(2 Corinthians 4:1-141Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; 2But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 3But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: 4In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 5For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. 6For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 8We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; 10Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. 11For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. 12So then death worketh in us, but life in you. 13We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; 14Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. (2 Corinthians 4:1‑14)).
To be of any profit this article must be read in connection with a Bible, opened at the above passage.
THE New Covenant ministry entrusted to the Apostle Paul is unfolded to us in chapter 3. As we open chapter 4, our thoughts are directed to the things that characterized him as the minister of it. And first of all he was marked by good courage. Since God had entrusted him with the ministry, He gave with it suitable mercy. So, whatever the opposition or difficulty he did not faint. The same thing holds good for us. The Lord never calls us to ministry of any kind without the needed mercy being available. “Ministry” of course is just “Service;” the kind of thing that any of us might render, though it is a word of wide meaning and covers things that many of us might not be called to do.
The second verse emphasizes the honesty and transparency that marked Paul in his service. He descended to none of the tricks that so commonly disfigure the-world’s propaganda. Many a zealot, religious as well as political, will stoop to a great deal of craft and falsification in order to gain his end. The end justifies the means, to his way of thinking. Paul was very conscious that he was proclaiming the “Word of God,” and this must not be falsified, but rather made manifest in all its truth. His transparent honesty in handling the truth was thus made manifest to every upright conscience.
And another thing also was gained. Things were brought to an issue in the case of those who did not receive his message. The word, “hid” which occurs twice in verse 3, is really, “veiled;” the same word (in a slightly different form) as occurs seral times in the latter part of chapter 2 “If also our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those that are lost.” (N. Tr.). There was no veil on the Gospel, for Paul declared it in its purity and its clarity: but there was a veil upon the hearts and minds of the perishing who did not believe; a veil that had been dropped in their minds by the god of this world. Had Paul preached the word only partially, or in deceitful fashion, the issue would not have been so clear.
What a word is this for those of us who preach the, Gospel! Are we rightly affected by the awful solemnity of preaching the Word of God? Have we renounced every “hidden thing.” whether of dishonesty, craft, deceit, or anything else unworthy? Do we make manifest the truth, and only the truth? These are tremendous questions. If we do not, the unbelief of our hearers may not be attributable to their blindness, but to our unfaithfulness.
However, even when the Gospel is preached as it should be preached there are found those who do not believe and the explanation is that the devil has blinded their eyes. The sun in the heavens has not been eclipsed, but a very dark blind has been dropped over the window of their little room. The light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ shines, but it does not shine into them. The god of this age will use anything, no matter what, so long as it blots out the Gospel: not usually material things, but rather speculative notions and teachings of men. During the past three-quarters of a century he has very effectually blinded multitudes by the revival of a favorite speculation of the pagan world before Christ — evolution. The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ does not penetrate where the evolutionary blind has been surely dropped. The blinded soul may entertain miserable notions of man as the image of a monkey — or some other elementary creature — or of a monkey as the image of man. He cannot in the nature of things know Christ as “the Image of God,” though he may talk about a Christ of his own imagination. There are many imaginary Christs: Christ as men wish He had been. There is only one real Christ, the image of God; Christ as He was and is, the Christ of the Bible.
Christ Jesus was the great theme of the Apostle’s preaching, and he emphasized His position as Lord. He kept himself out of sight as a mere bondman of others. Preaching Him as Lord, he of course presented Him in His present glory at the right hand of God; and so he could speak of his message as, “the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ” (verse 4. N. Tr.). Elsewhere He speaks of preaching, “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:2424But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God. (Acts 20:24)). There are not two gospels, of course. The one Gospel of God has both the grace of God and the glory of Christ amongst its outstanding features, and so either may be presented as characterizing it. Here the glory of Christ is the prominent feature as befits the context, for he had been speaking of the passing glory of the Old Covenant which once shone in the face of Moses. We can declare that the glory of God now shines, and will Forever shine, in the face of Jesus Christ.
