Last Sunday:
Paul can be considered the supreme interpreter of the Gospel of Christ down through Christian History. Saint Augustine (354-450), Martin Luther (1483-1546), and John Wesley (1703-1791) all discovered a heart-felt faith by reading or hearing read Paul’s letter to the Romans. Karl Barth’s Römerbrief arrived on the scene as a theological watershed, a bombshell into the theological ethos of his day. He proclaimed that “within the Bible there is a strange new world, the world of God.” The strangeness of the Bible was and is not a matter of chronology, language or culture, but the contrast between sinful humanity and a holy God witnessed to by holy writ: “The Bible tells us not how we should talk with God but what he says to us. . . . We have found in the Bible a new world, God, God’s sovereignty, God’s glory, God’s incomprehensible love.”
But there were those in the church at Corinth who did not buy Paul’s proclamation of the gospel of Christ. They rejected with disdain his interpretation of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. They desired more of a charismatic hero than a suffering Savior. Thus, they conceived of and chose “another Jesus . . . a different spirit . . . a different gospel” (11:4) than the “received” gospel (1 Corinthians 15:3) on which Paul had founded the church.
Such rejection of Pauline perspectives within the church are not mere history, it is still with us. For some, beginning in the eighteenth century with the Enlightenment, hold that Paul distorted the message of Jesus. Instead, they go back to the gospels with their historical research, ferret out the real Jesus who lived, taught, healed, and died. Then in various forms, but in similar essence, they present the church with a Jesus and with a gospel that is “another” and “different” than the witness found in the letters of Paul.
So we propose in this series of lessons to look at the gospel according to Paul that got him in trouble in Corinth, and thus at the Pauline witness that many interpreters of the Jesus of the Gospels find unsuitable for the cultured thinking person of our day and time. The material for these lessons dealing with Paul’s gospel comes out of an invitation I received in April 2009 to take part in a February 2011 Northwest Nazarene University Wesleyan Center Conference entitled “The Bible Tells Me So.” My assignment in the words of NNU Professor Tom Oord’s invitation is as follows”
In particular, I am writing to ask you to do a 50-minute workshop and write a 3,000-5,000-word essay on the major theological or homiletical themes of 2 Corinthians. We’re calling your workshop a “10 and 5 Workshop.” We’d like you to do a presentation and write an essay on the 10 things you would say if I were to do a sermon series on 2 Corinthians, and five things you’d avoid saying. Your workshop is designed to help preachers and teachers work through theological issues that emerge in 2 Corinthians. Your essay would be included in this resulting book.
To fulfill this assignment I proceeded with some abandon to write an essay that ballooned into 11,000 word document. With considerable effort I reduced it to 5,500 words and sent it in—so far, so good!. This short lesson series will consist of an adaption of the longer version—naturally! The NNU conference, “The Bible Tells Me So,” will attempt to address the issue of biblical authority among Wesleyans, a most relevant topic for us Nazarenes. I suspect that the organizers of the gathering’s concern is mainly the impact of the fundamentalism of the theological right on our pastors and people. But it is also obvious to some of us that the evangelical Wesleyan community should be equally concerned about the influence of the critical skepticism of the theological left. Ironically we Wesleyans are often viewed from the scholarly left as fundamentalists and from the scholarly right as liberals. With John Wesley we read the Scriptures primarily “to know one thing—the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore.” We look for a “way,” a journey, a life path.
Thus in this essay and in our lessons from we start appropriately with a word about Scripture according to Paul. Now to the essay:
Ten and Five: Theological Themes in 2 Corinthians
I will glory in the cross In the cross Lest His suffering all be in vain I will weep no more for the cross that He bore I will glory in the cross.
May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (5:17).
Introduction
Paul writes with passionate concern for the welfare of “the church of God that is in Corinth” (1:1). What he says and how he says it is captive to his inner drive for the integrity of “the gospel of Christ” (Gal 1:7) in the hearts and minds of the Christian community. Paul’s proclamation was informed and formed by a biblical theology. Christian homiletics (the art of preaching) is doing theology!
Paul wrote with power: “His letters are weighty and strong” (10:10). The secret of his power was in part that he lived in the Scriptures. His quotations from and seemingly limitless allusions to Old Testament texts make this obvious. His reading and pondering of his Bible shaped his understanding both of himself and of the situation in the church at Corinth. Paul “‘lived in the Bible’ to the point where the Bible has formed his whole outlook on how the world is and what his place in it might be.” The whole range of his Scriptures—the Law, the Prophets and the Writings—impacted his mind and heart. The language of the Psalms was in Paul’s blood stream.
Paul reveals his biblical hermeneutic as he interprets Exodus 34:29-35 in 2 Corinthians 3:7-18. Here he appeals to the Law or Torah, the most authoritative portion of Scripture for the Jewish community. From the prophets Paul understood the historical failure of the old covenant, a covenant that possessed God’s glory. He saw the consequences of destruction, death and the exile for the people of God. Paul understood the need of the prophetically promised new covenant (Jeremiah and Ezekiel) and saw its fulfillment in a new covenant of the Spirit. With a dynamic hermeneutic of the Spirit he interpreted the realization of the covenant as coming to completion in the person and work of Christ. In Paul’s view, “the entire history of God’s dealing with mankind could be summed up by the formula ‘God in Christ.’”
As Paul reflects on his text, the impact of the word of God overwhelms him with transforming insight into the living Christ, “the Lord is the Spirit.” Caught up in the raptured creativity of fulfilled hope, he writes with fresh boldness, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, . . . are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (3:17-18). Paul has soaked his mind and heart in the whole of Scripture. He submits himself to the Spirit of God and hears the biblical witness to its ultimate end and meaning in Christ. He believed with the Quakers that “the Scriptures are profitable in proportion as they are read in the same spirit which gave them forth” and that as Scripture they are directed to its readers in every age.
Paul knows the Old Testament Scriptures, but he is also fully aware of the situation in Corinth. In this matrix, listening to the Spirit and sensitive to the needs of the church, he understands anew the Scriptures in relation to the condition of the recipients of his apostolic labors in Corinth. This is the witness, the understanding of Scripture that he brings to bear on the world of his day. We can then infer from 2 Corinthians that the key to our reading of Scripture as Scripture is Scripture itself, and that the primary interpretive stance for our proclamation of the message of Scripture is found in Scripture.
Paul points the way for the role of the Church’s sacred text in the lives of God’s people in our day: the Bible read as Scripture. Second Corinthians is divinely designed to speak to us in our personal reading, in our understanding of our calling to be witnesses, and not least, in the preaching task. A “rich, alive, personally revealing God as experienced in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” can personally address “us in whatever circumstance we find ourselves.”
Through 2 Corinthians the Spirit can illumine for us a transforming word from the biblical text for ourselves and our people, As Wesley phrased it, “The Spirit of God not only once inspired those who wrote it, but continually inspires, supernaturally assists, those that read it with earnest prayer.” This Spirit-inspired function within the context of the faithful community primarily constitutes the authority and power of Scripture for us as it has for the Church through the centuries. As Joel Green phrases it, “What is needed most are people deeply embedded in faithful communities of discipleship, people in whom the Spirit is actualizing the Word of God and, thus for whom the Word of God is authenticated.” Richard Hays suggests that if we would learn from Paul how to read Scripture, “we would read it ecclesiocentrically, as a word for and about the community of faith.”
