God ordains trials & suffering to reveal His Glory - Part 3

We left off last week in verse 13 of 2 Corinthians chapter 4. So we will start in verse 13 as we read through 16 just because the thoughts from 13 kind of continue on into 14 or at least as far as the sentence structure is concerned. Obviously when Paul wrote this he didn't put the verse numbers in there so after the fact we are sometimes faced with the challenge of trying to split this up into chunks. I often wonder what it would have been like to have received the original letters and then said, well, remember what Paul said here? And then you've got to kind of scroll through the scroll and see what's going on. So we'll start in 13.

But having the same spirit of faith according to what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke. We also believe, therefore we also speak. knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you for all things are for your sake so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God therefore we do not lose heart but though our outer man is decaying yet our inner man is being renewed day by day so Friday night I had dinner with Mike Doyle and Donna Doyle.

Our families got together, which is always a blessing to be able to have fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. But we got to talking about how our Sunday school classes were going. You know, he's teaching a different class upstairs, and so every time I get together, since I've co-taught with him, I always ask how things are going. And we were talking about this last couple weeks and how things were going in our Sunday school class here.

And one of the things that Mike said that I would definitely like to reiterate as we were talking about this passage is that Paul is trying to set the focus for the church in Corinth not onto Paul, not onto themselves, but onto the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so as we look through this, we can see Paul is wrestling with the church in Corinth. He's been responding to them for the first four chapters now, off and on. He's cycling through, responding to how cranky they were. In verse 1-8, he says he's really sorry he couldn't come through a second time. And he continues to be cycling back around to what they're dealing with so that the church may stop being a bunch of whiners.

So, Paul is continuing to defend his ministry. How many of you remember when we were in 1 Corinthians and he had to defend his ministry there? As I was studying for this, I kept thinking, man, here's Paul. He's put his life on the line. Obviously, we've been talking about the fact that he was dealing with death and feeling like his life was on the line.

And the church is so focused on themselves. They're not focused on Jesus. They're not focused on Paul. They spend an inordinate amount of time in two letters defending his ministry. And so we're going to see how Paul is trying to transition away from some of that defense to set their focus on Jesus.

And so hopefully we, as we look at this this morning, keep that in the forefront of your mind. we're going to see that Paul is going to transition from having spoken the gospel, which we saw in verse 13, onto the hope of the resurrection, as well as the spreading of the gospel and the encouragement that the gospel brings to Paul and the group that are traveling with him. Paul seems to have to work really intensely with the church in Corinth. This is at least probably the third letter, and we have two of them, right? But why is it worth it for Paul to do so? Why is he spending so much energy on this church in Corinth if they're such distracted individuals and no body?

He loves them. Who came to them with the gospel? Paul did. And he loves them. He came in and he said, hey, I'm establishing this church. What did God commission Paul to do? to establish the churches. So Paul, even if they're a bunch of whiners and they're a bunch of babies and he really wished he didn't have to deal with the whiny babies and could get into some other theological content, that's what God has called him to do.

So as part of that taking the babies to maturity process, he's going to have to be diligent and push through this and draw their attention to Jesus Christ. So starting in verse 14, he says, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. So the gospel was spoken, it was responded to, and then there's a consequence for that. We've spent a lot of energy at Holly Hills over the years talking about the 34 things, the consequences greater than just this being raised up.

But Paul is, again, focusing the mental direction of the church in a different way. So Paul knows that he'll be joined with the church in Corinth for all eternity. He knows this. He says, knowing that, And it's the idea that you have a factual understanding. There's a factual understanding that he will be joined with the church in Corinth. Does it sound like the church in Corinth understood that?

Unfortunately not. Paul's focus is an eternal focus, and he wants to draw their attention to the eternal instead of the temporal. Oh, you didn't come visit us a second time. They're whining still. And he's responding to that by reminding them of eternity.

And he's going to be moving the rest of this chapter when we get into 17 and 18, he's going to again talk about the temporality of this life, the idea that we're only here for so many days. And so he can say in verse 17, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory." He says, okay, we have the temporary and we have the eternal. So the rest of the chapter is going to be thematically tied to the eternal here.

