2 Corinthians 4:1-2 - Homilies By R. Tuck

"By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." The great work of the Christian ministry is to set forth before men the truth . But we are not to understand by that term all truth or any truth. Reference is precisely to that truth about God, and his relations with men, which had been partially revealed before, and was fully disclosed in Jesus Christ the Saviour. That special truth had been committed to the trust of the apostles. They were to proclaim it freely to men, as they had or could make opportunity. And they were to be sure that God would make that truth his power unto men's salvation. Referring to the work of the modern ministry, it has been well said that we have not so much "to tell the truth as to make the truth tell." The apostle, in these verses, reminds us of some things that are necessary if we would efficiently set forth the gospel truth.

I. PERSEVERANCE . "We faint not." There must be no shrinking back in face of difficulties, no losing heart because things will not go smoothly, no wearying in our well doing. St. Paul himself gave the noble example of what he enjoined. He did not count his life dear to him so that he might finish his course with joy. Succeed or fail, in strength or in weakness, he was "instant in season and out of season."

II. SIMPLICITY . The faithful minister will absolutely refuse all merely sensational aids to his work. He will wholly separate himself from worldly and guileful schemes for accomplishing his ends. He will refuse in any way to "do evil that good may come." It had been made an accusation against the apostle that he had shown craftiness and guile in his dealings with the Churches. This charge he most vigorously rebutted, and was led to urge that guilelessness is essential to the faithful minister, whose conduct and motives may be searched through and through. Illustration may be taken from the ministry of the Lord Jesus. He resorted to no arts, or schemes, or tricks, either of speech or of conduct. His work was simple. It was the living of a life, the delivery of a message, a genuine effort to bless and save men.

III. FAITH . In the witness which the truth ever makes, and the response to it which is always given by men's consciences. We may preach with this confidence—conscience will surely acknowledge the claim of God, and the guilt of sin, and the need of redemption. Men may indeed silence conscience and put away the truth, but we always have this assurance—the best and deepest in every man responds, to our message.

IV. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF BEING UNDER GOD 'S EYE . "In the sight of God." That Divine presence the minister realizes as the fulfilment of Christ's words, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." There is a hardness and coldness about the idea that we should work "as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye." There is warmth, tender sympathy, and inspiration in the assurance that the spiritual "Man, Christ Jesus," is with us everywhere.

In conclusion, such points as these need careful treatment,

1 . Is this confidence in the power of the truth justified by experience?

2 . Does Christ's truth ever really stand in peril?

3 . If so, from what sources or in what directions does the peril come? Agencies and organizations and human moulds imperil it, and in every age men are raised up who can set Christ's truth free from our human limitations and bondages. The true revival is the freeing of the truth to win its own good way. We can have no ground for glorying comparable to this—"the Word of God is not bound."—R.T.

2 Corinthians 4:4 - Christ as the Image of God.

"The glorious gospel of Christ, who is the Image of God." From 1 Corinthians 11:7 we learn that there is a sense in which man is the "image and glory of God." In Colossians 1:15 the Son of God is spoken of as the "Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of every creature." The word used in our text is exactly equivalent to our word "likeness." "An image, or likeness, is a visible representation of an object. So Christ, in his humanity, is a visible representation of the unseen God life revelation of the wisdom and power of God that man has received can compare with that made in the life, death, and resurrection of the incarnate Son." The point to which we ask attention is this—the gospel sets forth the glory of Christ . But, when it is rightly viewed, this is found to be the setting forth of the glory of God . For God can only be known in image and symbol; and this is the perfect and wholly satisfactory image, precisely adapted to our human faculties and necessities. Jesus Christ is the "Brightness of the Father's glory, and the express Image of his person." His sonship is the earthly presentation of the Divine fatherhood. The Son is the very image of the Father. Philips Brooks well says, "This is the sum of the work of the Incarnation. A hundred other statements regarding it, regarding him who was incarnate, are true; but all statements concerning him hold their truth within this truth—that Jesus came to restore the fact of God's fatherhood to man's knowledge, and to its central place of power over man's life. Jesus is mysteriously the Word of God made flesh. He is the Worker of amazing miracles upon the bodies and the souls of men. He is the Convincer of sin. He is the Saviour by suffering. But, behind all these, as the purpose for which be is all these, he is the Redeemer of man into the fatherhood of God." Christ brings the light of God's fatherly love to shine on prodigal and sinful sons; that light wakens the old son spirit in their hearts, and wins them home, in penitence and faith, to their heavenly Father. And just this is the mission of Christ and his gospel—to shine God's light into men's souls.—R.T.

