Text: (2 Corinthians 12:13-15) 13 For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you? forgive me this wrong. 14 Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. 15 And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.
No human father could ever be as faithful as our Heavenly Father. Still, our choice is to dwell on the negative attributes of our earthly father or accentuate the positive characteristics. My earthly father, Tracy Nix Sr., has demonstrated, over his lifetime, the four unseen interactions of motive that the Apostle Paul used to illustrate his loving relationship to a church that he helped to birth: the church at Corinth. Paul wrote many corrective words to this brand-new church, but in a second letter to these dear people, he wanted them to know his interior motives for guiding them. As a Father and a Son, I can see and identify with these four unseen interactions of a faithful father.
A faithful Father will love unconditionally in the form of (1. agape love). Of the various words used in the Bible for love: the Greek word agape is used as the highest form of love and means loving without receiving anything in return. The Apostle spoke in verse 14 to his motive of "seeking not yours but you." Like Paul, a faithful Father will desire nothing that the children can give him but will be motivated to love without receiving anything in return.
Another motivation many times unseen in a faithful Father is the (2. arduous living) that they are willing to forebear for the sake of the welfare of their children. I cannot think of a characteristic that my dad exemplifies more than this uneasy task. (2 Corinthians 12:15a) And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you. As a little league baseball player, my dad coached my baseball team (The Bandits) until my Highschool years. We would travel around the country, playing over 100 baseball games per year, all while my dad worked a physically demanding job as a drywall contractor. Many days he would come in a take a 15-minute power nap after he showered up for the game that night so that he would have the energy to spend and be spent for me.
The third unseen motivation did not make too much sense to me until I myself became a Father. (2 Corinthians 12:15b); though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. The only way to explain this (3. Antithetical Levying) is that we love without reciprocation because it is a way that we can know just exactly how much our Heavenly Father loves us. I’ll levy the tax of a loving relationship so that you never feel resentment with the obligation to love in return.
Probably the most understood premise in the book of 2 Corinthians is the Apostle Paul’s desire to teach the Corinthians this (4. Affirmation of learning) through the sacrifice of selflessness. Paul would not take a salary of this church even though he was a pillar in the early church and directly trained by Jesus Christ in the Arabian desert. Paul could have appealed to his authoritative position to teach this Corinthian church, but he instead used the appeal of vested regard for these new believers. As an Apostle, Paul unprecedently worked a physically demanding job as a tentmaker to provide for himself just to make sure the church would understand all of the doctrinal teachings that God had for them. During the summer of 1994, my father set the agenda for our summer nights and weekends with the task of installing a rebuilt engine into my (new to me) Camaro, just for the sake of teaching me how a car operates so that I may have an appreciation for the complexity of the machine and learn to appreciate the gravity of the responsibility of driving. He didn’t have to, but my dad had a vested interest in the affirmation of my learning so that it would be engrained in my memory these many years later. My dad was not perfect like my Heavenly Father, but he exemplified these unseen interactions of a faithful father.
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