Paul is experiencing things intensely as Roger went over in the earlier verses. When you're talking in verses 8 and 9, about we are afflicted in every way but not crushed, that's intense. There's an intensity there. That's not a minor statement. But he says they're temporary. That's the focus. And there's an eternal state that Paul is looking towards.

The church in Corinth is experiencing disappointment, right? They're disappointed Paul hasn't come, but it's temporary. and Paul knows this and is reminding them of the outcome, the eternal outcome. So how come perspective matters so much for humans? Why does perspective matter?

If you are able to think ahead to the ultimate goal in the accomplishment of Christ in you, the hope of glory, and basically rest on that when things aren't going right. That's always an encouraging motive. This is the way Paul did it. That's a good answer to my second question after this one.

So how come perspective matters so much for humans, not believers, but let's say non-believers in this case? What is the flesh and the perspective of the flesh? cause us to do. Think about the atheists you know. Or agnostics. How does their perspective... There's an earthly perspective. That's the only perspective that they have. The perspective of the flesh is selfish. It's self-centered.

And it brings in attention to ourselves and what's in this for me. And so Paul is highlighting a little bit here as he's going through this, the importance of a biblical perspective. And so the second question, which Tom answered so well, is how come an eternal perspective matters so much for believers? And there's definitely a strong undercurrent throughout this first four chapters about how our perspective matters.

Why does Why were Bob and I so jealous of Roger for teaching 2 Corinthians 3.18?

Because 2 Corinthians 3.18... I'm saying jealousy as a joke, okay?

2 Corinthians 3.18 is about perspective, isn't it? Where are we setting our eyes on? We're beholding the Lord. Colossians 3, set your mind on things above where Christ is seated in the heavenlies.

That's a big, important principle that Paul is trying to refocus the church in Corinth in. I don't know, it's not obvious to me in the text here whether or not it was a report from Timothy or if it was from the letter of the Corinthians that they were griping about this. But either way, Paul knows that their perspective has been carnal and he's trying to redirect it here. So he says, knowing. He has a knowledge that's informing his perspective. Knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also. He who raised the Lord Jesus. Let's talk about that.

Roger, before you start, I had a note and I didn't actually look it up. Sure. On 14, some have rendered that because you know, and I haven't looked at the 10th and that kind of stuff, but if that is true, then that actually is more damning. You guys know this, but you're not walking that way. I think that's kind of cool. That fits a lot with other places where Paul said. He's reminding them what they already should know.

So because you know, would bring across that kind of idea. I had that note that I made. It's one of those things where you make a note in your bible and you think, where did I get that from? Let me take a real fast, I'm going to use my computer technology to see what I can quickly gander at that.

It might be in the, is it perfect maybe? I don't know. Yeah, I'm trying to take a look. Oh, you know what it is? I've got to flick a button here. It's doing... The software I use is the blueletterbible.org. Nope. I need the parsing. The nominative, plural, masculine, perfect, active... Perfect? Is it perfect? Okay, well that's where the story comes from. Yeah, the idea that it's extremely factual.

We'll do the algebra, you do the calculus. Please don't include me in any of your advanced math. But the idea of knowing, and even if they didn't know, this is still a fact. Paul is declaring it factually. So one way or the other, this is fact. But yeah, knowing, knowing that, no, that's okay. The point of knowing though is that this is fact. This is definitely not a, it's not opinion. It's not something that could potentially be. This is a factual statement. Knowing that he who raised the Lord. And so Paul makes this passing statement about he who raised the Lord in a longer thought.

But as I was meditating on what's here, Jesus willingly offered himself to die on the cross. He was obedient unto death, right? In Luke 22, 42, Jesus says, Lord, if it's your will, take this cup away, right? And did the Lord take that cup away? No, our Father, He didn't. But as Paul cites here, the resurrection came through the Father, the power and authority of the Father.