To sum up, a contemporary interpretive approach to 2 Corinthians can learn from Paul’s Spirit-empowered witness to the person and work of Christ. He applies this witness under the Spirit’s guidance to every aspect of the life of the Church, to its ministry, and to the individual lives of its people in obedience to the revealed and living Christ. In the language of the Fourth Gospel the Spirit, the Advocate, makes known to us what is Christ’s (John 16:15), The Spirit will guide us “into all the truth,” and tell us “the things that are to come” (John 16:13). This means primarily that the Spirit will inspire us to know what Jesus means for us now, where we are in life and community. Thus the Scriptures face us with “the arduous task of interpretation” as we seek to relate the ancient text to the life of the present Church.
We are faced with needing an interpretive stance appropriate to the biblical text. Paul asserts that “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (3:17). This “freedom,” as 2 Corinthians shows in nearly every line, involves inherently a Christological-ethical imperative. Thus Paul’s “model of hermeneutical freedom” is at the same time a model of hermeneutical responsibility. We cannot just take off anywhere we think the Spirit leads. As James Kay comments, “what a risk the Western Church takes with its high valuation of preaching,” for it has been said ‘man by nature is a fanatic.’”
As a famous marginal heading in the Second Helvetic Confession puts it, “The Preaching of the Word of God Is the Word of God.” For when “we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord,” God shines “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:5-6). This is the power of the Scriptures when “they are read [and proclaimed] in the same spirit which gave them forth” for nothing “can really teach us the nature and meaning of inspiration but personal experience of it.” In our contemporary Christian proclamation, if we do not have confidence in the Scriptures as Scripture to speak transformingly to us and through us in the Church and to the world, we need to look for another text!
Conclusion: A Preview
As a Christian minister, as a preacher in apostolic tradition there are
Ten things I would say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
One: I Would Proclaim Christ as Pre-eminent For Our Christian Faith.
Two: I Would Proclaim the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus as Central To Our Life in God
Three: I Would Proclaim a New Covenant Life in and of the Spirit
Four: I Would Proclaim the Way of the Cross in Christian Life and Ministry
Five: I Would Proclaim the Hope of Life After Death
Six: I Would Proclaim the Final Triumph of the Holy
Seven: I Would Proclaim Reconciliation for All Humanity in Christ
Eight: I Would Proclaim the Sacramental Nature of all of God’s Creation Nine: I Would Proclaim Stewardship as a Grace
Ten: I Would Proclaim the Trinitarian“fullness of God” in the life of the Church
Five things I would not say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
? ? ? ? ?
Paul’s Gospel: Two
2 Corinthians 11:4: For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough.
Introduction
To review a bit, last Sunday we pointed out that the Apostle Paul has been the single most important interpreter of the gospel of Christ down through the age-long life of the Church. His influence on the shakers and movers of the Church was crucial--Augustine (354-450), Martin Luther (1483-1546), John Wesley (1703-1791), Karl Barth (1886-1968), to name the most well-known.
Paul’s powerful witness to Christ in 2 Corinthians is explained in part by the fact that he lived in the Scriptures. With a mind and heart submissive to the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, he saw the fulfillment of the promises and hopes of the Old Testament in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.
Paul has shown us in 2 Corinthians that the Scriptures read, and prayerfully reflected on, function as the transforming Word of God in the community of faith. From this perspective on 2 Corinthians as Scripture we set forth the ten things I would say and the five things I would not say from 2 Corinthians in teaching and preaching.
So today we look at the first three “things I would say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians.” These first three theological affirmations deal with (1) the preeminence of Christology, (2) the indispensible reality of the Incarnation—Cross and Resurrection, and (3) the new covenant of the Spirit. These three are basic to all else I would proclaim from 2 Corinthians; they are foundational and penetrate every concern Paul expresses in the letter to the Christians at Corinth.
As a Christian minister, as a preacher in apostolic tradition there are
Ten things I would say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
One: I Would Proclaim Christ as Pre-eminent For Our Christian Faith.
For the Apostle Paul, Christology, or how one understands Jesus as the Christ, was primary. He was concerned that the Corinthians would embrace “another Jesus than the one we proclaimed” (11:4). A mere word count in 2 Corinthians indicates that he used “Christ” forty seven times and “Jesus” seventeen (NRSV). There is significance to this frequency for, when counting all his letters, “Christ” occurs a grand total of 385 times. “Christ” was on Paul’s lips at every turn; Christology was an indispensable foundation for his life, for his gospel, and for his ministry (1 Cor 3:11)—and in his mind for the very existence and integrity of the Church of God.
Paul expresses this pre-eminence of his Christology most vividly in 4:4-6. From his reflection on Genesis 1:3a, “Then God said, let their be light,’” and Isaiah 9:2b, “those who have lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined, Paul speaks of his proclamation as “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” This “Jesus Christ” was “the image of God” in whose “face” shines “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.” God speaks and God speaks through Scripture “in our hearts.” No wonder Paul confessed that “We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.”
No matter what Paul writes about, at the heart of his proclamation and apostolic care is Christology. It is his all-penetrating and all-controlling theme: “For the love of Christ controls us” (5:14 NASB). Christ crucified and risen functions for Paul as both telescope and microscope. He looks through his Christ of faith at everything he faces in his apostolic calling. This is true whether his gaze is lifted up to God the Father or brought down to the humiliations, hardships, and dangers he encounters in the course of his ministry. Every aspect of Paul’s ministry takes on meaning only in relation to “Jesus Christ,” the full expression of “the knowledge of the glory of God.” From this he never wavers. Whether Paul is probing the grandeur of the work of the Holy Spirit or defining his ministry to those who look down on it with disdain, the key to each is the person of the Christ. So with the long-ago song writer,
What more can He say than to you He hath said, To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? For Paul in Christ “every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say ‘Amen,’ to the glory of God” (1:20) through our apostolic ministry. In the recent work of theologian Kathryn Tanner, Christ is central “for all Christian thought and life: if the divine and the human are united in Christ, then Jesus can be seen as key to the pattern that organizes the whole, even while God’s ways remain beyond our grasp.” For Paul with Tanner, Jesus as the Christ is at the heart of all that God is doing everywhere.
As Christians, how does Christ define who we are, to what extent does he define who you are in your own eyes? To what extent do we take our self-image from him? As a minister of the gospel, where is this Jesus, this Christ in our hierarchy of proclamation, and how does he function there?
Two: I Would Proclaim the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus as Central To Our Life in God
The primary focus of Paul’s gospel was that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (5:19, NASB). In view are the entire life and ministry of Christ, his incarnate life and exaltation in and through which God is carrying out his redemptive activity in the world. In his greeting to the church at Corinth, all three designations count: “the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:2).
Paul’s theology of Christian life and ministry imbedded in 2 Corinthians comes to a climactic expression in 13:4: “For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.” His focus is on the mysterious and profound deed of Christ incarnate, crucified, and risen. This Christ Paul preaches for the integrity of the life of the Church and for the nature of the Christian life. His Christology radically transforms all he touches.
Christ was crucified “in weakness” as an actual mortal human being—one who was physically born, lived, and died-- not merely an apparent weakness as seen by the world. Yet he “lives by the power of God.” That is, the “God who raises the dead” (1:9) powerfully raised Christ from death. His death was not just a past event followed by a resurrection. Paul could say that “[we are] always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” (4:10). For him the two events are theologically one complex event, an event continually present; “the Risen One remains the Crucified One and the Crucified One remains the Risen One.” But the stress as Käsemann originally put it, “The Rising and Exalted One Remains the Crucified One.” With the apostle Paul, “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God” (3:4).
Margaret Spufford, an English historian and Anglican laywoman lived with physical pain from an incurable bone disease most of her life. Further she had the emotional pain of her daughter’s incurable metabolic disease from infancy. She tells of being dropped a mere two inches by ambulance men before they caught her:
. . . the effect was terrifying. All my reflexes seemed to go berserk with pain. I, who so much valued control, was completely out of control. I was screaming, not even able to stop in case my son would hear. My fingers were clenched in someone’s hair, the world ran amok, and my husband, who was there, was utterly irrelevant through the pain, He could not reach me.
