4:7 Having exulted in the new creational scope of gospel ministry, Paul calms his readers with a sobering yet hopeful juxtaposition that is well-deservedly one of the most beloved truths in all the Bible: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay.” This astonishing ministry of eternal magnitude, through which God opens the eyes of sinners blinded by the Devil (4:4) and begins a new creation (4:6), resides in fragile pots. Not beautiful, ornate, golden vessels. Just clay jars. Crumbling over time. Liable to be smashed to total destruction at any time. Unattractive. Unimpressive.

But of course! This is the wisdom of God. Inside that bland and breakable jar is a “treasure,” the gospel of grace accomplished by the work of Christ in the past and applied by the work of the Spirit in the present. On the outside the jar is manifestly vulnerable. On the inside is an indomitable treasure of priceless value and invincible power. If the jar is broken, the gospel only spills out all the more for the world to see. Or, to use the categories of this passage, the more there is death, the more there is life. The more the jar is beaten, the further the gospel surges. This is, as we are seeing throughout this letter, the upside-down nature of God’s deepest ways.

But why? Why not work through impressive, flashy vessels? Why not call the world’s most qualified people to steward the gospel, if it is so precious? Because the world’s most qualified tend to be the most unqualified in the eyes of God. They are prone to work out of their own resources. But to communicate the gospel out of one’s own power or cleverness or impressiveness is inherently contradictory to what the gospel is—good news for the unimpressive; qualifying news for the disqualified. Therefore, God gives his gospel treasure to jars of clay in order to make it clear to all that “the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

4:8–9 What does it look like for a jar of clay to house this gospel treasure and move through life accordingly? These verses paint the picture in concrete terms. In four pairings Paul drives home the point that, come what may to God’s jars of clay, nothing can finally extinguish them. Like trick birthday candles, the flame cannot be put out. One could say that the first half of each pair reflects life as a jar of clay; the second half reflects the presence of the treasure. The first half reflects life in this present evil (or old) age (cf. Gal. 1:4); the second half reflects the presence of the new age (table 3.5).

TABLE 3.5: God’s Power in Jars of Clay

The progression is from general adversity (“afflicted”) to inner distress (“perplexed”) to external hostility from others (“persecuted”) to being beaten down to the very ground (“struck down”).37 In each case God sustains, demonstrating that the “surpassing power” is his and not ours. The implication is that without God’s power we would fold. Emotionally, psychologically, relationally, physically—without God at work, we would go into meltdown and throw in the towel. It would be too much. These are not light trials.

4:10 But how exactly does God sustain us in these adversities that threaten to be so overwhelming? Paul now explains, bringing Christ into the flow of thought.

The verb “carrying” occurs only two other times in the NT, once to speak of people carrying the sick on mats to wherever Jesus was (Mark 6:55) and once to speak of immature believers’ being carried about by passing fraudulent doctrines like a ship on a stormy sea (Eph. 4:14). The idea here is that wherever believers go, they bring with them the cruciform nature of Jesus’ earthly existence, the giving over of themselves to heaven’s priorities, hastening their eventual physical demise (the Greek word is nekrōsis, connoting the process of dying, not thanatos, the more common word for death, as in 2 Cor. 1:9, 10; 2:16; 3:7). And this occurs not only everywhere but “always.” Embodying the death of Jesus is not a temporary reality. It is not a switch one can turn on and off. It is ever present.

It would therefore be utterly unbearable, but for one thing: Jesus not only died; he also rose again. Here we must be clear: Jesus’ rising is not like Lazarus’s (John 11:38–44) or any of the several bodily raisings of individuals in the Gospels or Acts. Those were closer to resuscitations than resurrections.38 These others who were raised still had to die one day. Not so the risen Jesus. His rising was the inbreaking of the life of the new age, the invincible, fully physical yet immortal glory of final resurrection. And by virtue of union with him, believers share in this life of the new age even before they have themselves died. We will die physically one day. But the new life, resurrection life, will continue on, and one day, when Christ returns, we will be given the same kind of bodies Jesus now has (cf. Phil. 3:21). In the meantime we live in the glory amid horror Paul here describes.

