precisely meant by πρὸς φωτισμὸν τῆς γνώσεως τῆς δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ κ.τ.λ.
By some the passage is rendered: God shined in our hearts, "that _He_
might bring into the light (for _us_ to see it) the knowledge of His
glory," etc. This is certainly legitimate, and strikes me as the most
natural interpretation. It would answer then to what Paul says in Gal.
i. 15 f., referring to the same event: "It pleased God to reveal His Son
in me." But others think all this is covered by the words "God shined in
our hearts," and they take πρὸς φωτισμὸν κ.τ.λ., as a description of the
apostolic vocation: God shined in our hearts, "that _we_ might bring
into the light (for _others_ to see) the knowledge of His glory," etc.
The words would then answer to what follows in Gal. i. 16: God revealed
His Son in me, "that I might preach Him among the heathen." This
construction is possible, but I think forced. In Paul's experience his
conversion and vocation were indissolubly connected; but πρὸς φωτισμὸν
κ.τ.λ., can only mean one, and the conversion is the likelier.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Expositors seem to be agreed that in this passage there is a
reference, more or less definite and particular, to the Judaising
opponents of St. Paul at Corinth. This may be admitted, but is not to
be forced. It is forced, _e.g._, by Schmiedel, who habitually reads
St. Paul as if (1) he had been expressly accused of everything which
he says he does not do, and (2) as if he deliberately retorted on his
opponents every charge he denied. Press this as he does, and whole
passages of the Epistles become a series of covert insinuations--a
kind of calumnious conundrums--instead of frank and _bona fide_
statements of Christian principle. The result condemns the process.
[38] "Il voulut se servir de la supériorité de ce génie, comme les
rois de leur puissance; il crut tout soumettre, et tout abaisser par
la force."
[39] Grammarians differ much as to the relation of τῶν ἀπίστων ("which
believe not") to ἐν οἶς ("in whom"). I have no doubt they are the
same. The natural way for the Apostle to express himself would have
been: "it is veiled in them that are perishing, whose minds the god of
this world blinded." But he wished to include the moral aspect of the
case, the side of the personal responsibility of the perishing, as of
equal significance with the agency of Satan; and this is what he does
by adding τῶν ἀπίστων. Hence, though the expression is capable of
being grammatically tortured into something different (the perishing
becoming only _a part_ of the unbelieving--so Meyer), it is, by its
sheer grammatical awkwardness, exempted from liability to such
rigorous treatment, and brought under the rules, not of grammar, but
of common sense.
XII
_THE VICTORY OF FAITH_
"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding
greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves; _we
are_ pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not
unto despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not
destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that
the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. For we which
live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life
also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death
worketh in us, but life in you. But having the same spirit of faith,
according to that which is written, I believed, and therefore did I
speak; we also believe, and therefore also we speak; knowing that He
which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus,
and shall present us with you. For all things _are_ for your sakes,
that the grace, being multiplied through the many, may cause the
thanksgiving to abound unto the glory of God.
"Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet
our inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction,
which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an
eternal weight of glory; 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."--2 COR. iv. 7-18 (R.V.).
In the opening verses of this chapter Paul has magnified his office,
and his equipment for it. He has risen to a great height, poetic and
spiritual, in speaking of the Lord of glory, and of the light which
shines from His face for the illumining and redemption of men. The
disproportion between his own nature and powers, and the high calling
to which he has been called, flashes across his mind. It is quite
possible that this disproportion, viewed with a malignant eye, had
been made matter of reproach by his adversaries. "Who," they may have
said, "is this man, who soars to such heights, and makes such
extraordinary claims? The part does not suit him; he is quite unequal
to it; his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible." It
is possible, further, though I hardly think it probable, that the very
sufferings Paul endured in his apostolic work were cast in his teeth
by Jewish teachers at Corinth; they were read by these spiteful
interpreters as signs of God's wrath, the judgment of the Almighty on
a wanton subverter of His law. But surely it is not too much to
suppose that Paul could sometimes think unchallenged. A soul as great
and as sensitive as his might well be struck by the contrast which
pervades this passage without requiring to have it suggested by the
malice of his foes. The interpretation which he puts upon the contrast
is not merely a happy artifice (so Calvin), and still less a _tour de
force_; it is a profound truth, a favourite, if one may say so, in the
New Testament, and of universal application.
