2 CORINTHIANS 3 AND 4 (NOTES OF A READING)
2 CORINTHIANS 3 AND [p. 197] 4 (NOTES OF A READING)
2 Corinthians 3: 17, 18; 2 Corinthians 4: 1 - 18
Ques “The Lord is the Spirit”, what does that mean?
CAC I suppose it is connected with the end of verse 6, “The letter kills, but the Spirit quickens”. Then there is a long parenthesis, and then, “Now the Lord is the Spirit” (verse 17). It is the spirit of the new covenant in contrast to the letter; the letter being external. Man needs what is spirit, not what is letter. Whatever a man really has, he must have it in spirit, the letter is external.
There is a wonderful effect produced by beholding the glory of the Lord; you are changed, and that is what the letter never did for anybody. The letter kills but the Spirit quickens. It is really the spirit of the thing; for instance, the apostle in chapter 4 says, “We also believe, therefore also we speak” (verse 13). That is, the apostle was occupied with the spirit of the thing, not the letter — the very life of the thing. You want the life of it, and each one must find the life of it in the Lord, and it is as each one gets it in that blessed Person we get life. It is not merely a text of Scripture, it is a Person. The gospel is not preached simply to teach people Scripture but to bring them to a Person. God has unveiled His glory in a Man, He has brought it near to us in a Man.
Ques What does it mean by His glory?
CAC I think all that God is has come out in a Man, and in connection with our deep need too. It is a very great thing to see that; very much depends on which side we look at the gospel. I may look at it as how it affects me, and all that is very true and very blessed, but it is not what Paul calls “my glad tidings” (2 Timothy 2: 8). By the fall God’s creature has lost the knowledge of God altogether, and God has come out in the gospel to make Himself known, and if that is the case the blessing must be infinite; it must be [p. 198] worthy of the Giver. The apostle was anxious that we should see the gospel from the divine side. All is coming out in a Person. The Christian ought to think it his privilege to speak a good word for God, if I may put it so. You feel that people do not know Him. To know Him is to love Him. God will never be content until we love Him with all our heart. In the Old Testament, God says, “My son, give me thy heart” (Proverbs 23: 26), and in the New He says, ‘I have given you My heart’. That produces a different effect, and that is, that I give Him mine. It is a very marvellous thing that God has given His Son and His Spirit; and I ask myself, what is it for? It is that I may know Him. You must have the two things: there is a perfect revelation in the Son, and a perfect capacity to enjoy it in the Spirit. We only get things as we feel the need of them. It is a great principle with God that “He hath satisfied the longing soul and filled the hungry soul with good” (Psalm 107: 9). The new birth is God working in man so that he has desires after God. Nicodemus is an illustration of a man seeking after God. He says to Jesus, “We know that thou art come a teacher from God, for none can do these signs that thou doest unless God be with him” (John 3: 2). There was a longing in the heart of that man for the knowledge of God, and that is what the new birth produces. What a wonderful thing that God should open out to Nicodemus things that He had never opened out before. The One who was the revelation of God was before him, and He opened out that wonderful gospel that nobody had ever heard before. Nothing could be available for us without His death, that comes out in John 3. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up”. The death of Christ is brought in immediately, and that is the very way in which the love of God has come to light for us.
The word of God was so precious and holy that the apostle was anxious that nothing should cast a shade on the glory of this wonderful testimony. I think the apostle was a [p. 199] changed man himself, he was an illustration of what it is to be changed. His exercise at the end of this chapter (4) was that the life of Jesus should be coming out in his mortal body.
God has shone out (verse 6), and when Paul comes to the practical side it is the life of Jesus; that is the way that the glory of God must express itself in a world of sin.
‘There only could He fully trace
A life divine below’. (6:2)
If we have the privilege of knowing God in His glory as set forth in Christ glorified, the other side is that the life of Jesus must come out here. If you are ministering the gospel of the glory you must express the life of Jesus — the life of that holy, dependent, lowly Man as He was here. And one feels that nothing else comports with the gospel of the glory of Christ. What goes along with that? The life of Jesus; you see it coming out in Stephen very markedly. He is an example of one who saw the glory of God, and how did he come out down here? He just comes out as Jesus came out. It is lovely to see it. It is one of the most blessed things in the gospel that it is a power to make us like Christ. You are actually changed so as to be like Him. The glory of the law was a consuming fire, but the gospel of the glory is a conforming power. You remember the old lines,
‘Run, run and work, the law demands,
But gives me neither feet nor hands;
But sweeter sounds the gospel brings,
It bids me fly and gives me wings’.
