Christs life and ministry and the glorious gospel

Alright, well this morning we are going to continue on after the pinnacle of chapter 3 verses 17 and 18 last week. We are going to find Paul, Paul is going to segue into this next section. We're going to continue to see the veil and the gospel, but Paul is going to be segwaying into presenting the gospel despite the trials as he moves on in chapter four.

So we'll get to look at that with more depth as we continue on. The first question I've got right there, well, no, let's read it. Let's read the text. That's always a good idea. So the text is, therefore, since we have this ministry, as we receive mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

So the first question I've got there is what do we know about our unveiled life? The veil has been removed. What do we know about our unveiled life going into this? Roger, what do you think? Well, you know, we learned back about, there was a comparison with Moses, how he has a veil, and that veil, and then Paul kind of opened it up and made the veil more inclusive, how all of Israel was veiled, and how unbelievers are veiled. But then of course, as we learned a couple weeks ago, you know, we have unveiled faces.

We can behold in God's Word. The glory of the Lord. So he spent that time building up that contrast that we have. We approach and we have unveiled it. We can look at the glory of God in scripture. We can see the Lord and we can grow in Him and the Holy Spirit moves in our lives. And so as believers, this principle of growth should be a reigning principle. That the Lord is teaching us and conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ.

Romans chapter 8 tells us all about that. But as we come into this, we want to take a look at... Paul's going to talk about what is frankly some very personally touchy subjects for every reader. And what does that mean? So we want to look at that in light of our unveiled life.

So Paul says we have this ministry and Paul is focusing on the ministry that he and those traveling with him have been given. So he's focusing on their ministry. It's not talking about we have this ministry necessarily like like us as believers today have this ministry.

And the reason why I want to emphasize that is, how many of you, when you became believers, knew right away that every Christian needed to go on a missionary trip? Anybody? No? Has everybody been called to be a missionary? And so I don't think that we are all called to be missionaries. It doesn't mean we're not called to be able to defend the gospel and share the gospel and reach out when the Lord brings people into our lives. But the idea that everybody should be a missionary is definitely unique.

And so we need to understand that when he says this ministry, what ministry is he talking about? He and his cohort were traveling around the Mediterranean at the time, basically the known world, presenting the gospel and so they were given this ministry.

There was a great song back in the nineties that I'm sure none of you heard of called Crawl to China. And it was by a band basically, one of the lines in it is God asking you to crawl to China or just to cross the street. And I thought that was kind of clever lyrics. But the idea for us sometimes is we think that we've been given this ministry and like the Mormon Church basically their doctrine is that when you become a legal adult you should go on a missionary journey, right?

So you run into a lot of so-called missionaries from them and I don't think that's what Paul is referring to here and I don't think we need to wrap ourselves around that idea. But he and those with him had received this ministry. And as part of that ministry, as we receive mercy, we do not lose heart. Now, Paul and these people traveling with him, how much material wealth did they have? How much comfort in their physical safety did they have? There's a lot of head shaking. Yeah, there was almost guaranteed difficulty, but they had been given mercy.

Now let's ask an important question. How do we define mercy? When God withholds from us, which we deserve. Okay, when God withholds. What is He withholding from us? Let's try to be specific. Judgment. Okay, is He withholding judgment on us? I'm going to say no actually, but let's talk about that in a second. There's many things that would involve spiritual maturity, so he's not going to throw the full weight of judgment on certain areas of growth until certain other areas are paid closer attention to or whatever, or however the Lord works in your heart. So mercy may be really critical for our spiritual growth process, that the Lord is like, wow, this is a babe. and they made a baby mistake, and that's okay. But as we grow, those baby mistakes will be not expected.

Although in this case, let's talk about why judgment, where did God pour his judgment? on Christ. Now the mercy was as a result of Christ's work on the cross, right? That's part of that process. But mercy gets its definition in God. Mercy actually is referenced only 15 times in the epistles, and seven of them are in Romans. So here's one of the eight that are not. Mercy is compassion or forgiveness shown upon someone that you have the power to punish. Compassion or forgiveness shown upon someone that you have the power to punish.