We take for granted now the second coming of Jesus Christ, but for many Jews who are only expecting one coming of a ruling and reigning Messiah, Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection were massively unexpected. I have an extra A in that sentence there for some reason. You can scratch that out if you want.

So, he who raised the Lord Jesus is a reference to God and his power. Paul uses the power of the resurrection as a baseline for the power of God. So what do you think about the idea of the resurrection being the baseline for the power of God? When he resurrected the Lord from the grave, he resurrected him as a new kind of man. He did. And I'm not too sure the Corinthians really grasped all of that. I think that they were faced with that kind of doctrine throughout the text of his letters, but it seems to me that it wasn't fully understood across the body.

How many of you are familiar with horsepower in cars? We measure things in horsepower. And of course, when you talk about rocket engines, rocket engines are like 20,000 or 2 million horsepower or some kind of crazy. You know, the comedian Jerry Seinfeld has a routine where he talks about, he goes, it's not like if the rocket engine went south that you could just gather 20,000 horses and say, hey, could you guys hoist this stuff up into space?

The equivalency is not transitive. But in this case, when the baseline is God's power for resurrection, that's a really powerful starting point. And Paul says that's the beginning of God's work in the church, is the resurrection of Christ. And there's more to come based on that same authority, that same power, and that same effort that God can put forth and no one else can. One thing to point out is that the resurrection defies the consequences of the fall and manifests a power that is ultimate. When Adam sinned, what did God promise would happen as a consequence of sin? Death. Separation. And God said, I've got a different plan. He's going to resurrect and defy the natural order of things.

And so that's the power of the resurrection that Paul is appealing to right here just briefly in this verse. So Paul then goes on to talk about the resurrection of the church. He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. So the church is going to be raised We just asked about perspective. If your perspective is the church is going to be raised, that changes things, doesn't it?

When is that going to happen? We don't know, right? That was a trick question. If anybody had a date, we'd have to have another talk, right? But we don't know. Hopefully it's really, really soon. It could be in the middle of this lesson. I'd be okay if I didn't finish. I think everybody would.

But the resurrection is coming, it's impending. If you're looking at Paul's next visit or the resurrection, which one is more important? And obviously that's where Paul is going with this. He's saying he's going to raise us up with Jesus and present us with you. The resurrection is for the body. God's going to be joining Christ with his bride. And I say this joke as often as I can so you'll forgive me but I've never been a bride before but I can't wait.

Instead of focusing on themselves Paul is expecting the church in Corinth to take a mature perspective which is eternal and rooted in hope that is in the resurrection. It removes the tension of Paul not being able to return and focuses their attention on Christ. At a fixed point in time in the future God will complete this work of the church and will raise all who believe in Christ up at once to be with Jesus Christ. Can there be a more important perspective for conditional concerns? What's a more important one? Anyone? There isn't. And that's an important place for us to be.

How many of you are faced by things every day where you find it mentally distracting? I know, I have stuff all the time. It was funny, I thought, well if I can just get a job then that problem will go away. Do you know what happened? I got a job and instantly my wife came up with other things I should be thinking about that could be concerns. And I don't say that to throw Jessica under the bus. She's just a tremendous wife.

But it was funny, because I thought, oh, if I can just deal with this boulder, I can get past it. And it was funny, we moved the boulder, and there's one right on the other side of it. But if I'm looking at an internal perspective, that doesn't matter, right? I can go, oh, that boulder is really tiny. It's a grain of sand in this side of God.

So then Paul says that they'll be presented with Paul. We're going to be together again, guys. I didn't get to visit you a second time, but we're going to be together again. And you know what? I kind of get the sense Paul's kind of looking forward to that. I don't want to be a spoiler of anything, but he's probably looking forward to Jesus more than the Corinthians.

He's going to be with them as a co-member in the body that is the Bride of Christ. So I wanted to take just a brief moment to build on some of this here. Paul's Holy Spirit work was led to be cultivating the Bride. He was, if you will, like Abraham's servant going out to get Rebekah. for Isaac. He went to go get the bride. He was sent to go get the bride. And he was doing that. So what did God need to do for us to be presented to His Son? We're going to be presented to His Son. What did He need to do? He had to send His only Son to do the heavy lifting. He had to redeem us, right? He had to redeem us and make us pure.