"We have this treasure," he writes--the treasure of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, including the apostolic
vocation to diffuse that knowledge--"we have this treasure in earthen
vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power [which it exercises,
and which is exhibited in sustaining us in our function] may be seen to
be God's, and not from us." Earthen vessels are fragile, and what the
word immediately suggests is no doubt bodily weakness, and especially
mortality; but the nature of some of the trials referred to in vv. 8 and
9 (ἀπορούμενοι, ἀλλ' οὐκ ἐξαπορύμενοι) shows that it would be a mistake
to confine the meaning to the body. The earthen vessel which holds the
priceless treasure of the knowledge of God--the lamp of frail ware in
which the light of Christ's glory shines for the illumination of the
world--is human nature as it is; man's body in its weakness, and
liability to death; his mind with its limitations and confusions; his
moral nature with its distortions and misconceptions, and its insight
not yet half restored. It was not merely in his physique that Paul felt
the disparity between himself and his calling to preach the Gospel of
the glory of Christ; it was in his whole being. But instead of finding
in this disparity reason to doubt his vocation, he saw in it an
illustration of a great law of God. It served to protect the truth that
_salvation is of the Lord_. No one who saw the exceeding greatness of
the power which the Gospel exercised--not only in sustaining its
preachers under persecution, but in transforming human nature, and
making bad men good--no one who saw this, and looked at a preacher like
Paul, could dream that the explanation lay in _him_. Not in an ugly
little Jew, without presence, without eloquence, without the means to
bribe or to compel, could the source of such courage, the cause of such
transformations, be found; it must be sought, not in him, but in God.
"God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things
which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are
despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to
nought things which are." And the end of it all is that he which
glorieth should glory _in the Lord_.
This verse is never without its application; and though the contempt
of the world did not suggest it to St. Paul, it may naturally enough
recall it to us. One would sometimes think, from the tone of current
literature, that no person with gifts above contempt is any longer
identified with the Gospel. Clever men, we are told, do not become
preachers now--still less do they go to church. They find it
impossible to have real or sincere intellectual intercourse with
Christian ministers. Perhaps this is not so alarming as the clever
people think. There always have been men in the world so clever that
God could make no use of them; they could never do His work, because
they were so lost in admiration of their own. But God's work never
depended on them, and it does not depend on them now. It depends on
those who, when they see Jesus Christ, become unconscious, once and
for ever, of all that they have been used to call their wisdom and
their strength--on those who are but earthen vessels in which
another's jewel is kept, lamps of clay in which another's light
shines. The kingdom of God has not changed its administration since
the first century; its supreme law is still the glory of God, and not
the glory of the clever men; and we may be quite sure it will not
change. God will always have his work done by instruments who are
willing to have it clear that the exceeding greatness of the power is
His, and not theirs.
The eighth and ninth verses illustrate the contrast between Paul's
weakness and God's power. In the series of participles which the Apostle
uses, the earthen vessel is represented by the first in each pair, the
divine power by the second. "We are pressed on every side, but not
straitened"--_i.e._, not brought into a narrow place from which there is
no escape. "We are perplexed, but not unto despair," or, preserving the
relation between the words of the original, "put to it, but not utterly
put out." This distinctly suggests inward rather than merely bodily
trials, or at least the inward aspect of these: constantly at a loss,
the Apostle nevertheless constantly finds the solution of his problems.
"Pursued, but not abandoned"--_i.e._, not left in the enemy's hands.
"Smitten down, but not destroyed": even when trouble has done its worst,
when the persecuted man has been overtaken and struck to the ground, the
blow is not fatal, and he rises again. All these partial contrasts of
human weakness and Divine power are condensed and concentrated in the
tenth verse in one great contrast, the two sides of which are presented
in their divinely intended relation to each other: "always bearing about
in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be
manifested in our body." And this again, with its mystical poetic
aspect, especially in the first clause, is reaffirmed and rendered into
prose in ver. 11: "For we, alive as we are, are ever being delivered
unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be
manifested in our mortal flesh."