And God has the power to punish. Paul knew this. The law told him. He grew up as a Jewish a young man or boy into a young man and as an adult went out and persecuted the church because he was trying to preserve God's righteousness without understanding God's mercy and understanding who Christ was. So Paul knew the punishment he deserved and recognized that preservation was very real and intentional. He says, as we have mercy, we do not lose heart. Since God immersively, purposefully, and lovingly spared Paul over and over, right? Paul had been spared not just once, not just twice, but over and over and over.

He took courage to do the ministry work that God had assigned for he and his cohorts. And when the Holy Spirit directed him, he said, OK, I'm going to boldly go, not to quote Star Trek, where no evangelist has gone before, right? And he's going forth. knowing that God is taking care of them and they don't lose heart despite the trials.

In 2 Thessalonians 3.13, if you've got your Bibles, let's turn there. I think it's worth our time. If you get there, go ahead and read out loud. But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good. Do not grow weary in doing good. Even if we take a look at our own walk, Paul is encouraging the Thessalonians and I think for us as well, the idea that we would respond with this diligence to continue. that we should also not lose heart.

Now, in the world around us, how many people are really sympathetic to the Christian cause? Right? Not as much as we'd like, right? We just want to make sure everybody comes to know Jesus and is healthy, wealthy, and wise, right? Wouldn't that be ideal? No, we come in and we want to know Jesus and then God can deal with the healthy and the wealthy side of those things, but we can give them the wisdom of God's Word. When we think of mercy in our own lives, what is our response as believers to that mercy? How do you respond to mercy?

Thanksgiving. How do we respond to grace? I'm contrasting this because I want to draw this out, but how do we respond to grace? Grateful awe. We respond to grace with grace. Grace is a blessing and we bless God right back. We respond with grace, it becomes our motivator.

Mercy is not necessarily the motivator, but it is a thing that we do because it gives us context knowing God's mercifulness and grace motivates us. So we just want to contrast those things a little bit because I think it's important to identify. Here's one of our rare chances in the New Testament to talk about mercy in context. Let's do it. So there's mercy.

So then Paul continues on, he says, we renounced the things hidden because of shame. And I got to tell you that as a believer who did not understand grace, or God's mercy for that matter, the idea of things hidden because of shame was very real to me. And as a believer still today, I know that if I walk in the flesh, it's very easy to want to do those same things, to hide things because of shame. The Greek word, it's a compound word where we find it gets translated into English where it says renounced. It carries with it the idea that something has been declared separated.

We have declared ourselves separated from these hidden things because of shame. Paul is publicly, by way of letter, saying that exact same thing. I'm publicly declaring that I am separated from these things. And then he explains what those things are in just a moment. But I want to talk briefly about the idea of something being hidden and the idea of shame. So shame is a human reaction.

It's not something that God has. We don't find recorded in the scripture that God has shame. Because God isn't ashamed of sin and falling short, right? God didn't sin. God didn't miss the mark. So God doesn't have shame of his own thing. It is a human thing as a response to the fall or as a consequence of the fall. Shame is a major motivator of the flesh and of Satan. The flesh uses shame. I'll do it better next time. Right? I won't sin again. That way I don't have to be ashamed. I'll do it myself. I don't need God and His work.

And Satan likes to use shame because then he can control the flesh. Right? If I guilt you into this, that, or the other thing, shame will be your motivator instead of grace. And there will be an outcome of that. But let's take a look at why Paul can renounce these things.

Shame has no place in an abiding church for several reasons. One, the church is justified and all of the things that cause shame have been paid for. I'm not proud of it, but it's been paid for. So shame has no place in the church because we're justified. An abiding believer should not be walking in shameful things.

We should see as someone matures, and Tom mentioned mercy for sanctification, as a believer is maturing and abiding more and more, those shameful things should be less common. And thirdly, we should be restoring each other so that these sorts of things are rare in the mature body.

