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 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. ESVUK

The ‘dyings’ (sufferings) of Christian leadership, are for the sake of the church (see also 12). Ministry is other-person centred.

There is a simple equation in this verse: ”more and more people” experiencing ”grace” (being converted), means more and more worship for God/more and more glory to God. The ultimate purpose of ministry, with all its costs, is that God should have more and more worshippers.

I remember reading a book about evangelism, written by John Stott. I believe he said that the ultimate purpose of evangelism is not the salvation of lost sinners, as glorious as that is. It is rather the glory of God.

‘…Paul is keen that the end result would be more praise arising to the living God. The more people are praising God, the more the world is taking the shape it was meant to have…’ Tom Wright

In his biography of John Calvin, John Piper writes about Calvin’s God-centredness, and he bemoans the evident man-centredness in much of modern evangelicalism. He quotes Leslie Newbiggin:

‘I suddenly saw that someone could use all the language of of evangelical Christianity, and yet the centre was fundamentally the self, my need of salvation. And God is auxiliary to that…I also saw that quite a lot of evangelical Christianity can easily slip, can become centred in me and my need of salvation, and not in the glory of God.’

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke”, we also believe, and so we also speak, ¹⁴ knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. ESVUK

We’re not keeping this quiet, not on your life. Just like the psalmist who wrote, “I believed it, so I said it,” we say what we believe. And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive. The Message

As a Jew, Paul was steeped in the Psalms, and he spoke in the same spirit as the psalmist in the 116th psalm. He continued to believe, and affirm his faith, in the face of suffering – the psalmist did, and so did Paul. At the heart of Paul’s confession is the resurrection of Jesus and its implications for believers. Although he is constantly exposed to the threat of death, here is his core conviction, and he verbalises it. The essence of the Christian hope is, in a word, Jesus. Paul expresses this clearly in Philippians 1:21-23:

 ”For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. ²² If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. ²³ I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

In his book, ‘Hope in times of fear’, Tim Keller refers to J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’. He says, ‘Sam Gamgee has been guarding his master, Frodo, during a harrowing journey through a deadly, evil country. At one point he rescued Frodo from a prison tower out of sheer force of will. Later he is falling asleep and sees a white star twinkling in the sky:

The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him

…real courage comes with self-forgetfulness based on joy. It comes from a conviction that we here on earth are trapped temporarily in a little corner of darkness, but the universe of God is an enormous place of light and high beauty, and that is our certain, final destiny. It is so because of Jesus.’

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke”, we also believe, and so we also speak…

• Believing and suffering. Paul aligns himself and his fellow-workers with the psalmist who continued to believe in the face of suffering (Psalm 116:10. Alec Motyer’s excellent quote on this Psalm is worthy of repetition: ‘Just as of old, it was a great cry for help (Ex.2:23-24) that initiated the exodus acts of God, so faith working by prayer remains the greatest force available to God’s earthly people’).
• Believing and speaking go together. If we believe it we will want to confess it, somewhere, some way, somehow. Beliefs in the heart naturally want to overflow through the mouth. The call to preach is a call to let the Bible speak; to say only what it says: ”…according to what has been written…” So the conviction that it is the Word of God is of crucial importance. It is a travesty when people stand in the pulpit and try to talk about the Bible, but they don’t really believe it. God may nevertheless bless any truth genuinely spoken. If it is gospel truth, the seed can still take root and grow. But preachers who don’t believe what they are saying will lack conviction and authenticity. That said, I once knew a vicar who was converted in the middle of one of his own sermons. It lit up and became alive to him. Truly, God’s ways are mysterious and wonderful.

 …always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. ¹¹ For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. ¹² So death is at work in us, but life in you.

‘…the apostle finds himself modelled on the gospel itself, living it out in his own person, his own body. And he has come to believe that this is not an accident. It is part of the deal, part of the commission.’ Tom Wright

We know that Paul and his team suffered physically. They were persecuted terribly, and endured many privations. They were repeatedly exposed to the danger of death. It stalked them. This may well be the experience of someone reading these notes. Perhaps for many it won’t be. But every death we have to die in order to live the Christian life, to share the faith, to advance the cause of the gospel, to serve the church, is the key to the life of Jesus being ”manifested” (10,11).

We can’t feel guilty if we live in a freer, more tolerant culture. We are where we are. We are living where God plants us (unless, we are Jonah-like in resisting His call to move elsewhere). But everyone who sincerely seeks to live a faithful life of Christian discipleship, anywhere in the world will have to do a lot of dying. (I’m also mindful that here in the west we are seeing a number of our freedoms being slowly, but surely, eroded. Who can say what we may have to face in the not too distant future?).

It is also the case that Christian leadership everywhere involves dying a thousand little deaths, day by day, moment by moment.

But, (12), just as Jesus’ death brings life to others, so a ministry patterned on Him will be life-giving. The church has always needed leaders who are willing to die. This is the cost of authentic ministry. I believe it was J.H. Jowett who said, ‘There is no blessing without bleeding.’

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; ¹⁰ always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. ESV

Many years ago, when I was a pastor of a church in Lancaster, I lived in the nearby coastal town of Morecambe. One day, after doing some pastoral visitation in the city, I decided to walk home. As I came down the hill into Torrisholme, a suburb of Morecambe, I noticed a car parked on the other side of the road. A few minutes later this same car was alongside me. The window was wound down, and a detective showed me his credentials. It transpired that a crime had been committed in that area the previous evening, and I fitted the description of the culprit! Anyway, after a few questions he let me go on my way. (I really did have nothing to do with it, I assure you). But here’s how I knew he was a genuine police officer: his credentials.

