886. The Light of the Gospel

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today we're continuing the series from 2 Corinthians, which was preached for seminary students. Today's message will be brought by BJU Seminary Professor, Dr. Ken Casias. Let me invite you to turn to 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, and we'll be looking together at verses 1 to 6. When you and I face any kind of challenge in life, there are basically three approaches that we can take. Those also are the three possible responses when you and I face difficulties and opposition in the ministry that the Lord has given us. We have those same three options.

We can give up, we can cheat, or by God's grace, we can stick with it and keep working faithfully and diligently in the task the Lord has given us. And I bring that up because in the core of our text this morning, Paul brings up all three of those options. Those are the three that he has before him as possibilities, and he deals with all of them. He rejects the first two, he concentrates and gives himself over to the third one, but take a look with me at what I would call the essence of the passage starting at the end of verse 1.

Here is his resolution. He says, first of all, we do not lose heart. That's the giving up option.

Paul resists the tendency to become overwhelmed by the burdens and the problems of the ministry. He refuses to cave to the pressure of his critics. He refuses to give in to a spirit of self-pity and to despair or quit altogether. And that's his commitment here. That's the heart of it.

We do not lose heart. But there is something else also that he is going to reject that could be another approach. He goes on in verse 2, he says, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God. So here's something else that he sets aside.

It is an option. It is an option that other people may engage in. Actually, in chapter 2, verse 17, he speaks about people who are peddling the word of God, but it's an option that he does not take seriously.

He is not going to engage in those kinds of forms of cheating in the ministry. Maybe soft peddling or otherwise corrupting the message, presumably to gain a greater following or to get some kind of material gain. It seems to be that Paul brought up his rejection of that alternative because among the things that were being hurled at him by his critics was that he was in it for himself.

And that he had some kind of underhanded motive and that he was adapting the message in a way that would be to his advantage. And Paul says, I have renounced all forms of shortcuts for cheating. And so if he's not going to lose heart and give up, if he's not going to engage in shortcuts, he's left with the one option of what? Of sticking with it, which is what then he says at the end of verse 2, but by manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. He's going to be faithful, he says. He's going to continue doing what the Lord had put in his hands to do despite whatever attacks or discouragement he might be facing.

Out of concern for people, right? In the conscience of every man and ultimately out of a burden to glorify the Lord in the sight of God. He is going to keep manifesting the truth, proclaiming it openly, proclaiming it boldly, proclaiming it straightforwardly. He is going to keep putting the gospel on display. And that idea of perseverance in truth-telling ministry is the essence of this passage. This is the commitment of the Apostle Paul. He is going to maintain his lifestyle and his effort by God's grace to openly proclaim the truth, no matter the circumstances, no matter the difficulties. Now that's easy enough to say and you would expect that Paul would have that kind of commitment. The question is, what kind of fuel is going to keep that engine running? Where is it that Paul is going to get the impetus, the power, the energy, the motivation to continue being so bold?

Actually, Paul gives all kinds of answers to that question in 2 Corinthians as to where is the fuel to keep this engine running? But in our text, he mentions two factors that spurred him on to persevere in proclaiming the gospel. And those two factors, the way this passage is structured, they actually flank the statements that I just read. There is one of those factors at the beginning before he makes his statement.

It is short. It is recapping what came before. And then in the rest of the passage, verses 3 to 6, he gets into the second of those factors. What are these realities that drive Paul to persevere in truth-telling ministry? The first of them is the merciful privilege of ministry. And I word that on the basis of the beginning of verse 1. He starts by reminding us of the privilege that he had when he says, therefore, since we have this ministry.

And of course, the word therefore alerts us to the fact that we are reading a logical conclusion from what came before. And what came before really is the entirety of chapter 3. That chapter was all about the new covenant ministry that the Lord had entrusted to Paul. And particularly about how the new covenant ministry was so much better than the old covenant ministry that Moses had the privilege of carrying out. His ministry was about the death-dealing letter of the law, whereas the ministry of the new covenant is about the life-giving spirit.

