2nd Corinthians Lesson 8

2 Corinthians 2:1-

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

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Lesson Transcript

Opening

Good evening. Please open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 2. After two months of studying, we’re ready to move into the second chapter. And we have one month remaining to finish chapter two and chapter three.

When we enter chapter 2, you’ll recall that last time, as we finished chapter 1, Paul had just started to talk about the change in his travel plans, which has been a big point of a big topic at the beginning of this letter. You’ll recall that he had been accused of not loving the Corinthians, of vacillating and changing his plans on a whim and various other things associated with that change. So early in this letter, he’s very concerned with explaining to them why he changed his travel plans. And that’s going to continue as we move on into chapter 2.

Verse 1 - The Second Visit

Verse 1: “But I determined this with myself, that I would not come again to you in heaviness.”

Now, as we try to unravel the events that led to this what we’re going to refer to in a moment as the second sorrowful letter and also the current letter that we’re looking at, we’re going to have to make some inferences from the text. And in fact, we need to make one here because you’ll notice in verse 1 that he says “again,” “again, I would not come again to you in heaviness.”

Verse 1 certainly suggests that Paul had previously come to them in heaviness. He didn’t want to do that again, which tells us he had done that once before. Well, that could not have possibly been his first visit to Corinth when he established that congregation and first taught the gospel there. That was not a trip with heaviness. That was when he was first teaching them about Christ. So it could not have been that first visit to Corinth that we read about in Acts.

But we know from this letter, in fact, later in this second epistle in chapter 12, verse 14, chapter 13, verse 1, we’re going to find out that his next visit to them is going to be his third visit. So we know that this visit he’s talking about here in verse 1 is not his first. We know it’s not his third because that’s his next visit, it’s going to be his third visit. That means he’s describing a second visit. His second visit is the one he’s describing here in verse 1. And that second visit was one that involved heaviness. It was a painful visit. Something bad happened on that second visit.

So, our question for us tonight is going to be to try to kind of unravel that. What was it that went on, and you know, what happened there? And certainly the text tells us a great deal about it as we proceed.

The Painful Second Visit

Just from this first verse, we know it was painful. Something bad happened on that second visit. Well, what happened to make the second visit so painful? Well, we’re going to be given some clues here in chapter 2 that we’re going to look at. And Paul returns to this topic in chapter 7. So I’m going to say a few things about chapter 7 because Paul has a few things to say there about what he’s talking about here in chapter 2.

Verse 5, which we’re going to study in just a moment here in chapter 2, suggests that this painful visit was painful because of a confrontation. Paul had a painful confrontation with somebody on that second visit. In fact, when Paul returns to this in chapter 7, verse 12, he’s going to tell us that this letter, this second letter, was prompted by someone who had done the wrong, he’s going to say. So, whatever this event was, it caused Paul to change his plans and write a letter, which we’ll refer to in a moment as the sorrowful letter.

The Language of Pain

Now, one thing we’re going to see at the beginning of chapter 2 is a very high concentration of pain language. Pain. The noun pain appears twice here. The verb form of pain appears five times in five verses. The noun for grief appears three times. The verb to grieve appears seven times in this letter. In fact, the majority of Paul’s uses of those terms occur in this letter, 2 Corinthians.

If Philippians is known as the Epistle of Joy, I fear that 2 Corinthians should be known as the epistle of pain because it appears so much throughout this letter. But as we’ve also seen, there’s another word that appears throughout this letter, and that’s comfort. Comfort. But where you see comfort, you nearly always see pain. And we see both of those here in 2 Corinthians.

Paul’s True Motivation

Now Paul may very well have been personally humiliated during this painful second visit. We’re going to see some suggestion of that. That whatever had happened, it was a personal, painful humiliation of the apostle that occurred. But Paul was not simply trying to avoid another painful personal humiliation. That personal humiliation was not the cause of this great, intense pain that he was feeling.

It was the Corinthians’ failure that was the cause of that. The Corinthians were failing to live up to their Christian calling. They were deserting the true gospel. They were going off for some glittering gospel of success dispensed by false apostles. That is what caused the Apostle Paul the pain. That was the pain, the real pain here.

