THE RIGHT FOCUS

2 CORINTHIANS 4:13-18

NASB

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, 14 knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. 15 For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is [a]spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.

16 Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. 17 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

4:15 [a]Lit being multiplied through the many 

NLT

13 But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, “I believed in God, so I spoke.”[*] 14 We know that God, who raised the Lord Jesus,[*] will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself together with you. 15 All of this is for your benefit. And as God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory.

16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are[*] being renewed every day. 17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

[4:13] Ps 116:10.   [4:14] Some manuscripts read who raised Jesus.   [4:16] Greek our inner being is.  

“The day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth” (Eccl. 7:1). King Solomon, the erstwhile cynic sage who devoured the best this world had to offer, came to this startling conclusion in the midst of his wilderness wanderings through human wisdom and experience. If read out of context, his pessimistic words might seem like the musings of somebody who had given up on life entirely. The line that follows, however, puts things into perspective: “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart” (Eccl. 7:2).

In other words, unlike the frivolity of a birthday party in which any miserable soul can pass as a “jolly good fellow,” a person’s entire life is seen for what it really was at a funeral (the house of mourning). There we hear what people really thought of the deceased, witness the person’s life legacy, size up accomplishments and set-backs, and sum up victories and defeats. Only at the end of one’s life can we see whether a person actually “fought the good fight . . . finished the course . . . kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7).

I think all of us would like to be remembered as people who didn’t quit, who stayed at the task. If I were to choose something for my own epitaph, it would have to do with consistency and faithfulness, not merely starting well but finishing well. At my funeral, I would want people to say that even in the midst of temptations, he chose the narrow path of righteousness. In the face of stiff opposition, he persevered. In the presence of countless distractions, he kept the right focus.

This is the kind of legacy left to us by the ministry of the apostle Paul. From his blinding start on the road to Damascus to his binding shackles in a Roman dungeon, Paul remained faithful to the end. Even during a ministry that got him beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and left for dead, he picked himself up and carried on. He truly fought the good fight. He completely finished the course. He consistently kept the faith.

Wouldn’t you love to hear that commendation spoken about you? That kind of resolve does not result from a one-off New Year’s resolution. Rather, a life lived with the right focus can be maintained only when we think about each of our moment-by-moment decisions from the vantage point of the end.

Finishing the course isn’t easy. The lanes are narrow and littered with obstacles that rise up from nowhere. Pain, disappointment, heartache, and loss jog alongside us, drawing close enough to trip us up and make us stumble. It requires a great amount of self-sacrifice and discipline to keep from dropping out of the race. To finish the course well requires the right focus. It is not accomplished by self-hypnosis or a positive self-image. Rather, it requires enthusiastic determination and authentic vision, both of which Paul addresses in 2 Corinthians 4:13-18.

— 4:13-15 —

One can hardly overestimate the ministry task before us. Think about it. Christ handed off a responsibility to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19) to a struggling band of scraggly, ragamuffin disciples —most of them social outcasts, blue-collar laborers, and unskilled in rhetoric. These were the men chosen to carry out an impossible work: the conversion of the world. Yet Paul exemplified a spirit of enthusiastic determination when he wrote, “Having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, ‘I believed, therefore I spoke,’ we also believe, therefore we also speak” (2 Cor. 4:13).

The phrase “what is written” indicates that Paul was quoting an Old Testament passage of Scripture, upon which authority he rested his own argument. In this case, Paul incorporates a brief snippet from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) from Psalm 116:10. Yet he uses the excerpt to point to the entire psalm, which describes the author’s experience of great pain and suffering to the brink of death. Craig Keener gives us an idea of how Paul is applying this text to his situation: “Because Jews and Christians sang or recited psalms, perhaps both he and his audience recognized that the verse’s context was a psalm about the righteous sufferer’s afflictions, offered to praise God for deliverance.”[122]

Like that psalmist, Paul had experienced God’s faithfulness even in his time of suffering. And like the psalmist, he proclaimed it far and wide. He continued on the path with determination and enthusiasm. But how can we hope to follow Paul’s example? I see three specific thoughts on enthusiastic determination in the face of such an enormous task as serving Christ in the midst of hardship, suffering, and turmoil.