So if I come along, if you guys come along and you see me, because I'm not going to come along and correct you, that's a bad illustration. It has to go the other direction, right? In the illustration, if Roger sees something, he's got to come alongside. And there's been a few occasions where he's had that opportunity.

And I don't relish the idea that an elder has to come alongside and correct me, but I am grateful that someone would come alongside me and correct me. I've had friends be very blunt with me on occasion and just say, this behavior I'm seeing in you is not reflective of who we are in Christ and we're not going to have it. And I'm okay with that. You have my permission to do that, but I also request that you would recognize that is part of the body. That we should be, not that we're coming around judging one another, but if we see something we can come alongside.

Galatians 6.1.

Shameful things, once they are known, lose their power due to grace. How many of you remember a few high-profile preachers in the news getting caught doing weird things? We had a guy down in Colorado Springs who got caught with drugs and a male prostitute or something like that. And the weird stories that came out of that, because of the shame, were bizarre. In the end, the truth came out. If he had just owned up to it, it would have been one level of consequence, but instead he had gone way deeper because of the shame, and lied, and gone further and further in his deception.

But Paul is just publicly renouncing them to remove their influence on his own behavior, to expose what God has paid for, and to destroy the influence of shame so the church can focus on what really matters. And I have asked a rhetorical question. I'm not going to ask you to answer it out loud and publicly in class here, because you can't.

But it is, what are you most ashamed of in Christ? Nothing. We have nothing to be ashamed of in Christ. All right. He says, not walking in craftiness. And I have tried to be on my best behavior and not tell a bunch of jokes in the middle of a Sunday school class. because I don't think it's always appropriate. However, I did read a joke that my uncle shared just this morning and it was so perfect that I'm going to share it with you. It's not long.

There's an attorney and he and his wife have 12 children and they're renting a place and they're rental period is to be due or is about to end and they're being kicked out of the rental and they keep going to look for rentals but they can't seem to get into a rental because every time the renters discover they've got 12 children. they say no, they decline them the rental. So the attorney realizing that if he lies he could get into legal trouble, he is an attorney after all, decides he's going to try to deal with this honestly. So before going to the next house where he's going to speak to the renter, or the rentee, how do they call that, he was a landlord, he sends his wife and 11 of his children to go visit her father's grave. And so he goes and he speaks to the landlord and the landlord says, do you have any other children?

He says, yes, I have 11. You have 11? He goes, okay, where are they? He goes, oh, well, they're in the cemetery with their mother. They got the house. So this next section here, Paul says, not walking in craftiness. The attorney in that terrible joke, not all of you were pleased by that, I apologize. The attorney was crafty. He was clever in his thinking and how I get around this.

But what do we know about the word walking? The Greek, the peripateo, the walking. What is that? Where does that come from? Does anybody remember? It's a Hebrew principle, right? The Jews, not a Hebrew principle, a Jewish principle. The Jews used walk as a term to describe your lifestyle. Conduct your life. Yeah, to conduct your life in a certain way. So don't conduct your life with craftiness or in craftiness, in deception, in being able to be clever.

In Gentile circles, this would have been actually considered advantageous. Ooh, look how clever that person is. They're able to get ahead socially, right? When we've talked about the church in Corinth over and over, we've brought up the fact that they try to be clever. But with the Jews, imagine how many times the Jewish community tried to work their way through and find loopholes in the law so they could just get stuff done or do certain things that they wanted to do. So that by the time of Paul's writing, they're crafty. There's a lot of clever ways to get around the law. I've used this illustration before, but I'll use it again.

My neighbor's two houses down when I was a kid were Jewish, and the mom would send the kids over to her house with arms full of stuffed animals, and they could only take so many steps away from their property on the Sabbath. and so they'd walk their 25 steps or 40 steps or wherever it was and they'd get there and they'd put down their stuffed animal. Oh, that's their property.

And they'd walk another 25 more steps and drop their property and they'd come up to our front door and they'd knock on the front door and they'd say, do you happen to have anything you've cooked that has never, or any cooking utensils, they usually want like a cast iron skillet, that has never touched pork?

