a glory to be revealed in us; and as we contemplate Him in the mirror
of the Gospel,[36] we are gradually transformed into the same image,
even as by the Lord the Spirit. The transformation, these last words
again teach, is not accomplished by beholding, but while we behold; it
does not depend on the vividness with which we can imagine the past,
but on the present power of Christ working in us. The result is such
as befits the operation of such a power. We are changed into the image
of Him from whom it proceeds. We are made like Himself. It may seem
far more natural to say that the believer is made like Jesus of
Nazareth, than that he is made like the Lord of glory; but that does
not entitle us to shift the centre of gravity in the Apostle's
teaching, and it only tempts us to ignore one of the most prominent
and enviable characteristics of the New Testament religious life.
Christ is on His throne, and His people are _exalted and victorious_
in Him. When we forget Christ's exaltation in our study of His earthly
life--when we are so preoccupied, it may even be so fascinated, with
what He was, that we forget what He is--when, in other words, a pious
historical imagination takes the place of a living religious
faith--_that victorious consciousness is lost_, and in a most
essential point the image of the Lord is not reproduced in the
believer. This is why the Pauline point of view--if indeed it is to be
called Pauline, and not simply Christian--is essential. Christianity
is a religion, not merely a history, though it should be the history
told by Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and the chance of having the history
itself appreciated for religion is that He who is its subject shall
be contemplated, not in the dim distance of the past, but in the glory
of His heavenly reign, and that He shall be recognised, not merely as
one who lived a perfect life in His own generation, but as the Giver
of life eternal by His Spirit to all who turn to Him. The Church will
always be justified, while recognising that Christianity is a
historical religion, in giving prominence, not to its historicity, but
to what makes it a religion at all--namely, the present exaltation of
Christ. This involves everything, and determines, as St. Paul tells us
here, the very form and spirit of her own life.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] In the LXX. ἑλπίζω is often used as the rendering of בָּטַה
_confidere_.
[29] Attempts have been made to render πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι otherwise:
_e.g._, πρὸς has been taken as in Matt. xix. 8, which would give the
meaning, "considering that the children of Israel did not look on,"
etc. Moses would thus veil himself in view of the fact that they did
not see: the veil would be the symbol of the judicial blindness which
was henceforth to fall on them.
[30] I cannot suppose that ἐπὶ τῇ ἀναγνώσει τῆς π. διαθήκης means
anything different from ἡνίκα ἄν ἀναγινώσκηται Μωϋσῆς. It conveys no
sense, that I can see, to say that there are _two veils_, one upon the
reading, and another upon the heart. Yet many take it so.
[31] The present, where we might expect the future, conveys the
certainty and decisiveness of the result.
[32] The subject of the verb ἐπιστρέψῃ ("turn") is not in point of
grammar very clear. It may be Israel, or the heart on which a veil
lies, or any one, taken indefinitely. Practically, the application is
limited to those who live under the old covenant, and yet have its
nature hidden from them. Hence it is fair to render, as I have done,
"when _they_ turn to the Lord."
[33] The peculiarity of the passage has given occasion to conjectures,
of which by far the most ingenious is Baljon's: Ὁῦ δὲ ὁ Κύριος, τὸ
Πνεῦμά ἐστιν, οὗ δὲ τὸ Πνεῦμα Κυρίου, ἐλευθερία: "Where the Lord is,
the Spirit is; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
[34] _Hom._ vii. on 2 Cor., p. 486, E.: Οὐ μόνον ὁρῶμεν εἰς τὴν δόξαν
τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐκεῖθεν δεχόμεθά τινα αἴγλην.
[35] So Meyer, from whom the particulars in this sentence are taken.
[36] The idea of the mirror is not to be omitted, as of no consequence.
It is essential to the figure: "we see not yet face to face."
XI
_THE GOSPEL DEFINED_
"Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained
mercy, we faint not: but we have renounced the hidden things of
shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God
deceitfully; but by the manifestation of the truth commending
ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But and
if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing:
in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the
unbelieving, that the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ,
who is the image of God, should not dawn _upon them_. For we
preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as
your servants for Jesus' sake. Seeing it is God, that said, Light
shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ."--2 COR. iv. 1-6 (R.V.).