Not just any old gal was going to do for Jesus as a bride, right? So Jesus' nature needs or demands a bride that is spotless, which is why we need to be redeemed. It demands a bride that is of the same type, which is why we're being conformed to the image of Christ. And it demands a bride that is eternal, which is why we need to be resurrected into new bodies. Randy as a bride, in this current body, is not going to garner too much attention. This body is aging and we're going to see Paul talking about decaying bodies here in just two verses. But God redeemed us and sanctified us and all the 34 things us so that we could grow and mature and be conformed to the image of Christ so that we could be a suitable bride. And we will be a suitable bride. And I think that's exciting.

So Paul, has he got your attention to heavenly things? Because if he hasn't got the Corinthians set to heavenly things, I'm disappointed. But for me, I was pretty excited looking at this verse, thinking of the eternal. Continuing on in verse 15, for all things are for your sake, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. So he says something here, and when I read it, I thought, man, this is kind of an interesting thing. He says, all things are for your sake.

But earlier, Paul said something else. If we look at verse 11, he says, for we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake. Oh no, we have two sakes. Alright? And they're different contexts, right? So Paul was dealing with those things for Jesus' sake in his own ministry, dealing with the turmoil.

But when we get to verse 15, he says something else here, for the church's sake. And this reminded me of another verse. Anybody have any Bible verse that jumps to mind when we talk about all things being for our sake? If you were at church last Sunday in the main service, maybe you would remember this one. Gary?

Romans 8.28, did somebody jump over there and read that for us? We know that God causes all things to work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. So why the two sakes? Why in verse 11, for Jesus' sake, and why now for your sake within the larger passage? Why are these two sakes here? Because if God is for us, who can be against us?

Okay? Paul was doing things and he was ministering for Jesus' sake, but in this case he saw the fact that God, for Jesus' sake, took him away to a different location, to a different destination, for the benefit of the church in Corinth. So now he's turned a corner with him. Right?

Not only should you have an eternal perspective, but you should have an eternal perspective and you should see that God took me somewhere else for your benefit. for your sake. So I'm not sure they're convinced. I'm gonna be honest with you. The church in Corinth seemed to be a little stubborn. I was stubborn once. Just kidding. All the time I'm stubborn. Just ask Jessica.

But in this case there's a contrast and the purpose for these sakes is a little different there but I just wanted to highlight that Paul was using those saying that for Jesus' sake he went somewhere else, but for their sake also he went somewhere else.

But grander than just their sake, in verse 15, he says, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. So the grace which is spreading and It's kind of unfair here at Holly Hills, and when I say unfair, I say that jokingly, because we have a much deeper understanding of grace than I have found in other contexts, in other church bodies that I've been to.

So if I ask you guys, what's a working definition of grace, you're all set. Somebody's going to tell me it's the unmerited, unlimited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. And I'll be like, okay, cool, we got that. But every time I run into grace, in the text of scripture, I ask, does that working definition fit here? And the good news is I think it does.

But the reason why I ask myself that question is because when I was younger, I didn't ask that question. Before I was exposed to grace defined more properly, I didn't ask that question. And then what would happen when I would come to a verse like this, I wouldn't understand it. So, just to amuse myself, I said, okay, what if I define grace as when God covers my sins? Okay, because that's how I was kind of taught grace was when I was younger.

God covering my sins. Now imagine rereading this verse with that context. Listen to how terrible it is. For all things are for your sake, so that the covering of your sins, which is spreading to more and more people, may cause the giving of thanks to abound for the glory of God." It's weak in comparison.

So we need to make sure that whenever we see grace, we look at the richness of what's there, the richness of God's blessing due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. It's not that grace doesn't also include the covering of sins, it's just that it doesn't also stop there. So, for the grace, which we have a good working definition of, The gospel is rooted in that. So what are some of the problems of misunderstanding grace?