That's one contrast. Another one is that the ministry of Moses was the ministry of condemnation. Making people aware of their guilt with this emphasis on the heaviness of the law of God. And the ministry of the new covenant is all about the righteousness that God through Christ provides for us as a gift.

Number 3 difference. The ministry of Moses was something temporary. And yet the ministry of the new covenant is something permanent, indeed eternal.

Number 4, the ministry of Moses. There was this concealment that went on when Moses covered his face and there was a limitation on the amount of information, of truth, of revelation that came out from the old covenant. But on the other side, the new covenant, it's all about clarity. It is the fullness of God's revelation through Christ.

And then finally, here's another contrast. The ministry of Moses did not have the ability to actually change people's hearts. In fact, it is associated with a veil that is put over people's eyes that prevents them from understanding where all of that was going. But in the new covenant, those blinders are taken off and there's all this vision and this clarity that people have as a result. And what Paul is getting at when he says, therefore, since we have this ministry, we don't lose heart, he's saying, given all of the superiority of what I've been given to do, so much greater than even the great Moses, it would actually be the height of folly and the height of ingratitude to give this all up, to abandon it because it gets hard along the way.

Or to find some way to change the message or make it easier for myself. Why would I do that given the glorious privilege that I have as a spokesman for the new covenant? This ministry is an awesome privilege. It is worth surrendering my entire life to.

It is worth making whatever sacrifices are necessary. And as if that were not enough, he mentions as well, as we received mercy. The apostle is ever conscious that God did not owe him anything and certainly didn't owe him the privilege of being able to serve him in this way. The only reason that Paul was in the ministry was that the Lord had taken pity on him and had transformed him from a Christ persecutor to a Christ proclaimer. Paul's heart was so melted by the undeserved privilege of being a spokesman for Christ that he was willing to keep preaching despite all of the internal and all of the external opposition that he constantly faced and that this letter gives us a little taste of.

The undeserved, the merciful privilege of ministry. Everybody struggles from time to time with motivation about their work. Whether somebody is a teacher, a mechanic, a salesman, a doctor or mother, every job has its downsides and every job has its bad days.

Times that you feel like either quitting or taking a shortcut somehow. And you find yourself going through life and observing other people in their work life and this question naturally comes up. Why do people stay in their jobs in some cases for decades and devote their entire life to some career despite the kinds of frustrations and opposition that we all face? People are motivated by a lot of things and sometimes people are motivated simply because they need a paycheck.

Not necessarily wrong with that. But they also have higher motives. They may stay at it because they sense that there is a very strong fit between their skills and the opportunities that they have. They may love the job itself. They might love a challenge and actually thrive on the difficulty that they face. They might look forward to the thrill of visible success when it does sometimes come and that's what drives them. Or maybe they love the people that they serve.

Or they love the people that they work with. And when you look at that little list, those actually are all solid motivations for ministry as well and some of them match up to the sorts of comments that Paul makes in St. Corinthians. But what he is saying at this point is a bottom line issue of motivation that you and I must never lose sight of. What he's saying is that of all the jobs in all the world that God could have given him, he gave him the task of devoting his life to minister the glories of the new covenant. And as you go out in the ministry, whatever work the Lord may have you do, pastoral work, evangelistic work, counseling work, leadership work, at the end of the day it is going to be some kind of dimension, some kind of outflow of this same issue that Paul is getting at. That he has put in your hands the privilege of taking the glories of the new covenant that far surpass anything that the Lord has given so far in the history of redemption and he is saying now take this and apply it and serve it to and minister it to some group of people that I had put before you.

Don't ever get over the wonder of that. The ministry is a merciful privilege. As we move on to our next point, I want you to notice that Paul ends verse 2 in describing his ministry commitment. He ends that verse by saying, commending ourselves to every man's conscience.

I'm going to stop and think about that comment at this point. Commending ourselves to every man's conscience. That seems to have been a generalization, but someone who was not inclined to support Paul could easily object and say, what are you talking about commending yourself to every man's conscience. There are all kinds of people who don't recognize you as a true minister. Many of your own Jewish brethren repudiate the Messiah that you preach. How can you claim that people all over the place find your ministry compelling? If in fact you are actually speaking on behalf of God and are a minister of the New Covenant, how do you explain all of the rejection that you experience? In your own ministry, there may be times when your own calling and the authenticity of your calling are questioned that way also, particularly because of the limited, visible results that you see.