Of this experience she writes that
It was months before I dared tell even my husband, who . . . knew I did not go in for pious or saccharine imager, that quite extraordinarily at that moment of unreachability, I had suddenly been aware even as I screamed, of the presence of the Crucified. He did not cancel the moment, or assuage it, but was inside it.
Later in her book Spufford seeks to come to terms theologically with her suffering. She found Job’s answer of the Creator God’s omnipotence of no help and out of integrity, as she says, would have had to hand in her ticket. She cites the example of Elie Wiesal who in the face of the horror of the holocaust, did hand in his ticket to any belief in God. She writes:
In the end, unless my image of a Creator had not been capable of transformation, by the very words of the Creed, into belief in the truth of a Creator who had himself entered into his creation to suffer with it, and to amend and redeem it, I too would have quit like Elie Wiesel. To the knowledge of the Incarnation, not to the image of an omnipotent Creator, I have clung like a limpet.
What more do or can we know about God than we can know in the incarnate Jesus and resurrected Christ? Christ the key to what God is doing everywhere. This is the kind of God—the Christ of the biblical witness--we proclaim. And it is at this very point--our witness to Christ crucified and risen--where we supremely touch the holy in proclamation!
Three: I Would Proclaim a New Covenant Life in and of the Spirit
I find this life expressed supremely in 3:4-8 and 17-18. Paul’s “competence,” the “confidence” that he has “through Christ to God” (3:4-5), is as a minister of “a new covenant . . . of spirit” for “the Spirit gives life” (3:6). A covenant by nature is with a people, here the age-long people of God—“Moses” and “the people of Israel” (3:7)--with whom the Church lives in acknowledged continuity.
But it is a “new covenant,” a new agreement that fulfils the eternal purpose of the God of creation and the “LORD” of the Exodus. It is “new” as “not of letter but of spirit” (3:6), for as Paul describes the life of the new people of God, “God . . . has anointed us, . . . giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” (1:21-22). If the former covenant “came in glory, . . . how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory?” (3:7-8).
Paul concludes his discussion of the new covenant life in and of the Spirit with a mind-boggling description of the quite unbelievable privilege of the Christian in community,
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (3:17-18).
We have or “we are engaged in this ministry” (4:2) are Paul’s very next words. We are graced to announce the transforming reality of this Spirit “kind of life,” a life both in the realm of and constituted by the Spirit of God as its source, whom we know best as “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom 8:9). This is resurrection life, life in Eugene Pederson’s words in which we are set free to “practice the resurrection”:
the resurrection of Jesus established the conditions in which we live and mature in the Christian life. . . . Jesus alive and present. . . . We live our lives in the practice of what we do not originate and cannot anticipate. When we practice resurrection, we continuously enter into what is more than we are. When we practice resurrection, we keep company with Jesus, alive and present, who knows where we are going better than we do, which is always :from “glory unto glory.”
It is no surprise then that Paul can write about this new “kind of life” that “from now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view. . . . So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God” (5:16-18a). And that he finally concludes his letter to the church at Corinth with “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (13:13).
As we noted earlier, these three theological affirmations inform and penetrate every issue Paul deals with in the letter. These three are foundational for all else I would say from 2 Corinthians.
Conclusion: A Preview
As a Christian minister, as a preacher in apostolic tradition there are
Ten things I would say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
Four: I Would Proclaim the Way of the Cross in Christian Life and Ministry
Five: I Would Proclaim the Hope of Life After Death
Six: I Would Proclaim the Final Triumph of the Holy
Seven: I Would Proclaim Reconciliation for All Humanity in Christ
Eight: I Would Proclaim the Sacramental Nature of all of God’s Creation Nine: I Would Proclaim Stewardship as a Grace
Ten: I Would Proclaim the Trinitarian“fullness of God” in the life of the Church
Five things I would not say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
? ? ? ? ?
Tune in again on February 27!
Paul’s Gospel: Three
2 Corinthians 11:4: For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough.
Introduction
Paul’s gospel as seen in 2 Corinthians (the witness of this particular letter), in essence not inconsistent with other letters, but a 10-5 for each letter would be different—Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Pastorals.
Conference content
My seminars
Yes, I agree that NNU does a good thing. I fully enjoyed the conference and felt that it fulfilled reasonable expectations--especially if pastors were encouraged to take the power of the Word (in both study and its relation to the Holy Spirit) more seriously in their preaching.
I assume that at least the sub-purpose of the conference was polemical, to open some minds on the right. At that point I wonder if many such folk were present. Not in my small group, at least. The way Tom Oord phrased the questions and the nature of the first evening panel emphasized more "understanding seeking faith" than "faith seeking understanding." The next morning I wrote, "Given the nature of the Bible as Scripture why do we start with the problems surrounding it rather than "seeking first" to experience the power of Scripture? I thought the President (PLNU Alum!) hit the right notes as did the two DSs in their devotional messages.
The purposes of information and inspiration were fulfilled, but this pietistic Bible-Thumper felt that the balance between "about" Scripture and "theopneustos" attention to Scripture could have been improved toward the latter. Tom's continual admonitions about our conduct indicated that the "instructive" intent of the conference was large in his mind--I wonder how he felt about its success. But from where I sat the power of Scripture kept breaking through--to be expected. Such cannot be controlled or manipulated (John 3:8). And Tom certainly did a great job in planning and directing the conference.
I enjoyed Randy Maddix's paper (“John Wesley on the Bible: The Rule of Christian Faith, Practice, and Hope”) tremendously although it was hard for me to hear from where I sat (near the side door). Is it in print somewhere? Some said they missed much mention of the 2nd person of the Trinity in the presentation. I was trying to hear, not evaluate. But I was impacted anew by the fact that John Wesley was bottom line more of a theologian than an exegete!
Ten things I would say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
One: I Would Proclaim Christ as Pre-eminent For Our Christian Faith.
Two: I Would Proclaim the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus as Central To Our Life in God
Three: I Would Proclaim a New Covenant Life in and of the Spirit
There those who seem to object who at least stress the Jesus as the supreme example of love in life and in death, who was resurrected (?). With the help of the Holy Spirit (how connected to cross?) we can imitate this life—how different from A. Schweitzer? Close to a God-mysticism? See Tom’s The Nature of Love.
One question that the conference raises in my mind is should not our concern for the excesses of the fundamentalist right among us be matched by a concern for the excesses of the critical left in our midst? I heard the word "watershed" a couple of times. What did we mean by that? A one or a two-sided sword? Along with a "crisis" concerning Biblical authority in our Zion does not that bring along with it a "crisis" in Christology? We can "re-construct" the Biblical witness to the person and work of Jesus until we come close to the "another Jesus" (2 Cor 11:4) of some current popular teachers in the mainline church. After soaking so long in the Christology of 2 Cor, I may be brain-washed by a contentious Paul. To what extent among us does the critically "in" research into the historical Jesus lead us to center on the great example of "love" in the life and death of Jesus, making it primarily a supreme moral example vindicated someway by the resurrection which ushers us into the "Spirit" age in some sense. Jesus' death is probably thus not to be understood in sacrificial terms and texts like 2 Cor 5:21 are not taken seriously. Our abhorrence of the penal substitutionary atonement has tended toward taking away much of our traditional emphasis on "atoning" as applied to Jesus' death. Don't ask me to document my osmosis feelings!
Four: I Would Proclaim the Way of the Cross in Christian Life and Ministry
Any use here for 1 Cor 1:17 and Phil 3:10?