Verse 6 is very striking, for it clearly alludes first to God’s act in creation, then to His act in Paul’s own conversion, and lastly to the ministry to which he was called. Of old God said, “Let there be light,” and light shone out of the darkness. That was in the material creation. But now there is a work of new creation proceeding and something analogous takes place. Divine light — the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus — shines into dark hearts as it did in such a pre-eminent fashion into Paul’s on the road to Damascus producing marvelous effects. It shines in that it may shine out. It is “for the shining forth of the knowledge” (N. Tr.). In that way the believer becomes luminous himself. He begins to shine, just as the moon shines in the light of the sun, save of course that the moon is a dead body merely reflecting light from its surface without being affected itself.
The fact we are dwelling on accounts for the wonderful character of Paul’s ministry. He was not a mere preacher — a mere professional evangelist — throwing off so many sermons a week. He preached more than others indeed, but his preaching was the shining out of the light that was shining within, the telling forth of things that were thus wrought into every fiber of his being. No one knew better than he that every Divine excellence shines forth in Jesus and that He dwells in light above the brightness of the sun, for he had seen it on the road to Damascus. That which he knew was as a precious treasure, deposited with him.
We have not seen Christ in His glory as Paul did, yet by faith we do see him there; so that we too can speak of having a treasure. As with Paul so with us. “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” The allusion here is to our present mortal bodies, for as to his body “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:77And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)). As originally formed, man’s body was perfect, and perfectly suited to his environment and his place in the scheme of creation. As fallen his body becomes marred, and so the earthen vessels in which the treasure is found are poor and feeble. But then that only makes more manifest the fact that the power at work is of God and not of man.
In the passage before us, extending to the early verses of chapter 5, we have many allusions to the body, and it is spoken of in various ways. In verse 10 it is clearly mentioned apart from figurative language as, “our body.” In verse 11 it is, “our mortal flesh.” In verse 16, “our outward man.” And in the next chapter, verse 1 and 4, “our earthly house of this tabernacle,” and “this tabernacle.” The whole passage instructs us as to the dealings of God with Paul as regards his body, and it throws great light on many an event in our own histories.
All God’s dealings with us, as regards the earthen vessel of the body, have as their object the better and more adequate shining forth of the treasure which He has placed within. There is an “excellency,” or “surpassingness” of power about this treasure, which was very manifest in the case of Paul. By virtue of it not only was he sustained under unparalleled afflictions, but life worked in those to whom he ministered, as verse 12 shows. Now, as we know, there is truly a surpassingness about the power of natural life which is inexplicable by us. Seeds get buried under heavy flagstones, and lo, in the days to come tender green shoots, filled with life, manifest surprising energy sufficient to lift the stone and push it aside. Life of a spiritual sort manifests even more surprising powers.
Now this power was operating very energetically in a frail mortal man like Paul. Had he been sent into the world to serve, clothed in a splendid body of glory, he would have been viewed as a kind of superman, and the power largely attributed to him. As it was, the surpassing power that wrought in him and through him was obviously of God.
The trouble with us so often is that we rather want to wield power as though it were connected with ourselves. We are not content to be like an earthen vessel containing a power manifestly not its own. Hence very little power, or perhaps even complete absence of power, is what marks us. This indeed is the inveterate tendency of our poor human hearts.
And it was also the tendency of Paul’s heart, for he was a man of like passions to ourselves. Verses 8 to 11 clearly show this. He was continually faced with seas of trouble and difficulty. On the other hand, he was continually maintained and carried through, and made a blessing to others by the power of God.
If we examine these verses carefully we see that what he had to face came upon him in a threefold way. First, there were adverse circumstances. These are mentioned in verses 8 and 9. Trouble, perplexity, persecution, castings down, all these came upon him. Verily he was “a man,” as he told the Jews, (Acts 22:33I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day. (Acts 22:3)) and hence not beyond these things. He knew what it was to be perplexed and cast down like the rest of us.