What a wonderful thing that such a man as I am can be given power to be here expressing the life of Jesus! I may think I am a poor thing, what can I do? But He gives me power. One is not surprised that the devil tries to blind minds to that. The Christian has seen the image of God in a Man. I think our great business as Christians is to put Christ [p. 200] before people. It is the only thing that will satisfy thirst. We must not forget that there are thousands of souls in this world who are longing for some knowledge of God, and we need to be diligent. The Spirit of God is here and He is diligent. There is one diligent Person here at any rate. The woman in Luke 15 lights a candle and sweeps the house and seeks diligently till she finds the lost piece of silver.
The great thing that people need is light — she lights a candle. It is a great thing if you or I can be a vessel to carry that blessed light of God revealed in grace.
“God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth” (verse 6), and that is true in principle for all Christians. If the knowledge has shone in, it is for the shining out. It is not anything of ourselves, we are only vessels, and vessels simply carry what is put in them. We have to be nothing but vessels, we simply have to hold what is put in us, “that the surpassingness of the power may be of God, and not from us”.
It is a very great subject, the glory of God in the face of Jesus, it takes some travelling over. God has been pleased to bring out His glory in many different ways, but all those ways reach their fulness in Christ. Promise has been a great element in the ways of God. A promise sets forth two things, His grace and His faithfulness; that is, when God has made known His grace, it is made good in blessing through His faithfulness, and all this is seen in Christ. If you want really to understand the glory of God you must survey the whole field of promises, and you see them all in Christ. In Him is the Yea and the Amen of them all.
Another element in God’s ways is sacrifice. You see God bringing out the great principle of sacrifice from the garden of Eden right down; in connection with the tabernacle too. In sacrifice you see the righteousness and holiness of God, but these could not be met by the sacrifice in themselves. They all pointed to Christ. You see it all through the Old [p. 201] Testament and it all leads up to Christ.
Another great principle is resurrection; you get it all through the Old Testament. Resurrection is the display of God’s power. We see the grace and faithfulness of God, His righteousness and holiness, and His power, and behind all we see His majesty and His love. You could spend eternity in meditating upon it. It is “the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. It is God shining out, and what God wants is that our hearts should be the vessels of His glory. And God wants all this known in the affections of men and not as a lot of dry doctrine. Then this glorious gospel does not take men out of the exercises of the pathway here, you see that very plainly in verses 8 - 10. God turns the exercises of the way to profit and blessing. It is a blessed thing if we go through them in heavenly light.
‘And heavenly light makes all things bright, Seen in that blissful gaze’.
It makes all the difference. The apostle was able to go through the exercises in divine power. It is not that he did not feel them, for God means us to feel things. What a remarkable word that is in Colossians 1: 11, “Strengthened with all power according to the might of his glory unto all endurance and longsuffering with joy”. You are made to feel things, but the power of the glory enables one to endure things with joy. I find a very little suffering soon clips my wings. It is because we know so little of the power of His glory. We may not know much about joy in it, but when souls are really exercised they are able to justify the ways of God. You feel that God’s ways are good. The Christian is a paradox, “As grieved, but always rejoicing; as poor, but enriching many; as having nothing, and possessing all things” (2 Corinthians 6: 10). The apostle was afflicted every way. When we have trouble and sorrow we are straitened, the apostle was not straitened (verse 8). He [p. 202] could not see any way out and yet his way was not entirely shut up. You might find moment by moment God opens the way out. The old woman said she was ‘never so hedged up that she could not see a way out at the top’.
There is not much apparent triumphal progress in that, and yet that is the way God carries His saints in triumph. God says, I will not lessen a bit of your exercise and trial, but I will lead you through in triumph. It is a fine thing to be a Christian after all.