Grind On for Glory (RTS Charlotte)

Introduction

2 Corinthians 4:1–6 ESV

1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

A few years ago in a talk on the paradox of beauty, artist Makoto Fujimura described his conversion to Christianity in this way. He was in Japan studying an old form of Japanese paintings called Nihonga. He said that the way Jesus led him to faith was by confronting him with beauty. It was through the extravagant crushed minerals he was using in the artwork; malachite, azurite, gold, silver, and others; beautiful extravagant materials he was learning to use and was mastering. He said,

Everyday I sought higher transcendence through the extravagant materials. I found success in expressions through Nihonga materials. And yet the weight of beauty I saw in the materials began to crush my own heart. I could not justify the use of extravagant materials if I found my heart unable to contain their glory.

He said he found that heart was unable to contain the glory of these extravagant materials. Glory, in the sense that Fujimora uses it here is related to beauty, majesty, awe, splendor. The glorious in this sense reminds us of our limitations. It reminds us that we are creatures and it points us to something that transcends the created world. It’s what the psalmist, David, means when he writes in first verse of Psalm 19:1

Psalm 19:1 ESV

1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

If I can look at the splendor and majesty of the created world and deny the glory of God then I am suppressing the truth. This is what Mako Fujimora was getting at when he said viewing the extravagance of these materials was too heavy for his heart to bear. It’s the weight of glory. His heart began to be crushed. Here, friends, is the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In chapter 19 of Luke’s gospel he tells us that as Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.

Let me quote from Mako Fujimura again. In his book Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, Mako Fujimura writes,

Jesus’s tears are gratuitous, extravagant, and costly.

He’s pointing out that Jesus’s tears are a reflection of a love that extends beyond a utilitarian need to survive or our pragmatic need for a savior. His tears are extravagant and costly precisely because they are driven by love, by a love that moved him to identify with us fully. And when we identify with him through faith, there is an unavoidable intimate fellowship we have with his extravagant, costly tears. In v. 10 of this chapter Paul says that we are

2 Corinthians 4:10 ESV

10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

Then in v. 16 he says,

2 Corinthians 4:16 ESV

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

Then, in the first verse of ch. 5 he says,

2 Corinthians 5:1 ESV

1 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Why is it that Paul is reminding the Corinthians that our physical bodies waste away? How is it that he’s come to have our physical limitations at the forefront of his mind? What has brought home the reality of our bodies decaying for the apostle Paul is the affliction, troubles, he’s having to endure because he’s following Jesus. He talks to them about his afflictions in ch. 1 of this letter. He brings up his afflictions in ch. 2. He talks about his afflictions again down in v. 17 of this chapter when he says,

2 Corinthians 4:17–18 ESV

17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

If you read ch. 6, what do you find out? He’s endured afflictions. For good measure, what does he bring up in ch. 7? You got it. He’s been afflicted at every turn he says. It’s not his diet that’s got the body on his mind. It’s that, for Jesus’ sake, he’s had to endure hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger (2 Cor. 6:4-5). And chapter 4 of this letter is in fact bracketed by Paul’s declaration that he’s going to stay on his grind in spite of his afflictions because he has an eternal perspective. Here’s what I mean. In v. 1 he says, “For this reason…we don’t lose heart.” Then he repeats himself with the same words down in v. 16. “Therefore, we don’t lose heart.” What he’s saying, in these two statements that help us understand what he says in the middle is, “We don’t lose our motivation. We shed costly tears, but we don’t lose our motivation.” In other words, to put it positively, “Even though we have to cry sometimes, we stay on our grind.” No matter how bleak and bad it is, we stay on our grind. Why Paul? Because, these things are light and momentary afflictions, and what they are doing is preparing an eternal weight of glory for us that is far beyond any comparison. We stay on grind for glory. He explains what this grinding on for glory looks like. I want to encourage us toward three things from the first six verses of this chapter: Grind on by Grace (vv. 1-2), Grind on Against the Darkness (vv. 3-4), Grind on in Hope (vv. 5-6).

Grind on by Grace

Paul says in v. 1, “Therefore, having this ministry as recipients of mercy we stay on our grind.” We don’t lose heart, we stay on our grind because we have something. It’s because we possess this ministry as recipients of mercy. That makes us ask a question. The question is, “What is this ministry you have Paul?”

