2 Cor. 4
As we turn to this chapter, there are three things I will refer to in connection with this ministry. They are in the seventh verse. He says, “we have this treasure,” and it is “in earthen vessels,” and there is what is called “the excellency of the power,” or, as I believe it should be, “the surpassingness of the power.” These are three wonderful things to get before our thoughts.
“This treasure,” what is it? I do not think the treasure is so much the estimate that my heart forms of Christ, as the value that God has found in Him. That is the reason, I believe, why it is called a “treasure.” I do not deny the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is to be a treasure to His people, because you get the scripture elsewhere, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”; but here the treasure, which is, of course, Christ, is presented more as it is looked at from God’s side. It is the treasure in God’s estimation. It is what the thought of God is as to this blessed One. Christ is His treasure. How did that treasure come into the vessel? Look at the sixth verse for a moment. He says: “For God, who commanded that but of darkness light should shine, hath shined in our hearts, for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” That is the way the treasure comes in. It is not that I have possessed myself of the treasure. It is a wonderful thing—it sustains one’s heart—to think of the sovereignty of the grace of God; to think of that sovereign grace in its actings, as well as its purposes. How, then, did this treasure find its way into our hearts? Let me ask, how did light come into this dark world? Remember this, the sun was not the creature of the first day; it was created afterwards. How then did light come? What was the light of the first three days in the old creation? This: “God said, Let there be light; and light was.” Just so spiritually in our hearts: God, in His wonderful, blessed, sovereign way of dealing, God Himself, who commanded that out of darkness light should shine, is the God who has shone in our hearts. It is not merely a ray from Him, or some emanation from Him, but God Himself shining; that is a very different thing; God Himself shining in a man’s heart, in all His blessed illuminating power, for, or in order to, “the shining forth of the radiancy of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Take an instance of it. This very Saul of Tarsus himself, on the road to Damascus, a persecutor, who had never had a good thought of Christ, nothing but hatred, a man who thought he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, suddenly, in a moment, without the slightest warning, saw “a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun,” a light that eclipsed the sun, shining in his noonday splendor, and the Savior in glory was revealed in his soul. He is thus the living instance of the way this blessed treasure is deposited in a man’s soul. Paul himself, who was writing this, is the living instance of the way in which God would command the light to shine out of darkness in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The whole glory of God is thus expressed.
And you cannot understand anything about the glory of God, except as you understand how it is seen in the face of Jesus Christ, and it is in the presence of that glory that conscience is dealt with; and if you think you can learn God in any other way, you are seriously mistaken, because the moment you bring your understanding or your mind to bear upon the things of God, apart from your conscience, there is the greatest danger of shipwreck as to faith. If I really see the whole glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ, I cannot help being challenged in the depths of my conscience, and that is the blessedness of it. There are royal roads to learning in other things, but not in this. The moment you have to do with God and Christ, you are convicted, and the earliest expression of your heart in the presence of that glory must be, “I abhor myself.” And yet, as I said, this leads to confidence, and is the only thing that is formative in our hearts.
That is the first thing. Next observe where this treasure is placed; that is the second point in the verse: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” You may have often observed that when man has anything valuable, he generally encases it in something that is at least in appearance far more valuable. The outside coverings of man’s valuable things are generally to sight a great deal more brilliant and valuable than the thing that is inside. The casket eclipses the jewel. Not so with God. He takes His treasure, the costliest thing, the most valuable and precious to Him, and puts it in the most contemptible vessel that you could conceive, that is, a poor, fragile vessel of clay. This is what he calls an earthen vessel; a poor, perishing, fragile vessel of clay.
But then He has a purpose in this; it gives Him the opportunity of doing two things. First His delight is to make everything of the treasure, and second, He is pleased to bring out the surpassingness of the power. There is not only the surpassing glory of the treasure, but the surpassing power with which He works in the vessel—the vessel broken to atoms; indeed, not worth anything until it is broken to pieces; but behind this poor vessel there is surpassing power. This, indeed, is a wonderful sight to look at. The whole power of God goes along with the poor vessel, into which He puts this treasure. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassingness of the power should be of God and not of us.” But we have not only to accept the breakings that God brings upon us; but beside that, and in addition to that, we must keep the sentence of the cross, the death of Christ, which has given us liberty from the condemnation to which we were exposed—must keep that death upon ourselves. God breaks the vessel; but we must keep the sentence of death upon it as well, in order “that the may be of God and not of us.”