First, enthusiastic determination grows out of being delivered by the Lord (2 Cor. 4:13). When we come to an impasse in life, in which we feel weighed down by the burdens or bogged down by the difficulties, we should recall the way God has delivered us from these things in the past. Unfortunately, we quickly forget the Lord’s deliverance when we are on safe ground again, or we view it as a onetime event. It is often difficult to believe God will deliver us again when we are in the center of the storm. That’s why we should read about the ways God miraculously delivered His people in both the Old and the New Testaments, remembering that we serve that very same God. Consider this brief sampling of our Savior-God’s glorious deeds of deliverance:

To maintain enthusiastic determination, remember that you serve a God who can deliver you from your troubles. Speak often about His works of deliverance in your life, and let His deliverance of others speak often to your own heart (2 Cor. 4:13). I have observed that when Christians get delivered, they often go on to new heights of motivation and enthusiasm because God saw them through a most difficult time. This is a major reason why we should share our testimonies, not only of our original salvation but also of God’s answers to our prayers for deliverance. Don’t keep them to yourself! Publish them abroad. Make them known to a world that doesn’t believe God is living and active in the world today. Tell your Christian friends about God’s answers to prayer. What it does to stimulate enthusiastic determination in their lives is amazing.

Second, enthusiastic determination grows when we focus on our future resurrection (2 Cor. 4:14). As Bible-believing Christians, we anticipate that day when we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye (1 Cor. 15:52). Then we will be given new, immortal, glorified bodies conformed to Christ’s resurrection body. Those new bodies will neither age nor be subject to sickness, disease, suffering, or pain. Not even death can stop the work of God.

With this focus on our bodily resurrection, Paul is doing what lawyers call “pleading in the alternative.” He just mentioned God’s pattern of delivering His people from death as a motivator for enthusiastic determination (2 Cor. 4:13). Yet even if God’s plan allows us to die, death is only a temporary victor. It may win this particular skirmish, but when Christ returns, death itself will be defeated. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:54, “When this perishable [body] will have put on the imperishable [body], and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”

Third, enthusiastic determination grows when we invest in the lives of others (2 Cor. 4:15). When we take seriously the temporary nature of our present life and the glories of our future resurrection life, it should motivate us to “die” to ourselves and “live” for others. When this happens, teachers are resurrected in the lives of their students, parents in the lives of their children, pastors in the lives of their congregations. Paul says as much: “For all things are for your sakes” (4:15). Paul and his co-laborers spent their very lives investing in the Corinthians in order to reap a great harvest of thanksgiving and glory when the gospel spread through them (4:15).

If you’ve lost an enthusiastic determination for ministry, take a look at your life. Are you living with an inward focus rather than an outward focus on others and an upward focus on Christ? Have you begun to cloister yourself away from others? The life that reflects Christ’s life exists to serve others, not ourselves (Phil. 2:3-11). So serve with self-sacrificial abandon! God promises that investing in others will be worth it. The soccer games are worth it. The out-of-pocket expenses are worth it. Those hours when nobody seems to appreciate your efforts are worth it. Keep affirming. Keep loving. Keep giving yourself. The worst thing you can do to destroy enthusiastic determination is to live a life completely unto yourself. I will guarantee you will languish and die a downhearted, cranky, and negative old person if you live only for yourself. People who give what they have for others have a remarkable ability to maintain contagious enthusiasm because they do not lose heart.

— 4:16-18 —

It’s happening. You can minimize its obvious effects, but you can’t stop it. To some of us, it’s happening worse than others. More wrinkles. More gray. More stooped shoulders. Less speed. Less vigor. Less energy. Maybe you are young enough to have not yet noticed, but it is nevertheless true: your “outer man” is decaying!

Every day we are getting older. And every day we are nearing the end of our earthly lives. From the world’s point of view, this is not only frustrating and discouraging but downright tragic and depressing. But not so for believers in Jesus Christ, the resurrected God-man, who is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Without Christ, the outer person and this present mortal life are all we have; to lose them is to lose everything. But with Christ, our inner person is being renewed, restored, refreshed, awakened, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit every day (2 Cor. 4:16).

Our experience of this renewed vision for ministry while here in our earthly bodies will put our “momentary, light” afflictions into perspective (4:17). As we endure these hardships, reaping their benefits of character growth (Jas. 1:2-4; 1 Pet. 1:6-7), we know that God is not forgetting our labors and hardships but that He will reward us (1 Cor. 3:8; Heb. 6:10). If we could stack up all of the experiences that make our present lives painful and then compare this pile to the infinite weight of glory that is awaiting us at our resurrection, the “big stuff” of this world would vanish into insignificance.

This is the secret to a Christian’s motivation for authentic ministry vision: We refuse to be discouraged because of the present circumstances. Let’s face it: “The things which are seen” in this world disturb us. They will drag us down, distract us, steal our focus away from Christ, cause us to spend our time on frivolous things instead of the things of the kingdom, and blind us to a clear ministry vision. When our focus shifts to the things that are unseen, however —the glorious future we have in the restoration of the world under the eternal rule of Christ —then everything else gets placed in its proper perspective.