Paul’s children were leaving the faith. That’s what was going on here. His children in the faith were leaving the faith, and that was causing this pain. And there may be no greater pain than that, to have your children leave the faith. And that was how Paul was experiencing this.

And Paul knew that setting things straight would also be painful, not just to him, but also to them. And Paul was not looking forward to that. And in fact, Paul did not change his travel plans to spare himself. Paul changed his travel plans to spare them because Paul knew what was going to have to be done. He was hoping they would come to their senses and repent, and many of them did, as we’re going to see here.

Verse 2 - Paul’s Joy in the Corinthians

Verse 2: “For if I make you sorry, who is he then that maketh me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me?”

Some commentaries divide that sentence in two, and they say it should read, “For if I make you sad, who then will make me glad? Certainly not the one who has been plunged into sorrow by me.” In other words, once I have rebuked somebody, they’re not going to turn around and make me glad because they’re going to be mad at me. I mean, that’s kind of the thought that they have.

But other commentaries interpret it this way: “For if I make you sad, who would be left to make me glad but the one I cause to be sad?” I favor that second interpretation. I think Paul’s love and affection for the church here in Corinth really comes out in this verse. They are a source of joy to the Apostle Paul. And when their relationship is out of sorts, when he’s not working with the Corinthians like he wants to be, and their relationship is gone south, that makes Paul so hurt. This pain is just multiplied because of his very close relationship with the church there in Corinth.

They need him, yes. They need the Apostle Paul, yes. But Paul needs them. The Apostle Paul also needs them. They are a source of comfort for Paul. They are a source of joy for Paul. They make Paul glad. That just comes through in this beautiful verse. And I think what he’s suggesting here is that there were few, if any, other congregations that had that special relationship with him.

Their rejection of Paul must have been so incredibly painful to the Apostle Paul. And don’t we see that pain all throughout this letter?

Verse 3 - The Sorrowful Letter

Verse 3: “And I wrote this same unto you, lest when I came I should have sorrow from them of whom I ought to rejoice, having confidence in you all, that my joy is the joy of you all.”

Well, that verse tells us what we’ve already mentioned, and that is that in place of that visit that Paul did not make, he sent a letter. Well, what letter is that? What letter did Paul send? “I wrote this unto you,” he says here. What letter is that?

Well, we talked about this a little bit in the introduction, so we’re certainly not going to plow through all that again. But you’ll recall from there that Paul wrote possibly as many as four letters. And maybe more, but as many as four, possibly.

The Four Epistles

Epistle, and the commentaries usually call these epistle A, B, C, and D. So we’ll do the same thing.

Epistle A is the letter referred to in 1 Corinthians 5, verse 9. When Paul says he had written them, he had warned them not to associate with sexually immoral people. That’s referred to in the first epistle to the Corinthians. Well, we don’t have that letter where he wrote that. Well, we have 1 Corinthians, but we don’t have the letter that came before it.

You know, I’ve asked before: does that mean that’s a lost book of the Bible? The answer is no. If we don’t have it, then God did not intend for us to have it, which means it’s not a lost book of the Bible. Is it a lost letter? Yes, it’s a letter and it’s lost. We don’t have it, but it was never intended to be part of the Bible, so it’s not a lost book of the Bible.

Epistle B, Epistle B is 1 Corinthians. That’s what we do have, that one, Epistle B.

Epistle C in the commentaries is the one referred to here. Called the sorrowful letter. That’s the one Paul wrote in place of coming to see them in person, and that’s usually called Epistle C.

Now we mentioned in the introduction that some people say, oh, that’s really chapters 10 through 13 of 2 Corinthians. And as we talked about before, I totally reject that. I think 2 Corinthians is a unified whole, and we don’t need to split it up into pieces. So I don’t think that’s true at all.

Now, others say, no, no, no, Epistle C, the sorrowful letter, is really the same as Epistle B. In other words, it’s 1 Corinthians. That the letter he’s referring to here in verse 3 is in fact 1 Corinthians, the letter we’ve already studied. We’ll come back to that in just a moment.

Epistle D, the fourth one, is 2 Corinthians, which of course we also have.

So there are four at least four epistles, and some commentaries just slice up first and second Corinthians and make a bunch of other letters out of them. I reject all of that. 1 Corinthians is a unified whole. Should not split it up. Same with 2 Corinthians.