He describes this ministry in three ways in ch. 3. He’s been dealing with opponents who’ve come into the church and tried to invalidate Paul’s message. So he says, at the beginning of ch. 3, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves to you again? Do we need letters of recommendation to you, or from you?” Then he says in vv. 4-6, “The confidence we have through Christ toward God is that even though we’re not sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, our sufficiency is from God. He has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant.” The ministry he possesses is new covenant ministry. He’s not a minister of the old covenant, that he says is written on tablets of stone. He’s not a minister of the law because a change has come. Christ has come, and he has brought about the reality of a new covenant that gets written on people’s hearts (on the inside) not on tablets of stone. He says in 3:7 that the old covenant was a ministry of death. It condemned people. Even so, it came with incredible glory because it came from God. The new covenant ministry, he says in v. 8, is the ministry of the Spirit. That is, it’s Holy Spirit ministry. Holy Spirit is poured out in this ministry. Therefore, it has even more glory than the old covenant. This ministry of the Spirit is also the ministry of righteousness. Look at 3:9, “For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.” This new covenant ministry is the ministry of the Spirit, who works to make people righteous in God’s sight.

This is the ministry he’s talking about in v. 1 of ch. 4. This is the ministry he possesses. The thing that enables him to keep going, the thing that enables him to stay on his grind, is that he’s clear on the fact that he possesses this ministry by grace. The ministry has come to him by the grace of God, not because he was somehow deserving or sufficient for it. He says in v. 1, “we have this ministry as recipients of mercy.” We’re not deserving recipients. We don’t make the ministry happen, the Spirit does. We don’t make people righteous, the Spirit does.

This is all driven by the grace of God. Understand how significant this truth is. At the very beginning of this letter he tells the Corinthians, “we want you to be aware of the afflictions we experienced in Asia. We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt like we had received the sentence of death. But this was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).

Brothers and sisters, through faith in Jesus Christ we possess the glorious ministry of righteousness as recipients of mercy. Here’s the connection. He has to tell them this because these Corinthian Christians had cultural values of their society that clashed with the new values they were given in Christ. The idea of possessing glory and power were cherished culturally speaking. Here Paul is saying to them that this new covenant ministry is full of surpassing glory. It’s empowered by the very Spirit of God. What they didn’t get was that it wasn’t about their personal empowerment so that they could be honored and glorified and put in positions of wealth and esteem in this world. So the 21st century isn’t that different from the first century. The message isn’t “Pursue ministry as a way to build your platform of influence.” I guarantee that none of you graduates are thinking, “I’m pursuing ministry to build a platform for my own glory.” But that temptation can be subtle. You see, what do you think it looks like for God to bless the ministry he has given you?

Grinding on by grace to push back against the cultural values that clashes with the new values in Christ includes an embrace of vulnerability that exposed us to being misunderstood and attacked. Grinding by grace takes you off of the throne in your own mind and heart. This is the kind of transformation that everyone needs.

What we do, he says, instead of losing our motivation, is (in v. 2) we renounce secret or disgraceful and underhanded ways. What he’s saying there is, we don’t have ulterior motives. He refuses to have some hidden and shameful agenda when he engages people with this ministry. We’re an open book, he says. We’re not trying to trick people into the kingdom of God. We refuse to live our lives by cunning or craftiness. We refuse to tamper with God’s word. Instead of trying to be cunning and slick, by the open disclosure of the truth, we are commending ourselves to each and every person’s conscience in the sight of God.

Listen, both in the gospel accounts and in the NT epistles a common theme is, don’t be deceived about what it means to follow Jesus. Salvation is free, but it’s not cheap. You’ll have to be honest about your weakness. You’ll have to be honest about your desire to be the master of your fate and the captain of your soul. You’ll have to be honest about your resistance to your need of daily dependence on the grace of God.

Grind on Against the Darkness

The reason that this grind has to be by grace is because it’s a grind against the darkness. Notice what he says at the end of v. 2, “we are commending ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” We are not discriminating about who we extend this transforming grace to. The word “every” is in the position of emphasis in the Greek text. He’s saying, we commend ourselves to every possible variety of the human conscience, Corinthian and non-Corinthian, Christian and non-Christian. And this has to be by grace because not everybody’s going to receive it. We’re going to lay the message out plainly, he says, so that everyone can judge for themselves, but not everybody’s going to judge rightly.

These are hard words in vv. 3-4. “But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to prevent them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” These are hard words to hear, but they're not difficult words to grasp. Darkness is real. Evil is real. Sometimes we experience the depth and darkness of evil. We experience the trauma of it. The apostle speaks in terms of two ages. The present age and the age to come. The age to come is the age of glory when everything wrong will be made right, and it will be clear to all that Jesus is Lord and God, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess it. But in the present age, Satan still has influence. So we encounter evil. We encounter evil people. We encounter evil systems and structures that oppress and destroy people.

The Bible takes the devil seriously. It’s often people who don’t. We could ask, “What is the chief goal of Satan?” The answer would be, “To deny God his rightful glory.” Part of the way he’s able to deny God his rightful glory is convincing us that he’s just some imaginary figure people made up.” Paul is saying, this grind for glory is a grind against the darkness because Satan is real.

