Christ and the Christian’s Hoping
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.
1 PETER 1:3–4
The Quest for Hope
“Where there’s life, there’s hope” is a deep truth. Deeper, however, is the converse: “Where there’s hope, there’s life.” We humans are hoping creatures; we live very largely on and in our anticipations, things we know are coming and we look forward to. If the light of hope goes out, life shrinks to mere existence, something far less than life was meant to be. This is a fact that must be faced.
It was a Headmaster’s Conference boys’ school, one of England’s educational elite, and amid its quite brilliant galaxy of instructors the scholar who stood out was the man we called Bill (behind his back, of course), the headmaster. When I studied Greek and Latin classics at Oxford, I met up with no tutor who could hold a candle to Bill or could teach me half as much as Bill had taught me already. He was a clergyman’s son who had retreated from the faith and become a sort of Buddhist.
Decades later, chatting with one of my former pedagogues, I asked after Bill, by then retired and, as I knew, in his early nineties. The reply to my question, based on a recent visit, ran thus (I seem to recall it word for word): “He’s very low. I asked him what he was doing these days; all he would say was, ‘Waiting for the end.’” Remembering the sharp-edged, upbeat vigor of Bill’s mind in his heyday, I felt very sad for him. Buddhism, as we know, does not beget hope. So here was a long-lived man, brilliant in his day, now withering rather than blossoming as he aged. Is that the best one can hope for?
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” declared Alexander Pope in his usual pompous way, but that is not all the story. For the first half of people’s lives, spontaneous hope does indeed spur them forward. Children hope to do this and that when they grow up; teens hope to go places and do things when they have some money; newlyweds hope for a good income, a good place to live, and good-quality children; established couples hope for the day when the children will be off their hands and they are free to cruise, tour, and see the world. But what then? There comes a point at which the elderly and those who, as we say, are getting on realize that of all the things they wanted to do, they have done all they can, and the rest are now permanently out of reach (“life’s too short,” we say wryly).
Yet life goes on. Today, indeed, people live longer than once they did, but the common experience is that extended and extreme age brings only bleak boredom and a diminished sense of the good life as consisting merely of three meals a day, television to watch, and a bed at night. Whether, as bodily health fades and minds and memories run increasingly amok, any better, more enriching experience of old age is possible is a question that secular social theory has shown itself unable to answer.
But the Bible appears to have an answer.
The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. (Prov. 4:18)
So even to old age and gray hairs,
O God, do not forsake me,
until I proclaim your might to another generation.
(Ps. 71:18)
Moses’s ministry began when he was eighty. What makes the difference? What does the Bible give us that secular theory cannot match? In a word, hope: hope understood not in the weak sense of optimistic whistling in the dark, but in the strong sense of certainty about what is coming because God himself has promised it. This hope is unique in the fields of both religion and philosophy. The philosopher Kant observed that the question, what may I hope for? is one of the most important questions one can ever ask, but he did not claim he could answer it.
The Bible, however, speaks directly to it, setting before those who are Christ’s a destiny that reaches beyond this world to a kaleidoscope of wonders, enrichments, and delights to which it gives the generic name “glory.” This destiny is big and exciting, and the New Testament writers show that they felt it to be so. As having something big and exciting to look forward to—a major family holiday, say—will keep children alert and on tiptoe for quite some time before it happens, so the big and exciting future for Christ’s faithful disciples that Paul looked forward to undoubtedly kept him at full apostolic stretch through all the adverse experiences to which he alludes in 2 Corinthians.
And do the New Testament writers as a body, with the Lord Jesus himself, expect this promised destiny to bring excitement and awe and amazement and joy into the hearts of all Christian people? The answer is an emphatic yes. This then is the prospect, the hope of which the promise is the wellspring, that we are now going to explore.
That leads us to the passage on which we shall be centering our attention, 2 Corinthians 4:5–5:8. Here it is:
What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 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.
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
So we are always of good courage. 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 are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
Upbeat in Weakness
The first thing to note about this passage, and indeed the entire letter, is how extraordinarily upbeat it is. We have seen already that 2 Corinthians exhibits Paul to us at his weakest situationally—consumed with a pastor’s anxiety, put under pressure, remorselessly censured, opposed outright and by some given the brush-off, and living in distress because of what he knew, feared, and imagined was being said about him by this rambunctious church at Corinth. We might have expected his sense of weakness in his relationship with the Corinthians to sour him and make him distant and defensive in addressing them. But no, there is no crumpling under criticism, no cooling of pastoral affection; and hope for the future, both here and hereafter, pours out of everything he says at every level. The whole letter is an awesome display of unquenchable love and unconquerable hope. It is Paul’s hope, particularly, that concerns us here.
