2 Corinthians 4:7-15 Amplified Bible
7 But we have this precious treasure [the good news about salvation] in [unworthy] earthen vessels [of human frailty], so that the grandeur and surpassing greatness of the power will be [shown to be] from God [His sufficiency] and not from ourselves. 8 We are pressured in every way [hedged in], but not crushed; perplexed [unsure of finding a way out], but not driven to despair; 9 hunted down and persecuted, but not deserted [to stand alone]; struck down, but never destroyed; 10 always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the [resurrection] life of Jesus also may be shown in our body. 11 For we who live are constantly [experiencing the threat of] being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the [resurrection] life of Jesus also may be evidenced in our mortal body [which is subject to death]. 12 So physical death is [actively] at work in us, but [spiritual] life [is actively at work] in you.
13 Yet we have the same spirit of faith as he had, who wrote in Scripture, “I believed, therefore I spoke.” We also believe, therefore we also speak, 14 knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and will present us [along] with you in His presence. 15 For all [these] things are for your sake, so that as [God’s remarkable, undeserved] grace reaches to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of [our great] God.
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen, Amen.
2 Corinthians 4:11-12 Easy-to-Read Version
11 We are alive, but for Jesus we are always in danger of death, so that the life of Jesus can be seen in our bodies that die. 12 So death is working in us, but the result is that life is working in you.
2 Corinthians 4:11-12New International Version
11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
Are we being so changed by our relationship with Christ that others who are in our lives see the glory of His character? How can we share in the dying of Jesus?
What we all want in this life as baptized Christians, of course, is to be like Him.
But the power of God is the miracle of others seeing in us, in the midst of our pressures and trials, our life which reveals the character and the life of Jesus.
I have always been taken aback and challenged by the verse in Colossians 1, where Paul prays that his friends in Colossae may be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might
(Colossians 1:11a).
11 [we pray that you may be] strengthened and invigorated with all power, according to His glorious might, to attain every kind of endurance and patience with joy;
What are they going to use all this power for?
It sounds as though Paul ought to say, So that you can go about doing great miracles; so that you can astonish people with the tremendous magnetism of your preaching and teaching and be followed by great crowds.
But that is not what he says. He says, I pray that you may be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience
(Colossians 1:11).
That is what takes power; that is where the life, the power of God is manifest.
That is the life of Jesus.
As you read through the gospels, the Spirit of God brings to your mind’s eye a far more beautiful and wonderful picture, perhaps, of Jesus’ character and life.
What you see His compassion of heart, His moral beauty that attracted people everywhere He went.
You see the serenity of His spirit, how He moves through every scene of anger and unrest with calmness and quietness.
You see His disciplined will and His obvious joy in living.
That is the life of Jesus,
and that is what we want, isn’t it?
How do you get it?
The secret, Paul says, is our consent to share in the dying of Jesus.
What does he mean by the dying of Jesus
?
You know he does not mean that we have to get ourselves nailed to a cross.
But that cross is a symbol of something very real in our experience.
What was Jesus like on the cross?
He was not powerful and impressive and significant anymore; now a criminal, He was not being applauded by the multitudes that listened to His every word.
No. The cross was a place of great physical weakness, of ultimate humiliation, of ultimate rejection by the scornful, proud and arrogant world around Him.
It was a place of lethal obscurity, a place where He was choosing, willing to lose everything He had built and to trust God to bring it back and make it significant.
We are only human, but we each want to live a life which matters
Pride before the Fall? Have you been in those circumstances recently, where no matter what you do you just cannot seem to get any glory or credit for yourself?
That is exactly where God wants you, because out of those times of inordinate pressure, times of hurt and despair and heartache and a sense of a Christian life being wasted and not used, God is working His will.
Others, perhaps, are being given life because of the death we are going through.
In our Scripture Lesson for this day, apostle Paul says that God has decided to put the most urgent and essential message of all time—the greatest treasure in the world—the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ inside of “jars of clay.”
Clay jars were used to carry water and other goods during Paul’s day.
And clay is a common substance that is available almost everywhere, and potters mastered the art of forming clay jars on their pottery wheels.
While some clay jars were beautifully decorated, most were humble vessels.
But whether they were plain or beautiful, they had a life-giving function—that of the gathering, preserving, and transporting of food, water to thirsty people.
Clay jars are also remarkably fragile—breaking if dropped or hit by a stone.
Not many clay jars survived a person’s lifetime—and even fewer survived to be passed down through several generations.
And Paul here uses the metaphor of jars of clay to represent us Christians who by our baptisms now carry God’s message of salvation by grace through faith in Christ Jesus—that is the treasure!!!
I think jars of clay are an outstanding metaphor for our brief lives.
We have but a few “short” decades to proclaim and share the Gospel at best.
I also love this metaphor of clay jars because it reminds me of my calling to proclaim the Gospel, but I am also conscious of my inadequacy to do just that.
But notice again what Paul writes in verse 7: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
Why is this important?
Well, for one thing, it gives us a good reason for practicing our humility daily.
Humility is 100% essential for anyone of us who seek to be vessels who carry the message of God’s love to other people who are thirsting to hear and see it.
When we forget that Christianity is not about us, is not about our opinions, is not about our rights and privileges—that is when we start to veer off track and cause the Gospel—which is really no Gospel at all—to look like a bad thing to the rest of society, like a judgmental and “I’m always better than you” thing.
In our reading, Paul doesn’t mince words, nor does he lie when he rightly points out that the honor of our being a bearer of the Gospel in this world is complex.
And this is because we are all human.
We all live with sin, temptations, limitations, the stark reality and the fragility of being easily broken, taken down a peg or two, at any given point in our lives.
