9. From Triumph to Glory

Covering 2 Corinthians Chapters 1-3:

We begin inside of triumph; we begin already possessing the final Victory. And we end in absolute Glory. I understand this now, that Paul was always writing out from a deep grasp of the meaning of his gospel, a meaning we have NOT known. Instead, we took a meaning that is the opposite of Paul’s gospel, a non-Biblical meaning, and forced everything Paul said onto that which Paul did not know.

Paul’s gospel is dramatic and universe-altering. It is beyond beyond-all, as he said so often. And the revolution, the overthrow, that Paul inserted into all human awfulness, is that God is all-Goodness, that God has already saved us to all completion, that our rebellion and all our sins have never been in His mind, and that all things are brand new.

Placing 2 Corinthians. The Reese Chronological Bible places the writing of 1 Corinthians from Ephesus, sometime in AD 57, probably in the spring, on Paul’s third missionary journey. Then, Paul wrote 2 Corinthians while traveling through Macedonia on his way from Ephesus to Corinth in the fall of that same year.

Paul must have received a full report of the Corinthian reaction to his strong words in the first letter, probably upon arriving in Macedonia. He would have written his response in return soon after that. Since it was only a few months later, Paul had his first letter clearly in his mind, yet in the midst of travel and new people and places, he started his second letter brand new.

An Overwhelming Glory. I have never encountered this blinding GLORY of the Gospel, as it was presented by all the Gospel writers, before in my life. And neither have you. – Yet we have only just begun! We do have this hope, that if we continue to look upon this Glory, though it is way too much for us, it will metamorphose us into the same image of Glory that is Jesus.

And so I must dare to continue with these Gospel Comments, even though it has already become way too much for me. Truly, truly, we have had zero knowledge of the overwhelming Glory of what are actually the simple truths of the Gospel, though we have read these things over and over our whole lives. And this is Paul’s whole meaning in the first five chapters of 2 Corinthians.

Speaking Comfort. Paul’s heart melted when he saw the reaction of the brethren in Corinth to the strong rebukes in his earlier letter. His response was to speak comfort into their hearts.

• 3 We bless and speak well of the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Father of compassions and the God of all comfort and encouragement; 4 the One who comforts and encourages us in all our pressures of travail, inside and out, enabling us to comfort those who are inside every pressure, through the comfort and encouragement with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Speak Christ: We speak blessing into God, our Father, the One who always speaks comfort and encouragement into us. Then we take that same comfort we have received from God and impart it to one another inside of all travail.

Travail to Life. Paul continues to address the pressures of travail which we all experience, for travail is that which brings forth Life.

• 6 More than that, if we are pressed with travail, it is for the sake of your comfort and salvation. If we are called to encouragement, it is for your comfort, energeoing inside the steadfastness of the same passions that we also suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm and certain, knowing that, as you share of the sufferings and passions, so also you share of the comfort and encouragement.

Life: The knowledge of God’s comfort and encouragement passes from one to another through travail. We share the same suffering; we share the same comfort. This is a reciprocity of giving, one of the meanings of Gospel Life.

Our Entrance and God’s. John saw this very quality Paul is describing as the Gates of the city, our entrance into God, through pearls. Yet, to our overwhelming astonishment, we discover that giving comfort inside of travail is also God’s Highway into our world. God’s entrance, His Highway, is also a form, as everlasting and as important as His dwelling place inside of creation, the House of God. This entrance is through travail, through Comfort coming into us and then flowing from us to others.

The Form for God through Jesus: Pearls, the entrances into God’s city, are formed by turning suffering and difficulty into treasures of goodness, that is, giving thanks. But when we share one another’s sufferings and comfort in reciprocity, we in turn become God’s highway into our world. God dwells inside our shared life together.

The New Covenant. • 18 Moreover, God is faithful, that our word towards you was not “Yes and No.” 19 Indeed, the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was proclaimed by us… to be among you, was not “Yes and No,” but it has always been “YES” inside of Him. 20 Indeed, the many promises of God are inside of Him. As the “Yes” is through Him, so also is the proclamation, “Let it be so – it is so,” connecting with God towards glory through us.