If you're in the church of Corinth and you've misunderstood grace, and Paul sends you this letter, what's your understanding going to be? It's going to be less than he intended. But we're here in the church of Denver. I was in the church of Carson City years ago. The older I get, the longer ago it was, right? And I didn't understand grace. And I didn't understand how that would apply to other people, and I didn't know how it would apply to me. And you know what? It also made it less exciting for me to think about what he says right after this.

He's spreading the grace to more and more people. If we think about grace, the unmerited unlimited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross being spread to more and more people, that's invigorating. How many of you have ever been to a missions conference or you've listened to a missionary talk, right? We've got some hands up. The importance of missions is the spreading of this grace.

I just want to build on that. Mike Doyle says this a lot. Grace has to be taught. This kind of confirms that. I've heard Mike say that. This is really kind of cool because it is spreading. That means that they are being taught and they understand it and it goes to the next person, the next person, the next person. That's pretty cool. Grace has to be taught because I remember at least one vividly in my memory situation where he said that it has to be taught because it's not something man would derive on their own.

Right? We would always come up with some meritorious way to fix things or we'd have some really clinical way that it was addressed but not to the depth of blessing and riches that are there. So grace was spreading and it was spreading to more and more people with a result in the church. Okay? So there's a benefit to the church body in the right perspective. The result being, or the outcome that it may cause, the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. How about that word abound? That's one. Every time I see that word abound, I'm like, that sounds really cool. But then I think, in my own life, do I observe that? The abounding. And Tom?

Yes, the deviled world. We try to go on to the next subject, on the next subject, let's get it done, let's get it done, move, move, move. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of pushed aside because we think we have more important things to do. Okay. Paul is saying that the giving of thanks to abound, the causing the giving of thanks to abound. We have this idea of abundance or things going on.

So one of the things I've observed in my own life, and I'm going to speak subjectively here for a moment, but I would suggest you take some time to think about it on your own time. If we find that in our own lives thanks is not abounding and God is not being glorified, It can be a key spiritual focus indicator. Am I abiding? How do I know? If you're not abounding in thanks, and you're not glorifying the Lord, that might be, okay, it's not the only indicator, it might be an indicator of an opportunity to reset your mental focus. Colossians 3, setting your mind on things above.

Glorification, in this case, is not us adding to the radiant essence of God's being. Isn't glory, our classic definition of glory, is the radiant essence of God's being? But we're not adding to that. That is not something we can do. We are not deity. And God's glory is infinite, so that makes it a little hard to add to. But it's the declaration of our opinion of God for His work. Our declaration of our opinion of God That's a pretty cool thing. That's different than praise and different than worship. It's glorification. So when we're doing music this morning, it shouldn't be the praise and worship time, it should be the praise and worship and glorification time, right?

So when you look at the world around you, it's possible to see negativity and decay. All you have to do is watch the news and you go, It's funny, I read Google News every morning and almost every morning the first five things that show up are about Donald Trump. Since he has become president, he is by far the most important thing in the media's reporting.

And it's never positive. I have no idea why that is. But we're surrounded by negativity and decay. I also subscribe to information on Uganda because Hassan is there. And I want to know what he's dealing with. Not just the drought, but all kinds of political things. Uganda has taken a strong stance about homosexuality. They're against it. And they get a lot of pressure from the United States and other countries to change their position on that. So that's another, it's moral decay. So we're surrounded by negativity and decay. But when your focus is eternal, what do you see instead when you look at the world around you that may be surrounded with death and decay?

Well, one thing that always helps me is I always try to remind myself that Christ died for the sins of the world. He died for all those people, for the decaying people out there, for all those people that are against him. You know, the doing, you know. So all the awfulness, he still, his death was sufficient for all that. So I try to remind myself. So the worst of the worst still come under that umbrella of his love. Yeah. So we begin to take on an eternal perspective, right? And that's an important thing for us to see.

When we look at Romans 8.28, or in this case, everything is all for your sake, we see that God can use it, even if it is disappointing. You know, it doesn't matter who the president is. It seemed like I turned on the news and there was always something about how terrible or wonderful the flesh was. Right? But that's not where our focus is supposed to be.