Which Letter Is the Sorrowful Letter?

If that’s the case, as I think it is, then we’re left with two options for this letter here in verse 3, two options remain: either it’s 1 Corinthians, the letter we just got through studying, or it’s some letter we don’t have anymore written between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. And we talked about that in the introduction.

Now, when I previously taught 2 Corinthians and 1 Corinthians, in fact, I think I probably said this back in the introduction to 1 Corinthians, I rejected the idea that this sorrowful letter is 1 Corinthians. Because, you know, you read through 1 Corinthians and it doesn’t seem that sorrowful. Although there are some pretty tough topics in 1 Corinthians.

But having researched it some more, I’m still leaning against it being 1 Corinthians, but I’m not leaning nearly so much as I was. A little more over here, and so I’m not so certain. It could be 1 Corinthians, this sorrowful letter, or it could be some letter that we no longer have. And we don’t really have time to go into all the reasons why it could be 1 Corinthians, but I think that is a possibility.

Paul’s Four Motives

Now, we learned from 2 Corinthians that Paul had four motives in writing this letter. Four reasons he wrote this sorrowful letter here in verse 3.

First, he wrote it so that his next visit would bring joy instead of pain. Paul did not want to come out there dispensing pain. He wanted to come with joy, and he was hopeful that this letter would cause that, that him he could come in joy instead of with pain.

Second, he wanted them to know of his love, his love for them. And it does seem that some perhaps had forgotten that Paul loved them as much as he did, and he mentions that.

Third, he wanted to test their obedience. He wanted to test their obedience and see if they would be obedient. And as we’ll discuss in just a moment, one reason this painful confrontation happened may have been because they had not been obedient to something Paul had said in 1 Corinthians. Possibility we’ll discuss in a moment.

And fourth, Paul wanted to bring about the effects of godly sorrow in their lives. Godly sorrow that bringeth repentance. He wanted to bring that out in their lives. And that was the fourth reason he wrote this letter referred to here.

The Nature of the Rebuke

Certainly, we know one thing about this sorrowful letter. Whether it was 1 Corinthians or it was some other letter we no longer have, it contained a very blunt and a very serious rebuke. Blunt and serious rebuke of the Corinthians. Later, when chapter 7, when he comes back to this point in verse 8, he’ll say, “For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I don’t regret it, though I did regret it. For I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though only for a while.” So there was something very painful in that letter that would have made them sorry, a rebuke of the Corinthians.

Now, Paul confronted the Corinthians in this letter and sometimes confrontation is the clearest proof of love for someone. It’s painful at the time, and sometimes the person who’s confronted may think, oh, you don’t love me. But confronting that person can be the surest proof of love. And certainly we see that with Paul.

Sometimes the easy path is to just gloss over the problems and act like they’re not there. The easy path is to pretend they don’t even exist. The easy path may be just to write the person off. I’m not going to have anything more to do with that person. Just write them off. That may be the easy path.

Paul did not take the easy path, he confronted them directly with the problem.

Joy from Pain

Now, mentioning joy and pain here. We see it. Joy and pain. We’ve already seen it in this opening verses. Picks up what we saw in chapter 1 with affliction and comfort. Joy and pain. Affliction. Comfort. God provides consolation in the midst of affliction, as we just saw in chapter 1, and Paul is sure that God will bring joy out of this painful confrontation.

Paul expresses his confidence in the Corinthians. Paul wrote the earlier letter with confidence that it would have its intended effect, and he can write with even greater confidence now because he’s heard from Titus. Titus has now come to him with a report that there has been some remorse. There has been some repentance. He’ll talk about that in chapter 7, verse 9.

And again, I think we see here the theme of the letter. The theme is coming through in every chapter. Sometimes every verse, we see the theme: joy from pain. That’s strength from weakness. Strength from weakness. That is the theme of this letter. We see it all throughout the letter.

Verse 4 - Paul’s Tears

Verse 4: “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears, not that you should be grieved, but that you might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you.”

Paul is not a stoic. Paul is not stoical about the pain that this has caused him. He does not try to hide his emotions from the Corinthians. He had felt deeply their love for him, and he also felt deeply wounded when they rejected him and withdrew that love. He writes from great affliction and anguish through many tears. And it was not simply some personal hurt that caused these tears. He was weeping over them because they had veered away from the faith. They had left the faith.