I am convinced that the GLORY coming up from 2:14 to 3:18 is very much filling Paul’s mind as he writes. For that reason, his train of thought leads him to begin defining the Covenant that is Christ Jesus already written upon our hearts. Paul did not quote Jeremiah, as Hebrews did, but the New Covenant is always close in his mind.

Glory through Us. Let’s specify what our text says about the Covenant. The faith-full-ness of God means no “back and forth,” no uncertainty. Then, Christ Jesus is spoken into – dwelling among us. This Christ Jesus spoken as Word into us, is always “Yes,” always every promise of God, Old Testament and New, now given to us. Then we respond with, “Let it be so; it is so,” God’s Word fulfilled, as our connecting bond back through Jesus to the Father inside of Glory. Wow!

Covenant: Paul is working towards an expression of the New Covenant (see 2 Cor. 3:3-6), the Bond that is Jesus, joining us together with the Father. Christ Jesus is spoken into us as a sure and certain word containing all that God has promised. Our part is to respond back with, “Let it be so; it is so.”

Towards the Ruling Thought.• 21 More than that, the One who is presently and actively establishing us, planting us firmly together with you into Christ, and who has anointed us, is God. 22 He is the One also who sealed us, having given us the down-payment of the Spirit inside our hearts.

Word is primarily Covenant, yes, but as Covenant, it also fully describes all the operations of the Kingdom. In the same way, Spirit is primarily Kingdom, yet the seal and gift of the Spirit is also at the heart of our Covenant with God. Paul is writing towards the extraordinary things he intends to say that will become Chapter 5. In fact, I can see now that the ruling thought of 2 Corinthians is 5:19-20, the unbelievable transition from Covenant to Kingdom and from Jesus to us. We must wait for the next lesson to tackle that Glory.

God Plants Us into Christ. God alone saves us. Paul repeats this absolute in every way possible, along with its companion thought, that we live always and only inside of God’s presence. Think of this line, “planting us firmly together with you into Christ.” How did we miss that? How should we respond to such a mighty action of God except by, “Yes, oh God?” “Let it be so; it is so. – God, You have answered us,” is our return to the Father, our part of the Bond of the Covenant.

Covenant: God alone saves us. He has done so by planting us firmly into Christ Jesus. We know that He has through faith. God has also given us His Spirit, now inside our hearts, even part of our humanity (see 1 Corinthians 2:12 & 6:17). The Spirit enables us to know and connect with God, sealing the Bond.

The Triumphal Procession. (Ch. 2) • 14 Good grace and thanks be to God, who always leads us in the triumphal procession inside of Christ, • with the aroma of His knowledge being made visible through us in every place. • 15 For of Christ we are a fragrance to God inside those being saved, and inside those still perishing; 16 to one, indeed, an aroma out from death into death [always the one death of Christ], to the other an aroma out from life into life. Who is sufficient for these things?

Verse 14 is part of Ruling Verse 7 along with Hebrews 3:6 & 14. The greater sense of meaning is in Hebrews, and so I will wait until then to do the complete layout for this Ruling Verse. In the regular flow of comments, however, I will have at least two regular comments for each Ruling Verse, the rule that it gives and the personal speaking of Christ.

This Part of Ruling Verse 7. Ruling Verse 7: God always leads us, and He leads us in the celebration of all the Victory Jesus already is inside of us. In return, we speak good Grace back into God even as we become His knowledge to others everywhere we go. This is the confidence through which we walk with God in all.

Speak Christ: I exult boastfully in all the victory of Christ revealed in me. I speak Christ in Grace to God and to others.

Ruling Verse 3: The Spirit of God flows out from us as Rivers of Life in every moment and in every place we go. This Life takes on many qualities according to who receives it. It always begins as Grace returning from us to the Father. Then, we are always the knowledge of God made visible. To some the Life from us becomes the knowledge of God as their own life, and to others, it becomes the certainty of the cross.

