). Other passages talk about the love that Christians have for each other as evidence of our salvation, or the way we talk as evidence of our salvation, or a number of other ways our beliefs are expressed through our life.
So, we need right Christian belief and right Christian living. We need to see fruit. And I’ll just say, I think generally we’re awful judges of our own fruit. Often times, we feel superior to others because we judge others based on their worst actions and ourselves based on our best intentions. Other times we are so down in the dumps because we refuse to see the Lord really at work in our own lives and refuse to acknowledge the true fruit that he is growing in us.
So being aware of our poor self-evaluation then, what we need is to belong in community where we know and are known by one another and where we can challenge and encourage one another. There are times where my view of myself is too high and I need the challenge of a brother or sister. In these kinds of situations, you and I need someone to look us in the eye and say, “Hey brother/sister, I see this pattern in your life and I’m worried about where it looks like your life is headed.” Other times I am just awful at seeing real fruit and need someone to come alongside me and encourage me. I suspect you are the same way. In those cases, you and I need someone to look us in the eye and tell us, “Hey brother/sister, I have been so encouraged to see the way the Lord is growing the fruit of patience in you more and more. Here’s how I’ve seen that.” We need those kinds of conversations in rich Christian community. So, join a community group, be in relationship with other Christian brothers and sisters that is close enough and honest enough to challenge you and encourage you and where you can do the same for others.
I hope that helps – I hope that, in our moments of struggle with assurance, that we can look back and examine ourselves, in community, according to the tests of creed and deed.
I just want to offer one final word to those who struggle with doubt and lack of assurance. More often than not, I think our doubts and lack of assurance tend to stem more from looking at our own imperfection rather than looking at Christ’s perfection.[1] We need to get our gaze off of ourselves more and more and look to Christ for assurance and rest. Our assurance doesn’t rest in our perfection of faith but the one that we place our faith in.
One pastor uses the image of two people flying in an airplane to describe this dynamic. He writes,
One person has almost no faith in the plane or the crew and is filled with fears and doubts. The other [person] has great confidence in the plane and the crew. They both enter the plane, [they both] fly to a destination, and [they both] get off the plane safely. One person had a hundred times more faith in the plane than the other [person] did, but they were equally safe. It wasn't the amount of their faith but the object of their faith [namely the plane]… that kept them from suffering harm and arriving safely at their destination. Saving faith isn't a level of psychological certainty; it is an act of the will in which we rest in Jesus. We give ourselves wholly to him because he gave himself wholly for us.[2]
There are some here this morning that need to hear the challenge of Paul to examine yourselves and the reality is that you need to come to Jesus. And there are some here that need to examine yourselves and be encouraged. Church, rest in the grace of Jesus. If you have faith in Jesus, no matter how feeble, and if you are displaying some fruit, no matter how small, rest in the blessed assurance that you belong to Jesus.
REAL LOVE INTERCEDES
So we’ve seen that real love confronts by asking us to do the hard work of examining ourselves, now let’s see how real love intercedes. Look with me at verses 7-9. These next two points will go quicker than the first.
7 But we pray to God that you may not do wrong—not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we may seem to have failed. 8 For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. 9 For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for.
Have you ever been going through something hard and have someone say, “I’ll pray for you”? That’s certainly meaningful, especially when it is coming from someone that you know means it. But think about the flipside. How many times have you said that to someone and then totally forgotten to pray for them? It probably happens more times than we’d like to admit. So think about how meaningful it is when someone says, “Can I pray for you right now?” or when someone texts you, “hey, just wanted to let you know I just prayed for you.” Those kinds of concrete examples of someone praying are far more encouraging to the person being prayed for. And this is exactly what Paul is doing. He tells the Corinthian church that he is praying for them and then spells out precisely what he’s praying for. He prays that they may not do wrong. He prays that they would be restored.
