Chapter 4

2022 - Begins with therefore, so we are going to see where the information in Chapter 3, about the superiority of the New Covenant over the old, logically leads.  The Law had a fading glory, but the New Covenant leads to increasing and eternal glory.  Paul is about the new.

With the gospel comes the putting away of "disgraceful, underhanded ways."  No cunning to be used, no tampering with God's word!  Again, we have to read backwards through this text to see what was going on in Corinth.  It's like there was a coordinated attack on that church with no holds barred on the part of the attackers.  They were willing to do anything and everything to undermine that church.  The attack was not from men, but from men used by Satan to tear down that church.  Why was it Corinth that they picked?  Why not Ephesus or Antioch? 

2022 - It seems that those attacking the church in Corinth were using OT scriptures - twisted and purposely misinterpreted - to "show" that Paul's teaching was inconsistent.  They would likely say that the freedom he preached was the opposite of what scripture taught.  They were saying that Paul's teaching made no sense, was illogical.  They may have been teaching that it went against orthodoxy.  And Paul would have agreed with them on that point.  The Law was gone.  But then Paul says that the reason they cannot understand his teaching is because the veil is covering their eyes, still untorn, still too think to see through.  They are so blinded by the Law that they cannot begin to see the New Covenant.  So long as they remain behind the veil, so long as they refuse to accept the one who's death on the cross tore the veil away, they will never "click" as to the teaching of the New Covenant.  Jesus is the only way the veil can be removed.

This verse:

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. [2Co 4:3 ESV]

This is about those who can't see the sense of it.  The dots don't connect for those who are still unsaved.  You cannot explain it to them.  Faith must come, and Spirit must indwell before the veil is lifted.  2021 - Yes it is that, but it also confirms I think that this church was under a coordinated direct attack by Satan.  Perhaps this is where he tested his strategies for uprooting and overthrowing the body of Christ - for disabling Christ in the Gentile Age.  This is where he learned how far he could go, what would....no....That doesn't seem to work.  But it does decidedly say that Satan was doing what he could to blind the eyes of unbelievers there.

A transition verse:

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. [2Co 4:7 ESV]

What a memorizable phrase!

2022 - Like the Dead Sea Scrolls, packed away in sealed clay jars, to preserve them against decay.  So it is with the gospel.  I will never fade away.  Again the contrast between the fading glory of the Law and the increasing glory of the New Covenant.

Getting old outside is nothing to worry about:

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. [2Co 4:16 ESV]

Good one for FB.

The Judaizers sought to incorporate the new Christian faith within Judaism.  They wanted to wrap around it so that they could control it.  And they wanted to impose their beliefs and hierarchies on it also.  It was not a noble thing they were doing, they didn't really believe in the New Covenant.

****2021 - This sure seemed confusing to me this morning.  I was just having a hard time following it - even worse than I had figuring out yesterday's reading.  It just seems like chapters and chapters of necessary information have been skipped over, and we are left trying to reconstruct events that we really know nothing about.  We can speculate about almost anything that it might have been, and we might be correct...or we might be 1000 miles away.  So for me, at least in these first four chapters, I will stick to the principles and try not to apply them too broadly since they may have been about specific troubles here.  At the same time, these chapters are perhaps a glimpse into what attack looks like, so that at least we will know when something serious is going on, rather than just a bit of disagreement on minor points.  I think perhaps the way Paul referred them back to orthodoxy - to original teaching - might be the main point of these first four chapters.  If your church is in trouble, faltering, splintering, attacked, false teachers abounding, members encouraged to stay calm and not get upset about false doctrines taught as truth...If all that is happening, the "cure" is a return to orthodoxy.  Go back to the simple.  Less classes, not more.  Old teachers, not young.  Hymns, not choruses.  Verse by verse preaching, not topical sermons.  The gospel, not...law?  I think this is the way to read this second letter - at least to this point.  Maybe it will get more specific.*****

2021-2,  The chapter closes like this:

17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. [2Co 4:17-18 ESV]

Here is another place where Paul says that what awaits us in heaven - what we have not yet seen will be so ecstatically infinitely good that no pain, no suffering, no affliction, no persecution in this physical life will budge the scales.  Heaven will be so good that no amount of "reprieve" on earth will be worth giving up what is to come.  The other verse about this is here:  18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. [Rom 8:18 ESV]