In fact, the worst part about it is when you are the one doing the questioning. You're looking out at the smallness of the results and you are frustrated and questioning whether in fact you are called to this ministry. You are gifted for this ministry. This kind of question came at the apostle Paul. And in this passage he is going to deal with them immediately and his answer becomes a segue to the second factor that keeps him persevering in this truth-telling ministry. And so we move from the first factor of the merciful privilege of ministry to the illuminating work of God in verses 3 to 6. And it begins on the negative side as far as those who have not been illuminated as an explanation for the unbelief of so many that listened to him, verse 3. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. As I mentioned already, the veil there, it has come up before. It is a metaphor for some kind of obstacle that prevents acceptance of the gospel. And back in chapter 3, Paul talked about the veil that Moses had over his face.

He talked about a similar veil spiritually that the people of Israel had over their own hearts. And here the effect is that the gospel itself is veiled to unbelievers at large. Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. And then Paul explains why that is. Why is it that this veil keeps people away from embracing the gospel?

Verse 4. In whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Here is the reason, here is the explanation for unbelief and rejection of the gospel. It is not the problem of the gospel. And in this case at least, it is not the problem of the gospel messenger either. The problem is an invisible one.

The problem is a supernatural one. The problem is that Satan himself keeps those unbelievers blinded to the true nature of the gospel. They listen to that message and they think it's nonsense. When in actuality the gospel reveals that the fullness of God's perfections, his glory dwells in Jesus Christ. That Christ is the divine glory. That glory that we were created to enjoy.

That glory that our hearts yearn for. It is all concentrated in the person of Jesus. He is the one being presented as so soul satisfying in the gospel.

But Satan keeps these people blinded to the reality of the message. And no wonder given Paul's realization of the glory of Christ, no wonder that unlike those people he is so thrilled to preach Christ which is precisely what he goes on to say next in verse 5. For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord. And one more time Paul is denying that his ministry is about putting himself forward. That it is about seeking accolades.

That it is about making money or some other way of self-promotion. Instead it is simply about elevating Christ in the world. It is about proclaiming that Jesus is Lord of all. That's his emphasis here. That he is Yahweh in the flesh come to earth to reassert divine lordship over all creation. Paul has come to realize that and Paul is driven to proclaim that and people are blinded to that truth. That's his message. Then he makes a little comment along the way since he just said we're not preaching ourselves but Christ as Lord. He makes a little comment along the way about well what about yourself?

What is actually your role? How do you view yourself if you're not of the essence of the message and this isn't really about you? He throws the sin at the end of verse 5. And ourselves as your bondservants for Jesus sake. The apostle viewed himself as a slave just like his own savior became a slave during the incarnation. And ultimately Paul is a slave of Christ but his specific role is to humbly serve believers and unbelievers in the hopes that they will also come to embrace Christ. You put all that together and again you're asking why would somebody give themselves over to being a slave and actually viewing yourself.

That's your self-concept. That is your sense of what your ministry is all about. I'm here to humbly serve for the glory of Christ these people many of whom at this moment are rejecting me.

Why would someone devote his life to such a lowly position? Why would someone put up with all the self-denial and the affliction and the rejection and the humiliation that a slavery of ministry entails? And now we finally come to that second factor that is driving Paul to persevere.

He has been building up to this main point with all these comments that I just covered and here is the factor. It is his experience of something he calls light in verse 6. For God who said, light shall shine out of darkness is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. That's why I'm saying that the issue that drives him to persevere in truth-telling ministry is the illuminating work of God, primarily his own experience of that illumination. Just as Paul was deeply moved by the mercy of God in calling him to ministry, he was deeply moved as well by the mercy of God in miraculously illuminating him in the first place, bringing him to faith, opening his eyes to the glory of Christ, and to illustrate the effectiveness of that illuminating work in bringing somebody to faith, Paul references, first of all, God's own effortless creation of light on the first day of the creation week.