We talked about prayer a lot last year. One of our goals as a church in 2025 was to pursue a culture of prayer. And while there is always more and more ground to take with a goal like that, I love the way the Lord has made us into more of a praying church. And so last year one of the things that we would regularly say is that we don’t want to see prayer as a last resort but our first instinct. Because there is a way to view prayer that sees it as the thing to try when all else has failed. After we’ve really tried, then we’ll pray. But that’s not the way that the Bible talks about prayer at all. Prayer is not a passive act, prayer is active. Prayer is not not doing something. We live today in an age of symbolic support—likes, comments, emojis, ‘thinking of you.’ But prayer is not symbolic care. Prayer is active love. Prayer is calling upon God, empowered by his Spirit, in the name and authority of the very son of God. Prayer is asking the all-powerful, all-knowing God of the universe to act.
And Paul’s encouragement to these Corinthian believers is that he is using all of that authority for their good. He is going to God on their behalf, interceding before God like a priest for these people that he loves. We hear the heart of a spiritual father praying for his spiritual children here. But keep in mind, he is also praying for some who he knows do not like him.
How are we at this? Sure, we can pray for our family and friends. The ones that are easy to get along with. When they are burdened, we are burdened. But how are we at praying for people that rub us the wrong way? The people that we seem to be constantly in conflict with. Paul here is not just praying for people that kind of rub him the wrong way, like so many of our relationship issues are characterized by. No, Paul is praying for the restoration of people who are bent on tearing him down. People who slander him and call his qualifications into question. And in the face of that kind of relational difficulty, Paul chooses the real ministry of real love. And real love intercedes, even when it’s hard.
Nowhere do we see this kind of real love intercession more clearly than Jesus. The night that Jesus was betrayed and arrested, he spent time in prayer for his followers—for you and I—praying, among other things, that we would be united to one another in the same way Jesus was united to his Father. But his prayers for his people didn’t stop then. In fact, Jesus displays real love even now. I don’t know how often we think about what Jesus is doing right now, but the Bible tells us that right now, Jesus is interceding for us at the right hand of God in heaven. If you belong to Jesus Christ, he is praying for you right now as you sit here this morning. This morning, your name is on his lips.
REAL LOVE BLESSES
We’ve seen that real love confronts and real love intercedes, now let’s see how real love blesses. Look with me at verses 11-14.
11 Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All the saints greet you. 14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
We’ve said a few times over the course of this series that 2 Corinthians is likely the fourth letter that was written from Paul to this church, and he has spent a great deal of time with them. After all the hard words and teaching and prayers and correction, how does he leave them? Does he say, “here, church, work on these 5 things” or “you’d better get your act together before I get there”? No. He does say those things, and he says them in this letter, but those things are not his final word. Instead, he leaves them with a charge and a blessing.
He charges them to, essentially, live out the gospel that is within them. To let the God of love and peace fill them with love and peace toward one another. To let the God who has reconciled them to himself empower them for restoration among each other. To let the God of all comfort to equip them to comfort one another. Do you see it? Even this charge isn’t purely or even mainly Paul asking them to do a bunch of stuff, but rather to let the Spirit that is already at work in them continue to work in their relationships with one another.
And then we get to verse 12, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” Now, if I read that and then said to you, “Church, based on the clear teaching of the unchanging Word of God for the people of God, we are going to apply this in our congregation right now. Why don’t you take a moment and greet those around you with a holy kiss.” – if I said that, you would probably get pretty uncomfortable. And the reality is, greeting one another with a kiss was a cultural practice in their day (and in some parts of the world today) that isn’t a practice in our culture. And yet, the discomfort many of you would feel if I had us all give each other a holy peck on the cheek is not all that different from how uncomfortable they would have felt about this same instruction from Paul.
To bring it closer to home, imagine that you have some kind of relational rift with someone else in the church. Maybe you don’t have to think too hard to imagine that. But imagine if that wasn’t just one person or family in the church that you had an issue with, but that the whole church kind of has an issue with one another. Hear Paul saying into that context, “have each other over for dinner. Look one another in the eye. Give each other a hug.” You see, a holy kiss was an act of hospitality and welcome. Bringing someone close. And he’s saying to them, “I know it’s way easier to live this separate life from someone you have beef with. But I’m telling you to get uncomfortable for the sake of hospitality.” So sure, you and I might feel uncomfortable with a little break in the service for a holy kiss. But they would have as well.
