10. Treasure in Weakness
Covering 2 Corinthians Chapters 4-6:
Gospel Word is one complete whole, containing in itself many complete wholes, each one containing more complete wholes. I am convinced that our categories are right, to show the wondrous weaving of Life taking place among all these complete wholes together as one. That sounds philosophical and vague, yes, but I am trying to express this LIVING and ENERGEOING Word into which Jesus has carried me.
We see 2 Corinthians as a complete whole, yet inside a larger complete whole that is both letters to the Corinthians, and also containing a whole series of complete wholes. Chapter 3 is HUGE, yet it is also the most important piece Paul places in building towards the revolution he is inserting into this age of human folly.
Rightly Dividing. Everything Paul wrote in Chapters 1 & 2 was building towards Chapter 3 and 5:19-20. And everything Paul says now, from 4:1 to 5:18, is coming out from Chapter 3 as a whole and going towards 5:19-20. Now we realize that “rightly dividing the Word of Truth” is not a mental task, but a Spirit-seeing of the vast panorama that is Gospel Word.
Let me say that again. It’s not possible for us to go forward in the reading of 2 Corinthians to know what God means, unless we have first absorbed the overwhelming GLORY of Chapter 3, making it common to our daily lives shared with God. Every Gospel Verse Paul continues to write comes out from such knowing.
Image and Glory. (Chapter 4) • 4 The god of this age has blinded the inward minds of those who will not believe so that they do not shine forth the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. That’s us. Until we first embraced our precious union with the Lord Jesus, we were BLIND to all this glory.
I have placed the pathways of power into Kingdom, for that is where they belong. Yet they are almost as significant as “The Form for God through Jesus.” In fact, they are the Synergeia coming out from Symmorphy. And this is why they are always first a description of LIFE. You see, that’s also us, the image of God, the glory of Christ. All of these things are defining our original purpose – Image.
Back to the Garden. You know, Paul is always going back to the garden, to Genesis 1-3, in all that he sets forth, for the same reasons that I feel the same need. The devil was not tempting us to “be like God”; he was blinding us to prevent us from seeing that we already are.
Definition: Image means the visible representation and dwelling place of an invisible spirit. Jesus as a human was that Image of the Father inside of creation, and He makes us to be like Himself. But the Church together is God’s dwelling place, for to see Christians loving one another is to see God.
Kingdom: The Glory of Christ Jesus is His greatest achievement, rendering sin and death inoperative, restoring us to the Father, and making us like Himself. We celebrate that Glory as the Triumphus by believing that God through Jesus is telling us the Truth. We are the face and presence of Jesus Christ.
The Key Companion. • 6 For the God who said, “Out of darkness light shall shine” (Genesis 1:3), this same God shines inside our hearts towards the illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God as the face and presence of Jesus Christ. • 7 For we have this treasure inside of earthen vessels, so that the surpassing beyond-ness of the power may be of God and not of us.
Paul is saying that the very words, “Let there be Light,” are God making us to be just like the Lord Jesus, His image and appearance inside of creation. Light is SEEING, we become like Him as we see Him as He is. Verse 7, then, is the key companion verse to Ephesians 3:19, for the Treasure is “filled with all the fulness of God,” and the vessel is our human weakness.
The Treasure. We cannot know that we are filled with God when we imagine that we are filled with ourselves. Yet when we place the Lord Jesus upon ourselves, we discover ourselves to be brand new, and everything we have ever been returns to us in glory.
Ruling Verse 10: We know the Father, for He has sent Jesus into us, that we might live inside of Him even as He is inside of us. For this reason, we enclothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, for we are His face and presence made known.
Ruling Verse 2: The Treasure is Christ Jesus inside our hearts; the Treasure is being filled with all the fulness of God our Father. Yet we contain this Treasure inside vessels of weakness, for our earthly humanity is our glory. This is the only way God can be known inside of creation, that the power would be out from God and not of us.
Life Made Visible. • 10 We are always carrying the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus should also become visible inside of our body. 11 For we the living are always being traded into death through Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be made visible inside of our dying flesh.