It reminds me of Philippians 3:18: “For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you, even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.”

Discipline is never painless. It’s painful, both for the one who delivers it and the one who receives it. And Paul is not iron-hearted here. Paul is not iron-handed here. He loves them, and that’s motivating everything he does here. If they’re grieved, Paul leaves no doubt that he’s grieved more than they are. Paul is grieved more than they are. And Paul insists that his grief is the surest sign of his love for them.

He gives direction to them, He gives guidance, He gives rebuke how as a loving father would give His children. And of course, Paul sees them as his children in the faith. And that’s how Paul is dealing with them. It’s such a beautiful letter seeing how Paul deals with these problems. In spite of being the object of their abuse, Paul, like a good father, continues to seek their best interest, and he responds to their rejection with a sacrificial love. Beautiful.

Why Didn’t Paul Give Up?

But we just have to ask, why didn’t Paul just write off this entire ungrateful bunch? Say, that’s it. I’m not going to have anything more to do with you. I’m going to go somewhere else. You’re on your own, writing you off. Good riddance.

Was it perhaps because God did not write Saul off when he was persecuting the Church of Christ? And God did not look down at Saul and say, “Good riddance”? Paul knew what it was like to have reconciliation, restoration, repentance. And Paul wanted them to experience the same thing.

It reminds me of Luke 7, 47: “Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” Paul loved much, and Paul had been forgiven much. What about us? How much have we been forgiven? Haven’t we also been forgiven much?

Paul’s Three Reasons

In summary, Paul gives three reasons why he did not return to Corinth as he originally planned. Chapter 1, he mentioned that near-death experience that we talked about. Certainly prevented him from coming. Where he was delivered by God. Chapter 1, he also talks for about another reason. The sovereignty of God was controlling what he did, and he was responding to the will of God, and that certainly controlled what he did. And now he’s explaining another reason. He was anxious to avoid another painful visit that he thought would make the reconciliation even more difficult. That’s a third reason that he’s now given for his change in plans.

Verse 5 - The Anonymous Offender

Verse 5: “But if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me, but in part, that I may not overcharge you all.”

Paul now turns to the specific incident that provoked his grief and his sudden departure, but he does so without rehashing what happened during that second visit. The Corinthians obviously don’t need Paul to tell them what happened. They know what happened. And dredging up all the unhappy details is certainly not going to help things. It would just bring back all the old feelings of anger. The wounds were still healing here. And rehearsing the events would have only made that worse.

So, Paul doesn’t go into all the details here, but for later readers like us, that leaves us a little bit in the dark because we’re not told a whole lot about what happened. We have to kind of look into the text and try to figure it out. But Paul is very tactful here, and he’s speaking to them sometimes in generalities.

Trying to avoid naming the person. In fact, he does avoid naming the person, or really describing the nature of what happened here. This anonymous person that we’re not told about, we do know he’d repented. And Paul now only identifies the transgression with a euphemism. He says, “if anyone has caused grief,” and he identifies the person in kind of a veiled way, when we get to chapter 7, verse 12, as “the one who did the wrong.” He doesn’t give the name.

Now, naming names, Paul certainly is able to do that when the situation calls for it. You can ask many people who are named in the Bible by Paul and not in a flattering way. But he did not do so here, and he does not specify the crimes. That would just have brought more grief to this person who had repented and had been sufficiently punished.

Paul’s Tact

You know, we see the same tact of Paul and Philemon, for example, when we’re dealing with Onesimus. He doesn’t mention there the unmentionable. Onesimus is desertion. He uses a pun to describe Onesimus’ former usefulness. He calls him useful instead. Instead of plainly saying that Onesimus ran away, Paul describes it kind of in a passive voice. “Separated from you for a little while.” I just saw some real similarities as I was looking at the way he’s dealing with this here and the way he dealt with Onesimus and Philemon.