And being good Christians, we put bacon on everything we could, and so we didn't really help. So they'd have to walk back and do the reversal of the steps and pick up the toys and go back. Now why that wasn't work, I don't know. Picking up toys sounds like work to me, but they got away with it. But they were crafty in this, right? They would try to go through and deal with these things.

But craftiness is not rooted in heavenly thinking. It's not spirit-directed living. When was the Holy Spirit called us to craftiness? He doesn't. And it doesn't edify the body. If we can't trust one another because so-and-so is crafty, that's no good for the body, right? That's ridiculous. When we're discovered in sin, how do we naturally want to respond in the flesh? We want a crafty excuse.

When I am asked if I'm currently working at Cisco, the answer is no. I'm not. I could be a liar, but any sort of answer I give that's crafty is not honest. So I'm going to look for a job. I don't work at Cisco. I'm currently underemployed. And I say underemployed because it makes them laugh, but we all know that means I don't have a job. So craftiness is not a thing that Paul is engaging in. He himself and his cohorts are not involved with craftiness.

That's something that leads to hidden things and it leads to shame. The next thing he says is adulterating the Word of God. Now Paul was a Pharisee and he was a student of the law. He also knew and had been trained to misrepresent parts of the Old Testament. That's why he was able to reject who Christ was and what he did on the cross, right? They had adulterated the Word. Not only did he know exactly what they adulterated, but he knew exactly how.

They were taking the Word of God, which was supposed to be where truth was and where God's righteousness was, and they had abandoned it because they were being, well, they were adulterating the Word of God. And then, when he was given the stewardship of this ministry, He was being inspired by God through the Holy Spirit to write these letters and he had to be really careful with his ministry that he was given. So the question I've got there is how can we as believers be sure we're not adulterating the Word of God? How do we handle it properly?

The right technical theology answer is hermeneutics. I'm sure you all are excited to hear me say that. But the idea of hermeneutics is just a systematic approach to studying God's word that is respectful of authorial intent. It's respectful to the idea that God as author of the scriptures intended something for us to know because he loved us. And that he gave it at a specific time through specific people that we can learn from and we can understand it.

And then we can understand if we should apply it, because some things we should not. My friend's dad, growing up, would always say, Judas went out and hung himself, therefore ye go out and do likewise. Which is terrible, terrible hermeneutics. That is twisting the word. It is definitely adulterating the word. But I was a teenage boy, and he had a teenage daughter. So I think he wanted me to get lost. Paul here is saying that they would be ashamed of adulterating the word of God, and that has no place in the church.

But instead, they were manifesting the truth. There was a manifestation of truth here. So Paul is working towards truth and integrity. And we can look and see that God is about manifesting His truth, His character in His life, in His people. If you look at Ephesians chapter 4, It says that God is actually in the process of working, God the Father in the process of working in the life of the believer with that outcome and that Christ is pouring out the gift of grace for that outcome and that God is seeking the edification of the saints for that outcome so that we're one body and one church directed by one spirit. So the question there is when we're manifesting the truth, who is the focus on? It's on Christ. It's not on us.

And that's an important thing because sometimes we think of our agency, our involvement as ambassadors, and we kind of think, well, I'd like a little bit of that glory. It'd be all right. I want to know I'm doing a good job. Pat me on the back and tell me I'm extra awesome. But that's not where the focus is. It doesn't come to us, it goes to Christ. And then Paul says, and I, as I was studying this, I was pretty floored.

He says, we're not commending ourselves, or let me read that properly. He says, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. So, commending ourselves ends up being something that he references over and over and over in this letter to the Corinthians. He says it in 3.1, 5.12, 6.4, 7.11, 10.12, and verse 18 as well in chapter 10. And the idea of this commendation is that he is not commending himself to build himself there's integrity here that is actually the thing that is driving people to the Lord.

The moral uprightness is driving people to the Lord. And it's the Spirit-led moral rightness. It's not just Paul being extra good of his own accord. It's not the flesh. It's the Holy Spirit moving in Paul and those who are with him so that every man's conscience would be drawn to the truth.