For the Apostle, the pattern of the Christ furnishes the pattern for the life and ministry of the Christian: “you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together” (7:3). Paul had hardly begun his letter when he declared that “the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us” (1:5). Such were indispensible for his ministry to the church at Corinth: “If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation” (1:6). His suffering on their behalf mediated to them the comfort of the Spirit of the resurrected Christ.
Paul could say these things because he had confidence in the “God who raises the dead” (1:9). For him the Christian’s redemptive participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is at the heart of being “in Christ.” As the essence of our relation to God, this participation permeates the quality of our living; it determines the manner of personal relationships and our ministry to others. As we serve, we identify by faith with the cross in order that resurrection life might be released in the lives of others: “
The classic passage for the way of the cross is 4:7-12 where Paul describes Christian life and ministry as a “treasure in clay jars” (4:7). He expresses this first in terms of “the great paradoxes of the Christian life”: “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (4:8-9). Rather than spell defeat, Paul saw this as “carrying in the body the death [dying] of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” (4:10). He identifies with the worldly weakness displayed in the life and death of the earthly Christ.
True Christian faith sees all of life taken up into the pattern of the Incarnation and the Cross. Before her “resurrection ministry” to the “poorest of the poor” began, Mother Teresa wrote of her special call, “Now I rejoice with my whole heart that I have joyfully carried my cross with Jesus.” Her unique ministry had its root in her early and joyful identification with the sufferings of Jesus.
The harsh realities of life need never be meaningless for any of us, for they can partake of the redemptive presence of God in Christ in the world. Just as Paul’s faith saw in his human vulnerability an opportunity for God, so we, by faith in his Son may open our lives to the resurrection life of Jesus. “So that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (v 10; see v 11) are the apostle’s words. This is “the vocation and job description of the church.”
The cross of Jesus entails the resurrection of Jesus. In the crucible of life our faith is not in a half but in a whole Christ, a Jesus both crucified and risen! We cannot separate the two—in either Jesus’ life or ours. The apostle declared to the Corinthians that in his ministry to them, “death is at work in us, but life in you” (v 12). Such is the nature of Christian life and witness in the world. With Chrysostom (344/354-407), “we bear about the power of his dying that the power of his life may be manifest.” Ministry in essence as he writes later in the letter is “power made perfect in weakness” (12:9). Just as Christ “was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God,” so we who “are weak in him . . . will live with him by the power of God” (13:4).
As a result, we Christians experience a freedom to be and a release to speak (4:13-15). Paul was convinced that they shared the “same spirit of faith” as the Psalmist (116:10): “we also believe and so we speak.” From the biblical perspective, preaching partakes of the character of witness, which, by its very nature, demands authenticity.
Five: I Would Proclaim the Hope of Life After Death
Inherent in the unified package of “Cross-and-Resurrection” faith is the certainty of life after death: God “will raise us also with Jesus” (4:14). This is true both for us and for those to whom we minister. Paul wrote, “everything is for your sake . . . for he will bring us with you into his presence” (vv 15, 14). The power of the Resurrection does not end with Jesus. It reaches to all who by faith conduct their vulnerable earthly lives in the “faith-light” of the Cross. Otherwise life is simply tragic, containing suffering without purpose or meaning.
Placed within the context of confidence in ministry, 2 Corinthians 4:16—5:10 complements the great resurrection chapter in 1 Corinthians 15. The theme of 4:1 continues as Paul returns to the ground of his courage: “So we do not lose heart” (4:16). His outer nature may be wasting away, but “his inner nature is being renewed day by day.” The reason: “this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (4:17-18). Paul recognizes the existence of realities human eyes cannot see, the eschatological dimension, the “not yet” of God’s purpose for his children (Rom 8:23-25), the certainty of a heavenly home (5:1-10).
In contrast to the present temporary and destructible earthly tent, Paul declares, “we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (5:10). He describes threefold our future hope when “what is mortal” will “be swallowed up by life” (5:4) in the resurrection body. God has been preparing us all along for the fulfillment of this hope; “for this very thing” he “has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (5:5). This is our confidence even “while we are at home in the body, . . . for we walk by faith, not by sight” (5:7). The connection between this life and the next is real, personal, and spiritual; Paul grounds the certainty of our hope in God’s own work in his own present life and in the lives of the Corinthians.
Thus Paul is prompted to state the supreme motivation of his life and ministry as “whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him” (5:9; see Eph 5:10). This leads to his expression of another dimension of life after death, mankind’s final and absolute accountability to God: “For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil” (5:10). Here Paul brings to bear “an explicit warrant for moral action.” As in life so also in death we proclaim not half a gospel but a whole gospel, Our proclamation includes our accountability to God for the ethical and spiritual quality of our lives. Paul seeks “to please him” both before and after death. The reality of divine judgment as an integral part of our Christian hope leads us into our next theme.
Six: I Would Proclaim the Final Triumph of the Holy
At this point Paul is more at home with us Wesleyans than he is with some Reform theologians. He expands his “aim to please” God as in life to “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God” (7:1). The expression “the fear of God” reaches back to the specific “all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (5:10). At the end, at the future consummation of our lives, we will give an account of our living as a holy people (6:14-18). For “before the judgment seat of Christ” we will each receive “what has been done in the body, whether good or evil” (5:10).
Paul’s intention appears specific. Although saved by free grace (Eph 2:8), what we receive at the judgment is the resultant moral and spiritual quality of our own lives viewed as a unity as the verb tense indicates. As Christians, our reward at the judgment is the kind of person we have chosen to be! Paul sought to eliminate the worthless in his life of service to Christ for he was convinced that there is a direct and definite continuity between earthly existence and the eternal one to come. God’s judgment will be in no way arbitrary, rather, it involves a natural retribution (11:15; Ps 81:12). The punishment of the godless is fundamentally that they will receive what they are; they are sentenced to live throughout eternity as the persons they have chosen to become!
If the biblical witness is correct that God indeed is holy, we live in a moral and spiritual universe. The holy will triumph in the end! This is the obvious implication of 6:14—7:1, called by some “a six verse conundrum.” Thus there is no “partnership . . . between righteousness and lawlessness,” there is no “fellowship . . . between light and darkness,” and there is no “agreement” of “the temple of God with idols.” Rather, “we are the temple of the living God”; God has said of us, “I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people, . . . and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” We are to separate ourselves “and touch nothing unclean, cleansing “ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God.”
In a moral universe the ethics of the holy are of ultimate value as problematic as that may be to assert. The spiritual and the moral is what is most ultimately real. The sanctification of life is an eternal matter in the mind of Paul. The holy will be victorious in God’s universe. This we must proclaim if we are to have hope in this life. Grace is not cheap! In marketplace terms, our investment in a life of integrity and in a holy character pays dividends. It is “worth it all.” Christian ethics possess the sanction of the holy, they are “the way everlasting” (Ps 139:24).
Conclusion: A Preview
As a Christian minister, as a preacher in apostolic tradition there are
Ten things I would say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
Seven: I Would Proclaim Reconciliation for All Humanity in Christ
Eight: I Would Proclaim the Sacramental Nature of all of God’s Creation Nine: I Would Proclaim Stewardship as a Grace
Ten: I Would Proclaim the Trinitarian“fullness of God” in the life of the Church
Five things I would not say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
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Tune in again on March 13!