Paul’s goal here is to bring about healing, not to go through and recount all these events and prove that he was right. That Apostle Paul, “I’m right. I was right then and I’m right now, and I’m going to prove.” That was not what Paul was intent on doing here. Yes, Paul was right. But that’s not his goal here, to show that. Instead of criticizing this culprit, he describes his own grief, Paul’s own grief, and what happened to him, and how that affects the gospel. Paul talks about those things.

Clues About the Offender

But of course to the modern reader, the curious modern reader, I hope we all fall in the curious category, we want to know who this guy was. I mean, we want to know who is this person. Well, let’s look at some clues and see if we can try to figure that out.

One clue is that the offense does not seem to have been a serious theological error, since Paul doesn’t really go into some big doctrinal issue here, like a big doctrinal dispute. But there is probably some kind of theological issue involved at the root of it all because of the gravity and the seriousness with which Paul deals with this situation. And perhaps that theological issue at the root was this person’s rebellion against an apostle of Jesus Christ. That’s certainly a theological issue. A very serious one. So that certainly may be the case. But it looks like, in addition to that rebellion, we may be dealing with some issue that was not as much theological, but maybe a moral lapse of some sort on the part of this one person, as opposed to some false doctrine or something.

A second clue is that certainly, a single individual committed the offense. We see that throughout. But somehow the Corinthians were all implicated in this. Chapter 2, verse 5, somehow they’re all involved, even though they’re certainly focused on one person.

A third clue we get, we can infer about the offense, is from Paul’s insistence that he was not hurt as much as the Corinthians were. And that he’d already forgiven the offender, chapter 2, verse 10. And that the man’s action was a direct slap at Paul, we’ll see in chapter 7. Whatever it was, it was certainly enough to force Paul to leave and change his plans and write this sorrowful letter. So something big happened involving a single person.

And the fourth clue is that this offense, whatever it was, affected the whole congregation in some way. Now, you know, originally the Corinthians may not have understood the gravity of the situation. Or they may have just been cowering in silence, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed and they would just play out with others. They may have tried to be bystanders and hide their heads in the sand. And perhaps when Paul was there, he needed people to stand up for him. That whoever this was was confronting Paul, and Paul needed someone to stand up for him, and it seems like no one did that. And Paul may have found himself standing alone, like Jesus did, when he was denied by his friends who fled. And so that seems to have gone on here also.

And the fifth clue is Paul’s statement in chapter 2, verse 10, “if there’s anything to forgive,” which some suggest say that this involved a personal conflict with Paul rather than either a moral lapse or a theological error. You see all those suggestions in the commentaries.

The Nature of the Rebellion

But you know Paul’s response here to me suggests this is more this is more than just name calling. It may have involved name-calling, but there’s something else here more than just name-calling because of Paul’s response here. Paul could deal with some simple name-calling. Paul dealt with much worse. We’ve already read, we read about that through Acts and throughout. But something else was going on here.

This person had rejected Paul’s authority. His rebellion against that authority, in fact, may suggest that this person was socially advantaged, was financially well off, and we know there were people in Corinth like that. We know Corinth had many different kinds of people, but we know some of them were rich and some of them had a lot of possessions. And perhaps, whoever this person was, he just wasn’t used to taking orders from anybody. He wasn’t going to take any orders from Apostle Paul. He gave orders. He didn’t take orders. That may be the attitude we have here.

And maybe he was trying to wrest people away from Paul and get them to follow himself instead. To do that, he would have to shame Paul in some way. So they’d leave Paul and follow him. This person may have even resisted Timothy. Treated Timothy with contempt and tried to stir up resistance against Paul during his absence.

The Ancient View

Well, who was this person? Well, there’s an ancient view or traditional view and there’s a modern view. So let’s start with the ancient view. The ancient view, almost unanimously the ancient view, is that this person is the man guilty of living with his father’s wife in 1 Corinthians 5. That is the almost unanimous ancient view of who this person is.

Paul insisted there that the Corinthians evict this person from the congregation because he was a corrupting influence upon them. Paul had told them not to associate with him because he was immoral. Even the pagans thought he was immoral. But the Corinthians seem to have ignored those instructions for some reason. 1 Corinthians 5, 9 through 11. You can read about it there.