Recent scholarship has highlighted the fondness of biblical writers for what is often called bookending, that is, enclosing what they have to say on particular subjects within opening and closing statements that, in effect, join their voices in speaking of what is spelled out in the territory lying between them, the first statement being introductory to this material, and the second being conclusionary. (In the days before paragraphing and chapter divisions, this was a convenient way of separating and rounding off units of thought. And, of course, it reflects what we humans actually do, and have always done, in our oral communication. When we have something complex and weighty to say, we start with an overall declaration that we then unpack, and we close with a summary statement matching that declaration, which pulls back together and reunites the various threads that our unpacking has separated out. This explains how it is that one can usually get to the heart of a book by skim-reading it, that is, by leaping from the first to the last sentence of every paragraph.)
Observe, now, the bookends between which the essential message of 2 Corinthians is sandwiched. (Let me say here: 12:11–13:14 is a personal afterword about Paul’s forthcoming visit, distinct from the matters of substance that he planned out before starting to dictate the letter. In this respect it is comparable to Romans 15:14–16:27, which follows the closing bookend there too.)
Here is the opening bookend, 2 Corinthians 1:3–4:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
This is a far stronger statement than might appear, because the English word “comfort,” both as a noun and as a verb, has lost so much of its meaning. When, back in the sixteenth century, it was chosen for the translation of these verses, it meant what the Greek verb means, namely, renewal of strength through encouragement. Today, when “comfort” suggests only some form of cushioning, making comfortable, and reducing pain, it is easy to miss the true thrust of what Paul is saying. Paul is praising God for his endless supply of strength to keep us going and rising to every occasion, and Paul is assuring the Corinthians hereby that though they may think of him as down, he is not out yet.
And now here is the closing bookend, 12:9–10:
[Christ] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Upbeat? Yes—terrifically, wonderfully so. And, as surely is clear by now, the tone and temper of all that Paul writes between the two bookends, topic by topic, is equally upbeat. For all that Paul is writing out of a situation of weakness and, without doubt, a sense of weakness more intense than we meet in any other of his letters, he is not lapsing into self-pity or voicing gloom and doom, but he is expressing his sense of ongoing triumph in Christ in face of all obstacles. And he is declaring his sure and certain hope of glory when his course through this world reaches its end. It is this hope for his personal future—a hope which, to echo Bunyan’s Mr. Stand-fast, lies as a glowing coal at his heart—that determines his attitude toward all the pressures of the present, as we are now to see.
Supernaturalized Living
We pick up the flow of Paul’s thought at 2 Corinthians 4:7. Speaking on behalf of his ministering colleagues as well as himself, as he has been doing since the start of , he contrasts the “treasure” God’s servants have with the “jars of clay” they have it in. The treasures are the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the world’s now-enthroned Lord; the clay jars are their fragile, vulnerable physical bodies, exposed to every conceivable form of weakness, pain, degeneration, and distress. Paul then proceeds, in 4:8–10, to give the first of his three lists of actual troubles that attend his and their ministry (the others are in chaps. 6, another “we” passage, and 11, where Paul speaks in the first person singular).
In verse 7 he has said that God’s purpose in this state of affairs was that “the surpassing power”—the power displayed in their fruitful ministry—might be seen to be God’s rather than theirs, and in verses 10–11 he tells us the nature of this power, namely, the resurrection life of Christ. Those who minister the gospel, he says, carry about in their bodies the dying process (that is what the somewhat unusual Greek word means) that Jesus underwent on the cross.
What was that dying process? Pain and exhaustion, with ridicule and contempt, all to the nth degree; a tortured state that would drive any ordinary person to long for death, when it would all be over. But, says Paul, Christ’s messengers are sustained, energized, and empowered, despite these external weakening factors, by a process of daily renewal within. So “death is at work in us, but life in you” (4:12). Eventually, however, “he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake,” to bring you to share in the ever-growing chorus of thanksgiving that gratitude for grace, itself generated by grace, is currently producing “to the glory of God” (4:14–15).
Meantime, however hard the going for the ministers themselves, “we do not lose heart” (4:16, as v. 1). “We are always of good courage” (5:6, 8). While our outer, public self (the person bearing our name that the world knows, or thinks it knows) wastes away, our inner self (we as we know ourselves, and as God knows us) “is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (4:16–17). We are on our way home, and home will be glorious. And contemplating that glory, however inadequately we do it, will brace minds and hearts to resist the weakening effect, the down-drag into apathy and despair, that pain, hostility, discouragement, isolation, contempt, and being misunderstood—and all the rest of the suffering—might naturally have on us otherwise.