Seven: I Would Proclaim Reconciliation for All Humanity in Christ
Paul boldly declares to the Corinthians both that “Jesus Christ is in you” (13:5) and that they are “in Christ” (5:17). The implications stagger the mind. The latter assertion is at the heart of our primary text, 5:16—6:1, a passage of “lyrical grandeur, cosmic scope, theological depth, and emotional appeal.” The controlling theme is that “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” Why? Because the key word in the passage is “reconciliation,” the central object of Paul’s Christian life and ministry: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” Out of the death and resurrection of Christ “a new creation” has come into being, a new world-order “in Christ.” The connotations are both individual and corporate: “everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” If the background of Paul’s thinking is found in the themes of Isa 40—66 as some suggest, he sees the complete eschatological (end-time) expectation of Isaiah 40—66 as comprehended by the his term “new creation.” The Christ event has created a new situation, a new order of humanity has come into being, God’s future kind of people. These are folk who “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another . . . from the Lord, the Spirit” (3:18). This renewal of individuals prefigures the renewal of the cosmos (Matt 19:28; Rom 8:19-23). The reconciliation, the overcoming of the alienation of humankind from God through the death of Christ, begins in an objective change in the situation (Rom 5:10; Col 1:20-22). God “in Christ” has adequately dealt with human sin and its devastating effects: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The justice and holiness of God are in no way compromised. The “world” as the object of reconciliation refers to the created world and everything that belongs to it as hostile to God and lost in sin (Rom 8:19-22; 1 Cor 3:22). Perhaps it even reaches to the cosmic proportions of all things: “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20). In the death and resurrection of Jesus, we proclaim with Paul the advent of the new creation “in Christ.” This entails the dramatic recovery of this alienated and dislocated world by God. He has acted eschatologically in Christ and placed the world under his rule. Eight: I Would Proclaim the Sacramental Nature of all of God’s Creation A “a new creation” (5:17) is what Scripture is all about; “a new creation is everything!” (Gal 6:15). This is constituted by the holy presence of God in his world “ín Christ” (5:17). All relationships and all use of what is in God’s created world are to be kept holy. “Be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean” is the Pauline exhortation at the heart of a significant passage about the Church in the world as “the temple of the living God” (6:14—7:1). The issue is idolatry: “What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” Every thing that God had made, “indeed it was very good” (Gen 1:31). Idolatry is the misuse of all that God has placed in our world, from the material things and opportunities he has given us to the societal institutions in which we find ourselves to us as well as all the inter-personal relationships that he has graced to us. The absolute incongruity between what is right and what is wrong Paul expresses in five antithetical questions: righteousness or lawlessness? Light or darkness? Christ of Beliar? Believer or unbeliever? Temple of God or idols? As “the temple of the living God” the promise to the Church and the Christian is “I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. . . and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” It is among his people and in his world that God lives. In the incarnate, crucified, and risen Christ “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:19). He lived and lives on the earth which “is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Pss 24:2; 50:12; 89:11). Therefore as we live in God’s world we seek to “cleanse ourselves” and to make “holiness perfect in the fear of God.” With the help of the ever-present Christ we seek to avoid all the “quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder” as well as “the impurity, sexual immorality, and licentiousness” (12:20-21) that is prone to accompany idolatrous living. We proclaim the privilege of treating all of life as sacred for we live in the presence of a holy God whose glory fills the earth (Isa 6:3)! We proclaim the sanctification of all of life and the presentation of ourselves “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God as [our] spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1). Nine: I Would Proclaim Stewardship as a Grace
The Apostle Paul talks about money. Significant for his apostolic ministry is the collection he has been promoting among his missionary churches for the economic needs of the Jerusalem Christian community (Rom 15:22-28; 1 Cor 16:1-4; see Gal 2:10). To this project he applies “the grace of Christian giving.” His rhetorical strategy involves a play on the Greek word for grace, charis, throughout chapters 8-9: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (9:8 NIV; see 8:1, 4, 6, 7, 9; 16, 19; 9:12, 14, 15). “Grace” (charis) is one of several terms of rich theological significance that Paul uses to impress on the Corinthians that their participation in the offering was integral to their very being as Christians. All the terms express a profound understanding of stewardship of material resources (8:2, 4, 20; 9:5, 12). All are informed by a theology of grace originating in the graciousness of the God revealed in Jesus the Christ who “graces” people to be gracious and generous in his name: For you know the generous act [grace, charin] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich (8:9). Paul sees a living connection between giving and theology; “Christian” givers are theologians, theology has everything to do with giving! When Paul uses “grace” (charis) in direct reference to the offering itself, “grace” is a “privilege” or a “generous undertaking” (8:6, 19). When the apostle urges the Corinthians to be generous and cheerful givers, “grace” is offered as their fully adequate resource, which enables them to serve others: “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (9:8; see vv 6-11). Paul’s life and apostolic ministry were totally within the embrace of the grace of God in Jesus Christ: “we have behaved in the world with frankness and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God—all the more toward you” (1:12; see 12:9). Paul applies this grace that he knew so well, the grace of God revealed in Christ, to the task of the collection as the measure of all our giving. Thus the entire scope of God’s revelation in Christ from the incarnation to the resurrection informs and motivates the stewardship of our resources as grace. This we are graced to proclaim! Ten: I Would Proclaim the Trinitarian“fullness of God” in the life of the Church
From the beginning of his letter and throughout until the very end, Paul roots the Christian life and ministry in a trinitarian God (see 1:19-22). His greetings to the Corinthians are “grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:2). His concluding benediction expresses his desire that the church fully enjoy the blessing of God in all its ethical implications: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (13:13. Paul’s final words are the mountain peak of his letter. They reflect the bright sunlight as they send forth like lightening encased in a peal of thunder the meaning of the whole. The apostle’s pastoral heart, the character of his ministry, the cruciform nature of the gospel, and the power of the Spirit of the Resurrection in the lives of even a factious and fractious people, are all here. To end such a letter in such a manner to such a church . . . simply staggers the Christian imagination. The benediction expresses the Corinthian’s highest good in a breathtaking summary of the Christian faith: (1) the grace of Christ (2) revealing the love of God (3) by their fellowship in the Holy Spirit. Paul’s three-in-one benediction comprehends the order of the faith and experience of the Early Church. The order, Christ, God/Father, Spirit, reveals the way the gospel came to the Corinthians. This is not as yet the full Trinitarian formula of the ecumenical creeds, for it is “trinitarian in form but not in substance,” but it does give voice to “both the goal of the letter and the means whereby it is to be achieved.” With his spiritual hands thus spread over the Corinthians in benediction, the apostle’s voice sinks into silence. “The Lord Jesus Christ” is the source of “grace”; the “love” is seen as coming from “God” and is of course brought near in “the grace of . . . Christ.” “The fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” following Paul’s normal use of koinōnia (e.g., 8:4; 1 Cor 10:16; Phil 3:10), would designate the Corinthians’ participation in the life and power of the Holy Spirit. All three phrases thus speak of the personal relationship of the believers in Corinth with “Christ” the Son, “God” the Father, and “the Holy Spirit.” Their participation in the Holy Spirit brings to experiential reality in the life of the church the objective, redemptive reality resident in the person of Christ by virtue of his crucifixion, resurrection, and exaltation (1 Cor 1:9). “The Lord is the Spirit” (3:17) indicates that the identity between the Son and the Spirit is thus a dynamic one of redemptive action, rooted in the fact that the Spirit is the life of the resurrected and exalted Lord (13:4; Rom 1:4; 6:4; 8:11; 1 Cor 6:14; 15:45). Although the vertical dimension of koinōnia is primary here, there is “a surplus of meaning” as the term always carries with it the horizontal dimension as well (1 Cor 10:16-17; Acts 2:42; Phil 2:1; Phlm 6; 1 John 1:3). So the apostle prays for a mutuality of participation in redemption that seeks for ethical transformation in the life of the church--a truly Trinitarian fellowship. Their common experience of the one Spirit constitutes the Corinthians as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12-13). As they open themselves more and more to the Holy Spirit, he will bring about the perfection (13:9) Paul desires for them. God reveals his power in a “Trinitarian” mystery. The divine economy of salvation is comprehended in terms vibrating with life—grace, . . . love, . . . fellowship—as the Church experiences them. Each term is theologically overloaded with transforming implications for the ongoing life of the Church that are as relevant to the churches in modern cities as in the ancient church at Corinth. All that Paul has said to the Corinthians is in essence here. This is the tip of the shining peak of Paul’s literarily encased soul-cry for the folk to whom he gave spiritual birth. The deepest desire of all Christian ministers for the people under their care is expressed in a formula defying reason!. Christian life and service is itself Trinitarian in form in relation to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. With our 18th century mentor, John Wesley, we proclaim the truth of “this awful [= awe-full] benediction.” Five things I would not say in a sermon series on 2 Corinthians
All five of the things I would not say from 2 Corinthians flow ultimately from Paul’s concern as expressed in 11:3-4: But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough. All five are rooted in “another Jesus . . . a different spirit . . . a different gospel” from that which Paul had received and proclaimed and what the Corinthians had received from him—the apostolic gospel (1 Cor 15:1-11). One: I Would Not Proclaim a Mystical Relationship With God That Minimizes an Incarnate Jesus.
