Thank you for listening to First Day.

Paul spends much of chapter four discussing the ministry of the Spirit. In verse six he states that we—himself, the Corinthians, and the Church today—have been made competent ministers of the new covenant through the Spirit. In performing this ministry, the Church becomes “the aroma of the knowledge of Christ” and brings life and was a ministry in which we have no right to participate. Paul states that it is because of God’s mercy that we have become Christ’s credentials to the world. We did not receive the death that we deserved but through Christ have received mercy. And this motivates Paul and should motivate the Corinthian church to continue moving toward the life of Christ. 

Having been entrusted with this ministry, the faithful must cease acting for their own interests and begin only acting for God’s. This same message is repeated from chapter one. We are to live openly and honestly, thus revealing the truth of the gospel. This act is not going to make us rich or powerful or even liked by the world. But it will prove that the kingdom of God is here. The purpose of this ministry is obvious. 

If the gospel message is not understood by those who are not walking with Christ it is because “the god of this age” prevents them from seeing Christ for who He is. Paul states that Jesus, “is the image of God.” Jesus cannot be understood to be anything else: not only a good, wise, or righteous man—not even an exemplary man—apart from his status as the image of God. This is why Paul can tell the Corinthians as he did in 1 Corinthians that human understanding did not bring them their knowledge of God. The message that Paul proclaims is not concerned with what is possible for humanity if it chose to follow Jesus’ example but rather that the image and glory of God is the Lord and not even the “best” human being. “What is impossible for men is possible for God.”

“Clay jars,” what a fitting description. Regardless of its size, drop a clay jar from a certain height onto a hard enough surface and…crack! We cannot be lords; we cannot create anything that truly lasts; we cannot even be the heroes of our own stories because of the fragility of our lives. And it is this way intentionally so that we can not boast that by our authority, design, and power we “have overcome the world.” We are what we are so that all people, everywhere, might know that only God’s power can bring complete and lasting transformation. As much as I love Star Trek, we simply don’t have that in us. Perhaps this is why God made us from clay/the dust of the ground and not out of trees. 

Consider how Jesus lived and what He experienced. Consider the practices and lives from which Paul told the Corinthians that they should distance themselves: social status, wealth, influence, self-promotion, and elevation. Only when we have nowhere left to turn, nothing of our own to rely upon, can the life of Christ—that which is the only way to make anything that lasts, which can make anything new—be known. Paul says here that only in our impotence and our unimportance can that which matters be revealed. 

Paul tells the Corinthians that all the struggles and the afflictions that he has experienced, all of the failures, setbacks, and weaknesses—the stammering and the ineloquence and the imperfections—everything that Greeks and Romans and modern day Westerners and Americans consider undesirable, these he has willingly experienced and lived so that the life of Jesus—the life we are to live—might shine. In his “death” Jesus’ life is working in Corinth. Remember, Titus has brought Paul good news concerning them—probably for the first time ever! This is why they are the proof of his apostolic authority.

Paul quotes here the LXX’s Psalm 116:10: “I believed, therefore I have spoken. I was greatly afflicted.” Although the following reading of Psalm 116 is from the NRSV, 1989—which uses the Masoretic Texts—the message is the same. It is “A Thanksgiving for Recovery from Illness”:

“I love the LORD, because He has heard my voice and my supplication. Because He inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call on Him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the LORD: ‘O LORD, I pray, save my life.’

“Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; our God is merciful. The LORD protects the simple; when I was brought low He saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.

“For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I walk before the LORD in the land of the living. I kept my faith, even when I said, “I am greatly afflicted”; I said in my consternation, ‘Everyone is a liar.’

“What shall I return to the LORD for all His bounty to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD. I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all His people. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His faithful ones. O LORD, I am Your servant; I am Your servant, the child of Your servant girl. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer You a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the LORD. I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD!”

With shades of Job’s struggles and hints of Jonah’s descent into the depths Paul lays claim to the power of Jesus’ life, suffering and death but also His resurrection. By dying a death like His and suffering for the sake of God’s will—suffering in righteousness—we will be able to claim His eternal life. 

To be raised to new life in Christ is worth dying to ourselves—worth the affliction and scorn of the world Paul tells the Corinthians—for the patron and the client alike. And when we compare what we are going through with what will be produced through us by Christ’s life, whatever struggle we experience has but the weight of a feather and is as lasting as a sheet of toilet paper in a thunderstorm. 

John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer immediately comes to mind when trying to summarize Paul’s message in chapter four:

I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, place me with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you,
Praised for you or criticized for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and fully surrender all things to your glory and service.
And now, O wonderful and holy God,
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer,
you are mine, and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it also be made in heaven. Amen.

When the Christian can say, “My desires no longer matter, because it is not about me but about You, God; I don’t have to have my way,” it is then that prepare ourselves to receive the eternal weight of glory. When we care about and treat others better than we do ourselves, “When we are kind and merciful to the wicked and the ungracious,” then we have laid down our own lives and died to ourselves so that Christ can live in us. “Then, we will be called the Children of the Most High.”

Thank you for listening to First Day.