So we're going to get to visit this again and again and again through this book. We're going to not have a choice. But it says for us, if we're abiding, that that should stand out to the world outside of us. And I just answered the next question, so I'll just keep running.

So Paul writes, if it is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. And so this is definitely one of those verses where you read it on the surface and you go, that is kind of negative. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. So let's talk about the veil. In chapter 3, Which direction did the veil go? Well, it was removed. It was removed? But it was from Moses outward, right? And these people...

Paul says we have no veil, right? So it is as though these people are wearing veils and they're keeping them on and they're tucking them extra tight. Because they don't want to see the glory of God. It is veiled to those who are perishing. They're perishing. They know they're perishing and they want that veil. They like that veil. They're afraid of the glory of God. I'm kind of expanding upon that myself when I say that. But let's evaluate what's going on here.

The world and the flesh and the devil all want these people to be wearing the veil. They all want these people to continue to be involved with the world, the flesh, and the devil, because that means that they're on their team. Satan, in the end, does not want anyone to respond to the grace of God through Jesus Christ and respond to the gospel. The world explicitly operates with deception to manipulate and control the broader thinking about what is true and what can be known.

How many of you have heard a few good conspiracy theories in your life? Right? You hear the conspiracy theories and it's like, well, there's the Illuminati or whatever else. I can tell you right now that if you read the Bible, there is no hidden conspiracy. It's very out front and open in the scriptures. The world wants to keep people away from the Christian worldview. The flesh wants to keep people away from the Christian worldview and so does Satan. It's not a hidden conspiracy theory. It's the reality of the sin nature and the work of Satan. So why does Paul use the analogy of a veil here? Why is a veil a good analogy? What does a veil do? It covers up. Does it completely prevent vision? Usually not. Usually not, right? Then it's a blindfold, right?

And so what does that fool you into thinking? Someone is better than he really is. Okay, but what does the idea that you can see fool you into thinking? It makes you think you can see. It makes you think you have the understanding. Oh, my eyes are working. I'm seeing this. This is okay.

But it's also blocking lots of visual information. And actually the cool thing is that we learn about how neurology works and how our eyes fit into seeing. Our eyes are actually seeing a really small amount of stuff, and then our brain is filling in the gaps with these crazy wiggles that our eyes do at a high speed. But the veil makes that work way less efficiently. But we think we can see. And these people that have these veils on, they're perishing. They think that they can see, and they're like, oh, I don't want to see this glory stuff. It offends my senses. I was thinking about veils.

You notice in a lot of movies, used to be, they would try to make the lead actress in movies look even more attractive than she might be if she had wrinkles. So they would actually, if you look at some films, if you look carefully at some films, they'll go between scenes and there'll be a veil put over to mask out the imperfections. Really? I can't think of an example. It was before Photoshop. So some things you'll see that if you look at older movies, you'll see that technique used.

And it's kind of interesting that in a way that kind of fits here in a sense that. that people think they're seeing the truth, but they're not seeing the truth. That person has such wonderful complexion, and they don't. They have a real complexion with all its imperfections. But it looks like it does look good. It masks it.

So I want to be clear, just in case I want to be careful. I just talked about hermeneutics and proper stewardship of God's Word. Paul is talking about the gospel being veiled here, not the people. But I think it's worth imagining, if you will, in this illustration, that these people, if they have a choice, they want a veil on and they don't want to see the gospel. I'm making it personified in this case to exaggerate the point of their desire. So I just want to be a good, careful steward of God's Word and I don't want anyone to misunderstand or to say, hey, he's mishandling God's Word. that would be really inappropriate after verse two. What do we care about a death of Christ? He was only a historical figure. They minimize what the gospel is. They veil it by minimizing it or making it less than what it is.