In this paragraph Paul resumes for the last time the line of thought
on which he had set out at chap. iii. 4, and again at chap. iii. 12.
Twice he has allowed himself to be carried away into digressions, not
less interesting than his argument; but now he proceeds without
further interruption. His subject is the New Testament ministry, and
his own conduct as a minister.
"Seeing we have this ministry," he writes, "even as we obtained mercy,
we faint not." The whole tone of the passage is to be triumphant;
above the common joy of the New Testament it rises, at the close (ver.
16 ff.), into a kind of solemn rapture; and it is characteristic of
the Apostle that before he abandons himself to the swelling tide of
exultation, he guards it all with the words, "even as we obtained
mercy." There was nothing so deep down in Paul's soul, nothing so
constantly present to his thoughts, as this great experience. No flood
of emotion, no pressure of trial, no necessity of conflict, ever drove
him from his moorings here. The mercy of God underlay his whole being;
it kept him humble even when he boasted; even when engaged in
defending his character against false accusations--a peculiarly trying
situation--it kept him truly Christian in spirit.
The words may be connected equally well, so far as either meaning or
grammar is concerned, with what precedes, or with what follows. It was
a signal proof of God's mercy that He had entrusted Paul with the
ministry of the Gospel; and it was only what we should expect, when
one who had obtained such mercy turned out a good soldier of Jesus
Christ, able to endure hardship and not faint. Those to whom little is
forgiven, Jesus Himself tells us, love little; it is not in them for
Jesus' sake to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things,
endure all things. They faint easily, and are overborne by petty
trials, because they have not in them that fountain of brave
patience--a deep abiding sense of what they owe to Christ, and can
never, by any length or ardour of service, repay. It accuses us, not
so much of human weakness, as of ingratitude, and insensibility to the
mercy of God, when we faint in the exercise of our ministry.
"We faint not," says Paul: "we show no weakness. On the contrary, we
have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness,
nor handling the Word of God deceitfully." The contrast marked by ἀλλὰ
is very instructive: it shows, in the things which Paul had
renounced, whither weakness leads. It betrays men. It compels them to
have recourse to arts which shame bids them conceal; they become
diplomatists and strategists, rather than heralds; they manipulate
their message; they adapt it to the spirit of the time, or the
prejudices of their auditors; they make liberal use of the principle
of accommodation. When these arts are looked at closely, they come to
this: the minister has contrived to put something of his own between
his hearers and the Gospel; the message has really not been declared.
His intention, of course, with all this artifice, is to recommend
himself to men; but the method is radically vicious. The Apostle shows
us a more excellent way. "We have renounced," he says, "all these weak
ingenuities; and by manifestation of the truth commend ourselves to
every man's conscience in the sight of God."[37]
This is probably the simplest and most complete directory for the
preaching of the Gospel. The preacher is to make the truth manifest.
It is implied in what has just been said, that one great hindrance to
its manifestation may easily be its treatment by the preacher himself.
If he wishes to do anything else at the same time, the manifestation
will not take effect. If he wishes, in the very act of preaching, to
conciliate a class, or an interest; to create an opinion in favour of
his own learning, ability, or eloquence; to enlist sympathy for a
cause or an institution which is only accidentally connected with the
Gospel,--the truth will not be seen, and it will not tell. The truth,
we are further taught here, makes its appeal to the conscience; it is
there that God's witness in its favour resides. Now, the conscience is
the moral nature of man, or the moral element in his nature; it is
this, therefore, which the preacher has to address. Does not this
involve a certain directness and simplicity of method, a certain
plainness and urgency also, which it is far easier to miss than to
find? Conscience is not the abstract logical faculty in man, and the
preacher's business is therefore not to prove, but to proclaim, the
Gospel. All he has to do is to let it be seen, and the more nakedly
visible it is the better. His object is not to frame an irrefragable
argument, but to produce an irresistible impression. There is no such
thing as an argument to which it is impossible for a wilful man to
make objections; at least there is no such thing in the sphere of
Christian truth. Even if there were, men would object to it on that
very ground. They would say that, in matters of this description, when
logic went too far, it amounted to moral intimidation, and that in the
interests of liberty they were entitled to protest against it.