Although Paul’s knowledge of Jesus as a historical figure was not his last word, he did “know Christ from a human point of view” (5:16). The name Jesus, appearing seventeen times in this letter, meant fully human, suffering, and dying—dead and buried--flesh and blood. Paul’s reference to “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (10:1; see Matt 11:29) is primarily descriptive of Jesus’ “gentle demeanor throughout his earthly life” including his “non-retaliation during his passion” (1 Pet 2:21-24). An incarnate Christ, the one that God raised from actual death, was indispensible for the apostle’s gospel. Paul’s supreme faith-expression of this was “the face of Jesus Christ” in which God. “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowedge of the glory of God” (4:6). Here, this “theological heart of the letter,” embraces the whole gospel that Paul proclaims. This “face” of Jesus we view “with unveiled faces” and are being transformed into the image of Christ (3:18). A “Christian” knowledge of God is mediated only through the incarnate Jesus the Christ. Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), famous for her classic study, Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1911), was converted from agnosticism around that period. Twenty years later she wrote that “I was a convinced Theocentric, and thought Christocentric language and practice sentimental and superstitious. . . . This position I thought to be that of a broadminded intelligent Christian.” In 1921 she came under the direction of Baron Friedrich von Heugel (1852-1925): She writes of his spiritual counsel: when I went to the Baron he said I wasn’t much better than a Unitarian. Somehow by his prayers or something, he compelled me to experience Christ. . . . It took about four months—it was like watching the sun rise very slowly—and then suddenly one knew what it was. Now for some months after that I remained predominantly Theocentric. But for the next two or three years, and especially lately, more and more my whole religious life and experience seem to centre with increasing vividness on our Lord—that sort of quasi involuntary prayer which springs up of itself at odd moments is always now directed to Him. I seem to have to try as it were to live more and more towards Him only—and it is this that makes it so utterly heartbreaking when one is horrid. The New Testament, which once I couldn’t make much of, or meditate on, now seems full of things never noticed—all gets more and more alive and compellingly beautiful.
Evelyn Underhill discovered that only Christianity comes “right down to one in the dust.” The historical Jesus, resurrected from the dead as the Christ of God, became essential for her Christian faith. A non-incarnate God-mysticism is for Paul “a different gospel.” At this point, however, I would not deny nor minimize the reality of prevenient grace, the work of the “hidden” Christ. Yet I would not proclaim a mystical relationship to God in which that One who “was revealed in the flesh” and “taken up in glory” (1 Tim 3:16) is not front and central. Two: I Would Not Proclaim a Resurrected Triumphant Lord Apart From a Suffering and Dying Christ.
Paul warned the Corinthians against submitting to “another Jesus than the one we proclaimed” (11:4). The Jesus that Paul had preached to them was plainly Jesus crucified and risen (1 Cor 15:3-4). What would be “another Jesus” be like? The tenor of the letter and especially his references to his opponents in Corinth as well as their objections to the nature of his apostolic ministry as one in which “power is made perfect in weakness” (12:9) suggest an interpretation of Jesus’ ministry that would deny or minimize his humiliation and suffering which culminated in a death by crucifixion. Their Christ would lead them only “in triumphal procession” (2:14). At stake appears to be a theology of the resurrection apart from a theology of the cross, that is, the Cross becomes only a past event and the Church lives in a consistent “resurrection-type” victory, now separated from the Cross as two merely consecutive events. The resurrection is rather “a chapter in the theology of the cross,” for “the exalted Christ still bears the nail-marks of the earthly Jesus, but for which he would not be identical with Jesus.” The cross is not merely “the last station on his earthly way.” As Käsemann insists, for “Paul any theology of resurrection must not only start from Christology but also remain with it.” Paul then can be seen as correcting a triumphalist misperception of what it meant to be “in Christ.” The implications of this “another Jesus” are staggering if not deadly for authentic Christian faith, resulting in a “different spirit” and a “different gospel” from the one the church in Corinth had received from Paul. The crucial issues are threefold both then and now. The nature of the Christian life, the Christian ministry, and even Christian salvation face a crucial challenge from such a gospel. In Christian life there would be such a sense of having so fully arrived spirituality that ethics are no longer an issue, they are automatic with us—what we do is therefore right. Christian freedom is misunderstood and therefore lost. Along with this is a triumphalist approach to human suffering and tragedy. . In stark contrast Margaret Spufford testifies: But it is because the celebration of the Eucharist and Christ’s offering of Himself in it seems to comprehend all the realities of acute pain and death that I have not handed in my ticket. I have spoken openly here of suffering and of death, breaking my own taboos, because it seems to me that a faith which cannot comprehend these realities, and contain them within its central paradox of life through Christ’s death, is not worth having. As Spufford’s witness is summed up by another, “a faith that doesn’t comprehend the reality of suffering and death simply isn’t worth having.” True Christians have the victory, not just in and through, but over such. These false perceptions Paul counters throughout the letter. But “a faith that doesn’t comprehend the reality of suffering and death simply isn’t worth having.” True Christians have the victory, not just in and through, but over such. These false perceptions Paul counters throughout the letter. As to the Christian ministry, when Paul wrote that God “in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession” (2:14), the image is that of a conquering Roman general in the lead rather than a captive staggering in chains at the rear. But it is the latter who is “the aroma of Christ to God, . . a fragrance from death to death, . . . a fragrance from life to life” (2:15-16). For the methodology of fully Christian ministry is in the weakness of the crucifixion and the resultant power of the resurrection (13:4)—a “treasure in clay jars” (4:7; see vv 7-12): “you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together” (7:3). Christian salvation is defined and determined by the person and work of the Christ, who, “though he was rich, yet for [our] sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty [we] might become rich” (8:9). It is thus that “the love of Christ urges us on, because . . . one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (5:14-15). Basic for our spiritual lives and service is that “for our sake” God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (5:21). Paul employs sacrificial language (see also Rom 3:25; 1 Cor 5:7) to indicate that because of our sin Christ fully participated with us in our alienation from God throughout his entire incarnate life, not only as it climaxed in this death and resurrection. He identified personally with us in our lot becoming “obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross!” (Phil 2:8). With James Denney “there is something in God as well as something in man which has to be dealt with” (see Rom 3:25; 1 John 2:2). God treated Christ as sin, aligning him so completely with sin and its consequences that, from the divine perspective, Christ became indistinguishable from sin itself. We stand ultimately before a mystery! But the point is that Jesus in his life and death became more than a loving example for us to emulate and interpret as we please, he became sin for us before a holy God! We take the suffering and death of Christ realistically as continually constituent of who we are as those who now live in the power of his resurrection. As Paul wrote elsewhere, to know Christ and “the power of His resurrection” involves “being conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:10, NASB). For these all-comprehending reasons above all I would not proclaim a triumphant Lord apart from a dying Christ, a theology of the Resurrection unbalanced by a theology of the Cross, a triumphal Christian life and ministry that is not characterized by “we are weak in him,” but “live with him by the power of God” (13:4). Christology is so crucial that I would be terrified of preaching “another Jesus” other than that of the canonical biblical witness! Three: I Would Not Proclaim a Saving Grace Independent of Character Transformation.