2 Corinthians 4:6 - Light from God and light on God.

The new Revised Version makes an important alteration in this verse, reading it thus: "Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light [or, 'illumination'] of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

I. LIGHT FROM GOD IN CREATION , ( Genesis 1:3 .) The following points may be illustrated.

1 . All material light, as a warming, life-giving, beautifying agent, is from God.

2 . All moral light, as the intimation of what is good and right in the relationships of men, is from God.

3 . All revelational light, as the unfolding of the mysteries belonging to God and his claim and mercy, must come directly from himself. On spiritual things man can have no knowledge, save as God is pleased freely to give it; and, on these higher themes, all light must be tempered to the capacity of those on whom it shines.

II. LIGHT ON GOD IN CHRIST . Calvin says of this verse, "A notable place, whence we learn that God is not to be investigated in his unsearchable height, for he inhabits the light unapproachable ( 1 Timothy 6:16 ), but to be known as far as he reveals himself in Christ It is more useful for us to behold God as he appears in his only begotten Son than to investigate his secret essence." The face of Christ is said to reveal the glory of God, as the shining of Moses' face told of the splendour about the mount where he had been with God. But the glory of God is his redemption work. That showed

and all these we find in the face of Jesus Christ. Illustrate the power of expression, and the power of revealing thought and heart, that are in the human face, and then show how the face of the Lord Jesus reveals to us the "heart of God." Before Christ came God was a half known, if not an unknown, God. And the incomplete conceptions of him involved, too often, imperfect and unworthy conceptions. We now know the "true God and eternal life" in the face of Jesus, his manifested Son—or rather, his manifested Self.—R.T.

2 Corinthians 4:7 - Heavenly treasure in earthen vessels.

"It was the practice of Eastern kings, who stored up their treasures of gold and silver, to fill jars of earthenware with coin or bullion" (see Jeremiah 32:14 ). To this custom allusion is made. St. Paul says that in these frail bodies of ours, with their limited faculties and powers, in these "earthen vessels" we have that priceless treasure, the knowledge of the glory of God as a Redeemer. Cecil says, "The meanness of the earthen vessel which conveys to others the gospel treasure takes nothing from the value of the treasure. A dying hand may sign a deed of incalculable value; a shepherd's boy may point out the way to a philosopher; a beggar may be the bearer of a valuable present." Three points claim attention.

I. THE TREASURE . This may be regarded as

In either respect, the personal Christ being the very Centre and Essence of it, he is properly the Treasure. Christ himself is our most sacred Trust. We have the one Saviour for men committed to our care. Then how jealously we should guard the treasure! and how wisely we should put it to use!

II. THE NEED FOR THE CONVEYANCE OF THIS TREASURE . For it is not to be stored up in hiding places, but somehow made the treasure of all men. It is a spiritual treasure, and needs some kind of material conveyance. Christ himself must be ministered to men by his disciples.

III. THE VESSELS FOUND FOR THE DUE CONVEYANCE OF THE TREASURE . Humbly spoken of as earthly, or as mere earthenware. Enlarging upon them beyond St. Paul's immediate thought in the use of the term, we may show

2 Corinthians 4:10 - Suffering showing forth character.

It has been said that "affliction" is the one predominant word in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. And perhaps no other Epistle is so charged with wounded personal feeling and reminiscences of varied suffering. This may be explained by the circumstances under which this letter was written. Perhaps we do not sufficiently realize how much personal suffering, from disease and bodily infirmity, the apostle had to endure; and yet this is evidently the key to many of his intense expressions. Either from constitutional weakness, or in consequence of his many exposures, he had upon him some painful and humiliating form of disease, which was incurable; and this his enemies made the occasion of scorn and insult, until they wounded him to the very quick, and drove him to the throne of grace, seeking, with threefold importunity, to have the "thorn in the flesh" removed. When we apprehend this, we begin to feel the meaning of our text; he was "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus:" pain, disease, suffering—like a daily dying—brought on him in the fulfilment of his ministry for the Lord Jesus. But St. Paul never dwelt long on the merely sad side of things, and so he goes on to say—Even if our life on earth be like the dying of the Lord Jesus, this also is true, through our very suffering and dying, the life of Jesus is made manifest in our mortal flesh and earthly spheres. "St. Paul felt that every true human soul must repeat Christ's existence. He could bear to look on his decay; it was but the passing of the human; and, meantime, there was ever going on within him the strengthening of the Divine. Pain was sacred, since Christ also had suffered. And life became grand when viewed as a repetition of the life of Christ."