The Covenant Written. (Ch. 3)• 3 It is fully made visible that you ARE a letter of Christ, with us under your service, having already been written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God – not on tablets of stone, but inside tablets of hearts of flesh.

I have completed all the Gospel Comments in-between 3 and 18 before writing for these two. This has caused me to see how Paul is fitting these two verses together – profoundly.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days says the Lord, I will place My laws in their through-minds, and upon their hearts I will inscribe them; and I will be God inside of them, and they will be a people inside of Me (Hebrews 8:10). The purpose of Word as Jesus written upon our hearts is that we might be metamorphosed into His same image.

Stone versus Flesh. I have not before considered “having already been written.” The Covenant is God saying, “I will write My Word in your hearts.” Again – God alone saves us, and He already has. The comparison to tablets of stone is so important. This is the finger of God engraving Christ Jesus upon our hearts with Spirit “ink,” the completion of every Word that He Speaks. Our part is to let the Bible verses pass through our minds to be planted in our hearts, with no need to “figure them out,” but rather, to believe that they are Jesus already.

I am having a very hard time limiting this to the simplicity a Bible reader must have towards this one verse, but I must try. Think of the difference between stone and flesh. Rock is God, but stone is stumbling, and flesh is our entire humanity.

The Setting and the Covenant. In order to understand the Covenant and its power, we must place the key Covenant verses always into Ruling Verse 1, already symmorphosed with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ruling Verse 1: God has already symmorphosed us with the Lord Jesus, sharing the same form with Him as the image and revelation of the Father. 2 Corinthians 3:3 is a critical view of how He has done this, His Word written upon our hearts, His Pro-Thesis by which we are made just like Jesus.

Covenant: Our hearts are the actual New Covenant, for in sending Christ Jesus into us, God has already written every Word that He speaks upon our human hearts of flesh. Our hearts are the living Bible, and every Word written there is already fulfilled for Jesus is already triumphant.

The Root of Essence. I have realized something about the pathways of power, our authority to influence all through the Spirit. We originally determined that there is one category of Gospel Verses, Life, and that everything else is inside of Life. Now I have realized that, whereas sometimes the pathways of power do fit Kingdom, they always fit the meaning of Life. In this case, we are speaking of the Root of Essence, the flow of Word out from God’s Pro-Knowing through Jesus into us.
 
Life: The Lord Jesus is our Source, for we are always coming out from His good-speaking. He sustains and carries us by His power-filled Word (see Hebrews 1:3). God is Word; He speaks His Words, the Lord Jesus, and we become. This Flow through Jesus is our Life, for now every Word that God speaks is inscribed all through every pathway of our hearts.

Made Sufficient. • 5 not that we are sufficient out from ourselves, to reckon anything as out of ourselves, but our sufficiency is always out from God, 6 who also has made us sufficient servants of a New Covenant, • not of letter, but of Spirit; indeed, letter kills, but Spirit gives life.

Our participation with God in speaking this profound Word of Life into one another fills Paul’s Gospel. This is the flow, the return. This is the Means of Devotion, how God actually fulfills His Word, how God actually lives. This is the context in which we now understand the words, “with us under your service,” in verse 3:3. This truth is Ruling Verse 2, our sufficiency always out from God, and Ruling Verse 7, we are made sufficient, the result of being filled with all of God.

The Issue of Word. Ruling Verse 2: We have this Treasure, filled with all the fulness of God, in vessels of weakness. God is our sufficiency; God is enough for us.

Then we see that the definition of “the letter of the word,” and “the Spirit of the Word,” must come out from the overall context of all Paul is saying. Indeed, it is the conflict found in Genesis, “Let there be light,” vs “Did God indeed say?”

Definition: The Spirit of the Word is that which receives the words of our Bibles as the Lord Jesus entering into us, living and energeoing (see Hebrews 4:12), and written upon our hearts as the Bond of our connection with God. The “letter of the word” is akin to “Did God indeed say” (see Genesis 3:1), thus turning the words of our Bibles into ideas for our intellects, under our own control, that is, death.