When Paul writes about “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,” Christ was and is “the image of God” (4:4). And it is into this image, because of “his Spirit in our hearts” (1:22) that we who look openly to him in life “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (3:18). To live otherwise is to have received “a different spirit” (11:4). The ongoing transformation of personal character is an inherent part of “a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (11:3). Christlikeness is the goal as we “aim to please him” (5:9). The Christian by definition and nature is in the business of behavioral change, “making holiness perfect in the fear of God” (7:1). So in no way could I proclaim a reception of the grace of God that does not liberate us to moral and spiritual transformation: “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (3:17). I would not proclaim a salvation that is not through and through ethical (1 Thess 5:23-24): Forgiveness of sins and the cleansing of heart and life from sin (1 John 1:7, 9) are inherently related. Justification and sanctification are a unified “grace-full” work of God in Christ through the Spirit in our hearts and lives. The potential for character change is beyond human description (Rom 12:1-2; Phil 2:12-13). There is no mere book-keeping involved, no hiding of the human condition from the eyes of God in our walk with him! We are all “naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render account.” (Heb 4:13). We “approach the throne of grace with boldness” for there we “receive mercy and grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:16).
Four: I Would Not Proclaim a View of Christian Living with Implications Only For This Present Life
This fully realized eschatology of “a different gospel” (11:4) has two aspects. Both partake of the oxymoron of a somewhat future-less eschatology. Both de-emphasize the future, life beyond this life, and its significance in their peculiar ways. One aspect appears positive and affirming, the other seems negative and denying. One sees the benefits of salvation fully accomplished in a “deification” of this life with no need of any future transformation—they have “arrived” spiritually; the other does not sense or acknowledge the qualitative impact of this life on the next. The purpose of salvation in both is not so much moral and spiritual as it is therapeutic. Paul puts it simply, these seek to “walk . . . by sight,” not “by faith” (5:7). In contrast Paul has two things to say. First, What is good now will be greater then: Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (4:16-18). The inner renewal that is going on now will be “an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” then for it originates in the eternal. What has begun now “in Christ” will be completed then “in him” (Eph 1:7-12); what is a matter of joy now in the Spirit (5:5) as “the first fruits” (Rom 8:23) will become fullness of joy then in the very presence of the Father. Even now by faith “we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. . . . He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (5:1, 5). The “temporary” will be transformed into the “eternal”! Second for Paul, the eternal significance of the moral dimension of human and Christian existence is never far from his mind: So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil (5:6-10). What more is there to say? Not much. For two reasons I would not proclaim a salvation that does not take seriously character transformation in this life with implications for the life to come. Present spiritual life has eternal significance because first, our present in-process Spirit enabled participation in the image of God contains the culminating promise of its full transformation into the likeness of Christ (3:18; 4:4, 6). Second, because at “the judgment seat of Christ” our eternal fate is to exist forever as the kind of persons into which our moral and spiritual choices in this life have formed us. In our kind of world, the present cries out for future consequences, “whether good or evil.” Today’s moral and spiritual character is of worth tomorrow, the quality of the future determines the value of the present. Thus I would not proclaim Christian life as of therapeutic benefit for this life alone—it has a future! Five: I Would Not Proclaim My Personal Inner Spiritual Experiences As Instructional for Others
Paul knew the joy of inner spiritual experience, the raptures of a mystical life—“visions and revelations of the Lord” (12:1). But ironically, he sandwiched the report of his one such ecstatic moment between the great humiliation of his hurried escape from Damascus (11:32-33) and his unrelieved weakness as exhibited by his thorn in the flesh (vv 7-10). Moreover, Paul was not even sure of the precise nature of this experience for twice he wrote, “I do not know, God knows” (12:2-3). Thus he speaks with great hesitation of this indescribable moment of intimate companionship, when for an instant he was “at home with the Lord” (5:8) within the courts of heaven itself. Paul does not belittle charismatic experiences, but he always attempts to keep them in proper perspective. The influence of such experiences appears to have been incalculable for his own personal encouragement and strength to carry on his strenuous ministry. But these were so sacred that Paul kept them between himself and God, they were for him alone: “on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses” (12:5). At this point there seems to be those in Corinth who were of “a different spirit” (11:4) in their spiritual bravado. Did the secret of Paul’s power in ministry lie in his hesitancy to speak of such private revelations? Rather, writes Paul, “if I wish to boast, . . . I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations” (12:6-7a). As James Denney put it, “There are things too great to allow the intrusion of self.” With the great apostle, we must be extremely hesitant to even mention our inner spiritual experiences. The danger is that (1) we will be exalting ourselves calling more attention to ourselves than to Christ, and (2) we will be speaking beyond what can be observed in our conduct and heard in our speech. The credibility of our witness becomes at risk. The French Priest, Jean Nicolas Grou (1731-1803), who ministered in both France and England, devoted as much time as he could to study and writing both classic and theological works. From his writings a small volume, The Hidden Life of the Soul, was published. In it he spoke to our subject: You must continually seek Divine Light, ask for it on every occasion, great or small, undertaking nothing without it. In the earlier stages of the interior life, it is generally very abundant. . . . You must receive this passively, letting it come and go as God wills. It is given to do a special work at the moment; and when you need it again He will renew it, but He does not choose you to claim it as a possession, or a blessing you can summon at will. The Spirit of God cannot be . . . subject to our control: you must wait patiently, certain that He will never fail you in the hour of need. It is well to make a rule to yourself not to speak of these lights to other men, under the pretext of giving God glory or of enlightening them. . . . Moreover, we waste our grace by too readily pouring it out around us. Of course, I do not mean but that you should do all in your power to forward other men in the way of holiness, but without using your personal experiences for that end. Another light is Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) who counseled her sisters to “Believe only those who you see walking in conformity with the life of Christ.” Teresa was subject to ecstatic or extraordinary experiences, often to her embarrassment when they overcame her in public. Such things as union, raptures, locutions (words heard audibly or by interior impression), and even levitations (rising in the air in defiance of gravitation) would catch her unawares. But their only validation for her was an increase in love for God and others. She writes in “The Interior Castle” (1.4) that such favors are lost when they “fail to benefit those to whom God grants them.” Rather, they should “be delighted and awakened through these favors to a greater love of him.” It is spiritually dangerous for ourselves and for others to instruct them from inner intimate experiences of the Lord that are meant for our affirmation and strengthening alone. They are pearls to be guarded (Matt 6:6). These I would hesitate to proclaim or speak about to others, except with extreme caution. Conclusion Christology . . . ! What I would proclaim from 2 Corinthians, its implications for the life and ministry, even for the theology of the Church, must be rooted firmly in Paul’s view of God “in Christ.” What I would not proclaim for Christian faith and life is anything that obscures or perverts Paul’s witness to what he sees in “the face of Jesus Christ” (4:6).