I. ST . PAUL 'S CONCEPTION OF OUR LORD 'S LIFE . It had been a daily dying which nevertheless showed up himself, in the glory of his character and spirit. The dying manifested to men the life that was in him. St. Paul had, probably, never seen Christ in the flesh, but it was given to him, by his fellowship of suffering, to understand better than all the rest what a suffering Saviour Jesus was. It is St. Paul who writes so much about the cross of the Lord Jesus. He dwells oftener than any other early teacher upon our Lord's death, but when you apprehend his meaning, you find that he looked upon Christ's whole life as a dying. He saw that Jesus was every day dying to self, dying with shame, pain, exhaustion, conflict, and agony. And you do not read Christ's life aright unless you can see in it what St. Paul saw., even humiliation, limitation, suffering, burdening it every day, But that was not all St, Paul's conception of Christ. In that, standing alone, he could have found no rest, no inspiration. He saw also this, that our Lord's sufferings were just the dark background that threw out so perfectly, with such well-defined lines and graceful forms, his noble spirit, his Divine character, his sublime sonship, his blessed life. And so he could speak calmly , even triumphantly, of the suffering Saviour, and glory in the dying of the Lord Jesus, through which the life of Jesus found its highest and best manifestations. How much a picture depends upon its background! Fill the front with the most exquisite figures or landscape, still all the tone and character and impression of the figure will depend upon its background. You may so paint as to leave the forms and figures indistinct and uncertain. You may throw out into prominence the special thought or truth which you seek to embody in form; your picture may be calm morning, hot noonday, flushed evening, tender twilight, or gathering night, according to your background. St. Paul felt what shadows of suffering and woe lay all behind that life of his Lord; but they helped him to see the glory of Christ himself; they seemed to bring out so clearly the Divine and blessed life that was in him. Illustrate by the language of Isaiah 53:1-12 . and Philippians 2:5-11 . Also from the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary. The Captain of our salvation was made perfect, to our view, through suffering.

II. ST . PAUL 'S CONCEPTION OF HIS OWN LIFE . He could wish nothing better for himself than that what was true of Christ might be true of him, and that his sufferings, too, might show up his character and help to make him a blessing and a power for good. St. Paul never could glory in mere suffering. Suffering is grievance and loss. But if they could be like Christ's sufferings, not merely borne for him, and in the doing of his work, but actually like his, and ordained by God to be the same to him, and to others through him, as Jesus' sufferings did! The apostle felt he could glory in that. And this is the view of suffering that we also need to gain. Our troubles and sorrows are as the dying of the Lord Jesus. Once laying hold of this, we find that we have one thing to be supremely anxious about—it is that our dying shall show up Christ's life in us, shall make the Christly virtues and graces manifest in our mortal flesh. We have our sorrows. Does our character shine out clearly on the darkness of them? Do men see and feel our "whiteness" by the contrast of them? Are we beautiful with a Divine patience, and fragrant with a Divine sweetness, in the very darkness? On the background of our pain do men see our submission? In the hour of our disappointment do we show up to men our trust in God? When heart and flesh fail does the sanctifying Spirit of Christ make our very faces glow with the heavenly light? Is it true of us that the "life of Jesus is manifested in our mortal flesh"?—R.T.

