Remember he had gone through an experience in which he despaired of life itself. Now, he wanted to rejoice. He wanted folks to walk up to him and grab his hand and say, "How are doing Paul. Man, it's great to have you with us." That's why he postponed the visit. He just couldn't have that kind of visit until they got rid of some of the baggage they had been toting around.

In verse 4, he referred to that previous correspondence. He said, "For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you." It's so important for us to maintain a high regard for those with whom we differ. That means you don't approach conflict by planning strategy so you can win a power struggle. When we get into power struggles, nobody wins. Everybody loses.

We see it happen in families. Husbands and wives try to make themselves look good at the expense of one another, so they say cold, calculating, mean spirited things to another. The game is oneupmanship. The weapons are put downs and insults. We're all embarrassed when we see husbands and wives play that game in public. The same thing happens in churches. I can recall being invited to be a guest speaker at a church some distance from my home congregation. At the close of the service, I was standing in the foyer shaking hands with the folks and two brothers standing not three from me, exploded into a war of words. That's not what Paul would have done. That's not Christ like. That's destructive and the cause of Christ suffers every time it happens.

I've been called in the middle of the night and asked to mediate a dispute between brethren. I have always refused to do it. For one thing, when people get into that frame of mind, there's usually a lot more heat than there is light. They're pumped up on adrenaline and they're quenching the Spirit of God. Besides that everything looks worse than it is late at night, so I will nearly always say, "Let's deal with it in the morning." A few times, they've had the confrontation in the middle of the night, against my advise and without my mediation. I have never known such a meeting to turn out well.

Some people think you aren't strong unless you're always on the attack. They become competitive and confrontational at every turn and when that happens everybody loses. But if we can do it the way Paul did - with great concern for grieving the body, with love in your heart for the brother, whom you sincerely believe to be wrong, then everybody wins.

PAUL MANAGED CONFLICT BY MAINTAINING PERSPECTIVE

Apparently the matter at issue in Corinth involved the treatment of a man who had caused grief to Paul and to the church at Corinth. Notice the language of verse 5, "If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you, to some extent-not to put it too severely." This unnamed person had committed some kind sin that everyone knew about, but that was not the issue at this point. It appears that disciplinary action had been taken and it had achieved it's desired result, which was the repentance of the brother in question. The problem was, the folks in Corinth did know when enough is enough and they wouldn't let go of their resentment and forgive the man.

It seems like they were saying to him, "You've got to make things right with Paul before you can make things right." Paul was saying, in effect, "That's not the way it is at all. If you forgive him, I forgive him." Notice how the devil switched his tactics. At one point, the brother in question had sinned. Everybody agreed to that. The devil used that sin brought reproach upon the Corinthian church. But now the devil, because the brother repented. But the devil, always devious, always playing the angles, simply switched his tactics. He thought he could achieve the same objective if he could turn the church into a group of unbending, insensitive, uncaring, self-righteous, unforgiving people.

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