It is only three months later that Paul writes Galatians 2:20. That RULE is already there inside of Paul’s heart, directing everything he is writing, although he has not yet given Ruling Verse 5 its best and strongest wording. In other words, we do NOT interpret these lines by Constantine’s cross, as we once did, but by union with Christ. Symmorphosed already with His death, life traded for life, Jesus now living as us, His life made visible even out from our dying bodies, Resurrection LIFE before the resurrection.
Life Made Visible. “The life of Jesus made visible inside of our dying flesh” is an extraordinary statement, almost impossible to comprehend. Life is God known, and Paul’s focus is image, sharing the same image with Jesus as the revelation of the Father.
Ruling Verse 5: Jesus initiates all that is Salvation towards us; it is He who comes into union with us first. Inside of intimate fellowship, Jesus trades His death for our death and His Life for our life. His goal is that we share with Him as the image and revelation of the Father.
Ruling Verse 1: God has already symmorphosed us together with Jesus as the image and revelation of the Father. Life made visible inside of and out from our dying bodies is the Father made known, for LIFE is knowing God (see John 17:3).
Faith. • 13 Possessing the same Spirit of faith, then, according to what was written: “I believed, therefore I have spoken,” we also believe and therefore speak, 14 recognizing that the One who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up together with Jesus and will prove us and cause us to stand together with you. • 15 For all things are through you, so that grace having abounded more and more through the Eucharist, the thanksgiving, the speaking of good grace, may increase and abound into the glory of God.
In Galatians, Paul says that we possess the faith of the Son of God; here he says that we possess “the same Spirit of faith.” These are both Speaking Christ, but look at verse 15, for it is, again, beyond all. Grace increases through us to become God seen and known.
And the Eucharist. Faith and the Eucharist are always together. We speak Good Grace back into our Father.
Speak Christ: We believe that God is telling us the Truth, therefore we speak Christ made personal as us. As we speak the sane Words that are Jesus (see Romans 10:8), so we know the Father through the same Spirit of faith.
Speak Christ: Eucharist, thanksgiving, and speaking good grace are the same Greek word – eucharis. The Eucharist is our sharing with Jesus in giving ourselves to the Father. Thanksgiving is bringing the Father into every moment and circumstance of our lives. And speaking good grace is Christ Jesus in our mouths through which the goodness of God enters our world.
Placing the Tenses. • 16 Therefore we do not become weary or lose heart; but if our outward form is decaying, yet our inner person is being made new each day. 17 For our momentary and easy to bear pressure of travail within and without is working out for us a far surpassing beyond-ness into far surpassing beyond-ness. • 18 We are not looking at or regarding the things that are seen, but we are looking at and regarding the things that are not being seen. For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are age-unfolding.
Placing the three tenses as one together, already done, present and ongoing, and always will become, enables us to place the “present and ongoing,” of 2 Corinthians 3:18 into Paul’s larger theme in 2 Corinthians, that God has made us to be vessels of weakness.
Sufficiency. Let me restate that. The continuous and ongoing part of being made like Jesus connects directly with the nature of being earthy vessels of weakness containing all of God. It is in our weakness that Jesus is “all that we need” every moment. Then we see that “already symmorphosed” is rooted in the nature and being of God, and “will become” is found as the ever going forth of the Spirit.
2 Corinthians is all about SUFFICIENCY, Jesus sufficient inside all our human weakness. And suddenly everything fits. If God needs us to be His form inside of creation, how would that work if we did not NEED to be filled with all the fulness of God? And if we need to be filled with God, how would that work if God either needed no form or used every form?
Into Far-Surpassing Beyond-ness. Sufficiency goes both ways. Our human weakness is designed by God to be perfectly compatible with His unceasing power and divine personalness. The “far surpassing beyond-ness ” is being filled with God brand new every single day.
Ruling Verse 2: Our human weakness is designed by God to be perfectly compatible with His unceasing power and divine personalness. We are made brand new inside as we know God our Father filling us with all of Himself every single day. This is why we are not distressed over our bodies tending towards death.
Definition: Death and all of its affects are visible outwardly. God our Father filling us with all of Himself is not visible to us or anyone else. The “invisible” to us is not something murky or esoteric, such as “divinity,” etc., but rather the Person of our Father. “Age-unfolding” then means our every next moment filled brand new with God, without regard to any outward difficulty or lack.
