“Because it is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone [or ‘lit a lamp’] in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassingness of the power may be of God, and not from us.”
These verses express a marvelous purpose of God! To light a lamp within us and so deal with us that He may reduce our earthen vessels to a transparency in His hands — in order that the glory of God, shining in Jesus on high, should shine out from our hearts, that we may be God’s lanterns in a dark and Christ-rejecting world.
Some have referred to Gideon’s lamps and pitchers (Judg. 7) as an analogy of the glory of God shining out of our earthen vessels. However, the lamps in Gideon’s day shone out only when the pitcher was broken. Here, the vessel is not broken but is rendered transparent. All the hindering elements of flesh are so attenuated (lessened and made thin) that the “treasure” possessed by the vessel may shine forth undimmed. Thus Paul says in verse 10, “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be manifest [shine out] in our mortal flesh.”
Paul, a Shining Vessel
The circumstances through which Paul was passing when he wrote his letters to Corinth are worthy of our serious consideration, for they show how his own vessel was being made more transparent for the shining forth of the glory of God. His feelings and circumstances entered into all the texture of the teaching which flowed from God to us in his letters. As his vessel passed through the trial or exercise, his heart was trained. His affections were formed by these things, and he was sustained and supported of God in the sorrows of the way, so that “out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Paul had drunk from the living stream at the fountainhead of all blessing (John 7:37-3837In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (John 7:37‑38)). His thirst had been quenched by Christ. And so his inner man — the mind, the heart, the soul — became the means of refreshing streams to others. That which had consoled his own soul in its sorrow was a consolation to others. The Father of mercies so blessedly filled Paul’s soul with all His consolation in Christ that it overflowed, and the stream passed on in living power, producing fruit in the desert sands of the world where he went.
Paul had to learn how to live in the power of that which he would teach others; his purpose was to bear about in his body the dying of Jesus. How could he be helped in this? By being delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may be manifest in his mortal flesh. This is God’s reward to those who seek to live in the power of what they teach and know.
F. G. Patterson (adapted)