Forsaking: 2 Corinthians 12:20-13:2, especially vs. 2:
"I say in advance to those who have sinned in the past and to all the rest as well, that if I come again, I will not spare anyone." (NAS)
The Apostle openly warns all the Christians in Corinth that if they persist in flagrantly pagan living, he will take strict disciplinary action against them. They receive fair warning herewith to forsake their attitudes and behavior that are opposed to the life in Christ (vss. 20,21). As an Apostle of Christ, St. Paul truly did not wish to bear the pain of having to correct or punish openly those whom he had catechized in the Faith, those who should have known better (vs. 21).
Living as we do today in a neo-pagan environment that is similar to the bawdy, seaport milieu of first-century Corinth, we can affirm these Apostolic rebukes as merciful warnings from the Lord Jesus Himself. Lest anyone think that this culture is so very different from the Corinth of St. Paul's day, let him compare the sins the Apostle describes with what he reads and sees in the media. Further, let us forsake through repentance and purification, any trace of such sins in our own persons, determining always to struggle against the anti-Christian thoughts and ways all around us and so make ourselves deserving objects for stern, corrective pastoral action.
The Apostle mentions two different sorts of sins, those divisive offenses that will beset us when we are tempted to quarrel or disdain others (vs. 20), and the impurities of heart, soul, and body that plague us when we are aroused by lustful temptations (vs. 21). How ready the self is to become contentious, jealous and given to angry outbursts even as it thinks to condone or veers close to lewd thoughts: "What's the matter with watching that program?” What’s so bad about a little ‘off-color' joke." "I don't think it is ‘the end of the world' if someone has an affair."
St. Paul explained to the Faithful at Corinth, "I wrote to you...not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But...not to keep company with anyone named a brother...." who does these things (1 Cor. 5:9,10,11). We are to resist any movement within ourselves to be drawn into such thinking and behavior because "the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:9). Therefore we should closely monitor our inner life against every hint of the sins named by St. Paul.
Let us not be found before the Lord in the kind of moral disorder which the Apostle feared he might find among the Faithful at Corinth (vs. 20). The first hint of such sins within us should serve as a call to repentance. The process starts with self-monitoring and examination and continues on with frank admission, godly sorrow, honest confession, begging for help from the Holy Spirit, planning future avoidance, cessation of any stray thinking, and devout gratitude to God for snatching us like "a brand plucked out of the fire" (Amos 4:11 LXX).
It is necessary for a determined, serious Christian to take up such a process as a personal cross, making it the normal way of living - to "die with Christ" and "rise to newness of life" (Rom. 6:4). Let each of us firmly settle in himself the choice never to allow the self to drift off toward the mounting immorality that swells around us and assaults us through the media. Who among us should not open himself to firm and painful discipline of the sort, which the Apostle warned? Beloved of the Lord, our Pastors are charged to guard the flock and to correct any who persist in sin. Like the Apostle Paul, such Pastors can "live with [Christ] by the power of God" (2 Cor. 13:4). Let us not provoke them like foolish pagans.
Let my beseeching be wholly acceptable, so that my transgressions may not prevent the descent of the Holy Spirit that I may be allowed to cry to Thee without condemnation, O Lord.