Ministers of Christ will keep on keeping on, no matter what. The watching world may well wonder where they find the energy to do so, but the puzzlement of outsiders is no concern of theirs. What animates and propels them is the power of their hope as they “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” (4:18).
This is how, by grace, the God of grace supernaturalizes the natural, bodily, mortal life of all who through faith are in Christ, united to him by the Holy Spirit for endless power and joy. God-taught hoping leads to God-given strengthening. When, humanly, we are weak, then in the Lord we are strong. So it was for the apostles and their colleagues two millennia ago, and so it can and should be today for you and me.
Glory
One mark of the supernaturalized life, as Paul depicts it, is the reality of the appearance within it of glory—or perhaps I should amend that to “glories,” for the word “glory” is used in this part of the letter, as elsewhere in the Bible, in three distinct though connected senses. Weight, or weightiness, and consequent grandeur are the ideas at the root of the Hebrew word, and overtones of these ideas are attached to all three uses of the term.
“Glory” refers, first, to what God shows, and what shows God to us, namely, his own active presence with self-manifestation to eye or ear or both. In Old Testament times, and in the Old Testament text, the visual aspect of this glory was presented in symbols, principally two: dazzling white light, like that of the sun, such as shone from Moses’s face when he had been with God (2 Cor. 3:13), and a huge throne, occupied, such as Isaiah and Ezekiel saw (see Isaiah 6; Ezekiel 1). In the New Testament, by contrast, the awe-inspiring glory is in the face, or person (the Greek word can mean either), of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate (2 Cor. 4:6; see John 1:14; 17:5, 24).
Then, second, “glory” refers to what the godly give to their God, namely, praise in response to the praiseworthiness that he has shown to them. This is the sense of the word in 2 Corinthians 4:15. The first and second senses meet in the classical Anglican Eucharist, where the Prayer Book has us saying: “Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.” Praise to the One who is praiseworthy and adoration of the One who is adorable are basic aspects of the love of God with heart, mind, soul, and strength that Jesus identified as the Great Commandment of the law.
Third, by an extension of the first meaning, “glory” points to God’s continued transforming work in us whereby “we all . . . beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (3:18). This is the glory that God bestows on his covenant children, those who have a living faith in Christ and are united to Christ, and in whom the Holy Spirit, the master mason in character building and habit forming, now dwells. Though truly supernatural, the transformation is not in this life physical; it consists, rather, in “the fruit of the Spirit . . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). The Spirit imparts in the heart, as a matter of purpose, the desire for and habit of thus realizing the moral profile of Jesus, which is Christlikeness in the most significant sense of that word.
This process is in fact the first stage of being glorified with Christ, as he has now been glorified, which is the destiny God has appointed for us who believe (see Rom. 8:17, 30). And as the ongoing formation of Christlike character qualities in us is supernatural, so is the cognitive process whereby we come to know the little that we do know about this, and about the further dimensions of God’s forthcoming work in our lives. Through this process, which is effected by the Spirit of God through the Word of God, we learn that each of us is a work in progress, inasmuch as “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17). And we further learn that this work of grace that reshapes us is advanced “as we look [the Greek verb implies an intense, steady gaze] 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 not seen are eternal” (v. 18). By this kind of looking we come, in the fullest sense, to live.
To speak as Paul does of looking, and looking hard, at what is unseen and at present unseeable sounds paradoxical, but Paul’s purpose in speaking this way evidently is to make memorable his summons to the mental and spiritual discipline of sustained thought about our goal of glory. This, he knows, is the best he can do to keep Christian minds and hearts facing in the right direction—that is, forward—so that our hope may fill our horizon and, countering our weakness by adhering to this our source of strength, we may keep on keeping on, traveling hopefully until we arrive; which, contrary to what Robert Louis Stevenson thought, will be the happiest thing imaginable.
Hope Fulfilleds
What is it, then, that we have to look forward to? Second Corinthians 5:1–8 sets before us in picture language that aspect of our hope which will counter, cancel, and consign to far-off memory “this light momentary affliction”—bad health, crippled limbs, bodily pains; minds, memories, relationships, personal circumstances all going downhill; insults, cruelties, and whatever else. This hope fills us with wondering joy that everything can be so good. We shall be given a new dwelling place, says Paul, new clothes, and a new home life in the company of our Lord. It sounds marvelous, and so indeed it is. It sounds, in fact, too good to be true, but that is not the case. Let us focus on it as we move toward our close.
