CO 4:10 {" Then you come to the way the vessel is dealt with, in Paul, (a man with sin in him like ourselves). A thing with a will is not a vessel: a person is acting for himself if he has a will; he must not think or will anything for himself; and therefore it says, Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.' That is obedience of course. Christ was obedient unto death; that is not a man's will, and I am always to bear about in my body His dying: that is Christ's dying, or being put to death, as we have it in Peter, Forasmuch, then, as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind,' Christ did actually die, and Peter had just been speaking to them not to suffer for evil doing, but if it were God's will, for well doing; arm yourselves, therefore, with the same mind. This would be carrying about the dying Christ had died; and this dying of Christ I apply to myself, so that the body never stirs, and the will of the body never moves.
We have then these two things: first, Paul, as a faithful man, never allows the vessel to have, for one instant, a will or a thought of its own. Just as much as Christ died, and completely died, so Paul was carrying this about constantly, and says, 'Now you are as dead as Christ was,' and though Paul was very faithful in that, the Lord helped him by sending him through circumstances, so that he despaired of his life. It was not chastening, but he was having the sentence of death written in himself. He held himself practically for a dead man, and the Lord says, Well, now I must bring death right on to you, and so you will be a dead man.' In his case it was making it good by the trials he went through, and with this object, that nothing but the life of Christ should come out. The Lord says I must make this thorough that he may realize it in himself,' and then Paul sums it up by saying, so then death worketh in us, but life in you,' that is, Paul was so entirely a dead man, that nothing but the life of Christ wrought in him towards the Corinthians. Wonderful description! If the vessel thinks or acts, it is spoiled. There is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to come out, and if the vessel is anything, by so much the light is hindered: but if the vessel is kept dead, nothing but the life of Christ is there to come out. It ought to have been the same in them as in himself; but it was not; of them he says, life in you.' Death was working in him, and so nothing but Christ's life worked out in them. Death and life are both taken morally in this verse. Read verses 10 to 12. There would be no so then,' if it had been death in the Corinthians already. It is a wonderful thing to say for anybody, but it is said of Paul. The treasure was, as we have seen, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It shined' into Paul's heart.
But the vessel is in danger of working, and so he applies Christ's death to the vessel and then there is nothing but Christ's life to come out. But it was death to him as a man."