Paul tells us “the Love of Christ urges us on.” This does not mean that OUR love of Jesus compels us to work harder. It is a reminder that the abundant, gracious love that Jesus has for us holds us together. The Church, then, can live that out together and help one another feel that love.

We’re in the middle of a 6-week study through 2 Corinthians, a book that Paul wrote detailing his pain and suffering in spreading the Gospel. Paul writes about what we all know: there are times when life is hard. But latent in his letter is a constant hope. Hope that God is with us, and that it will not always be this way.

In his book, Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright writes, “Our present experience even with our Christian experience, is incomplete. But in Christ we have heard the complete tune; we know now that it sounds like and that we shall one day sing it with him. Our present experience, with all its incompleteness, is meant to point us to the fact that we will one day wake up and arise from sleep. That, after all, is what resurrection is about.”