Word NOT in the Heart. • 7 Now, if the ministry of death, which was engraved as letters on stones but is now abolished and rendered inoperative, if that ministry came into being inside of glory, to the extent that the sons of Israel were unable to look intently into the face of Moses, because of the glory of his face, 8 how much more will the ministry of the Spirit be inside of glory?

Most do not consider Verse 7. Paul is specifically calling “the ten commandments” – the ministry of death. He will explain later that the law is not death in itself. The problem is that these are words carved into stone, and thus NOT written upon the heart. This is word on the outside of us, kept at a distance, kept entirely under our own intellectual control. It is our minds of death that make the law deadly.

Defining the Ministry of Death. Now we begin to see that Verse 3 and Verse 18, two very significant Covenant Verses, are tied together in this stark contrast to Moses and to word carved on stone. Yet we also know that God gave the ten commandments, knowing that their result would be death, in order to establish the power and meaning of the Cross. Paul says, with Colossians 2:14, that the Cross has rendered that force of death inoperative by the Spirit of Life inside of Christ Jesus.

Definition: The ten commandments are death to us, for they place the word outside of our hearts, making it word under our own control. “I believe this, you believe that.” God has abolished and rendered inoperative that ministry of death towards us, yet it retains a “glory” of self some still pursue.

The Veil Stripped Away. 14 Their minds were hardened, for until the present day, the same veil remains unlifted upon the reading of the old covenant, which veil itself is abolished and rendered inoperative inside of Christ. 15 But unto this day, when Moses is read, a veil is set upon their heart. • 16 However, whenever anyone turns towards the Lord, the veil is stripped away.

There is a real sense in these lines of the fact that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil closes one’s eyes to the Tree of Life as if it does not exist. We are seeing how often “rendered inoperative” is used, the action of Propitiation. Then, “the veil stripped away” is actually the action of the Apocalypse, Covenant becoming Kingdom.

Placing Mary’s Response. I see now how the Spirit of God is placing Mary’s response to the Word God speaks as the key that unlocks this passage of Word into us from death to LIFE. – “Let it be to me according to Your Word.” These verses are the same as John 1:12-13. Yet many do receive and seize hold of Him, and to them He gives the authority and right to be sons birthed out from God, even to those believing into His name, those who are conceived not from… the desire of man, but out from God.

Speak Christ: Our response to the Word God speaks is Mary’s response. “Let it be to me according to [what You mean by] Your Word.” When we receive the Word as the Lord Jesus written upon our hearts, rather than as ideas for our minds, we become just like Jesus (see 2 Cor. 3:18 & John 1:12-13).

Into That Same Image. (Ch. 3) • 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. • 18 Having the glory of the Lord unveiled upon our faces, we all are reflecting the same image [to one another] as a mirror • and are being metamorphosed [into that same image] from glory into glory, that is, as from the Spirit of the Lord.

We see now the connection between verses 3 and 18, between Jesus written as Word upon our hearts and our being metamorphosed into His same image as we behold Him. This, then, is the same pattern given to John in the letters to the seven churches, presenting Jesus as He is (written upon our hearts) to our becoming just like Him as overcomers. This connection is utterly profound and so filled with Glory that we can hardly consider it.

Defining Liberty. Verse 17 expands on our growing definition of Liberty. Liberty is one of the pathways of power, Likeness and Condition, as James said, free to be what we are, just like Jesus, with no need to pretend. Freedom is “where the Spirit is,” that is, a quality of the Spirit of Devotion. Those who are led of the Spirit are sons of God (Romans 8), that is, theocracy, the rule of God, which is liberty, every individual led only by the Spirit inside, with NO shadow of violence or force.

Definition: The Law of Liberty is the freedom to be what we are, just like Jesus, with no need to pretend (see James 1:24-25), that is, no attachment to anything else. We know this liberty inside the Spirit, for as we are led by the Spirit now part of us, we know NO shadow of violence or force.   

Covenant. Again, we place the critical view of the Covenant found in verse 18 into its setting in Romans 8:29. Romans 8:29 is already done; verse 18 is continuous and ongoing, and 1 John 3:2 is, will be. All three are True, always together forever.