The point isn’t the kiss, but what was behind the kiss: welcome, embrace, bringing someone close because of the good news of how Jesus has brought his enemies close. And that is the unchanging teaching that you and I can apply today. Who do you need to bring close that you’re at odds with? Who do you need to reach out to right now to set up a time to reconnect? Not because it feels good but because that’s what the gospel calls us to.
Finally, we get to the very end. Hear the blessing that Paul leaves this church with. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. What a glorious way to end a letter. Paul pronounces a blessing on the people in the name of the trinitarian God who has given them every spiritual blessing in Christ. He blesses them with grace from the Son. He blesses them with love from the Father. And he blesses them with the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Again, his final word to them isn’t instruction, but blessing. And it is for this reason that we end each of our services with a word of blessing. We want you to know that you are sent out with the smile of God.
If you leave service every week thinking purely, “wow what a great service, now I know more” or “wow, now I know what to do” then we as pastors have failed and need to go back to Preaching 101. I mean I sure hope you leave each week knowing more about God. And I really hope you leave with tangible ways to apply the Word of God in your life. But our goal as pastors as we feed you the Word of God each week is not to leave you with pure information or pure instruction but to display for you the unmerited, undeserved favor of God on offer for you. To show as supremely precious the radical love of God for his people.
If you are in Christ, our goal for you is to leave the service going, “wow, the love of God for me is amazing. The grace of God for me is better than I could have ever imagined.” And maybe this morning, you just need that reminder. Church… Christian, you need to know that God loves you more than you could possibly understand. You, sitting right where you are in all of your weakness, woundedness, and waywardness – God is crazy about you. If you don’t believe me, I’ll let God himself do the talking through his Word.
Psalm 103:11 – For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. (Christian, that’s you!)
Zephaniah 3:17 – The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Romans 8:31, 35, 37-39 – 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?... 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?... 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [you] from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I could go on. Church, God loves you. God loves you with a real love. And he leaves you not with a honey-do list, and not with a textbook. He leaves you with his blessing.
CONCLUSION
And so, the letter ends. The Corinthian church has a choice to make. Are they going to receive the real love of God through Paul? Are they going to receive the real love of confrontation, intercession, and blessing? Well, we can only speculate. But here’s what we do know. Acts 20 tells us that just as Paul planned, he arrived in Corinth. And when he got there, he stayed for three months. During this stay in Corinth, he likely wrote the book of Romans, which has little of the hard words of 2 Corinthians. And in fact, Romans 15 tells us that the churches in the region of Achaia, where Corinth was located, were “pleased” to give generously to the collection that he was taking up for the Christians in Jerusalem.[3]The church that resisted Paul eventually welcomed him. The people who questioned him supported the mission. The strained relationship seems to have been restored.
So again, we can only speculate, but it seems like when the Corinthians were given an opportunity to receive the real love of confrontation, intercession, and blessing, they did. We have that same opportunity. Each week, when we come under the Word of God, we have an opportunity. How will we respond when God confronts us and tells us to kill our sin? How will we respond when we have opportunities to pray for those we are at odds with? How will we respond when those we are at odds with welcome us? How do we respond when the last word from the Lord is blessing? Will we try to come up with all kinds of excuses of why we need to do more or why we should stiff-arm his grace? Or will we accept that God really loves us and wants to bless us?
Jesus confronts because he loves you. Jesus intercedes because he loves you. Jesus blesses because he loves you. Church, receive the real love of the living Jesus with open hands today.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father…
[1] This was an insight from Jeremy Treat’s sermon, Restored by Grace.
[2] Timothy Keller, Center Church, 36.
[3] Helpful connections drawn from Barnett, 619.