I do not pursue this further, but would ask to think of these three things which are connected with this ministry: first, the vessel of clay, just what you and I are; secondly, a treasure placed in it of surpassing glory; and thirdly, a power that is surpassing in its efficiency behind it; and that power ever working in company with nothingness and weakness and self-abnegation, as well as a complete, utter, thorough denial of the flesh and the world. You cannot have power otherwise; and there is no manifestation of Christ, no shining forth of Christ, except as this vessel is entirely as clay in the hands of the potter. There is no shining in, or shining out either. It must be clay for Christ, the treasure, to shine into, and clay for the Holy Ghost to bring the features of Christ out of, so that others may see them.
The picture alluded to here is no doubt Gideon’s army. They put the light into the pitcher, but the light never shone out until the pitcher was broken. They had to break the pitchers, and then the light shone. And no doubt the Spirit of God alludes to that fact here. You have the shining in of the glory, and you have the surpassing power working that it may shine out. These two things go together, namely, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ shining into our poor earthen vessels, or pitchers, and the surpassing power of God that works through these vessels for the display of the glory of Christ.
How little our hearts are really up to God’s wonderful purpose in giving such a ministry as this from those opened heavens! How little of affection there is in our hearts to enter into the purpose of God and into His thought, that, in a world which rejected His Son, cast Him out, despised Him, nailed Him to the cross, there should be those who should be the expression, the manifestation of that blessed, wonderful One whom the world rejected, but whom God glorified. Do our hearts desire that? Is that what we long for? Is that our purpose and object? Is that what we propose to ourselves? God will help us if we have such purpose of heart. Can we say to Him, I have only one desire, that I should be upon this earth a vessel in whom the display of the glory of Thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, should be found in every circumstance here? God delights to help us, and we shall have the comfort, the sustainment, of being in communion with His thought. I do not know any greater comfort in the whole word of God. Oh, the blessedness and rest of having, through grace, common mind with the Lord in any little measure! God and His people of one mind about those things that relate to the glory of His Son. It is most wonderful grace on His part to bring us into such a place that we can have like mind with Him, and to enable us by such surpassing power.
Suppose I see one turning his back upon everything in this world, who looks for nothing in it, who has no interests here, who does not expect anything, and would not take anything from the world. I say, What surpassing power is displayed in that man! If I see a poor, feeble creature lying on a bed of sickness, racked with pain, the poor body pressed down with disease, morn, noon, and night, and one who might be tempted to say, What good am I, a trial to every one about me, and a burden to myself?—Yet if I see, amid all the weariness and pain, instead of complaint, satisfaction instead of querulousness, rest and quietness instead of quickness of temper, the blessed manifestation of Christ in meekness and endurance, I say, What a surpassing power there is there!
That is what this ministry is able to do, beloved reader, and that is God’s thought about us in relation to it. There is not a circumstance in life, or a detail in our history, or a position that we can be called into—whether sickness or health, pain or its absence, prosperity or loss, trial or ease—there is not a single thing too many for the one who is satisfied to be clay in the hands of surpassing power. And more than that, it is in these very circumstances that Christ is endeared to us, for He alone is our sufficiency for all. Also, it is where we are, not where we would be, that the blessed God desires to have His Son seen in us.
This is the testimony that is really lacking at this moment. Every one is heard speaking of doctrines, and is supposed to be clear about them; but people are amazed to see so little of the doctrines practiced, and they fail to see the corresponding grace in the propounders of them. Oh, for the manifestation of the truth in love, that exhibition of Christ which would stop the mouth of the rejecter, and commend itself to the consciences of men! And hence, says the Holy Ghost, “by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (v. 2). Men would be forced to say, Though I hate those people because they are so narrow, yet at the same time my conscience is bound to give this testimony, that they seek to please God. Herein is the efficiency of the power manifested, that in every circumstance, every service, everything I have to do, I am to be an expression of the skill of His hand.
The Lord, by His Spirit, give our hearts to desire to be His handiwork, to say in reality, and to act it as well, Lord Jesus, take me, and form me after the fashion of Thine own heart, place me where Thou wilt, only grant me this desire. that Thou mayest be magnified in my body, whether I live or die! Oh, may our hearts prize more than ever this blessed ministry, characterized as it is by such glories as we have had before us!