2 Corinthians 4:16 - The outward and the inward man.

For the word "perish" in this verse, the Revised Version reads "is decaying." "Outward man" is the body, "inward man" is the soul, so far as the terms may be understood by anybody. "Outward man" is the whole sphere of the senses and the flesh; "inward man" is the whole sphere of the moral, the spiritual, the Divine, the eternal, so far as the terms may be apprehended by the quickened and regenerate of mankind. The "outward man" is man related to the "seen and temporal;" the "inward man" is man related to the "unseen and eternal." And what the apostle so plainly says in our text is this—the "outward man," the material framework of the body, and the whole circle of purely human and earthly relations, are yielding to a gradual process of decay, and soon they must all pass away. But the "inward man," the spiritual life, the very man himself, is day by day rising, through successive stages of renewal, to yet higher life. And the very decayings of the body and of the earthly surroundings bear directly upon the nourishment and growth of the soul's life, and so upon the soul's future. This is the thought which is set before us for our consideration, and we begin with that familiar truth on which the statement of the text rests.

I. BODY LIFE AND SOUL LIFE BOTH DEPEND ON NOURISHMENT , ON FOOD . This is the law of all created life. Angels live on angels' food. Souls live on appropriate souls' food. And bodies live by meat and drink and air. Science tells us that bodily life, health, fatness, and vigour directly depend on the character and quantity and appropriateness of the food supplied. Given vitality and freedom from active disease, and any bodily result that is desired can be obtained by giving flesh-forming, or bone-forming, or brain-making foods. And the health, the vigour, and the work of our soul's life just as directly depend upon the food with which it is nourished. Would you get more good work out of your souls? Then you must feed them better. Do you expose your souls to much peril? Then you must improve and increase their food. We may speak of the soul's life as being faith and love, and as having for its natural expression worship and work . Then the soul's food which we provide must bear, in the most direct and efficient way, on these four things. Here is a most practical problem for each one of us to solve in our daily life—What will nourish into the fullest health and strength my soul's faith and my soul's love? What will strengthen the soul's brain and heart for holy worship, for prayer and praise, and the soul's muscle and nerve for holy work? As life unfolds there come to us all times of special stress and strain. Business has its unusual anxieties. Home has its unusual cares. Decisions of grave importance have to be made, and we too easily forget at such times that we need better soul food; we must be oftener at the secret sources of spiritual nourishment; we must find out how strong they can become who eat of the tree of life, who partake of that Bread of life which satisfies, and that "flesh and blood" which are "meat indeed and drink indeed."

II. NOURISH THE BODY LIFE HOW WE MAY , IT IS WEARING DOWN TO DECAY AND DEATH . "The outward man perishes." "The fashion of this world passeth away." All the feeding, all the nourishing, all the fresh air, cannot keep the bodily powers working over long; for soon the sight grows dim, and the hearing fails, and the taste palls, and the hands tremble, and the breath goes hard, and the limbs totter, and then the golden bowl is broken at the fountain, and man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. There is a fixed limit beyond which the body cannot go. None of us can with impunity exert ourselves beyond the limits of our physical strength, for gradually, as the years pass on, our vital force is lowered, our recuperative power fails, the body is really decaying and wasting down to helplessness and death. But why should we trouble because we cannot feed these bodies of ours into a strength that shall resist disease and old age, and make our years last through all the generations? They are not us. They are but the machinery, the agency, the sphere, of our sublime moral trial. They may last no longer than is needed for the perfecting of the trial. I shall not want this frail body, with its limited senses and relations, nor shall I want this "ower sin-burdened earth," when God sees that my moral trial is over; when he has found out, by this practical experiment, what I really am. I can see them both pass away, and enter God's spiritual and incorruptible body—the glorified counterpart of this body I now have—which is fashioned akin to the "new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."

III. NOURISH THE SOUL LIFE , AND IT WILL GROW ON FOREVER . For there are no forces that can touch the regenerate soul to destroy it. "I give unto them eternal life," He said who brought life and immortality to light by His gospel, "and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." Law, Satan, sin, temptation, worldly atmospheres, death, and hell cannot hurt the soul whose vitality is well nourished and maintained. Take food for the body, and its service is soon spent. Take food for the soul, and its service never can be spent; it becomes a permanent element of good; it has gone to the making of character, which death has no power to touch. There are, indeed, varieties of religious experience, ups and downs of religious feeling. We may encrust our lives with worldliness, we may feed our souls with nothing but the luxuries of human pleasure, and if we do so we must suffer, and bitterly suffer. Great diseases and calamities may come to us as cleansing and correcting processes. But God will not let the soul growth be permanently hindered. If we will not make the soul thrive by the food of truth, and duty, and worship, and prayer, and fellowship, then he will make it thrive by the medicine of pain, and distress, and humiliation, and bereavement, and loss; but thrive and grow it shall. "The inward man [shall be] renewed day by day."