4:11–12 Paul drives home the point he has just made in verse 10—that Jesus’ cruciform death and resurrection life shines forth in our lives through our union with him—with four added elements.

First, Paul reiterates that this happens “always,” though he uses a different Greek word (aei as opposed to pantote) that signals more specifically “unceasing” as opposed to the slightly more general sense of “at all times.” Second, whereas verse 10 spoke of “carrying” the death of Jesus, verse 11 solemnifies this even more deeply by asserting that we “are . . . being given over to death” (reverting here to thanatos), using a verb that means to be handed over, yielded over, or even betrayed—the word used of what both Judas (Matt. 27:3) and Pilate do in handing Jesus over to death (Matt. 27:26). In graduating his language from “carrying” to “being handed over to” death, Paul now speaks of believers as contentedly given over to mistreatment by the world under the gentle governance of their heavenly Father. This is the meaning of 2 Corinthians 4:12. Part of God’s redemptive purpose is to use our being delivered up to a thousand deaths throughout this mortal existence to ignite and nurture life in others.

Third, the resurrection life that is “manifested” (phaneroō in both v. 10 and v. 11) in believers is said to be manifested “in our bodies” in verse 10 but “in our mortal flesh” in verse 11. Paul ratchets up the sense of the earthiness and fragility and transience of the jar of clay in which the life of Jesus shines forth. Fourth, in verse 10 death and resurrection simply coexist in the believer; in verse 11 it is clarified that death directly leads to resurrection such that there is no resurrection life without first being given over to death.

In all these ways verse 11 is a squeezing of verse 10, a pressing deeper into what it means for those in Christ to share in his death and resurrection. Theologically we are being taught an important truth, that the death and resurrection of Jesus transpired not only in place of us (in a way we can never follow) but also ahead of us (in a way that we must follow). He is not only a substitute but also a pioneer, blazing a trail we are called to walk ourselves. The former is Christ for us; the latter Christ in us. Only the former is atoning, but apostolic Christianity necessarily includes both.

To summarize verses 11 and 12: Unbelievers are the living dead. They feel themselves to be living, but most deeply they are dying. Believers are the dying living. They feel themselves to be dying, but most deeply they possess resurrection life. Here as everywhere in 2 Corinthians, things are not as they seem.

4:13 The key to understanding verses 13 and 14 is the snippet from Psalm 116 that Paul quotes. Paul explicitly cites the OT less frequently in 2 Corinthians than in many of his other letters, though all of Paul’s writings (as well as his sermons and speeches in Acts) are built on an OT substructure. Even a letter such as Colossians, with no explicit OT quotations, cannot be made sense of without OT categories and structures of thought.

What is Psalm 116 about? Life out of death. The psalmist recounts an experience of dire distress when he was at death’s door, apparently with no humanly wrought escape possible (Ps. 116:1–4). But the Lord delivered him. Strikingly, the psalmist says the Lord has “delivered my soul from death, . . . I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living” (Ps. 116:8–9; the very next verse is then what Paul quotes, as usual using the LXX). Notice the language of life out of death in the psalm. Yet in the psalmist’s precarious experience of mortality (notice the continued reflection on death in Ps. 116:15), God has delivered him from death only to continue in mortal existence, with the hope of future resurrection life (Ps. 116:9). In 2 Corinthians 4 that future resurrection life has irreversibly invaded the Corinthians’ present experience.

What the psalmist does in the midst of peril is exercise faith leading to confession, belief fueling speech. The same “spirit of faith” exhibited by the psalmist has been appropriated by Paul and his readers (“spirit,” Gk. pneuma, could mean Holy Spirit but more likely means human spirit, perhaps with a subtle nod to the Spirit in the background). This faith impels open boldness of speech as Paul communicates the treasure of the gospel despite believers’ being fragile jars of clay outwardly.