Even the extraordinarily well educated Master Pharisee Paul freely admits to moments being perplexed, hard-pressed, persecuted, and often struck down.
But he says that even though this is the case, we are not left in despair, we are not abandoned, we are not left without any hope and we are not destroyed.
And this is all because of our Savior Jesus and our Savior Jesus only!
Isaiah 53:4-6 Amplified Bible
4
But [in fact] He has borne our griefs,
And He has carried our sorrows and pains;
Yet we [ignorantly] assumed that He was stricken,
Struck down by God and degraded and humiliated [by Him].
5
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our wickedness [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing];
The punishment [required] for our well-being fell on Him,
And by His stripes (wounds) we are healed.
6
All of us like sheep have gone astray,
We have turned, each one, to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the wickedness of us all [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing]
To fall on Him [instead of us].
Even when we fulfill prophesy, like sheep we go astray, get off course and our eyes lose sight of the Shepherd, let go of God’s hand, God never lets go of ours.
Even when we prophetically mess up and prophetically do really dumb things, God is with us and God’s Holy Spirit leads us to repentance and reconciliation.
In spite of these self fulfilling prophesies, If we are willing vessels, God can accomplish some very good things through us even when we make mistakes…
…because…
…it’s NEVER GOING TO BE ABOUT US—it’s always about the treasure of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified and Risen that is the “surpassing power from God.”
I hope this enables us to be honest about our frailty, our human-ness—not only with God and others but with ourselves.
Phariseeism, or trying to be perfect according to the Law according to our own strength, can and will cause us all kinds of connectional, relational problems, such as isolation and low self-esteem, frustration, and possibly mental illness.
But when we finally achieve a place in our baptism, accept that God accepts us—even as imperfect jars of clay- we can accept ourselves and others and enjoy the fruitful journey of being one of Jesus Christ’s very fragile human disciples.
And that is the healthy way to live.
And that is attractive to other people.
Because no one is perfect.
Because no one should ever expect to be perfect or made perfect in this life.
Because no one is going to be perfect in this life.
And if we try and pretend we are perfect, we will find ourselves in a lonely place, an anonymous place, a darkened secretive and a broken place walking on eggs.
John 3:28-31 Amplified Bible
28 You yourselves are my witnesses that I stated, ‘I am not the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed),’ but, ‘I have [only] been sent ahead of Him [as His appointed forerunner and messenger to announce and proclaim His coming].’ 29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands by and listens to him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this pleasure and joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase [in prominence], but I must decrease.
31 “He who comes from [heaven] above is above all others; he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks [about things] of the earth [his viewpoint and experience are earthly]. He who comes from heaven is above all.
The power of God’s living Word makes God’s light shine in our hearts, for “we [dare not] preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord….” (2 Corinthians 3:1-3)
Ministers of a New Covenant
3 Are we starting to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some [false teachers], letters of recommendation to you or from you? [No!] 2 You are our letter [of recommendation], written in our hearts, recognized and read by everyone. 3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
If the message of God is going to be robustly revealed throughout our lives, we must absolutely get out of the way.
And what a relief that is.
It is a relief to know we don’t have to try and save the world—we are not expected to save the world.
Only the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ can and will save the world.
So, we are free to be humble.
We are free to be ourselves.
We are free to be wholly and fully human.
We no longer have to live with the pressure of fighting for all the attention or demanding our rights, our way, and so forth.
We don’t have to judge the world and tell the world it is wrong and we are right.
We are to allow God’s light to shine through our lives simply and humbly.
The life of a humble servant of Christ may not be easy, but it should be a stress reducer.
Paul says, “For we who are alive are being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.”
We are to die to self and live for Christ.
We are to die to our wants and live for what Christ wants.
We are to die to selfishness, envy and the like and live lives of humble transparency and love.
The world talks a whole lot about human power, but the real characteristic of a human being is not our power but our weakness, what God can and will achieve through that weakness.
There is a story about a water carrier in India who had two large clay jars, and each jar hung on either end of a pole that she carried across her shoulders.
One of the jars had a crack in it, and the other did not.
After the long walk from the source of water, the cracked jar always arrived at its destination half full.
And this caused the jar with no crack to become proud of its own accomplishments.
But the cracked jar was ashamed of its imperfection and was miserable that it could only accomplish half of what it was created to do.
One day, the cracked jar spoke to the water carrier, “I am ashamed of myself,” it said.
“You need not be ashamed of yourself,” replied the water carrier who had an appreciation for the old cracked jar.
She said, “As we return to our destination, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.”
And sure enough, as they went down the path, the old cracked jar saw the sun warming the beautiful flowers on the side of the path.
But at the end of the trail, the cracked jar felt bad again because it had leaked half its load.
The water carrier asked, “Did you notice that there were flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other side?
That is because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it.
I planted flower seeds on your side of the path and every day while we walk back from the stream, you’ve watered them.
For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table.
Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty in his house.”
Each of us have our own unique flaws.
We are all cracked jars.
We are all only human, weak and fragile.
But God is able to do great things, even through our weakness if we allow Him.
And that is an ample reason to greatly rejoice in whom God has created us to be.
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Heavenly Father, thank You that Jesus died and was raised from the dead for my sake. Thank You for the ministry of Paul whose life was a little reflection of Christ’s deep love for us… as he selflessly shared the gospel of grace to lost souls and was willing to be delivered over to suffering and death for love of the Lord Jesus so that the life of Christ might be manifest through him. I pray that I would be willing to die to my own self-interest for the love of Christ Jesus so that I may also be used by You to spread the good news of the gospel of grace and the life of Jesus might be manifest in my mortal body too. This I ask in Jesus’ precious name, Alleluia, Alleluia, AMEN.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen, Amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 