IV. THE VERY WEARING DOWN , SUFFERING , DECAYING , AND DYING OF THE BODY LIFE ARE MADE AGENTS IN NOURISHING THE SOUL 'S LIFE . St. Paul goes on from our text to say, "For our light affliction… worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." How bright and hopeful that bruised, worn, suffering apostle always was! He even found it in his heart to glory in his infirmities, because, the weaker he was, the more of Christ's power must rest on him and work through him. The outward man perishes, but he is not going to be sad or to faint about it, since the inward man is renewed day by day. And Paul says that there is such an intimate relation between these two that, by the dying of the one , the life of the other is actually furthered. Our light afflictions and our testing death are even made food for our soul's growth. We may thrive upon our very woes. Trial, toil, struggle, weariness, frailty, pain, bereavement, all the body can know of sorrow and care, are the soul's food. It lives by them. It thrives on them. It steps up toward heaven with the help of them. "Out of the eater it brings forth meat; out of the strong it brings forth sweetness."—R.T.

2 Corinthians 4:17 - The Christian estimate of affliction.

There is a passionate intensity, a kind of extravagance, in these words, which we often notice in the utterances of the noble but impulsive apostle. High feeling, strained emotion, are often helpful in our religious experiences. They lift us, as on a great wave, over the bar of difficulty. They help us in the doing of duty, and they lighten the burden of our sorrow. Our hymns and sacred poems are often the expression of such high emotions as are only felt by the best of men in their best of times; but they are an inspiration and a joy to us, though they may be beyond our actual attainment. In this way we may get gracious help through our text. The context refers to ministerial troubles, but troubles are our common human lot, and if we had to choose what form they should take for us, we should make sad mistakes. Concerning the blessings wrought by affliction we have remarkable Scripture testimonies. Moses would rather "suffer affliction with the people of God than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." David says, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now will I keep thy word." Solomon tells us that it is "better to go into the house of mourning than into the house of feasting." And the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." Our text suggests what estimate the child of God may and ought to make of afflictions, and he may judge them as regards weight, time, and influence .

I. AS TO THEIR WEIGHT . He may call them "light afflictions." This is apparently untrue. Surely Job, and Jacob, and Naomi, and David, and Martha and Mary could never call theirs "light afflictions." It is truly said that "no affliction for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous." It seems impossible to call such a catalogue of woes as is given us in Job 11:1-20 :23-27 "light afflictions." And yet this is the deeper truth, and we may see that it is if we weigh our troubles in fair balances:

Both knowledge and faith may help us to call our affliction "light."

II. AS TO THEIR TIME . "But for a moment." This also is apparently untrue. Joseph cannot call those weary prison years "but a moment." The captives in Babylon, worn out with hope deferred, hung their harps upon the willows because they could sing no longer. They could not call their captivity "but for a moment." And we can never call "short" those dreadful six hours of agony borne by our Lord upon the cross. And yet this also is the deepest truth. In comparison with life itself it is. Our times of suffering are few, of joy are many; they lie together in something of the proportion of streams and fields. Then, too, it is the actual tact that in our suffering times only brief moments bring unbearable pain. And it is found that the worst pain is the least remembered; it passes, and we cannot even recall it, so as to suffer it over again in imagination. And earthly suffering is truly but for a moment if it be compared with the eternity of joy into which it leads us.

III. AS TO THEIR INFLUENCE . "Working a... weight of glory." It is as important that we should be prepared for the glory as that the glory should be prepared for us. St. Paul's idea of glory is what is done by affliction in the Christian himself. And amongst the things wrought in the Christian character and life we may note these.

1 . Patience—the power to be quiet and wait.

2 . Trust—the full committal of our keeping to God.

3 . Holiness—the deliverance from the enslaving power of evil.

4 . The sanctifying of human relationships, which nothing makes so tender and so true as does our sharing in common sorrows.

5 . And the renewal of Christian activity; for affliction is the time when we may seriously review the past, and make earnest resolves for the days to come.—R.T.