4:14 For Paul, however, unlike the psalmist, this faith is more robustly motivated, as this verse makes clear. It is a faith-fueled speech arising from the reality of inaugurated resurrection. Again, the fundamental resurrection is Christ’s, into which believers have been plugged.

Note how seamlessly Paul can swivel between the present resurrection experience of believers and the future consummation of that resurrection (“will raise”) when Christ comes again. This is because Christ’s resurrection is a guarantee of ours, but more than a guarantee—it is in fact the first instance of that final resurrection, right in the middle of history (cf. 1 Cor. 15:20–23). The raising that believers experience between Christ’s two comings is decisive and spiritual; the raising we will experience upon his return is final and physical, as was Christ’s own (cf. 1 Thess. 4:14).

Paul continues to reflect on the wonder of knowing the resurrection of Christ in our own lives here and now, anticipating its completion in the future, in the very presence of the living Christ himself. But note his pastoral attentiveness in the way he slips in “with you” in the closing words of the verse. Paul and the Corinthians are together united in Christ. They share the deepest reality of the universe. Here as elsewhere Paul seeks to ward off the Corinthians’ temptation to give greater heed to the impressive false teachers in Corinth as he seeks to restore his paternal relationship with the church at Corinth.

4:15 Having mentioned the Corinthians toward the end of verse 14, Paul makes explicit his driving point in these sentences: Paul’s ministry is not about himself but about the welfare of the Corinthians, the extension of grace, the gratitude of the saved, and the glory of God.

First, the welfare of the Corinthians: “It is all for your sake.” What is for their sake? Everything Paul has just been relating: stewarding the treasure of the gospel in jars of clay (v. 7), carrying around the death of Christ (v. 10), manifesting the resurrection life of Jesus (v. 11), openly speaking of the truth (v. 13). The point, as he put it in verse 12, is “life in you.” The same gospel that startles us into wonder in the way Jesus lays himself down for our welfare nurtures, in those who receive it truly, a heart impulse to do likewise for others.

Second, the salvation of the lost: “as grace extends to more and more people.” The very nature of grace is that, like a good infection, it spreads. Static grace is not grace. Those who truly receive it long to pass on the restored right standing with God (3:9) and boldness (3:12) and freedom (3:17) they are now swimming in.

Third, the gratitude of the saved: “so that . . . it may increase thanksgiving.” Grace leads to gratitude. This is the basic organization of the Heidelberg Catechism, on which many Christians have been raised and catechized over the past 450 years. Felt grace ignites thanksgiving and praise—not in a mechanical way but in a natural prompting by which the giving of thanks completes the joy of receiving the grace—and yet one never feels one has given thanks enough.39

Fourth, the glory of God, on which note Paul ends. The entire tenor of life in Christ is to be drawn away from self-involvement to God’s honor and worth and brilliance.

4:16 The next three verses rightly stand as some of the most sublime and calming words ever to be written by a human hand. Paul continues his theme of life through death but turns from looking in at his own experience (vv. 7–12) and out to others (vv. 13–15) to looking ahead to believers’ inevitable and incomparable future (vv. 16–18).

Paul repeats a phrase from verse 1, bringing full circle the argument between these two bookends: “We do not lose heart.” This has been Paul’s driving point—to encourage his readers. Yet it is an encouragement that does not shy away from the manifest reasons we find all around us to lose heart. Rather, Paul weds utter realism with soaring hope, resulting in a stability and calm as we weather the billows of life. We see this realism when he acknowledges, “Our outer self is wasting away.” To waste away here means to decay, to erode bit by bit—the same Greek verb (diaphtheirō) is used in Luke 12:33 to speak of what moths do to treasure over time, corroding it bit by bit. But what is the “outer self” (lit., “outer man”)? It is the entire human being according to the old age. It is the remnant of us that remains but is decaying, belonging to the old order. Picture a healthy cicada struggling to break out of its decaying outer shell. The outer shell is still there, part of the insect. But it does not define it. That decaying outer shell is falling away. Soon it will be no part of the new life the cicada has already begun to experience.