Second, there was the spiritual exercise and experience expressed in the words. “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.” The dying of the Lord Jesus was abidingly impressed upon the mind of the Apostle so that he bore it about with him continually. But these words seem to convey more than this, for as a consequence the dying of Jesus laid its finger, so to speak, upon every faculty and every member of his body, controlling, all his ways. It laid its finger for instance, upon his tongue repressing many an utterance that would have been unworthy. The thing was not perfect with him as we know. Yet it was characteristic with him, marking him normally in spite of occasional deviations and failures.
Third, there was God’s disciplinary action which he describes as being “alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake.” God permitted many a thing to come upon him, such as that episode at Ephesus, which he described in chapter 1. as “so great a death,” by which he was delivered to death in his experiences amongst opposing men. In this way the inward and spiritual experience of which he speaks in verse 10, was supplemented by outward experiences, sent of God to further help him in his service. By these things he lived and his light the more brightly shone.
We have only noticed so far one side of the matter. The other side is concerned with the wonderful results, with the way in which the surpassing excellence of the Power of God was displayed in and by means of these things. Though circumstances were continually against him yet he was not distressed not in despair, not forsaken not destroyed. Obviously a sustaining power was working in him which counteracted all that was working against him. He was rather like one of those self-righting lifeboats, pounded by the stormy seas and even overturned, which nevertheless come-up, the right side up when the thundering billows have passed. It was indeed the power of the divine life in Paul that accomplished this.
Again, whether the action of faith and love in his own experience, leading him to bear about in his body the dying of Jesus, be in question, or whether God’s disciplinary actions in keeping with that experience be in question, the same end was achieved, and a wonderful end it was. The life of Jesus was made manifest in his body, his mortal flesh. In verse 2, referring to his service, he had spoken of the manifestation of the truth. Again in verse 6, still referring to his service, he had spoken of the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now we have something additional to this, for the manifestation of the life of Jesus is not just service. It is character. In his unconverted days Saul of Tarsus manifested himself, as a man of imperious energy and self-will, in his mortal flesh. Now all was changed. The dying of Jesus was so applied to him that the Saul character was effectually stilled in death, and the life of Jesus manifested.
Nothing less than this is true and proper Christian testimony. Behind preaching and service lies the life. Christ in His glory should be clearly manifested in the preaching, but that manifestation will only reach to its maximum of power and effect as Christ is manifested in the life. And this is as true in regard to ourselves today as it was for the Apostle Paul. Without a doubt here lies one of the main reasons for the ineffectiveness of so much modern preaching, even though the preaching itself is correct and sound.
Verses 10 and 11, then show us that, as the result of death working in Paul, life wrought in him, and the life of Jesus was lived by him. Verse 12 shows that there was a further result — life wrought also in those to whom he ministered, and notably the Corinthians. Some years before life had worked to their conversion. Now he was rejoicing to see further evidence of life in their genuine repentance as regards their wrong-doing and their affection for himself in spite of his rebukes. And lastly he looked forward to the resurrection world where they together with him would be presented in due season. Verse 14 mentions this.
The words, “I believed, and therefore have I spoken,” are quoted from Psalms 116:1010I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted: (Psalm 116:10). If that Psalm be studied it will be seen that the circumstances of the Psalmist when he wrote were very similar to those of Paul. He had been confronted by death and tears and falling, but had been delivered; and now he had the confidence that he would “walk before the Lord in the land of the living:” that is he had the resurrection world in view. Believing that, he was able to open his mouth in testimony. Now Paul was just like that. He had “the same spirit of faith.” The resurrection world was full in view for him.
Is it fully in view for us? It should be. Life and incorruptibility have come to light by the Gospel: and that which was known partially to the Psalmist may be known in full measure by us. It is only as we live in the light of resurrection that we can be content to bear about in our bodies the dying of Jesus; and only as we do that is the life of Jesus manifested in our bodies, and does life work in others whom we may serve.
F. B. Hole.
The clearest and most important exposition of the revelation of God in the inspired Book is the revelation of God in the renewed man. Every Christian will discover, in proportion to his advances in divine knowledge, that the very things which arc written in these hallowed pages are written in his own experience. We never fully understand divine truth until we have experienced it; the diamond of divine promise never glistens so brightly as when it is placed in the setting of personal trial and experience.
C.H.S.