Paul’s view that this man gave the whole congregation a bad reputation. 1 Corinthians 5, 2. May explain why he says here that he has caused pain to all of you. This person was causing pain to all of them through what he was doing. Paul refers to the involvement of the whole congregation in disciplining and restoring this person, the one who did the wrong, here in chapter 2, verse 9, later in chapter 7, verse 12. And he called them all to discipline this person in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. So there’s a big similarity between the two.

Satan is mentioned in both accounts. 1 Corinthians, they’re told to exercise discipline by delivering the offender to Satan. And here in 2 Corinthians, they’re told to keep Satan from gaining an advantage over them, as we’ll see in a moment, by accepting him back into their fellowship. And there’s also a reference to Christ in both of those texts. Chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians, “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” how they’re supposed to act. And “in the face of Christ,” we’ll see here in verse 10 of 2 Corinthians 2. There are a lot of similarities.

What May Have Happened

Perhaps what happened is that when Paul arrived on that second visit, He thought this problem had all been taken care of. After all, he’d written about it in 1 Corinthians 5, if that was not the sorrowful letter, and he’d given them explicit instructions in that letter. But perhaps that person met Paul when he got there. First person to meet him there and confronted him as soon as he arrived. And no one came to Paul’s defense.

You imagine how that felt to Paul, that he had written that letter specifically about this person and told them what to do about this person. And then he shows up, nothing’s been done. This person meets him at the boat, personally confronts him, calls him every name in the book. And no one stands up for the Apostle Paul.

If that happened, no wonder Paul left immediately. And it was not to spare himself. Paul left because he knew the punishment the Corinthians deserved for letting that happen, and he did not want to meet that out. He was perfectly able to show up with a rod. But he didn’t want to do that, and he left to spare them, not to spare himself.

Modern Objections

That makes a lot of sense, but I will say the majority of modern commentators almost unanimously, not totally, reject that view. Most modern commentaries reject the view that this is the man that was guilty of incest in 1 Corinthians 5. In fact, one commentary says this view is “now almost universally and rightly abandoned.” And another argues that “under no circumstances can it be right.” Well, that’s not just a little strong, that’s a lot strong, but let’s talk a little bit about why they say that. Why do they reject the view?

Well, first they say that, well, Paul treats this guy with such gentleness here, with such reserve. Doesn’t call him by name. Refers to it with euphemism, and they say that really doesn’t match that offense of incest we read about in 1 Corinthians. Well, I agree with that, but hadn’t the situation changed between 1 and 2 Corinthians? In 1 Corinthians, the guy was in rebellion, living in incest. And the 2 Corinthians, by the time this is written, he’s repented of that. He’s repented of that. So that could explain the change in tone, certainly.

The second objection, they say, is that Paul says he forgives them before they have. And they say this really suggests some personal injury against Paul himself. And the commentaries say there’s no indication from 1 Corinthians 5 that the incestuous man had directed any insults toward Paul. To which I respond, well, yes, because at 1 Corinthians 5 he hadn’t yet directed any personal insults toward Paul. But by 2 Corinthians 2, he had, because it’s in that painful second visit that we get the personal insults.

So we have the incest in 1 Corinthians 5. We have the second painful visit with the insult. I’m sorry, we had the incest in 1 Corinthians 5. We have the insults on the second painful visit. We have two things going on here. Doesn’t that explain a lot of what we’ve been saying, that this mu somehow involved some moral lapse, but it also involves something directed at Paul? It somehow involves something directed at all the Corinthians, yet somehow it involves something personally directed to Paul? The incest would have been directed to all of them. It would have involved everybody. The insult would have been directed to Paul. I think that’s what’s going on here.

And finally, some say, look, how could Paul forgive someone who had sunk to such depths that even the pagans thought it was horrible? How could Paul say in Saturday 2, verse 10, “if there’s anything to forgive”? Well, first, Paul could forgive that because Paul had been forgiven for much worse than that. And second, “if there was anything to forgive,” could refer to that second event where the man had insulted Paul personally and Paul could be kind of downplaying that now that he had repented.

Looking Ahead

Next week, we’ll start off by looking at some of the other candidates that have been proposed in place of the man guilty of incest. And we’ll return briefly to talk about why I still think it’s very likely that this is the man guilty of incest, even though modern commentaries almost universally reject it. And then we will continue on.

Thank you. And then we’ll have our closing prayer.