It is a grind against the darkness because there is a veil over the minds of those who don’t believe. And those who don’t believe don’t realize that they have a veil over their minds. They don’t realize that, spiritually speaking, they cannot see. What’s so hard about this is that this unbelief has consequences. Paul says, if our gospel is veiled, if this ministry of the Spirit, this ministry that brings righteousness, this ministry that brings healing spiritually can’t be seen by you, you are perishing. He’s used this language of veiled and unveiled already in ch. 3. Speaking of his fellow Jews, he says in 3:14, “their minds were hardened. To this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away…when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.” Now he’s expanding the description to every person who doesn’t believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Satan works to blind the minds of unbelievers. He doesn’t make them unbelievers. I was already an unbeliever. Satan didn’t have to make me not believe in Jesus. I did that that on my own. What he works to do is encourage people in unbelief. He works to make people discredit Christianity. He works to make you say, “Christians are silly. Why believe in a Jesus I can’t see?” He works to help you say, “If there was a good God, then there wouldn’t be so much suffering.” He encourages you to believe, “There can’t be one true religion.” He makes you think you’re right when you say, “A loving God wouldn’t send anybody to hell.” “A loving God wouldn’t deny me the satisfaction of being affirmed in whoever I want to be, or however I want to live.” Satan works to help you deny the truth.

But notice this with me please. The truth that Paul is expressing here reflects a certain disposition towards those who can be described as unbelievers. Nobody gets to say “the devil made me do it.” Everyone is responsible for their own sin and unbelief. But because the god of this age works to blind minds, the grind against the darkness is not primarily a grind against people. It’s a grind against him with a desire the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ break through the darkness and overcome the blindness. The disposition towards those who don’t believe is one of love, not hatred. What we hate are the works of the devil. Our steadfast refusal to tamper with God’s word presses us forward to a love that might look strange.

Much of what we will engage in ministry is a grind against the darkness. May God give us the grace as we resist the works of the devil to do it in such a way that also communicates a desire to build strong relationships with those who think differently that we do, even if their minds are blinded to the glorious gospel of Christ; to communicate in a way that demonstrates a desire for our relationships to be as strong as our words.

Grind on in Hope

Here’s what makes this possible. We can grind for God’s glory in this way, grinding against the darkness, because we grind in hope. Darkness actually doesn’t get to have the final say. Darkness doesn’t get to win the day. Paul basically says to the Corinthians in v. 5, “I am your slave for Jesus’ sake.” Because of what Jesus has done for me, and because of the ministry that he has given me, I am your slave. Because he is a slave of Jesus Christ, he is a slave of the Corinthians. What he keeps communicating to them, what he keeps proclaiming to them is Jesus Christ as Lord. He’s making a distinction between himself and those who are trying to discredit him among the Corinthians. They’re trying to make much of themselves, he’s saying. But here’s the mark of true ministry. The minister who makes much of himself is no minister at all. The minister who makes the ministry about him, who doesn’t pursue this combination of the open proclamation of the truth of God’s word along with the humble commitment to serving the people, is discredited as a minister.

Here’s the point. Paul can continue to grind against the darkness, yes because he grinds by grace, but also because he grinds in hope. He commits himself to them like a slave. Realize that these aren’t folk who’ve got their acts together. These are people who are struggling to live out the implications of the gospel. These are people who have all kinds of issues, who are living like Christ has made no difference to them. Why would he commit himself to them? It’s because he grinds in hope. His statement of hope is v. 6. “The God who said, ‘let light shine out of darkness,’ he has shone in our hearts to illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” From the very beginning of the created world, God has been a specialist in bringing light into the darkness. You and I can proclaim Christ as Lord because he has shined a light into the darkest reaches of our hearts, and therefore we know that he can shine his light into the darkest reaches of anyone’s heart. We have a right view of ourselves and how God delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, qualifying us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light (Col 1:12-13). We know Isaiah was right when he said to the people that one day the Lord would be their everlasting light, and their God would be their glory. It’s happened for me, and because of God’s mercy I now see that glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Paul says, I keep going. I keep grinding. I don’t lose my motivation for ministry because I’m driven by that same hope manifesting itself among you Corinthians. I believe that it’s happening.

Family, it is hope, not wishful thinking; but sure, certain, steadfast hope that enables him to say in vv. 7-9

2 Corinthians 4:7–9 ESV

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;

Why do we continue to press forward? Why do we commit ourselves to extending the grace of Jesus Christ to as many people as we can, including ourselves? It is because of this singular reality. God has shone in our hearts to illuminate them with the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Our eyes have been opened by grace, and even when we have to shed extravagant, costly tears, we live in the hope that the darkness does not have the final word. God does.