Paul does not say that he bears about in his body the death of Jesus
(θάνατος), but his dying (νέκρωσις, _mortificatio_), the process which
produces death. The sufferings which come upon him daily in his work for
Jesus are gradually killing him; the pains, the perils, the spiritual
pressure, the excitement of danger and the excitement of deliverance,
are wearing out his strength, and soon he must die. In the very same way
Jesus Himself had spent His strength and died, and in that life of
weakness and suffering which was always bringing him nearer the grave,
Paul felt himself in intimate sympathetic communion with his Master: it
was "the dying _of Jesus_" that he carried about in his body. But that
was not all. In spite of the dying, he was not dead. Perpetually in
peril, he had a perpetual series of escapes; perpetually at his wits
end, his way perpetually opened before him. What was the explanation of
that? It was _the life of Jesus_ manifesting itself in his body. The
life of Jesus can only mean the life which Jesus lives now at God's
right hand; and these repeated escapes of the Apostle, these
restorations of his courage, are manifestations of that life; they are,
so to speak, a series of resurrections. Paul's communion with Jesus is
not only in His dying, but in His rising again; he has the evidence of
the Resurrection, because he has its power, present with him, in these
constant deliverances and renewals. Nay, the very purpose of his
sufferings and perils is to provide occasion for the manifestation of
this resurrection life. Unless he were exposed to death, God could not
deliver him from it; unless he were pressed in the spirit, God could not
give him relief; there could be no setting off of the exceeding
greatness of His power in contrast with the exceeding frailty of the
earthen vessel. The use of body and of mortal flesh in these verses has
been appealed to in support of an interpretation which would limit the
meaning to what is merely physical: "I am in daily danger of death, God
daily delivers me from it, and thus the life of Jesus is manifested in
me." This is of course included in the interpretation given above; but I
cannot suppose it is all the Apostle meant. The truth is, there is no
such thing in the passage, or indeed in human life, as a merely physical
experience. To be delivered to death _for Jesus' sake_ is an experience
which is at once and indissolubly physical and spiritual; it could not
be, unless the soul had its part, and that the chief part, in it. To be
delivered _from_ such death is also an experience as much spiritual as
physical. And in both aspects, and not least in the first, is the life
of Jesus manifested. Nor can I see that it is in the least degree
unnatural for one who feels this to speak of that life as being
manifested in his "body," or in his "mortal flesh"; it is a way which
all men understand of describing the human nature, which is the scene of
the manifestation, as a frail and powerless thing.
The moral of the passage is similar to that of chap. i. 3-11.
Suffering, for the Christian, is not an accident; it is a divine
appointment and a divine opportunity. To wear life out in the service
of Jesus is to open it to the entrance of Jesus' life; it is to
receive, in all its alleviations, in all its renewals, in all its
deliverances, a witness to His resurrection. Perhaps it is only by
accepting this service, with the daily dying it demands, that that
witness can be given to us; and "the life of Jesus" on His throne may
become inapprehensible and unreal in proportion as we decline to bear
about in our bodies His dying. All who have commented on this passage
have noticed the iteration of the name of Jesus. _Singulariter sensit
Paulus dulcedinem ejus._ Schmiedel explains the repetition as partly
accidental, and partly indicative of the fact that Christ's death is
here regarded as a purely human occurrence, and not as a redemptive
deed of the Messiah. This points in the right direction, though it may
fairly be doubted whether Paul would have drawn this distinction, or
could even have been made to understand it. The analytic tendency of
the modern mind often disintegrates what depends for its virtue on
being kept whole and entire, and this seems to me a case in point. The
use of the name Jesus rather indicates that, in recalling the actual
events of his own career, Paul saw them run continually parallel to
events in the career of Another; they were one in kind with that
painful series of incidents which ended in the death of the historical
Saviour. People have often sought in the Epistles of Paul for traces
of a knowledge of Christ like that which is conserved in the first
three Gospels; in this expression, τὴν νέκρωσιν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, and in the
repetition of the historical proper name, there is an indirect but
quite convincing proof that the general character of Christ's life was
known to the Apostle. And though he does not dwell on Christ's
sympathy with the fulness and power of the writer to the Hebrews, it
is evident from this passage that he was in sympathetic fellowship
with One who had suffered as he suffered, and that even to name His
human name was consolation.
In ver. 12 an abrupt conclusion is drawn from all that precedes: "So
then death worketh in us, but life in you." _Ironice dictum_, is
Calvin's comment, and the words are at least intelligible if so taken.
The stinging passage beginning at chap. iv. 8 of the First Epistle is
ironical in precisely this sense--"We are fools for Christ's sake, but
ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye have glory,
but we have dishonour": this is as it were a variation on the theme
"death worketh in us, but life in you." Still, the irony does not seem
in place here: Paul writes in all seriousness that the sufferings
which he endures as a preacher of the Gospel, and which eventually
bring death to him--which are the approaches of death, or death itself
at work--are the means by which life, in the most unqualified sense,
comes to be at work in the Corinthians. If the death and life which
are in view wherever the Gospel appears are to be distributed among
them, the death is his, and the life theirs; the dying of Jesus is
borne about by the Evangelist, while those who accept the message he
brings at this cost are made partakers in Jesus' life.
Not indeed that the contrast can be thus absolute: the thirteenth
verse corrects this hasty inference. If death alone were at work in
St. Paul, it would frustrate his vocation; he would not be able to
preach at all. But he is able to preach. In spite of all the
discouragement which his sufferings might beget, his faith remains
vigorous; he is conscious of possessing that same confidence toward
God which animated the ancient Psalmist to sing, "I believed,
therefore I spoke." "We also," he says, "believe, and therefore also
we speak." What he believes, and what prompts his utterance, we read
in the thirteenth verse: "We speak; knowing that He who raised Jesus
shall raise us also like[40] Jesus, and shall present us with you.
With you, I say: for the whole thing is for your sakes, that the
grace, having become abundant, may by means of many[41] cause the
thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God."