Practically, this is what Voltaire said of Pascal.[38] But there is
such a thing as an irresistible impression,--an impression made upon
the moral nature against which it is vain to attempt any protest; an
impression, which subdues and holds the soul for ever. When the truth
is manifested, and men see it, this is the effect to be looked for;
this, consequently, is the preacher's aim. In the sight of God--that
is, acting with absolute sincerity--Paul trusted to this simple method
to recommend himself to men. He brought no letters of introduction
from others; he had no artifices of his own; he held up the truth in
its unadorned integrity till it told upon the conscience of his
hearers; and after that, he needed no other witness. The same
conversions which accredited the power of the message accredited the
character of him who bore it.
To this line of argument there is a very obvious reply. What, it may
be asked, of those on whom "the manifestation of the truth" produces
no effect? What of those who in spite of all this plain appeal to
conscience neither see nor feel anything? It is sadly obvious that
this is no mere supposition; the Gospel remains a secret, an impotent
ineffective secret, to many who hear it again and again. Paul faces
the difficulty without flinching, though the answer is appalling. "If
our Gospel _is_ veiled (and the melancholy fact cannot be denied), it
is veiled in the case of the perishing." The fact that it remains
hidden from some men is their condemnation; it marks them out as
persons on the way to destruction. The Apostle proceeds to explain
himself further. As far as the rationale can be given of what is
finally irrational, he interprets the moral situation for us. The
perishing people in question are unbelievers, whose thoughts, or
minds, the god of this world has blinded.[39] The intention of this
blinding is conveyed in the last words of ver. 4: "that the
illumination which proceeds from the Gospel, the Gospel of the glory
of Christ, who is the image of God, may not dawn upon them."
Let these solemn words appeal to our hearts and consciences, before we
attempt to criticise them. Let us have a due impression of the
stupendous facts to which they refer, before we raise difficulties
about them, or say rashly that the expression is disproportioned to
the truth. To St. Paul the Gospel was a very great thing. A light
issued from it so dazzling, so overwhelming, in its splendour and
illuminative power, that it might well appear incredible that men
should not see it. The powers counteracting it, "the world-rulers of
this darkness," must surely, to judge by their success, have an
immense influence. Even more than an immense influence, they must have
an immense malignity. For what a blessedness it meant for men, that
that light should dawn upon them! What a deprivation and loss, that
its brightness should be obscured! Paul's whole sense of the might and
malignity of the powers of darkness is condensed in the title which he
here gives to their head--"_the god_ of this world." It is literally
"of this age," the period of time which extends to Christ's coming
again. The dominion of evil is not unlimited, in duration; but while
it lasts it is awful in its intensity and range. It does not seem an
extravagance to the Apostle to describe Satan as the god of the
present æon; and if it seems extravagant to us, we may remind
ourselves that our Saviour also twice speaks of him as "_the prince_
of this world." Who but Christ Himself, or a soul like St. Paul in
complete sympathy with the mind and work of Christ, is capable of
seeing and feeling the incalculable mass of the forces which are at
work in the world to defeat the Gospel? What sleepy conscience, what
moral mediocrity, itself purblind, only dimly conscious of the height
of the Christian calling, and vexed by no aspirations toward it, has
any right to say that it is too much to call Satan "the god of this
world"? Such sleepy consciences have no idea of the omnipresence, the
steady persistent pressure, the sleepless malignity, of the evil
forces which beset man's life. They have no idea of the extent to
which these forces frustrate the love of God in the Gospel, and rob
men of their inheritance in Christ. To ask why men _should_ be exposed
to such forces is another, and here an irrelevant, question. What St.