Ruling Verse 1: God has already symmorphosed us with the Lord Jesus, sharing the same form with Him as the image and revelation of the Father. 2 Corinthians 3:18 adds “continuous and ongoing” to “already done,” and 1 John 3:2 adds “always will be.” These three tenses are Jesus to us forever.

Covenant: Christ Jesus is written as every Word God speaks upon our hearts of flesh. We look upon Him, both inside ourselves and on each other’s faces. As we do so, we are always being metamorphosed into His same image. God has sworn, what Jesus IS – we become, the Covenant.
 
From Glory to Image. Now, even though I have to make several stabs at writing these things, coming in almost sideways, we do not want to define glory as “glowing.” Glory is the Father’s deepest Desire and His greatest work. God’s deepest Desire is to be known through us, that is, us as His image, and His greatest work is to turn us into such a wondrous thing.

Definition: Glory means two different but related things. It means one’s deepest desire, and it means one’s greatest achievement. God’s deepest Desire is to be known by all – through us as His image, and His greatest achievement is to make us to be just like the Lord Jesus Christ.

Kingdom: Covenant is substance; Kingdom is appearance. To be God’s image is to be His appearance inside of creation, the Kingdom, God free to be Himself among all.

Such Glory. I know now that from the moment I rushed home on the afternoon of August 6, 2006, to begin writing the first words of The Jesus Secret out from the Covenant, that is, Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18, and 1 John 3:2, I have been seeking one thing – this Flow of Gospel Word. I also know that prior to this summer of 2025, I had no idea, for I was not able to look upon such GLORY. We have never seen; we have never known. Yet we have only just begun.

And as John and Ezekiel were told, the Glory of Gospel Word becomes bitter in our stomachs, for to be its entrance into our world is the appearance of all costliness. We can lose nothing by substance, but we live in appearance, and it sure looks to us like costliness. Yet it is also sharing Hheart with God, and that is the deepest Substance, the Covenant.

Reading for Next Time. The next chapter is titled “Treasure in Weakness.” It will cover 2 Corinthians Chapters 4-7. I hope, however, to complete 2 Corinthians with the third letter, “My Grace Is Sufficient,” in time for the Zoom meeting next week.

Nonetheless, “Treasure in Weakness” will contain the ruling verse of 2 Corinthians, 5:19. God was inside of Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting to them their false steps, and now this same God has set forth and placed inside of us the Word of reconciliation with God. In fact, both letters to the Corinthians have become a single whole, a vast panorama of GLORY. The ruling verses of both letters are one thing, but the heart of all of it is 2 Corinthians 3, receiving Jesus as Word and being made like Him.

Let’s Pray Together. “God, our Father, we live always inside of Your Presence. You alone save us every moment, and in every moment, You have already done so.

“Father, such Glory, that You would send the Lord Jesus into us to be written as Your every Word fulfilled all through our very human hearts. This is beyond wonder to us, Father, and we honor You by believing that You always speak the Truth. Oh God, You have sworn Your Covenant to us, that as we see Jesus as He is, inside our own hearts and reflected in Glory from each other’s face, so we are made just like Him, metamorphosed into His same image, Father revealed.

“Father, we embrace Your Covenant. We are Your image and appearance forever. Be God inside of and through us.

“God, our Father, we come to You now carrying all our Christian brethren all across the earth inside our hearts. Christ Jesus is written on their hearts just as He is upon ours, yet they cannot see Him, for they do not know Him as He is.

“As the Lord Jesus now through us, we release our brothers and sisters from the veil that covers their hearts. Let it be cast away, Oh God, that they might see the Lord Jesus upon each other’s face, that they might become Your revelation as well. Through the authority You have given to us, Father, we bind and cast off every demon seal that prevents Your Church from knowing her Salvation, from being clothed with Jesus. Let every demon flee from Your Glory revealed, Oh God.

“We know and receive the Apocalypse, Oh God, our Father, for You have answered us.”