Or, The Heart of TEC (Pt 5)
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Date: August 7, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
This is the last paragraph in 2 Corinthians 4, and the last paragraph we’ll consider in this short series on the Heart of TEC. Though it’s the end of the chapter, these are the verses that first drew me into the chapter a dozen years ago. This paragraph is on my emergency text list.
In fact, I turned us to this passage on what turned out to be the last Sunday for our in-person assembling on March 15, 2020, prior to seven weeks of livestream only services. Knowing what we know know, for all the things I might do differently, looking at the glory in these verses is the easiest, no-brainer good choice.
The whole chapter can be seen as a summary of Paul’s ministry, but in particular how in his ministry he did not lose heart. As Tyndale put it, “we are not weried.” These are likewise truths at that are at the heart of TEC, and worth considering especially as we bless the Lord for providing this place for our assembly and as we ask Him to make us fruitful.
This sentence starts the final paragraph of chapter four just as it launched the first paragraph of the chapter.
So we do not lose heart.
He considered himself a weak, clay pot (verse 7), carrying the treasure of the gospel ministry, suffering for and speaking about the truth of the Lord Jesus. He was afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down (verses 8-9). He was thumped and thrashed around. He was worn out in his work for the Lord. Through all of it he maintained his confidence, We do not lose heart.
He means that his soul was secure. Though threatened, he couldn’t be defeated. Though tempted to wander, he wouldn’t go AWOL. His daily dying brought grace and life to others. He wasn’t going to stop. The plural, we do not lose heart, wraps every ministering pot in this confidence.
In the first paragraph (4:1-6) Paul explained that we don’t lose heart because our ministry is driven by the Spirit and because it is a privileged calling. In this paragraph (4:16-18) he will double-underline the promises that keep us on course.
While there are great promises that give us heart, it doesn’t always appear that things are okay.
Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
Paul concedes, that is, he admits it’s true, that his best life was not now. He says, but (even if) our outer self is wasting away, (and it is). He yields the point as if he were in an argument, that the outer self, the part of us that can be seen, hurts. He’s not referring to the “old man” of the flesh, but the “mortal flesh” (verse 11) that bleeds and dies.
We are wasting away, being destroyed, “decaying” (NAS), “perishing” (NKJV). It’s like rusting out. It is the aging, decaying, draining process in view here, a process that never sleeps.
There’s no need to deny it. Our confidence doesn’t come because we escape attrition and affliction. It is hard. But for the one who has the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ in his heart, the ruin of the outer man isn’t the only process at work. Even as the outer man is wasting away (and it is), our inner self is being renewed day by day. The inner man, the soul of a man, is being renewed, and that renewal is as constant as the sunrise, day by day (a particular phrase only used here in the NT). The resurrection of Jesus fuels every believer’s inner engine. It is a hidden strengthening in visible suffering.
Even our concession about the reality of afflictions can’t cause us to lose heart. And there is more to say, as verses 17-18 explain part of the renewal process.
God operates behind the scenes in ways not everyone sees or knows about. There are principles at work in the universe, principles established by the Creator of the universe, that work the afflictions and hardships into something better. Clay pot pilgrims have three considerations about afflictions.
That is, the essence or the attributes of difficulties.
For this light momentary affliction
”The momentary lightness of affliction” would be another good translation. The primary focus is on the adjective light. We normally feel light when we’re not afflicted. We speak about how difficulties weigh on us; they burden us. But Paul claims that they are light. How can he possibly say that?
Afflictions are not slight (insignificant, or inconsiderable), but they are light in comparison to the weight (the heaviness) of glory that is coming. Trouble isn’t trivial. It’s not a game; it’s not recess; it’s not semantics. It does bring us to our breaking points. It will feel like we can’t take any more. The burden feels like a death sentence (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). The point is that the pilgrim’s heavy and hard way is light and easy when put on the balance with the glory we’ll receive later.
Not only are they light, our afflictions are also momentary. The best they can do is consume consecutive minutes. But they are confined to moments. And again, by comparison, these are short compared to the eternal weight of glory. No clock or calendar can quantify the infinite duration of our coming experience. Afflictions for the pilgrim are light and momentary.
Afflictions are not useless or vain. They are working hard on our behalf.
this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
Present trouble is preparing for us an inexhaustible future of joy. The infinite and eternal glory is real. We can’t see it now, but it exists.
Not only is it real, it is almost unbelievable. It is an exaggeration. Paul says it is beyond all comparison, “far more exceeding” (KJV), a glory that “far outweighs them all” (NIV). The Greek phrase is καθʼ ὑπερβολὴν εἰς ὑπερβολὴν; a superlative use of what gives us our English word hyperbole. It means to take something to an extraordinary degree, to the extreme.
The glory is “according to hyperbole unto hyperbole,” one hyperbole heaped on another, meaning that it is exceeding exceedingly glorious in the highest possible degree. “You may pass from one degree to another; from one sublime height to another; but still an infinity remains beyond. Nothing can describe the uppermost height of that glory, nothing can express its infinitude” (Barnes, quoted in Calvin, 213).
How are afflictions preparing glory for us? What are afflictions affecting? They aren’t making the glory more glorious. They aren’t making things in heaven better. They are making us better able to enjoy the glory.
Our joy-glory buckets are so small, so easily filled. In order to know and enjoy this kind of glory, God is increasing the size of our joy thimbles, by afflictions, into honker buckets for joy. The afflictions are working for us a greater experience of glory.