In this passage we see Paul’s fragility on display (and there is going to be much more of this to come in the letter). But in a sense we can say he is ‘showing his credentials’, as a genuine apostle.

Talk about kicking a man when he is down. It’s hard to imagine that his opponents would criticise him for his weakness, unfavourably contrasting him with themselves. But it does seem to be the case that this is what they were doing. They were such ‘superstar’ leaders: so charismatic, so powerful (or so they imagined).

But Paul states clearly that authentic Christian ministry is cruciform in shape (10-12). The only way to ‘Easter Sunday’ life and power is by ‘Good Friday’ dying. What a thought that the very life of Jesus can be ”manifested” in a fragile human body. A repeated theme in this letter is that it is through weakness that we experience such power.

‘To me, ’twas not the truth you taught, to you so clear, to me so dim;

But when you came to me you brought a sense of Him.

And from your eyes He beckons me, and from your heart His love is shed,

Till I lose sight of you, and see the Christ instead.’

One final thought for today: it is good to know that, in Christ, what comes against us doesn’t have to finish us (Rom.8:28). I am struck by the contrast between ”We are…but not…” One day we will be able to say of every trial, ‘It came to pass.’

PRAYER: Lord, I often feel so weak, overwhelmed really. The truth is I am weak. But I ask that in my weakness you will be seen, shining in your glorious strength. Cause other people to see your reality in me, for your glory.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. ESV

Paul never wanted the ‘jar of clay’ to be confused with the ‘treasure’.

Tom Wright, in his commentary on 2 Corinthians, talks about Sir Oliver Franks, who was the British Ambassador to the United States at the time the cold war began. He describes how he often needed to get urgent, top secret messages between Washington and London. There was a diplomatic bag which went back and forth each day, carrying confidential documents across the Atlantic by air. But when something was ‘really confidential, utterly top secret, and desperately urgent’ he wouldn’t put it in a bag that everyone knew was important. Rather he placed it in an ordinary envelope and sent it by regular mail. Tom Wright adds:

‘What Paul is saying is that there is no chance of anyone confusing the content of the envelope with the very unremarkable envelope itself. The messenger is not important; what matters, vitally and urgently, is the message…The Corinthians had been looking at the envelope – at Paul’s own public figure, his speaking style, and at the fact that he is in and out of trouble, weakness, and now near to death – and they have concluded that there is nothing at all remarkable about him. He ought to look more important than that, surely, if he really is a messenger with a message from the living God! No, says Paul: you’re missing the point. Precisely because of the vital importance of the message, the messenger must be dispensable.’

We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. NLT

I often think about ‘Sting’s song ‘How fragile we are’. I first heard it while driving in my car early one morning, and it immediately resonated with me. We are indeed ‘fragile’. We may not always like to let it show, but in our depths we know it to be so.

We have seen:

• We don’t preach about ourselves (5): Jesus Christ is Lord, and we are His servants. We know our place. We are not the message; we are the messengers. One of the ways some of us serve the Lord Jesus (if it is our calling) is by proclaiming Him. But we further see today:
• We don’t serve in our own strength (7): It is self-evident that there is a fragility about us. We are like easily breakable ”clay jars”. In ourselves we are weak, but what God has put inside of us is so powerful. When people see, and hear, us doing what we can’t naturally do, people glorify the God who empowers us. ”But we have this treasure in earthenware pots, so that the extraordinary quality of the power may belong to God, not to us.” Tom Wright translation

 For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. NLT

Although it is true that the gospel is hidden to many people, because there is a devil who blindfolds them (4), we should not despair. Because the same God who said, at the beginning, ”Let there be light,” (and there was light! Gen.1:3) is able to do the same in human hearts. His Word is His work. In His Sovereignty He can, in a moment of new creation (5:17) make ”this light shine” inside people, so that they do see Jesus clearly. Paul, of course, knew this so well from his own experience (Acts 9:1-19a).

‘The gospel isn’t about a different god, someone other than the world’s original creator, but about the same creator God bringing new life and light to his world, the world where death and darkness have made their home and usurped his role.’ Tom Wright.

When you have confidence in this God, and the message He has entrusted to your stewardship, you won’t play fast and loose with it; you won’t tamper or tinker with it, won’t distort it. You will rather, as Spurgeon is purported to have said about the Bible, just ‘let it out of its cage.’ It will do its own divinely appointed work.

This was certainly Paul’s reality. He knew only too well the power of the gospel (Rom.1:18).

 You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake. NLT

Every preacher is meant to be, like John the Baptist, a signpost – pointing away from themselves to Jesus:

”The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29 (see also 1:19-27).

Let’s get their eyes on Jesus. We are not the message, and we must not get in the way of it. The Holy Spirit can only be expected to bless preaching that glorifies Jesus (John 16:14).

‘Paul is very concerned that the Corinthians might have supposed he regarded himself as the head of the organisation. He is simply a servant, a porter, a secretary, an assistant: he is merely someone who introduces people to the top man. He is one of the Messiah’s office staff.’

There is a famous quote attributed to Count Von Zinzendorf: ‘Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten’.

‘Jesus, lover of my soul
All consuming fire is in your gaze
Jesus, I want you to know
I will follow You all my days
For no one else in history is like you
and history itself belongs to You
Alpha and Omega, You have loved me
And I will share eternity with you

It’s all about You, Jesus
and all this is for You
for Your glory and your fame
It’s not about me
as if You should do things my way
You alone are God and I surrender
to your ways.’ Paul Oakley.