They distort what is true to say, oh, I don't have sin. I don't sin. Or everybody sins, so therefore God's unjust. And while I don't think God's unjust, So sin isn't real or not a thing that God would punish. Unless you mention Adolf Hitler. For some reason everybody wants Adolf Hitler to go to hell or Saddam Hussein. But everybody else who just drives down the street in America is good enough. I don't know.

It's a strange observation. But a veil distorts and a veil prevents people from seeing what is really there it gives you a limited perspective and they want that limited perspective because it allows them to maintain something else. So Paul continues on here he says In whose case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And this is classic Paul run-on sentence here, so we'll try to take it piece by piece but recognize it's one big long thought. So who's the God of this world?

Satan. Okay. I don't disagree with you. Let's take a second. Let's move back to John chapter 8. And I'm gonna pull it up here on my laptop and say where we should start reading. I couldn't decide. I'm sorry. I was putting this handout together and I wanted to read the whole chapter but that seemed excessive.

But But Jesus is interacting with these Jews, and they're very devout. There's these people approaching him, and they say, hey, you're a teacher, and they love him. But he begins engaging with them. And so I'm going to bite the bullet and start in verse 31. Let's recognize this is part of a longer chapter, though. So please, on your own time, read this. 831, So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed him, If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

They answered him, We are Abraham's descendants, and have never yet been enslaved to anyone. How is that you say you will become free? And Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. And who is everyone that has committed sin? Everyone, right? Except for himself. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son does not remain forever. So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

I know that you are Abraham's descendants, yet you seek to kill me, because my word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with my father, therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father, the God of this world. the answer and said to him, Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, if you are Abraham's children, do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, what were the deeds of Abraham? Ride that trail. What did Abraham do? He had faith. And he walked by faith. Those were the deeds of Abraham.

Not the law that was before the law. But as it is, you are seeking to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God, this Abraham did not do. You are doing the deeds of your father, they said to him, we were not born of fornication, we have one father, God. Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God for I have not even come on my own initiative, but he sent me."

Verse 43, why do you not understand what I'm saying? It is because you cannot hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Verse 45, But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me. And of course he keeps going on. I wanted to read the whole chapter, but I'm being as disciplined as I can on this.

But do you see the idea there that the God of this world is blinded, the minds of the unbelieving? He's a liar. If Satan is a liar, he's the god of this world. We should go into the reason why he's the god of this world, but we're running out of time. Let's just say that Adam abdicated it when he fell. He gave up his rights and dominion to the earth. Satan is a liar. He's the father of lies and he blinds those who are his children.

Now this is a difficult thing. How many of you have run into Jehovah's Witnesses and you've had a really good conversation with them and you think, alright, maybe I've reasoned with this person? Anyone? On a few occasions I felt like I maybe even had a little bit of traction.

But the church of Jehovah's Witnesses stuff, calling them a church seems wrong, so let's not call them that. The Jehovah's Witnesses teach that we are liars from Satan. They say we're not saved and Satan is our father. So even if we have good traction with them, where we think, ah, I have spoken rationally with another rational being and they will understand this, their father is a father of lies. Their church teaches we're liars though, so it's kind of pointing at each other saying the same thing in that case, right?

But it's a dangerous thing. Anything that you hear someone say from a secular perspective, Let's say you run into a really brilliant atheist, or agnostic, or a Hindu, or a Muslim, or anyone. Who's their father? That's a really big deal. So they're being blinded. They've been blinded. But if you know that, then you can preach the gospel to them. That's the point. If you identify somebody's blind, you show them where they can get sight. Next section here, we're just going to keep moving, because I'm almost out of time here. I've got ten minutes or less here.

So that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. And I totally spelled Christ with a G, and my spell checker didn't catch it, so it says Grist. And I apologize for that, so fix that. The gospel is the glory of Christ. And that's a powerful thing.

The gospel is the glory of Christ. It draws a relationship between Jesus' work on the cross, His death, His burial, His resurrection, and ascension, and it's how we are given eternal life. When we think about the glory of Christ, the gospel is the glory of Christ. What's the glory of God the Father? It's the radiant essence of who He is. He dwells in eternal light, right? But Christ came in physical form and was glorified in a unique, special way as the Son, and that is what the gospel is rooted in.