Accordingly, the “inner self” (lit., “inner man”) is that which belongs to the new age—the real person, the eternal self. The person in Christ. And the inner self, by the Spirit, in union with the resurrected Christ, is taking one step closer to the consummation of its destiny day by day. The shell is crumbling away, doomed to perish. But the new self, the true one, is waking up, fresh and strong and beginning to stretch its limbs, preparing—not yet physically, but spiritually—for the life of the new earth.40

4:17 Having spoken of the outer man (belonging to the old age) decaying and the inner man (belonging to the new age) striding forward, Paul pauses to return momentarily to the outer (old age) man. What is this “wasting away” actually accomplishing? “An eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

Paul is once again speaking in eschatological categories, even if this is not immediately apparent in English translation. “Beyond all comparison” is literally “a surpassing unto surpassing eternality”—that is, a new-age eternality (Gk. aiōnios, related to aiōn, age) that is characterized by a quality of glory that cannot be compared to even the best glories of this present evil age. On first reading, one may be tempted to think Paul is playing down the horrors of life in this fallen world. Stomach cancer in a young father of three? A freak accident on the way home from golf practice that takes a sixteen-year-old’s life? The daily, accumulating pinpricks of this world—haunting memories, indulged sin and fresh shame, marital strife, torpedoed friendships, a deadened humanity through sustained depression? This is “slight” (or “light”)? (The only other NT occurrence of the Greek word elaphros is Jesus’ comment that his burden is “light” in Matt. 11:30.)

In themselves, no, these burdens are not slight. Paul knew pain (2 Cor. 11:23–29). But in comparison, they are light as a feather. For they are “momentary.” The coming heavy weight of glory is “eternal.” See, then, the two pairs of opposites Paul employs in contrasting the pains of this world with the glory of the next: light versus heavy, temporary versus eternal. In weight the two cannot be compared, because in length of time the two cannot be compared.

4:18 Paul continues with one of these pairs: the temporary/eternal contrast. The first half of the verse explains how we apprehend what he has just described—the simultaneous powering down of the part of the old man and the renewing of the new man. Paul uses the metaphor of sight, already present in the context through the pervasive use of veil imagery. But among the several sight-related verbs Paul could have chosen he uses one (skopeō) that includes a connotation of “look out” or “watch out,” or, as we might say today, “keep your eyes peeled” (cf. the other four Pauline uses: Rom. 16:17; Gal. 6:1; Phil. 2:4; 3:17). Our present afflictions are nurturing future glory (2 Cor. 4:17), and we become attuned to that and heartened by it as we pay close attention to the invisible rather than the visible world. Note the paradox. We are to look at what cannot be looked at. To see what cannot be seen. That is, to fix our heart’s eyes (cf. Eph. 1:18) on the next world, the coming glory—invisible to physical eyes, apprehended only by the eyes of faith.

The second half of the verse picks up this “things seen”/“things not seen” contrast and connects it to the temporary/eternal contrast of the previous verse. “For the things that are seen are transient . . .” “Transient” echoes “momentary” from 2 Corinthians 4:17. This is the only time Paul uses the word, which is the word used in the parable of the sower to describe the seed that has no root and falls away when adversity comes (Matt. 13:21; Mark 4:17). “But the things that are unseen are eternal.” Using the word aiōnion again (“eternal”; also 2 Cor. 4:17), Paul says that we fix our eyes on the invisible world because this is the one that lasts. And it is here now. Nowhere in this passage does Paul say the things seen are present and the things unseen are future. To be sure, one day the invisible will explode visibly onto world history, more solid and concrete than the most visible realities today (Rev. 21:1–5). But we are fixing our minds on the coming embodiment of the new age that has already quietly erupted onto world history in Christ’s resurrection and our inaugurated co-resurrection through union with him (cf. Col. 3:1–4).