I’m glad some of us are finding this magnificent, profound epistle as lifegiving as I do. As we’ve seen, Paul wrote it on the edge of depression: massive pressure, being hit with criticism, called unimpressive, rejected by the church he’d planted; & feeling himself, indeed, that he has failed. And that’s why it’s so helpful; when we face these same times, just WHY don’t we give up? Paul shows us now that there are certain situations where God’s resurrection power is released particularly; and it will help us grasp why certain kinds of things happen to us, & what’s being achieved in them. Again, there will be something specific here for each of us…
`More love, more power’, goes a well-loved chorus, `more of you in my life.’ And there is invisible power within each of us for astonishing ministry, says Paul: power, as we’ve seen, to carry and pass on the very Spirit and Word that transform us into Christ’s likeness; power also to break through the deepest blindness that the Enemy has inflicted on humanity. But now he connects this to the pressures he and so many other believers have suffered. We have exactly this power, this `treasure`, in `jars of clay’, he says (4:7) – cheap, disposable containers, indeed containers that are falling apart. We’re like tin cans containing a vintage wine, or a cardboard box containing very expensive chocolate. And God creates this distinction between the contents and the packaging, so that it will be clear that `this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us’ (4:7).
It’s not always easy to be a clay pot – or, let’s say, a cardboard box. Feeling – discovering – as many of us do, that one is such second-rate, inadequate, failing and broken material for God; hoping, often, that not too many other people will notice. Why does it have to be this way? Could not God’s Spirit be carried around in `containers’ a little less prone to falling apart? What can we learn from chapter 4 as Paul explores this further?
First, it is normal. The issue plagued Paul – and many others before him. One wonders if, as he wrote this, Paul was thinking of Gideon – someone else whose story concerns light hidden in clay jars (Judges 7:16-21). Gideon, too, came to see God’s strength revealed in absurd human weakness. He successfully recruited an army of thirty thousand to liberate Israel from the invader. Then, first, God told him to send home any who were frightened; so much for all his efforts in motivation. That cost him two-thirds of his army. Next, God separated the rest into two groups, one nine thousand seven hundred strong, the other a mere three hundred. And just when (one imagines) Gideon was feeling relief that this time he would lose just three per cent more, God told him to send the nine thousand home; so that Israel’s faith would be in God, not their own strength (Jud 7:2; cf 2 Cor 1:9).
Finally came God’s battle plan. He told Gideon to give each man a light in a jar, and encircle the enemy’s camp. In the middle of the night, the invaders woke to hear trumpet blasts and the smashing of clay jars, and to see lights flaming out in every direction around them. In the panic that ensued, the enemy was put to flight completely. But if this lesson was in Paul’s mind, he will have remembered the cost: the clay pots had to be broken (like the chocolates’ cardboard box has to be ripped open) for what’s inside to shine out.
At any rate that is what’s happening to him. `We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed… struck down, but not destroyed’, he writes. `We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body’ (4:8-10). It’s a central spiritual principle (shall we call it the `Calvary principle`?): the divine power of the resurrection goes with the brokenness of the cross. The principle was most clearly set out by the divine `wounded healer’, Jesus himself, in John 12:24: `Unless’ – unless – `a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ (Thankyou, Lord, that you have been this way, and you know what it’s like…) That was the way of the cross, and, said Jesus, there is no alternative route to glory: `Whoever serves me must follow me’ (John 12:26,23).
Paul knows it is happening to him; in the pressures, the criticisms, the pitiless disclosures of his own human weakness. They connect to this `carrying around in our body the death of Jesus’. In fact, they are part of the process of being made like Jesus, `transformed into his likeness’, that shone over Paul’s horizon in 3:18. Growing into Christ cannot exclude the cross that was so central to his incarnation here. But to recognise this is to find deep meaning inherent in our stresses, our inadequacy, even our failures (cf 12:10). Somehow, they make us usable; they are inseparable from the release, somewhere and somehow, of God’s power, of `the life of Jesus’ (vv10-11). It may even be, as a Japanese colleague counselled me late one night about an issue I felt was genuinely harming my own work, that our difficulty is our strength (cf 12:10 again).
And if we’ve absorbed this we can say, & sometimes we have to, Lord I know you love me enormously, I don’t enjoy what you’re doing, but I know any experience you permit of the cross must lead to resurrection, and, because you love me, you permit these things only if they lead to enormous goodness and glory; Lord, I trust you, go on. And it is okay to feel bad; but `therefore we do not lose heart’; even when (to quote Eric Clapton’s Unplugged) we’re down to `running on faith’.
So we are weak cardboard boxes carrying his Spirit, tin cans carrying vintage wine, broken clay pots: but inside is God’s light that he promises to shine out through us. We pray: we aren’t very good at it, but the Spirit who answers prayer is. We share our faith: we are weak and imperfect and we muddle it up sometimes, but the Spirit who works through us is real and strong. We go through pressures, our weakness is revealed, and so his glory is released. This is the way of the cross and it leads to glory beyond our imaginations. That’s why this chapter finishes with v17, `Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all`: when we get to heaven we’ll realise that some of the best times, the triumph times, were ones when things seemed to be going worst and we felt weakest. Jesus went the way of the cross to secure the certainty of this for us; and now the Calvary principle – if we’re members of God’s kingdom, cross will always lead to resurrection, suffering will always lead to glory – means we can grasp meaning in the pressures and the disclosures of our weakness, because that is where God’s power is so often released. And as we grasp that, it frees us up, and brings some hope and joy into our hearts….
(Of course all this does depend on our being part of God’s kingdom. Outside it, suffering may just lead to anarchy and tragedy. But if we’ve brought our lives into where God reigns, weakness will turn out to be strength, and suffering the gateway to glory…)
In all the pressures, then, Paul lives, survives, by faith. (Thankyou, Lord. Please help me trust too.) Faith that in all the problems – even as the `cardboard box’ or `clay jar’ that he has become is `wasting away'(v16) – so the gospel is furthered, God is glorified, and others benefit (v12,15). `In all these things’, as he says in a similar context in Romans 8:35-37, `we are more than conquerors…’
PS I find this quote helpful from the Chinese writer Watchman Nee’s classic book What Shall This Man Do?: `Life, Paul tells us, is that with which he serves the Church, and in doing so he defines the thing upon which all true ministry in the Church is founded. Death, working in the servant of God, produces life; and because he has life, others too have life. The Church receives, because some are willing to bear the Cross… By allowing God to work through their trials and testings, praising Him and submitting to His will, His children make it possible for Him to bring life to others. But only those who pay the price receive this costly ministry. For life is released through death, but only so… Thus we see two ministries by which the Body is built up – gifts and life; and we may ask ourselves: In which do we discern God’s highest purpose? I reply: not in gifts, but in the life from Christ which comes through death…’
PPS In the new testament, suffering and glory seem to go together like the two sides of a coin. (See Romans 8:17-18, or 1 Peter 5:1.) So a letter with plenty to say about pressure should also have plenty more to say about glory. Next week we’ll do a quick survey of chapters 4 and 5, and we’ll see at least three striking aspects to this…