But we have an eternal perspective and these things change. Grace becomes a motivator. So Paul, in light of all the verses, including things like 2 Corinthians 3.18, which we read earlier, as he's building up his argument, in light of all those things, leads up to verse 16 where he says, We do not lose heart. But though our outer man is decaying, which would be kind of a bummer statement, he says, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. So I have the title of this section here, The Heart Lost and Found is Closed. We do not lose heart.

And as it turns out, that is definitely a modern translation of an idea that is in the Greek, but it is not what the Greek says. The Greek, if you were Roman and you were living at the time, the idea was that you would go into darkness or evil. That's actually, we do not go into darkness or evil, is a more literal translation of the Greek word that's underneath there. But lose heart is how that's translated because I think it best reflects the way that we would describe what Paul was going through.

The idiom doesn't translate necessarily identically between the Roman culture and the modern American culture. So Paul is further contrasting for the church in Corinth these ideas that they need to pin their value on different things by saying that he doesn't lose heart. We're not losing heart, despite all of the difficulties they're straining and dealing with there. When we talk about losing heart here, what causes us to lose heart in our own day-to-day lives? Take your focus off of Christ and put it on yourself. That's really important. The idea that we are focused on ourselves, which is to trust in ourselves, right?

And then what comes from the outcome of trusting in ourselves is often more selfishness. You know, this is just a little rabbit trail observation. Guilt, when the flesh finds guilt, it's never sorry that it sinned. It just is focused on what it can do better next time. And it's confidence is in itself. Next time I won't do that, right? It's sorry, but it's sorry only leading to, I'll do better next time. I'll do better next time in my own strength. And we know as believers we can't, we won't, we'll screw up again.

That's why we need the Holy Spirit indwelling us. And so we lose heart, we get down, and we think, I just need to pull myself up by my own bootstraps. which reminds me of a story when I was in elementary school Sunday school I actually had an adult come into the Sunday school class and tell me I could do that and I spent a tremendous amount of energy trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps completely unaware that that was impossible not understanding gravity or physics or any of those things so as an adult I made it a point not to harass young children in Sunday school on account of that one event. What causes us to lose heart is reliance on the flesh there.

So Paul does not descend into despair as a normal practice. We saw earlier that he had despaired of life, but as a whole his mood is to not lose heart and stay there. He says our outer man is, well let me go back here, this is entirely because he's aware of the doctrines that are true of him in Christ.

Paul is aware of what is true of him in Christ, which is why Peter, of course Paul writes similar things, but Peter writes to us in 2 Corinthians 3.18, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If you're growing in those things, those will be the things that you don't lose heart over. Those are the things you can be anchored in.

So then Paul continues on, but though our outer man is decaying, Paul was being pressed from all directions to the point of feeling like he was going to die, like he wrote in 2 Corinthians 1.8, which we already looked at, and then as Roger went over in 4.7 and 9, this great state of physical oppression, and he had physical suffering through the thorn in the flesh. which we believe are his eyes.

If we look at Galatians 6.11, he says, see with what large writing I write in my own hand.

And then in 2 Corinthians 12.7, where he says he prayed for the thorn in the flesh to go away, and we'll get to that later on in this year, obviously. And God did not take that away. But the physical things, his body was aging, his body was dying, his body was feeling the effects of being used up, because he was made in the image of Adam. He was being poured out.

But ultimately, Paul would die, right? And is that the end? Paul dies? What's the end? Where do we go back to? Two verses earlier, 14. What's he looking forward to? And when will we get to see him?

The resurrection. So even though this body is dying, and he knows it, the next thing he says is that the inner man is being renewed day by day. Despite the physical limitations of the flesh, Paul found that they were renewed internally. The Holy Spirit made them all new day by day. and that's why he can say things about do not grow weary. If we're not abiding will we grow weary?