This is how it worked. Just like the Lord said, let there be light, and immediately it happened. It was not difficult for the Lord. There was no delay.

There was no really activity or instrumentality that he used. It just happened. That idea of the effectiveness of the miracle, Paul says, that's what this is like. This is the sort of thing that has happened in my own soul. And maybe by using that creation analogy, he's also suggesting that as the Lord does this work of converting sinners, that is a part of the new creation that he is bringing about in the world as a whole. So Paul alludes to creation as kind of an illustration or the measure of the power of illumination, but he also alludes to his own conversion on the road to Damascus as he goes on to say that God is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Acts chapter 9 tells us a story about that conversion, and it describes how a flashing light from heaven knocked him over and temporarily blinded Paul physically. But there's an irony there because even while you have a physical blindness, that experience of physical blindness was actually the means by which Paul's spiritual blindness was removed at that moment of conversion. By the Lord's own gracious working in his inner man, Paul's thinking about who Jesus is dramatically changed.

It was a total conversion of his theology. Jesus in his mind was no longer an imposter Messiah, but again was the possessor and the revealer of the glory of God himself, and really the access, the path for us to enjoy that glory as well. If I could put it this way, when his eyes were opened, this one that Paul had so long rejected, he came to see Jesus as compelling, as magnificent, as beautiful, as all worthy, as glorious. And having had that supernatural experience of the truth of the Gospel, Paul could do nothing but get up each day and proclaim Christ with clarity and boldness. And he was also confident that whenever God was pleased to shine on someone else, the same spiritual light that had transformed him, that person would also humbly and joyfully follow Jesus. He was driven to perseverance.

He was encouraged to endure because of the glory of the illuminating work of God that he had experienced. Yesterday I was trying to dip in every now and then into the hearings where they are questioning Amy Barrett for the Supreme Court, and probably a lot of you saw the clip of the eighth grade civics lesson that Senator Ben Sasse gave to his colleagues there. And among other points that he was making to them to get them hopefully on the right track with their questions, he focused on the need to avoid a religious test in the questions that were going to be posed to Mrs. Barrett. And here's what he said. This committee isn't in the business of deciding which religious beliefs are good, and which religious beliefs are bad, and which religious beliefs are weird. And then he went on to say this. And I just want to say, as somebody who's self-consciously a Christian, we got a whole bunch more really weird beliefs.

Forgiveness of sins, the virgin birth, resurrection of the dead, eternal life. There are a whole bunch of really, really crazy ideas that are a lot weirder than some Catholic moms giving each other advice about parenting. That was an incredible moment in those hearings. And my heart was warmed to see somebody in that position, in that setting, in the highest places of power in the land, being so forthright about what Paul in Corinthians calls the foolishness of preaching. He's not hiding the fact that this stuff is weird, that this is a belief in the supernatural. He is willing to be mocked for it. He is being very plain spoken, just like the apostle Paul was, and uncaring about whatever mocking or rejection he might receive. And you say again, why would somebody do that?

Why would somebody endanger his own reputation in this high position, and at least in part we're back to the same issue. Here's a man, he's a believer, who has been deeply convinced of the truth of the gospel, and he has come to that persuasion because of divine illumination, and because of that, he's not afraid to speak it forth plainly, and even acknowledge, this is going to sound crazy to a lot of you. Here is the kind of thing that the apostle Paul did. I trust that we have all had that experience of divine illumination, and that we also are emboldened by that to speak forth plainly. And what Paul is encouraging us to do here by his example, is to study and to stay aware of the grace of illumination, and the glory of the illumination that we have experienced. The more we grasp how supernatural it is, the more you and I will be strengthened to stay at it in truth-telling ministry. God has been exceedingly merciful to us, in first of all illuminating us, and secondly in calling us to serve as his instruments of illumination in others. You've been listening to a sermon from BJU Seminary professor, Dr. Ken Casias. Thanks for listening, and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study in 2 Corinthians on The Daily Platform.