Travail. Now we begin with Chapter 5. • 4 And so, being inside of this tent, we groan with great pressure of travail and grief, being weighted down, not that we desire to be unclothed, but to be clothed, that what is dying may be swallowed up by LIFE. • 5 The One who has now prepared us, having achieved and worked out already for this same thing, is God, who has already given to us the earnest payment of the Spirit, the security of the whole.
We GROAN for the Resurrection of our physical bodies, for that is the moment when a World of Life enters into the knowledge of creation. Travail is the essence of weakness, the glory of the woman, to bring forth LIFE into the world. Verse 5 says that God has made us able to do such a thing.
The Goal of Travail. Life is the mother of the Kingdom; therefore Life is the greater. The purpose of the Church is Life. But God’s commitment of Himself to prepare us by the gift of the Spirit, that is Covenant, the Source of the Life.
Life: Our human weakness is God’s dwelling place forever, but the dying of our physical bodies is not. Because we see God filling us full, in spite of our mortality, we groan in travail for that moment when our physical bodies are swallowed up by LIFE, God becoming visible through us.
Covenant: God made us specifically for the experience of our dying physical bodies being swallowed up by the Life of Resurrection without ever losing them. The Spirit of Devotion given to us is the certainty of the Covenant that makes such an experience the goal of all our travail.
Faith Sees. • 7 for we walk through faith, not through sight. 8 We show confidence and good courage, and are well-pleased, rather, not to identify ourselves as out from a dying body, but to identify ourselves fully towards the Lord.
We can see clearly now that the idiom Paul used in verse 8 refers directly to what it means to walk through faith now. It does NOT refer to heaven “someday.” Paul is repeating what he said in 4:18. And we are beginning to see the real meaning of the OVERTHROW Paul is inserting into the human dilemma, that God already FILLS our human weakness, with NO outward sign. Faith SEES what appears not to be, and calls what it sees into existence. We SEE a glorious Church; we call her forth.
Seeing and Identity. Verses 7 & 8 are the same as Romans 4, Abraham not regarding his dying body, but being strong in faith. Our walk through faith is also Ruling Verse 7. And indeed, the idiom of verse 8, identifying with Jesus, is the same as Hebrews 3:14. This is why I am free to translate verse 8 as I did, for I regard the ruling verses of the Bible.
Ruling Verse 7: Human weakness and mortality are two very different things. With Paul, we glory in our weakness, for God is our all-sufficiency. But death is our enemy (see 1 Cor. 15:26). We are part of Christ because we are confident that we are part of Christ with no outward sign, that is, there is no outward reason to believe such a thing. The key is our identity, and this is why we speak Christ. Our identity is that we are at home inside of Jesus and not anywhere else.
The Day of Slaughter. • 14 For the love of Christ presses us together, because we have concluded that if One died for all, then all have died. • 15 And He died for all, that those living should no longer themselves live, but rather the One who died and who was raised again for their sakes [in trade, life for life].
Jeremiah prophesied “the day of slaughter,” God putting to death every human who ever lived. That Day was the Day of Passover in AD 29, the Day of the Lord. This death was not “for God,” but for us, that we might KNOW the CERTAINTY by which the old is GONE. – The Egyptians you see today, you will see no more forever (Exodus 14). Galatians 2:20 is simply turning these two verses into a positive confession of faith, Paul setting himself as our example to speak Christ with all certainty. “Christ is my life: I have no other life.”
The law brings all to death. The Cross brings all into Christ.
The Road to Damascus. Now we can see that Galatians 2:20 is the deepest expression of what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. He had fulfilled the law, but it brought him only to the Cross, the end of all his doing. Yet Paul then stepped through the Cross into the revelation of all the life of Christ inside a new creation.
The Cross is far larger than all things created.
Ruling Verse 5: Because Jesus died for all, we know that all died upon that Cross, the entire original creation. We are already crucified with Christ, and we are already made alive inside of Jesus. We have stepped through the Cross through faith into all of life shared with the Lord Jesus. We no longer ourselves live, but Christ lives as us.
Speak Christ: Christ is my Life; I have no other life.
Look and See. • 17 Therefore, if anyone is inside of Christ, he is a new creation. The old things are already gone; look and see, the New has already become. • 18 And all things are now out from God.