In Galatians 6.9 Paul tells the church in Galatia that if they do not grow weary and that growing weary is directly tied to the idea whether or not you're abiding. Now we've talked a lot in this Sunday School class through different books, and I've had the blessing of being involved with some of the teaching here, and some of it I have been in other classes, but we've talked a lot about the idea of the life of Christ. The Holy Spirit empowers us, but if our will is aligned with the Lord's will, we may actually physically exert ourselves and be exhausted.

We're strengthened by the Lord, but we are also physically exerting ourselves. And Paul was physically feeling the labor of his work, feeling the oppression of death, but his inner man was being renewed day and day, is the way the Greek is stated there. The Lord day and day and day would renew his inner man. So how is that possible? that he's renewed. It's the Holy Spirit's work, right? It's not our own work.

You know, positionally we have the perfect life of Christ, but conditionally we can grow in that. And it seems at first... Almost a contradiction? I have the perfect life of Christ, but how can that perfect life grow? But he's talking about us. And we can grow and we need to grow in that. Yeah. And that growth happens and that renewing happens with the Holy Spirit working in our lives and the Holy Spirit empowering us. I would argue that the root concern is abiding there, that we're walking with the Lord and we're walking in the Spirit and He will empower us despite the physical decay of our bodies.

It's amazing because I remember one time Jessica and I were in seminary in Texas and we went to a conference. And Dr. John Wolvard came as a guest speaker, and I'm not throwing that name out today. We want to worship Jesus, not John Wolvard. But he was an important man at Dallas Theological Seminary back in the last century.

The room was crowded. There were different break-off classes and everybody wanted to come hear John Wolvert. Jessica and I were on the floor, even sitting on the hard floor, which even for my young body was a bit much. But we all sat down and we wanted to hear what John Wolvert was going to say.

Give us a little spiritual nugget so that when we leave we're even more spiritual than we were before. And we're waiting for a theological atomic bomb. We're waiting for this thing And what we walked out of that class remembering was that John Wolvert was looking forward to the return of the Lord because he wanted to spend eternity with the Lord. Which was the theological atomic bomb we needed because we were all focused on being theologians. We wanted to be theologians. And a big theologian was coming and he came in and he said, you know what matters?

Eternity. Setting your hearts and minds on things above. And so here when we talk about being empowered in our inner man, what Paul was saying this, is because he knew what was eternal. And when we go into the next two verses, so he's got the awesome opportunity of teaching through the last two verses of this chapter and they are, well they're They're really exciting verses, but they remind us of the eternal. So I've got a concluding question here. Why does Paul not only have to model these principles, but also write about them and correct the church about them? Why modeling, writing, and correcting? Why all three of those? Okay, for us in the future. That's an excellent answer. It is actually a really good closing thought to what goes right in front of it. Tom? Because he's writing to pretty much the same people that John was writing to. Okay.

The ones who are growing, the ones who have attained so-called spiritual adulthood. The growing doesn't quit. As long as we're on this earth with breath, the Lord is conforming us to the image of Christ. And Paul is establishing the church in Corinth. We started this with the question of why is he so diligent to push through on this? And the answer is he's going to establish the church. And he loves them. He's called to this. And the same thing is true.

He's rooting the church in Corinth so that there will be a legacy of doctrinal truth lived out. that they would understand the spiritual life that they have, that they would have their hope and their focus on the eternal. And so Paul modeled that, he wrote about it, and he corrected about it. And so when we look at our own lives, we should either be reading it to learn it, reading it to be corrected if we're not applying it correctly, and then turning around and actually modeling that. the principles of who we are in Christ and being focused on the eternal things. Any other thoughts or questions?

Otherwise, that bell is going to ring right in the middle of my prayer. You will be just like Christ, but you will never be a deity. That's right. We will be conformed to His image, but we will be the bride. We won't be the groom. We won't be deity. Alright, let's pray here and hopefully it doesn't ring in the middle of my prayer.

Heavenly Father, we come before you, we're so grateful for the truth of your word that Paul would write it to these stubborn Corinthians and that we would get to read it. about 2,000 years later and learn from it still. We pray that we would understand hope and eternity and the joy and thankfulness of the resurrection that we may glorify God in abundance. And we pray that you would come even today. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.