What an interesting illustration this is of the communion of the saints!
Paul recognises a spiritual kinsman in the writer of the Psalm;[42]
faith in God, the power which faith confers, the obligations which
faith imposes, are the same in all ages. He recognises spiritual kinsmen
in the Corinthians also. All his sufferings have their interest in view,
and it is part of his joy, as he looks on to the future, that when God
raises him from the dead, as He raised His own Son, He will present him
_along with them_. Their unity will not be dissolved by death. The word
here rendered "present" has often a technical sense in Paul's Epistles;
it is almost appropriated to the presenting of men before the
judgment-seat of Christ. Good scholars insist on that meaning here; but
even with the proviso that acceptance in the judgment is taken for
granted, I cannot feel that it is quite congruous. There is such a thing
as presentation to a sovereign as well as to a judge--the presenting of
the bride to the bridegroom on the wedding day as well as of the
criminal to the justice--and it is the great and glad occasion which
answers to the feeling in the Apostle's mind. The communion of the
saints, in virtue of which his sufferings bring blessing to the
Corinthians, has its issue in the joyful union of all before the throne.
As Paul thinks of that, he sees an end in the Gospel lying beyond the
blessing it brings to men. That end is God's glory. The more he toils
and suffers, the more God's grace is made known and received; and the
more it is received, the more does it cause thanksgiving to abound to
the glory of God.
Two practical reflections present themselves here, nearly related to
each other. The first is that faith naturally speaks; the second, that
grace merits thanksgiving. Put the two into one, and we may say that
grace received by faith merits articulate thanksgiving. Much modern
faith is inarticulate, and it is far too soothing to be true if we
say, Better so. Of course the utterance of faith is not prescribed to
it; to be of any value it must be spontaneous. Not all the believing
are to be teachers and preachers, but all are to be confessors. Every
one who has faith has a witness to bear to God. Every one who has
accepted God's grace by faith has a thankful acknowledgment of it to
make, and at some time or other to make in words. It is not the
faculty of speech that is wanting where this is not done; it is
courage and gratitude; it is the same Spirit of faith which prompted
the Psalmist and St. Paul. It is true that hypocrites sometimes speak,
and that testimonies and thanksgivings are apt to be discredited on
their account; but bad money would never be put in circulation unless
good money was indisputably valuable. It is not the dumb, but the
confessing Christian, not the taciturn, but the outspokenly thankful,
who glorifies God, and helps on the Gospel. Calvin is properly severe
on our "pseudo-nicodemi," who make a merit of their silence, and boast
that they have never by a syllable betrayed their faith. Faith is
betrayed in another and more serious sense when it is kept secret.
But to return to the Apostle, who himself, at ver. 16, returns to the
beginning of the chapter, and resumes the οὐκ ἐγκακοῦμεν of ver. 1:
"Wherefore we faint not." "Wherefore" means "With all that has been said
in view"; not only the glorious future in which Paul and his disciples
are to be raised and presented together to Christ, but his daily
experience of the life of Jesus manifested in his mortal flesh. This
kept him brave and strong. "We faint not; but though our outward man is
decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day." The outward man
covers the same area as "our body," or "our mortal flesh." It is human
nature as it is constituted in this world--a weak, fragile, perishable
thing. Paul could not mistake, and did not hide from himself, the effect
which his apostolic work had upon him. He saw it was killing him. He was
old long before the time. He was a sorely broken man at an age when many
are in the fulness of their strength. The earthen vessel was visibly
crumbling. Still, that was not the _whole_ of his experience. "The
inward man is renewed day by day." The meaning of these words must be
fixed mainly by the opposition in which they stand to οὐκ ἐγκακοῦμεν
("we faint not"). The same word (ἀνακαινοῦσθαι) is used of the renewal
of the soul in the Creator's image (Col. iii. 10)--_i.e._, of the work
of sanctification; but the opposition in question proves that this is
not contemplated here. We must rather think of the daily supply of
spiritual power for apostolic service--of the new strength and joy which
were given to St. Paul every morning, in spite of the toils and
sufferings which every day exhausted him. Of course we can say of all
people, bad as well as good, "The outward man is decaying." Time tires
the stoutest runner, crumbles the compactest wall. But we cannot say of
all, "The inward man is renewed day by day." That is not the
compensation of every one; it is the compensation of those whose outward
man has decayed in Jesus' service, who have been worn out in labours for
His sake. It is they, and they only, who have a life within which is
independent of outward conditions, which sufferings and deaths cannot
crush, and which never grows old. The decay of the outward man in the
godless is a melancholy spectacle, for it is the decay of everything; in
the Christian it does not touch that life which is hid with Christ in
God, and which is in the soul itself a well of water springing up to
life eternal.