Note, first, the certainty of what we are about to be told. “We know,” says Paul (5:1). How so? Surely, from the words of Jesus, plus, I guess, revelations mediated to Paul directly. In 12:7 the apostle refers to “the surpassing greatness of the revelations”; I presume, though I cannot prove, that what Paul specifically assures us of in 5:1–8 was among them. I proceed on that basis.
Note, next, the content of Paul’s certainties.
1. We shall be given a new dwelling-place.
Paul begins his unveiling of the Christian’s personal hope by talking about the body, telling us of a better body to come. We humans are, as we all know, embodied souls—personal selves, that is, individuals who have been given bodies to live in and live through. Our bodies have three purposes: (1) They are for experiencing realities, which we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and react to with feelings of all sorts. (2) Our bodies are also for expressing ourselves, which we do through the looks on our faces, the utterances and tones of our voices, the moving of our hands, and the shifting of our posture, thereby showing what is going on inside us. And (3) our bodies are for enjoyment, inasmuch as all life’s primary pleasures, eating and drinking and sweet sensations of all sorts, come to us through our bodies. A disembodied life, such as Plato dreamed of, in which the only pleasures are intellectual, would be a far poorer thing than the embodied lives that we are actually living now.
Yet there is a debit side. Paul is a tentmaker by trade, so from one point of view it is not surprising that he should picture the body in which we now live as a tent—a temporary residence. But Paul is a civilized first-century man, a town-dwelling church planter and pastor when he is not actually on the road, so it is not surprising either that he should picture the better body that is in store for us as a house rather than a tent—a permanent, higher-quality habitation into which God has promised that he will one day move us. Tents, when all is said and done, make very vulnerable living quarters. They leak, they get rain-sodden and drip, they let in the cold and the heat, and the earth around, if not the earth inside, becomes muddy, making surface dirt part of the camp experience.
I have camped in a tent (who, these days, hasn’t?), and I disliked it very much, though most people, I know, are different and enjoy camping, at least in small doses. But everybody (so Paul assumes, and surely he is right), if asked to choose whether they will live long-term in a tent or in a house, will choose a house, a place, that is, where the limitations and inconveniences of tent life do not apply.
Living in our bodily tents, we groan, says Paul (twice! 5:2, 4), and we have reason to. All sorts of diseases, discomforts, and under-the-weathernesses come our way; and as we age, the reality, and so the feeling, of our limitations grows and grows. The groaning expresses, on the one hand, intense longing for the bodily house that is to come and, on the other hand, intense frustration (we feel “burdened,” weighed down) with the reach-exceeds-grasp and if-only and oh-no-not-that aspects of life as it comes to us in the present. (In these opening verses of 2 Corinthians 5, Paul is of course following on from his testimony to “carrying in the body the death of Jesus” in 4:7–18. Giving that testimony must have left him with a very strongly stirred-up inner ache for the joy of his future heavenly home. This seems to be reflected in the jumpy vividness of the verses that follow. Yet it is clear that in saying “we,” “our,” and “us” throughout this paragraph, Paul is including all Christians with himself at all points, at least as far as verse 10.)
2. We shall be given new clothing.
Some of Paul’s wording as he speaks of what awaits him and his readers is very striking. Thus, he begins by referring to the possibility of his tent being “destroyed” (2 Cor. 5:1). This reflects his awareness that in the ups and downs of his travels, amid various forms of human hostility and with his thorn in the flesh as a constant companion, his life was always at risk and might be ended, suddenly and violently, at any time. And sudden death, as he knew and we know, may similarly overtake any believer. All of us need always to be ready to leave this world, and we can only live well if we are.
Then in verses 3 and 4 we find Paul negating the idea that, having said good-bye to our body, we shall forever be and feel “naked” or “unclothed,” in a state of permanent loss. That is not what we want and not what we shall have. On the contrary, what awaits us is possession of a new “house”—a “building from God . . . not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (5:1). We shall “put on” this house as one puts on a garment over what one is wearing already (an overcoat, for instance, for going out of doors on a cold day). Thus we shall not be “unclothed,” but “further clothed” by what God is doing to us; hereby “what is mortal” will be “swallowed up by life” (v. 4).
The metaphors are mixed and a bit blurry, but the basic meaning is clear. Whatever God’s work of putting us into our resurrection bodies may involve, and that is more than we can imagine at present, it is not going to be impoverishing but enriching. It will not feel frustrating but fulfilling. And it is already on its way. “He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (v. 5). The transforming presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives (see 3:18) is the deposit or down payment whereby God assures us that this putting-on (“overcoating,” as one commentator puts it) is most certainly going to happen.