Paul saw, and what becomes apparent to every one in proportion as his
interest in evangelising becomes intense, is that evil has a power and
dominion in the world, which are betrayed, by their counteracting of
the Gospel, to be purely malignant--in other words, Satanic--and the
dimensions of which no description can exaggerate. Call such powers
Satan, or what you please, but do not imagine that they are
inconsiderable. During this age they _reign_; they have virtually
taken what should be God's place in the world.
It is the necessary complement of this assertion of the malign
dominion of evil, when St. Paul tells us that it is exercised in the
case of unbelievers. It is their minds which the god of this world has
blinded. We need not try to investigate more narrowly the relations of
these two aspects of the facts. We need not say that the dominion of
evil produces unbelief, though this is true (John iii. 18, 19); or
that unbelief gives Satan his opportunity; or even that unbelief and
the blindness here referred to are reciprocally cause and effect of
each other. The moral interests involved are protected by the fact
that blindness is only predicated in the case in which the Gospel has
been rejected by individual unbelief; and the mere individualism,
which is the source of so many heresies, doctrinal and practical, is
excluded by the recognition of spiritual forces as operative among men
which are far more wide-reaching than any individual knows. Nor ought
we to overlook the suggestion of pity, and even of hope, for the
perishing, in the contrast between their darkness and the illumination
which the Gospel of the glory of Christ lights up. The perishing are
not the lost; the unbelievers may yet believe: "in our deepest
darkness, we know the direction of the light" (Beet). Final unbelief
would mean final ruin; but we are not entitled to make sense the
measure of spiritual things, and to argue that because we see men
blind and unbelieving now they are bound for ever to remain so. In
preaching the Gospel we must preach with hope that the light is
stronger than the darkness, and able, even at the deepest, to drive it
away. Only, when we see, as we sometimes will, how dense and
impenetrable the darkness is, we cannot but cry with the Apostle, "Who
is sufficient for these things?"
This passage is one of those in which the subject of the Gospel is
distinctly enunciated: it is the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who
is the image of God. The glory of Christ, or, which is the same thing,
Christ in His glory, is the sum and substance of it, that which gives
it both its contents and its character. Paul's conception of the
Gospel is inspired and controlled from beginning to end by the
appearance of the Lord which resulted in his conversion. In the First
Epistle to the Corinthians (i. 18, 23), and in the Epistle to the
Galatians (vi. 14), he seems to find what is essential and
distinguishing in the Cross rather than the Throne; but this is
probably due to the fact that the significance of the Cross had been
virtually denied by those for whom His words are meant. The Christ
whom he preached had died, and died, as the next chapter will make
very prominent, to reconcile the world to God; but Paul preached Him
as he had seen Him on that ever-memorable day; with all the virtue of
His atoning death in it, the Gospel was yet the Gospel of _His glory_.
It is in the combination of these two that the supreme power of the
Gospel lies. In the distaste for the supernatural which has prevailed
so widely, many have tried to ignore this, and to get out of the Cross
alone an inspiration which it cannot yield if severed from the Throne.
Had the story of Jesus ended with the words "suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried," it is very certain that
these words would never have formed part of a Creed--there would never
have been such a thing as the Christian religion. But when these words
are combined with what follows--"He rose again from the dead on the
third day, He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of
God the Father"--we have the basis which religion requires; we have a
living Lord, in whom all the redemptive virtue of a sinless life and
death is treasured up, and who is able to save to the uttermost all
that trust Him. It is not the emotions excited by the spectacle of the
Passion, any more than the admiration evoked by the contemplation of
Christ's life, that save; it is the Lord of glory, who lived that life
of love, and in love endured that agony, and who is now enthroned at
God's right hand. The life and death in one sense form part of His
glory, in another they are a foil to it; He could not have been our
Saviour but for them; He would not be our Saviour unless He had
triumphed over them, and entered into a glory beyond.
