Ordinary – 2 Corinthians 4:7-18
For God who said, “light shall shine out of darkness”, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 2 Cor 4:6
The next verse reveals a core truth about God’s intention to shine the light of his glory into the darkness of this world.
But we have this treasure in earthen (ordinary) vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves.
What treasure is Paul referring to? 1 Corinthians 3:16 provides the answer.
Do you not know you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
God’s plan of revealing Himself to the world involves you and I – the receptacles of his indwelling Spirit. So how does this light within get projected outwardly into the surrounding darkness? What must happen to produce for us this eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison? Paul responds, “It may require some momentary light affliction.” We ask, timidly, “How light?” Paul’s response…..
We are afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down and our outer man is decaying.
And so we ask, “How could affliction possibly produce any light? Where is the victory in this negativity?” Paul’s would ask us to bear with his foolishness a little longer……
Even though we are afflicted in every way, we are not crushed. Even though we are perplexed, we aren’t despairing about it. Even though we are persecuted, we are not forsaken. Even though we are struck down we are not destroyed. And, even though our bodies are deteriorating, our spirits are being renewed every day.
Paul goes on to explain the mysterious perplexity of suffering….
We are always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body, for we are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal bodies.
Paul, knowing this is complicated, continues ….
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
If I am not mistaken Paul just challenged our inalienable right to pursue happiness. How un-American of him! Yet, for light to truly shine from sea to shining sea, it is going to require, a right response on our part, to affliction. While it may not be in keeping with western culture’s personal-success gospel, scripture makes it clear, God is glorified as much (if not more) by endurance through affliction as He is by deliverance from it.
Knowing now that becoming the light of the world involves more than asking Jesus into our hearts, do we remain as attracted to that eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison?
Father, each of us know affliction to some degree. As to the why behind it, we are perplexed and even knocked down. Help us to see, like Paul, that our afflictions are merely light and momentary. Where we have been knocked down and confused by our trials, help us to our feet where we can focus on the eternal things beyond our sight. Help us to shine brightly in the midst of our particular darkness. May our extra ordinary lives provide the surprising context for Your incomparable and compelling glory. Amen.
Rob,
I think you are correct in thinking that many people do not wish to suffer. However, I think that there are many who are willing to suffer. They just are unable to distinguish between suffering and correction. It was Jesus’ home town that rejected him. It was the religious leaders who crucified Him. It was the religious leaders who persecuted the early apostles. It was the Catholic Church that killed so many protestants. It was the first Protestant groups that killed the Anabaptists.
These people were persecuted by and suffered under those who should have been shepherding them. I wonder how many began to follow Jesus, Peter, Paul, Jan Huss, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Smyth, Menno Simmons, or Rodger Williams, but when persecution came, they saw it as the loving correction of a shepherd. The leaders who were torturing and killing the children of God claimed to be doing so for the sake of the souls of those whom they were afflicting. I wonder how many of these followers believed this and fell into line rather than suffering. These people should not be judged too harshly. The persecutors were those who had taught them everything they knew about God and His Kingdom (however wrong that teaching may have been at times). Plus, as I have mentioned, these are the people they should have been able to trust. In fact, even the Bible tells us to honor these elders and to submit to their correction. I think this is one of the problems with the institution. The leaders make their teaching the ultimate end of true faith, but when people try to follow where God wants to lead them, their human leaders try to convince them that they are wrong and that God would rather them do something else.
Most of my life, I wanted to be a missionary because I wanted to suffer for Jesus. This would have been an acceptable form of suffering within the culture of the institution. However, that was not what God had in store for me. When I finally began to get an idea of what God had in store for me is when I began to suffer. I have not actually suffered physically. I have suffered a little financially as I have had (at some points in the journey) to struggle along the road God has for me with no support. My family and I have really struggled a lot emotionally when the treatment we received from “elders” (for attempting to do what God has called us to) has felt almost like we were under church discipline. If this type of thing had happened years earlier, I may have submitted thinking that I was under legitimate correction. I would not have been shying away from suffering, I would have been trusting that these leaders were assisting me in becoming righteous. In that case, I think I would have eventually lost my passion and become the typical hypnotized sheep that is so prevalent within the walls of the institution.
I wonder how many sheep used to be energetic gazelles for Jesus who ended up with broken hearts when the shepherds’ voices proved to be so much louder than the Shepherd’s. They may have even ended up “suffering” on the mission field or in a parsonage where they had to live well below the poverty level because this is how people “suffer for Jesus.” The problem is that our loving Father never called them to this.
I think there are a lot more people who would willingly suffer if they knew that He was the one leading them. However, they are torn. Their head has been convinced that their faith is supposed to look like everyone else’s. Their heart knows that they are not on the track God has laid out for them. We need to be about the business of teaching believers that they do hear God’s voice (as Jesus said) and supporting them in efforts to follow where He is leading THEM (not where He is leading US).
Curtis Eastin
You hit on a number of painful and important points Curtis. Any ideas how the “THEM’s” and “US’s” could work toward unity in spirit? Or, are we doomed to our impasses?
The THEM I refer to are the people whom we are helping to discern God’s voice. We already have unity with those people in that they (like us) simply want to follow God. The point I was trying to make I that last paragraph was that we can’t (like so many through the ages) try to force others onto the path God has us on. Rather, we have to encourage them in they path He has them on while continuing to walk our own.
No one has ever been abused by religious leaders more than Christ. He never lost sight of the fact that they too were instruments of God’s purpose. He could have called angels yet He submitted and prayed for their forgiveness. Paul claimed a clear consciene but said he was not thereby justified;that God is the judge. It is sometimes difficult to discern God’s hand behind what apppears to us as unjust suffering but if we are patient and trusting we may even discover God was at work for good in the long run. At least that was true for me when my family and I were left stranded on an island when we discovered the “leader’s” abuse, or much later when I caught the Sr. Pastor in compromise and he orchestrated my defrockin and excommunication. We are forewarned that some will persecute believing they are doing God’s favor. He could prevent it, and sometimes does, but even if not, it is Him with whom we have to do, is it not?
I wonder what Jesus’ inward, off-the-record response was when he had to reckon with the Father-with-whom-he-had-to-do, in those moments when surely the next thing was going to be costly to his preferences or his relationships or his health or his reputation? Since he was tempted in every way as we are, did he not, in certain moments, face an involuntary “oh-no-not-another” kind of shudder in his heart? Did Jesus have moments when he had to squelch a protest before it became an outright revolt, where he had to side against a part of himself in order to yield to God’s Spirit?
This is how I have thought Jesus, Paul and us work out that “with him whom we have to do” process which includes the 2 Cor 4:10 “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus.” I have thought this is how Jesus becomes Lord, in practice; how the life of Jesus is manifest in our body and how we become the light of the world.
Have I cobbled to many ideas into this thought?