Frank G. Carver, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Religion Point Loma Nazarene University
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, tran. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1933. Barth’s dates are 1886-1968. Karl Barth, “The Strange New World within the Bible,” in The Word of God and the Word of Man (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1978), 28-50. Quoted from Joel B. Green, Seized By Truth: Reading the Bible As Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 155. Perhaps what they preferred had similarities to a “new age” American spirit which permeates part of our culture—theologically looking at life primarily if not only through “resurrection” lens. Primarily the three Synoptic Gospels. Particularly as that witness is found in Romans, the Corinthian letters, Philippians, Ephesians, and Colossians. John Wesley, preface to “Sermons on Several Occasions, in The Works of John Wesley, vol. 1, ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 105-106. Dottie Rambo. Sung by Keith Beresford July 4, 2010 at SDFC. Galatians 6:14-15. Frances Young and David F. Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987, 63. That is, “interpretive approach.” Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, Studies in Paul’s Technique and Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 241. “Quaker Strongholds by Caroline Stephen,” in Emilie Griffin and Douglas V. Steere, ed., Quaker Spirituality (Harper One, 1984, 2005), 121. Caroline Stephen’s dates are 1834-1909. She was an Anglican aristocrat who was attracted to and joined the Quakers. The literary figure Virginia Woolf was her neice. Joel B. Green, Seized By Truth: Reading the Bible as Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 3. Green’s book is excellent background reading for this section. See also the earlier N. T. Wright, The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005) for another helpful discussion of this issue. Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 28. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (London: The Epworth Press, 1950 [1754]), 794. Green, Seized By Truth, 164. Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989), 184. James F. Kay, Preaching and Theology (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2007), 120. This is another book that is significant for this section, particularly Chapter 1, “Preaching as the Word of God,” pages 7-23. See Green. Seized by Truth, Chapter Four, “Methods,” 103-142. Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989), 186. Kay, Preaching and Theology, 8. His quotation is from Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith, trans. James W. Leitch (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1963), 424. Kay, Preaching and Theology 8: “Praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei.” This Confession of Faith was published by Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575), the successor to Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) at Zurich. “Quaker Strongholds by Caroline Stephen,” 121. The positions taken and the use of specific texts from 2 Corinthians are based on the fuller discussions in Frank G. Carver, 2 Corinthians, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City, Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2009. For the preceding discussion see pages 63-69. Col 1:19. From the invitation to lead a seminar at “The Bible Tells Me So” conference at Northwest Nazarene University February 1-12, 2011. Six dimensions about the Word of God are suggested by verse 6: (1) “God speaks,” (2) “God speaks through scripture,” (3) “God’s word for Paul is not dead, but alive; not impotent but powerful; God’s Word is God’s act,” (4) “Paul speaks of the God ‘who has shone in our hearts,’” (5) “God’s Word gives ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God,’” \ (6) “Paul claims that the knowledge of God communicated by the Word of God comes to focus ‘in the face of Jesus Christ.’” Kay, Preaching and Theology, 10-13, Sing to the Lord (Kansas City, Missouri: Lillenas Publishing Company, 1993), 689. Said of Kathryn Tanner’s Christ the Key (Cambridge University Press, 2010), i. [Reviewed in Christian Century, August 10, 2010, 37-39, by Lois Malcom: Premise: “God gives the fullness of God’s own life to us through Christ.” “Christ is the key to what God is doing everywhere”--human nature, grace, Trinity, Holy Spirit’s Involvement.] Jerry M. McCant, 2 Corinthians. Readings: A New Biblical Commentary, edited by John Jarick (Sheffield, U.K. Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 162. Ernst Käsemann, Jesus Means Freedom (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 67.
Margaret Spufford, Celebration (London: Fount Paperbacks, 1989), 38. Spufford, Celebration, 38. Spufford, Celebration, 82-83. A limpet is a marine gastropod that has a low conical shell broadly open beneath, browses over rocks or timbers, and clings very tightly when disturbed. Eugene H. Peterson, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation On Growing Up in Christ (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), 8. Col 1:19. William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, Daily Study Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 2nd ed., 1956, 223. Paul gives another expression to these same paradoxes in 6:3-10. “Dying” (NASB) is probably to be preferred to “death” here as the translation of nekrōs. Brian M. C. Kolodiejchuk. Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta (New York: Doubleday, 2007) 20. February 8, 1937 Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 197. Gerald Bray, ed., 1-2 Corinthians, vol 7 in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, Thomas C Oden, ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. 1999), 211. A more literal translation could be simply “receive what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.” Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 39. J. Paul Sampley, “The Second Letter to the Corinthians: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in vol. 11 of New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000), 1001. A recent treatment of the theme of this section is N. T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010). Col 1:19. W. George Shillington, 2 Corinthians, Believers Church Bible Commentary, Elmer Martens and Willard M. Swartley, ed. (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1998), 126. G. K. Beale, “The Old Testament Background of Reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5-7 and its Bearing on the Literary Problem of 2 Corinthians 6.14-7 .1,” New Testament Studies 35 (1989), 556; see Scott J. Hafemann, 2 Corinthians, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 243-244. Col 1:19. Carver, 2 Corinthians, 376. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Theology of the Second Letter to the Corinthians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 136. Frank J. Matera, II Corinthians: A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 314. See Kathryn Tanner, Christ the Key (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 140-206. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 677. Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 668. Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians, 249, see 248-52. Margaret Cropper, Evelyn Underhill (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1958), 98. Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, 98. Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, 86. See John Wesley’s works and the Writings of Karen Armstrong. Douglas John Hall in “Cross and Context,” Christian Century (September 7, 2010), 37. His essay was in the series, “How my mind has changed.” He is apparently quoting Ernst Käsemann, Jesus Means Freedom (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 68: “The point is that the resurrection is one aspect of the message of the cross, not that the cross is simply one chapter in a book of resurrection dogmatics.” Käsemann, Jesus Means Freedom, 68. Käsemann, Jesus Means Freedom, 67. Käsemann, Jesus Means Freedom, 82. Spufford. Celebration, 86. She adds, “We have to learn to live in the tension which seems so much the crux of Christianity, in which present agony is also permeated with joy or the promise of joy. If we cannot, we are only subscribing to pious platitudes. So our own discovery that events which stretch us to the limit, and then beyond what we think we are capable of, these times of acute suffering can bring with them an insight into joy beyond rational conception, is fundamental to our growth. I can at least bear witness to some of this kind of reality.” 86-87. Deborah Smith Douglas, “Enclosed In Darkness [But Not Alone],” Weavings. Volume XXVI, Number 1, 32. Deborah Smith Douglas, “Enclosed In Darkness [But Not Alone],” Weavings. Volume XXVI, Number 1, 32, citing Margaret Spufford. Celebration: A Story of Suffering and Joy (London: Harper Collins, 1989, 100. An illuminating meditation on how a theology of the cross works itself out in daily living is Parker J. Palmer’s “The Stations of the Cross” in Weavings . . . James Denney, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. 5 in The Expositor’s Bible, W. Robertson Nicoll, ed. (1943, 1894), 769. See N. T. Wright, After You Belive: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010), as well as Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. For the contrast of this to Hellenistic views of immorality in which New Age thought participates, see N. T. Wright, Surpised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008). These views are deficient in the continuity of moral and spiritual quality from this life to the next as is found in the more biblical miracle of the resurrection. Denney 1943, 801. H. L. Sidney Lear, The Hidden Life of the Soul (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1935). Lear, 34-35. Mary J. Luti, Teresa of Avila’s Way: The Way of Christian Mystics 13, Noel Dermot O’Dionoghue, ed. (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press. 1991), 82. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, vol. 1 of The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, trans. (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2nd ed., 1987), 168, 172-174, 212-223). Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, vol. 2 of The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, trans. (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1980), 285, see 319.
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