From My Journal

Making Every Hour Our Finest

2 CORINTHIANS 4:16

I was just shy of six years old, but I can remember my mother and father sitting silently before the family radio, listening past the intermittent crackling of the interference to the broadcast magically delivered from across the ocean. The old radio receiver made the voice of the famous statesman sound like he was speaking through a tin can, and I was too young to understand the importance of what he articulated, but I recall my parents attentively glued to the radio, holding on to every word.

It would be many years before I finally understood why.

June 18, 1940. I was five going on six; he was sixty-five going on sixty-six. On that day in hushed living rooms like ours across the world, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood before a captivated global audience and took his stand against a malevolent dictator, the likes of which the modern world had never known. From a tiny island nation separated from the enemy of humanity by a narrow channel of water, that great statesman, historian, and orator faced an enormous task with boldness. Though I was too young to comprehend his rousing speech at the time, since then his historic words have spoken to me a thousand times:

The battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us on this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

How easy it is for an individual, a family, a church, and a nation to lose heart when they begin to lose focus. When I think about the enormity of the task of ministry before us in this generation, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. The increasingly bitter struggle for the souls of the lost, the growing hostility toward the Savior and His people, and the ominous clouds of pluralism and paganism —these things threaten the Christian church and its voice of truth in the world. Yet instead of growing fearful in the face of the dangers and surrendering to the armies of the enemy, the words of Winston Churchill motivate me to take a stand even in the face of an apparently impossible task. More than this, the repeated words of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:1, 16 strengthen my resolve to face the enormity of the mission, come what may:

Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart. (4:1) (emphasis mine)

We do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. (4:16) (emphasis mine)

APPLICATION: 2 CORINTHIANS 4:13-18

Wanted: Weavers, Investors, and Dreamers

Nowadays, weavers, investors, and dreamers get a bad rap. The term “basket weaving” is often used to connote a course of study that dodges anything academically challenging —a weaver is synonymous with a cop-out. Investors today are sometimes portrayed as heartless money-grubbers who will bend or even break financial rules to squeeze every last dividend out of the market. And although “dreamer” can be a positive designation for an innovator, people often use it in a derogatory sense for one whose head is in the clouds —so disconnected from real-world practicality as to be of no good to anybody, not even to oneself. But as we think about how to practically apply 2 Corinthians 4:13-18, I would exhort you: Keep on weaving, keep on investing, keep on dreaming!

First, keep on weaving. We keep the right focus on our ministry goals when we remember that today’s deeds are individual threads in tomorrow’s tapestry. That’s easy to forget, isn’t it? Every kindness, every thoughtful act, every encouraging word, every testimony shared, every forgiving response, even every smile —these are all seemingly insignificant deeds considered individually. If, however, you could catch a momentary glimpse of how all your threads fit into the full tapestry of God’s plan, you would be even more motivated to keep on weaving those threads.

Second, keep on investing. We keep the right ministry focus when we realize that mortal people are immortals in the making. When we think of those around us as potential glorified saints —soon-to-be adopted sons and daughters of God —it will be hard for us to peter out in ministry. This idea isn’t original with me. C. S. Lewis wrote:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations —these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.[123]

What an interesting twist on how we perceive the people around us. If that doesn’t fuel your fire of enthusiasm for ministry, you are dealing with wet firewood! When we remember that every person we meet is immortal and that everything around us has the staying power of a puff of smoke, we’ll be motivated to invest in the things that last. How do you invest? Open your mouth to tell the good news. Open your heart to share your story. Open your hands to help the hurting. Keep on investing.

Third, keep on dreaming. We can keep the right focus in life and ministry if we let our minds and imaginations rise above the temporalities of this world and touch the eternality of the next. Let yourself reflect on the unseen rather than the seen. I don’t mean to detach yourself from the world, to withdraw from reality, or to pretend like the world around you isn’t real. As Christians living in the time between the first and second comings of Christ, we need to hold on to both —living responsibly in this world while living responsively to the next. I challenge you to do that this very week. Dream about the world to come. Read about it in Revelation 21–22. Meditate on those future realities. You know what you’ll discover? Joy. Peace. Courage. Perseverance. A new sense of priorities. Fulfillment. Contentment. The typical human dreams of material gain, financial success, and worldly achievements will fade into insignificance in the face of the world to come. Keep on dreaming.

Keep weaving. Keep investing. Keep dreaming. By doing that, you’ll have the kind of focus you need to maintain an enthusiastic determination for ministry and an authentic vision to keep you going despite your dark and dreary circumstances.