You know, Paul seems to be bringing in all three of the HOW verses into his intention to present the God of verses 19-20: Resurrection Life, how we walk; the Cross, how we share all with Jesus; and the Blood, how we live inside of God. Look and see. You are inside of God; everything that you see is only God Himself, your Father, sharing all with you. The Cross is the entrance into God. Open your eyes and see the only place you live. Look and see where you are; look and see this God inside of whom you dwell.
What Paul Is about to Do. I have been searching for the heart of Paul’s revolution, and I have found it. Paul is about to TURN US AROUND, but in doing so he says first – SEE GOD, and second – SEE GOD in the only way we can, through the Ekenosis, a man on his face in the mud – “He that sees me sees the Father.” Only then does Paul turn us around.
Ruling Verse 6: Through Jesus as our Way, through the Blood, we live inside of God. Look and see. You are inside of God; everything that you see is only God Himself, your Father, sharing all with you. The Cross is your entrance into God. Look and see this God inside of whom you dwell, revealed to you through a very human Jesus. And when you know that everything you experience is now out from God, then be ready for what comes next.
God through Us. • 19 How that God was inside of Christ reconciling and reconnecting the world-cosmos to Himself, not counting to them their false steps [not knowing in His mind any sin or disconnection], and now this same God has set forth and placed inside of us the Word of reconciliation with God. • 20 For the sake of Christ, therefore, we are ambassadors as God Himself encouraging and inviting through us. We deeply desire for the sake of Christ: Be reconciled, connect yourself back [through faith] to God.
Do you see the ENORMOUS involvement of God Himself towards us first, and then through us, second. But there is so much in these two verses, and we must unpack it a piece at a time. God was inside of Christ. The Ekenosis, an invisible God in appearance as a man.
Propitiation – Reconciliation. And what was God doing inside of Jesus? The Greek word is katallassó, literally, “come down to the exchange.” According to Etymonline.com, the Latin word “reconcile” means “to restore to union and friendship,” “to bring together again.”
Propitiation is what Jesus does, to resolve the differences. Reconcile, then, is God’s side of propitiation. And this reconciliation is the most EAGER action found in the Bible. Your sin is wicked rebellion. Your sin is black and evil. Your sin is dead upon the Cross. God has never known your sin. Now this same God – just as EAGER, has taken His Word of “come back into union with Me” and placed it inside of us.
So – to resolve the differences, propitiation, is Jesus’ part. To restore to union, reconcile, is God’s part. What is our part?
Define a Christian. And here is where our hearts are split wide open. For the sake of Christ – By this we have known Love (1 John 3:16). – For the sake of Christ (repeated twice). To return such Love back to the Father, we TURN AROUND!
Define a Christian. A Christian is one through whom God Himself is encouraging and inviting, eager to enter back into an active union (Grace) with every created thing. Define a Christian. A Christian shares Hheart with Jesus, His deep desire, WANTING this one to be with him in glory, saying to each one earnestly. “God has already eagerly come into union with you; give yourself in union to Him in return.” Yet this is more than just “saying.” It is speaking Christ into; it is a word that creates life; it is calling forth the True.
Paul’s Revolution. Here is Paul’s REVOLUTION, the thing most reject. God is now doing through us, humans on this earth, the very same thing He was doing through Jesus. God is showing Himself as out-poured Love, a God who knows no evil, a God who eagerly enters into union with us, sharing our lives forever. Living turned around is living God-All through us now.
Ruling Verse 8: God showed Himself to us through Jesus, through a man on his face in the mud under a cross he could not carry, carrying us, carried by Father. By this we have known Love. Now this same God, a God who knows no evil, is inside of us, having turned us around, that He might come as Salvation through us into our world – And we also. God through me now encourages you to embrace full union with Christ, to know that you also share Life with God.
To Exchange. • 21 For He made the One who never once knew any disconnection from God, to take upon and into Himself that disconnect for us, for our sakes, so that we might become the just innocence of God inside of Him.
This verse is inside of Ruling Verse 6 and 5 together, that Jesus is our Scapegoat, living now as us, taking upon Himself even our sin and our shame. The root of the Greek katallassó is to exchange, a death for a death, a Life for a life.