When the Apostle speaks of Christ as the image of God, we must not let
extraneous associations with this title deflect us from the true line
of his thought. It is still the Exalted One of whom he is speaking:
there is no other Christ for him. In that face which flashed upon him
by Damascus twenty years before, he had seen, and always saw, all that
man could see of the invisible God. It represented for him, and for
all to whom he preached, the Sovereignty and the Redeeming Love of
God, as completely as man could understand them. It evoked those
ascriptions of praise which a Jew was accustomed to offer to God
alone. It inspired doxologies. When it passed before the inward eye of
the Apostle, he worshipped: "to Him," he said, "be the glory and the
dominion for ever and ever." Whether the pre-incarnate Son was also
the image of God, and whether the same title is applicable to Jesus of
Nazareth, are separate questions. If they are raised, they must be
answered in the affirmative, with the necessary qualifications; but
they are quite irrelevant here. Much misunderstanding of the Pauline
Gospel would have been prevented if men could have remembered that
what was only of secondary importance to them, and even of doubtful
certainty--namely, the exaltation of Christ--was itself the foundation
of the Apostle's Christianity, the one indubitable fact from which his
whole knowledge of Christ, and his whole conception of the Gospel, set
forth. Christ on the throne was, if one may say so, a more immediate
certainty to Paul, than Jesus on the banks of the lake, or even Jesus
on the cross. It may not be natural or easy for _us_ to start thus;
but if we do not make the effort, we shall involuntarily dislocate and
distort the whole system of his thoughts.
In the fourth verse the stress is logically, if not grammatically, on
Christ. "The Gospel of the glory of _Christ_," I say. "For we preach
not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your
servants for Jesus' sake." Perhaps ambition had been laid to Paul's
charge; "the necessity of being first" is one of the last infirmities
of noble minds. But the Gospel is too magnificent to have any room for
thoughts of self. A proud man may make a nation, or even a Church, the
instrument or the arena of his pride; he may find in it the field of
his ambition, and make it subservient to his own exaltation. But the
defence which Paul has offered of his truthfulness in chap. i. is as
capable of application here. No one whom Christ has seized, subdued,
and made wholly His own for ever, can practise the arts of
self-advancement in Christ's service. The two are mutually exclusive.
Paul preaches Christ Jesus as Lord--the absolute character in which he
knows Him; as for himself, he is every man's servant for Jesus' sake.
He obtained mercy, that he might be found faithful in service: the
very name of Jesus kills pride in his heart, and makes him ready to
minister even to the unthankful and evil.
This is the force of the "for" with which the sixth verse begins. It is
as if he had written, "With our experience, no other course is possible
to us; for it is God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ." But the connexion here is of little
importance in comparison with the grandeur of the contents. In this
verse we have the first glimpse of the Pauline doctrine, explicitly
stated in the next chapter--"that if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature." The Apostle finds the only adequate parallel to his own
conversion in that grand creative act in which God brought light, by a
word, out of the darkness of chaos. It is not forcing the figure unduly,
nor losing its poetic virtue, to think of gloom and disorder as the
condition of the soul on which the Sun of Righteousness has not risen.
Neither is it putting any strain upon it to make it suggest that only
the creative word of God can dispel the darkness, and give the beauty of
life and order to what was waste and void. There is one point, indeed,
in which the miracle of grace is more wonderful than that of creation.
God only commanded the light to shine out of darkness when time began;
but He shone Himself in the Apostle's heart: _Ipse lux nostra_ (Bengel).
He shone "to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ." In that light which God flashed into his heart,
he saw the face of Jesus Christ, and knew that the glory which shone
there was the glory of God. What these words mean has already been
explained. In the face of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, Paul saw
God's Redeeming Love upon the throne of the universe; it had descended
deeper than sin and death; it was exalted now above all heavens; it
filled all things. That sight he carried with him everywhere; it was his
salvation and his Gospel, the inspiration of his inmost life, and the
motive of all his labours. One who owed all this to Christ was not
likely to make Christ's service the theatre of his own ambitions; he
could not do anything but take the servant's place, and proclaim Jesus
Christ as Lord.
* * * * *