At this point, as we have already insisted, Paul is pursuing his personal pastoral apologia; his mind is not set in the teaching mode, and he does not tell us everything we would like to know about the destiny he is outlining. In particular, he does not speak to the question, Does our putting-on occur at the moment of death, or is it God’s plan that all Christians, starting with the apostles, should wait together till Christ returns publicly to bring about the general resurrection? He seems to imply the latter in 4:14, but then the question arises, How should we conceive life in what is called the intermediate, or interim, state between our death and our resurrection? And that is a question that must be left largely unanswered. We simply do not know, not having been told.
One key thought about it, however, is already before us, namely, that we shall at no stage suffer any sense of loss or impoverishment over leaving our bodies behind. And a second key thought now follows, namely, that from the moment of our death we shall be at home with our Lord Jesus Christ. This is something that Paul looks forward to. “While we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord . . . . and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (5:6, 8). All believers should feel that way, for no matter how old or sick we are, thoughts of our future with Jesus will bring fortitude and joy into our hearts. Jesus himself, from his throne, will see to that
What can we say in positive terms about the transformation, or reembodiment, that awaits us, which Paul pictures here as installation in the new house that is henceforth to be our home? Not much, it must be admitted, and the positive things are negatives really. In the ideal new house in this world, everything works perfectly and nothing malfunctions, and in our resurrection bodies it will be the same. Jesus, risen, remained recognizable, so we can be sure that when we are “further clothed,” the same will be true of us. So we shall know each other and have joy in that knowledge.
Our new body, we may be sure, will match and perfectly express our perfected new heart, that is, our renewed moral and spiritual nature and character. That body will reflect us as we were at our best, rather than as we are physically at the time of leaving this world; indeed, we should expect it to be better than our physical best ever was. The new body will never deteriorate, but will keep its newness for all eternity. It will know no inner tensions between one desire and another, each pulling against the other, nor will desire to do something ever outrun energy and ability to do it. Nor, when we are in glory, shall we ever lack, or fail to show, love to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and to all the brothers and sisters in Christ who are with us there.
This, however, is about as far as we can go.
3. We shall be given a new home life.
Now Paul comes to the climax of the contrast he is drawing between our ongoing life of faith in Christ in this world and our promised future life of seeing him and being forever as close to him as can be. He expresses the contrast, as we have seen, in domestic terms: “away from the body . . . at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6, 8). While still in this body—away; but when away from this body—home. Jesus himself assured his first disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you . . . I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:2–3). Those disciples represented all the believers that ever would be, and Jesus’s promise is a word to each one of us.
Similarly, when he prayed, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24), he was praying for you and me, and for all the believers of all time. Every day every Christian may, and surely should, renew his or her grip on the promise and the prayer, take a long look ahead, and say with Paul, “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8).
Look Forward, and Look to Christ
What I have had to say about weakness being the way in the Christian life has now been said. Men and women of the world draw on their talents and ingenuity to map out for themselves paths of strength and success in worldly terms. Christians plan paths of faithfulness to Christ knowing that these involve both apparent and real weakness. And they settle for this on the understanding that journeyings of faithfulness, which please their Lord as of now, lead to final glories.
Neither I who write these pages nor anyone who reads them knows as yet what it will be like, experientially, to leave this world. But one day we shall all have to do that, and it is wonderful to know that somewhere in the process of transition out of the body into the next world, Christ himself will meet us, so that we may expect his face to be the first thing we become aware of in that new order of life into which we will have moved. Looking forward to this is the hope that will sustain us, as evidently it sustained Paul, while we grow older and our weaknesses, limitations, and thorns in the flesh increase. “So we are always of good courage” (2 Cor. 5:6). May it ever be so.
Meantime, the path that we tread daily is overshadowed—no, the appropriate wording is lit up—by Christ himself, our Savior and Lord, who in alliance with the Holy Spirit indwelling us really though invisibly walks beside us all the way. He, our sin-bearing Mediator with the Father, is our shepherd, guide, and model. He is the source of our strength in weakness and of our hope of heaven. He sustains us when our life and well-being are under threat, and his redemptive self-giving for us teaches us generosity in financial giving to relieve others’ needs, one way in which we express our gratitude for grace. Such are the aspects of what is sometimes called the all-sufficiency of Christ that 2 Corinthians displays. For Paul, the Lord Jesus is the controlling center of life in every respect, being both example and enabler throughout.
So it is no wonder that Paul in his sign-off prayer puts the Lord Jesus first in the holy Trinitarian team of the three persons who are the one God. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship”—the shared life—“of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (13:14). And that is my prayer also as I bring this book to a close.