Ruling Verse 6: Jesus is our Scapegoat, living now as us, taking upon Himself even our ongoing sinfulness, even all of our antagonism against God. Inside that same exchange, for our sakes, Jesus makes us to be His own just innocence, the just innocence of God, even as we dwell only inside of Him.
Salvation Now. • 2 For He says: “In an acceptable season of opportunity, I listened to you, and inside a day of salvation, I helped you,” Behold, now is the season of favor and of good welcome; behold now is the day of salvation.
We have not yet defined Salvation in this flow of Gospel Word. It might be time to do that. Salvation is TODAY, this moment; it has nothing to do with “someday.” “Someday” is a hoax, completely fake, requiring no actual faith at all. Yet it rules in the minds of most. Why? – Because of the refusal of weakness. And now we can see how our definition of Salvation relates directly to the Form for God through Jesus. Being available to God means giving thanks inside all our human weakness.
A Day of Salvation. “An acceptable season of opportunity” means everything from 2 Corinthians 2:14 to 5:21, featuring Christ in our hearts to being made like Him, from vessels of weakness to being filled with God. To put this to the future is REFUSAL.
Definition: What an opportunity we have been given TODAY! Today we are made like Jesus, today we are filled with all of God inside vessels of weakness. Salvation is what happens today. Putting God’s Salvation off to some future day “in heaven” is to “look and see God,” and to REFUSE Him.
The Form for God through Jesus: God fills our vessels of weakness, coming through us now as Salvation into our world. To give thanks inside of and for the sake of all, especially this present moment, is to welcome God as He has welcomed us; it is to be His Highway (see Isaiah 40:3-5).
I Belong to You. • 17 Therefore, “Come out from the midst of them and be separate and marked off by boundaries,” says the Lord, “and touch nothing impure, and I will welcome and receive you (Isaiah 52:11). 18 And I will be Father into you, and you will be sons and daughters into Me,” says the Lord All-Sustaining (2 Samuel 7:14).
Because we are the Form for God through Jesus, we cannot be the form for any other spirit, especially inside this world. It’s not a question of “thou shalt not.” It’s a question of, is not union with God worth so much more? To be “marked off by boundaries” is the same meaning as “horizon,” which I have translated as Determination, that is, Pro-Determination. It is God’s Determination towards us by which we say in return, “Look at me, God; I belong to You.”
The Season of Good Welcome. Verse 18 references God speaking to David concerning the building of His House, and thus God already speaking of our symmorphy together with Him as His dwelling place forever. I have a chapter coming up in “Being a Witness of Christ” titled “Be Ye Separate,” from this verse. Paul is referencing identifying with Jesus, and with nothing else, NOW, in this incredible opportunity, in this season of GOOD WELCOME!
The Form for God through Jesus: Inside of this season of Good Welcome, God is inviting us to be together His dwelling place, that He might fill us with all of Himself as Love, the Father. Given such a Treasure, we eagerly identify ourselves only with the Lord Jesus, our only Life, separating ourselves from all other identities and attachments in this deceitful world, that we might BELONG only to God..
A Complete Picture. From writing this lesson, I am now able to complete “The Valley of Decision” in Being a Witness of Christ. I have the heart of the meaning of “the road to Damascus,” the same confrontation that must come to tens of thousands very soon. More than that, we are seeing in this lesson such a complete picture of all the fulness of God filling all our human weakness, what it means, what it’s for, and the boundaries inside of which it is found.
Yet I have never before seen the intense separation Paul places between our God-designed weakness, that we need God and one another, versus mortality, our enemy and God’s. We become what we see to look upon (Look and see - God.) Calvin said – when you see God, you will know how evil you are. Paul said – when you see God, your dying body will be swallowed up by LIFE.
The Greatest Goal. We can draw from these chapters that part of the meaning of our bodies redeemed is the Apocalypse. Before, no one could see God when they saw us. Now, everyone knows that the kindness and goodness they see in us is God made visible.
As wonderful and as important as that change is, it is not the greatest goal, however. The greatest goal for which God has prepared us is that we might share Hheart with God. And that is the purpose of separation, for who, having seen such a Treasure as sharing Hheart with God our Father would not immediately abandon all that they have in order to know such a Symmorphy forever.
God is inside of us reconciling the world to Himself, and we are inside of God carrying all whom God has given us safely into His bosom.