On Grind for Glory

Introduction

2 Corinthians 4:1–6 ESV

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 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. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 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. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 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.

I admit at the outset of this message that the title of this message, On Grind for Glory, doesn’t necessarily sound very inspiring. The idea of being on grind indicates difficulty. But it can indicate more than that. I can indicate movement. You see, I definitely desire to talk with you about the challenge of ministry life as you graduate and transition into whatever ministry call the Lord has for you. But I am not talking with you about grinding to a halt. I’m talking about grinding to glory.

The apostle Paul has an answer in our text. His answer, however, isn’t one that will fix the problem of evil people. In fact, he realizes something. He realizes that he doesn’t have the power to change people from evil to good. He says to the Corinthians in v. 4 of our text that there are some unbelieving folk whose minds have been blinded by the god of this age. This blinding prevents them from seeing the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus. What does he do? His focus, as a Christian, and his focus for the Corinthians is to stay on grind for the glory of Jesus. It’s not that he’s unconcerned about evil people. It’s that he knows the only one who can deal a blow to evil, and it’s Jesus.

This whole chapter, in fact, is bracketed by Paul’s declaration that he’s going to stay on his grind. 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 don’t lose our enthusiasm.” In other words, to put it positively, “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 grind for glory looks like. I want to encourage you toward three things from this passage as you prepare for where the Lord taking you from this point forward in ministry: Grind by Grace (vv. 1-2), Grind Against the Darkness (vv. 3-4), Grind in Hope (vv. 5-6).

This whole chapter, in fact, is bracketed by Paul’s declaration that he’s going to stay on his grind. 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 don’t lose our enthusiasm.” In other words, to put it positively, “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 grind for glory looks like. I want to encourage you toward three things from this passage as you prepare for where the Lord taking you from this point forward in ministry: Grind by Grace (vv. 1-2), Grind Against the Darkness (vv. 3-4), Grind in Hope (vv. 5-6).

Grinding by Grace

Paul says in v. 1, “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart, we stay on our grind.” When you see a “therefore” in the Bible you want to ask, “what’s it there for?” You’re being clued into the fact that a statement of result is about to be made. Something is true or something is happening because of something else. Usually, that means we have to look backwards in the text to find out what he’s talking about. But in this case, the answer is right here in this verse.

Therefore, Paul is saying, 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?” Now we look back in the text to find out what this ministry is. [Let me say this before we do that. Ministry is a word we use a lot in the church and in Christian circles, but don’t talk about what it is. Simply put, the word means service. The Greek word is diakonia, and the English word “deacon” is derived from it. So, deacons are appointed to serve the physical needs of the church. Ministry is spiritual work of service. It’s spiritual because it’s done with the Lord in view and for his fame and glory, not our own.]

What, then, is this ministry Paul says that he has? He describes it in three ways in ch. 3. In this letter to the Corinthians, one of the things he’s dealing with are 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, the Holy Spirit is poured out in this ministry. Therefore, it has even more glory than the old covenant. Not only that, the ministry he has is the new covenant ministry, which is the ministry of the Spirit, so it’s 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. That’s why we stay on our grind. That’s why we don’t lose our motivation. What we do, instead of losing our motivation, is (in v. 2) we renounce disgraceful and underhanded ways. What he’s saying there is, we don’t have ulterior motives. We don’t have some hidden and shameful agenda when we engage people with this ministry. We’re an open book. 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.

This is all driven by the grace of God. We can be lulled into thinking that what Paul is saying here is no big deal. But 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.”

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 can’t be, “Come to Jesus and get everything you ever wanted.” It’s, “Come to Jesus and be transformed.” Among the things that’s transformed is your understanding of what it means to be blessed.

I know that none of you in here intend to make the ministry God has called you to about you. I know that none of you intend to grind forward in ministry solely by your gifts and not by grace. But each of you is gifted and called by God to his kingdom service. And it’s easy, especially when fatigued and tired to do ministry in a way that leans on the gifts while neglecting the gift giver. (My trial sermon…) Grinding by grace takes you off of the throne in your own mind and heart. This is the kind of transformation that everyone needs. In fact, it’s the kind of transformation that the world needs. So, we’re not peddlers of the word of God. We don’t tamper with the word, we’re about the open disclosure of the truth because we don’t want anybody to be deceived about what it means to follow Jesus.

Grinding 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. In the Greek text the word “every” is in the position of emphasis. 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 gospel 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 actually shouldn’t be 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. But what people often do not want to do is acknowledge the spiritual reality of evil. We’re responsible for the evil that we do, but we have help in doing it. Paul 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. As you press into ministry, you will encounter evil. Do not be deceived. You will encounter evil people. You will encounter evil systems and structures that oppress and destroy people.

The Bible takes Satan, the devil, seriously. It’s people who don’t. The first question in the WSC is, “What is the chief end of man?” The answer is, “To glorify God and enjoy him fully forever.” We could ask, “What is the chief end of Satan?” The answer would be, “To deny God his rightful glory by preventing people from enjoying him forever.” Paul is saying, this grind for glory is a grind against the darkness because Satan is real. In first century Corinth, people wouldn’t have had any issue believing that there were spiritual forces of evil. We are more challenged to believe that there is an active, conscious evil being that we cannot see.

It is a grind against the darkness because there is a veil over the minds of those who dont’ 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 fixes you 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. The difficult truth is that to perish means to be separated from God forever, to face the wrath of God and the punishment of hell. Notice this with me. Even though Satan is real, no one is going to be able to say, “the devil made me do it.”

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.

Before this week it seemed like we had ten straight days of heavy rain. The reality is that even when the clouds and rain were covering our area it doesn’t mean that the glorious light of the sun wasn’t shining. It was just hidden to us. We grind against the darkness because even when people cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ, it doesn’t mean his glory doesn’t shine. It simply means that you’re being affirmed in your unbelief by a false god. In other words, we grind against the darkness, empowered by God’s grace because we have a certain hope.

But let me say this to you. I join with Paul in saying that I refuse to practice cunning or distort the word of God. The open declaration of the truth is that apart from bathing in the light of the radiance of Christ and his glorious gospel, you are living in darkness and perishing no matter what your life looks like on the outside. It doesn’t matter if you look like you have your life together. Apart from Jesus Christ you are in darkness and perishing. And I’m determined to grind against the darkness, empowered by God’s grace because we have a certain hope.

Grind in Hope

We grind for God’s glory 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. I know it says “servant” in v. 5, but we can see that word and not realize the depth of commitment he has for them. 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.

This isn’t my point, but this is for free. If you see someone who claims to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ who’s making the ministry about them, and their platform, and their ministry, don’t walk, run the other way! And that includes me!

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, ‘light will 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, God has been a specialist in bringing light into the darkness. I proclaim Christ as Lord because he has shined a light into the darkest reaches of my heart, and I therefore know that he can shine his light into the darkest reaches of your hearts too. 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. 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.

Why will you press forward in your ministry calling, graduates? Why will you commit yourselves, even through difficulty, to extend the grace of Jesus Christ to all without discrimination? 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 we live in the hope that he will use us to open the eyes of others to see this same glorious Jesus we’ve come to love.