Moses' veil kept God's glory hidden from Israel, okay? But this is a veil that is worn by everyone else in a reversal of roles that keeps God's glory hidden because they want to have their eyes covered. They want to have this gospel veiled. They don't want to see it. They don't want to respond to it. And it's an outcome, this veiling, that Paul is battling against.

When the gospel is presented, what shines light on the darkness of sin? God's Word. The glory of Christ actually comes shining in. This is the glory of the dead, buried, resurrected, ascended Son of God who came fully God, fully man. And it shines light on our imperfection. The idea that we needed a new federal head, right? Using the five dollar theology word. So Paul is approaching these unbelievers who have veiled eyes, so to speak, he's approaching them with the gospel because they need to hear it. And it's the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ that comes in. It's what can save them and it's what can offend them.

And then Paul finishes the last of this verse here saying that Christ is the image of God. Who is the image of God? The glory of Christ, who is the image of God? Jesus is the image of God. Now, I want to kind of, I've mentioned cults a few times here, I'm going to keep coming back to that in this section because I think there's some really important theology. There are several things about this that are worth exploring theologically. One is that Jesus is the image of God that Adam would have been patterned after. Okay?

Jesus is the image of God and I think Adam When God says, let us make man in his image, Adam wasn't a being dwelling in eternal life, was he? He had physical form. And God knew what that form needed to look like. Because Jesus carried that. And secondly, that Jesus as the image of God is the type after whom we are made as a new creation. in him, and I'm missing the word him there, that's excellent. So Christ was able to come as fully God and fully man because the character of God's image was already reflected in Adam.

It was almost like God knew from eternity past that he was going to send his son. Is it almost that way, or is it really that way? It's really, really that way. They knew it was coming. And so God made an appropriate physical form that would be appropriate for his son to assume.

Adam had complexity of body, mind, and spirit and was reflective of God's triune makeup. I think this is the only time we're going to mention makeup in church. It was reflective of God's Son. Without the hypostatic union, the idea that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man, Jesus would not have been the perfect sacrifice.

2 Corinthians 5.17, so later on in the series, it tells us that we are created in Christ Jesus as a new creation. And that new creation is the image of Christ that we're being transformed to. We're not being transformed to have deity, okay, that's important, but we're being made without blemish and with a new nature untainted by sin, rooted in a new position in the heavenlies. So, based on this idea of the hypostatic union that Christ was 100% God and 100% man in the image of God, what is the number one technique of cults to change who Christ is? They either make him not a deity, Or they make him not a man. Or they make him so that he's one of many gods like the Mormons do. So they basically neutralize one part of the hypostatic union over and over again.

Oh, he was just a good man. Isn't that special he was a good man? He's a good guy. That sweet Jesus guy. They neuter who he was. He was the son of God. He was part of the triune God, and they neuter him. So the idea that Jesus is the image of God is very important, and it's critical to Orthodox doctrine.

So we find that Paul's passionate request to the Church of Corinth is that they forgive him, he changes plans, and that they come forward and they focus on the presenting of the gospel. We're going to transition into the presentation of the gospel and all the trials Paul went through, and we're going to continue to see Paul saying that he's looking to be commended to other people as a believer, as being morally upright because of what the Holy Spirit has done, and that that is what will draw them to be curious about the gospel. The Holy Spirit will use that to woo them. and the gospel and Jesus Christ becomes the center of things. So last question before the buzzer buzzes again is what is the gospel message since Paul has referred to it here?

That Jesus died, that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day. According to the scriptures. And so if we go about sharing the gospel according to the scriptures, do we get any of the authority? Do we get any of the accredit? But we get to be representatives of God's mercy too. We get to be representatives of God's grace.

Alright, any other thoughts or questions? Otherwise I think I may actually have beat the buzzer. Alright, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we ask that you would continue to teach us through the truth of your word that we would carefully be students of it and then be able to be lights and share that wherever you may send us. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.