I imagine that if a thimble had a mouth, a thimble would cry out in pain when put in the furnace to be heated, hammered and shaped into a bigger pot. It is stretching for a kettle to be heated and beaten into a cauldron. But if we would enjoy an exceeding weight of glory forever, the suffering of the present life prepares us.
Comparatively, afflictions are light and momentary. Effectively, afflictions work infinite and eternal joy for us.
How do we know that our inner man is being renewed day by day, especially since we see the outer man being ruined? How do we know that brutal, constant suffering is for our good, and relatively short and painless? How do we not lose heart? By living on unseen things.
as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
This is the money quote. The pilgrim either keeps walking on or collapses depending on his focus. We’re not looking on the things that are seen. “Looking” includes more intention than simply seeing what’s in the periphery, we pay attention to the unseen.
The things that are seen are the things of this world, both bad and good. Afflictions and comforts, the outer man issues, circumstances and situations, people and problems, a day in the life of a clay pot. Seen things may be sicknesses, bills, broken appliances, recessions, and heat waves. Seen things may also include good things such as health, resources, friendships, and family.
The reason that pilgrim’s don’t look to or depend on “seen things” is because they consider that the things that are seen are transient (“temporal” NAS, “temporary” NIV). The seen things only last for a time. They are impermanent, here today and then poof.
The pilgrim can’t afford to spend his money on that which isn’t bread or his labor for that which doesn’t satisfy. Losing heart is at stake. His eternal glory is at stake. He must look to something else.
He looks to the things that are unseen. Of course there is irony in “looking for” things that can’t be “looked at” but, more importantly, what are these unseen things?
The immediate unseen thing is our soul, and the souls of men. It is the inner man.
The ultimate unseen thing is God Himself. Paul wrote at the end of his testimony, “To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God” (1 Timothy 1:17). The author of Hebrews wrote that “(Moses) left Egypt by faith, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27).
John Bunyan saw God as the primary unseen thing in 2 Corinthians 4:18. In his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, he wrote about his two-step plan to prepare his soul for prison.
Before I came to prison, I saw what was a-coming, and had especially two considerations warm upon my heart; the first was how to be able to endure, should my imprisonment be long and tedious; the second was how to be able to encounter death, should that be here my portion….[T]hat saying in 2 Co. 1:9 was of great use to me, “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but God which raiseth the dead.” By this scripture I was made to see, that if I would ever suffer rightly, I must pass a sentence of death upon everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments, and all, as dead to me, and myself as dead to them… .
The second was, to live upon God that is invisible; as Paul said in another place, the way not to faint, is to “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 2 Co. 4:18… .
That was the key to John Bunyan’s Christian journey: not to look to the seen, but “to live upon God that is invisible.” In other words, Bunyan survived by living on unseen things.
”Live on” is close to “look to”; it expresses the same idea. To “live on” something is to survive solely by consuming a certain thing. Live on coffee and nicotine.
I’d like to add, though, that Paul could have said, “not looking at the seen things, but looking to the unseen God.” That’s true, but that’s not exactly what he wrote. I’m okay with understanding God as part, or even the primary part, of unseen things, but I think we can be more precise. When we live on unseen things, I think Paul is referring to gospel promises.
The the things that are unseen are eternal, God is eternal, but so are the promises He makes to His pilgrims. Every word of God is “living and abiding” and “remains forever” (1 Peter 1:23-25), and the promises in 2 Corinthians 4 alone are enough to live on. The promised weight of glory is eternal, and that promise keeps us going even though we’re weary now. He promises that we’ll be raised and presented in God’s presence, and that promise is as certain as God’s Son is alive (4:14). There are some things that must end and some that must never end.
The gospel promises of spiritual sight, life, resurrection, fellowship with Jesus and His Body, and weight of glory are not seen now, but they are eternal. They last. They are without equal and without end. His promises are everlasting, indelible. Pilgrim’s will not work, pray, suffer, sojourn, die, and keep heart unless they live on these unseen things.
Bunyan knew the importance of promises. He said,
I tell thee, friend, there are some promises that the Lord hath helped me to lay hold of Jesus Christ through and by, that I would not have out of the Bible for as much gold and silver as can lie between York and London piled up to the stars. (“Sighs from Hell,” in The Works of John Bunyan, vol. 3, 721)
One crucial clarification needs be made. According to 2 Corinthians 4, afflictions are light and momentary for those looking on unseen things. Those who are blinded by the god of this world to the gospel of the glory of Christ, those who remain in spiritual darkness, have “light and momentary afflictions” compared to the eternal weight of guilt and wrath being stored up for them on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed (cf. Romans 2:5). Their outer self is wasting away, and there is no renewal of the inner man. The inner man is rotting and being ruined right alongside the outer man. Your pain is but a taste of more pain unless you follow Christ by faith.
“For in the reprobate, too, the outward man decays, but without anything to compensate for it.” (John Calvin)
But, Christian, are you living on unseen things, or neglecting them, or worse, despising them? Clay pots will look to get out of the rotation unless they’re held up by promises.
May the Lord bless TEC to be a people living from faith to faith, from day to day, from extraordinary to extraordinary, from glory to glory.
Is your heart downcast, in heaviness? Even though you haven’t seen Him, look to Jesus. Are you weary, a cracked and cracking pot, questioning if you’ll be good for another day’s use? Look to the hyperbole of His power. Somehow, among all the things fading away, He is equipping you with the luxury package. Don’t lose heart.
[A]ccording to the riches of his glory, may he grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:16–17a, ESV)