Think Wink.

Continuing through the lesson I gave my Sunday school class this past Sunday, we come to the second question: How does this “gospel of the glory of Christ” save sinners? We now know what it means when Paul says, “the gospel of the glory of Christ.” He is saying that the gospel of Jesus Christ–his death and burial and resurrection that Paul preached to the Corinthians–puts on display the very glory of God for us to see. In the midst of all of the horror of Golgotha that Good Friday, in the midst of the depression during those hours Jesus lay in the tomb, during the joy of seeing the resurrected Christ and his victory over sin and death, what we saw was the very glory, beauty, splendor of God that Moses was shielded from seeing but told (cf. Exodus 34:1-9). It is that beauty, that splendor, that delight and joy that the human soul was made to enjoy and we have now been able to see it. So how does seeing God’s glory in the cross save us? How does this gospel save sinners? Let’s get the text back in front of us one more time,

4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Before we can see how a sinner is saved, what does this gospel save the sinner from? That is the question that we are forced to deal with first. So first our plight. To understand this, I want to work through the text backwards from 4:6-4:3. In doing so, I think we can see the progression of our plight and dilemma.

Paul says in 4:6, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Notice a nice parallel here, “Let light shine out of darkness” and “God…has shone in our hearts to give the light…” Light and light parallel, shine and shone parallel, darkness and “our hearts” parallel. If the light shines into darkness as the quotation from 4:6 shows us and light shines into our hearts, Paul is saying that our hearts are dark. Paul says in Romans 1:23, “[they] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” The light that comes from the glory of God was cast away and images were put in its place. The radiance and effulgence of God’s glory was cast aside and replaced by men and animals. All that is left is darkness. Jesus said in John 3:19-20, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” Imagine a heart like we draw for Valentine’s Day; but instead of red or white or pink, it is empty and dark.

Now we look at 4:4, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” The question I ask is this: whose minds were blinded? The answer, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.” Those who were not believing the gospel. Thus a heart that does not have the radiance of God’s beauty in it and turns to darkness no longer trusts God but is unbelieving, even to the point of atheism. So in our image, take our dark heart and put in a box labeled “unbelief,” as the unbelief keeps the hear turned away from the effulgence of God’s splendor and majesty.

And those unbelievers were blinded, as we saw 4:4 say. What does Paul mean by “blinded the minds”? There are two words that I think get to the heart of this term. In 4:3 Paul speaks of being “veiled” to the gospel. There is a covering over “those who are perishing” that prevents them from seeing the gospel and the glory of God that it unashamedly proclaims and displays. In 2 Corinthians 3:14 Paul says, “But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.” Here we see the idea of a veil keeping the Jews from being able to see Christ in the Old Covenant. But notice what happened to the minds, they were “hardened” (ἐπωρώθη τὰ νοήματα αὐτῶν). They were encrusted and hardened, made resistant to God. I think that Paul understands these terms to have the same effect. The mind is made to to be resistant towards God. Thus the progression goes like this: turn from light of glory to darkness, which leads to unbelief, which leads to resistance. Now I want to say something about the identity of “the god of the world” (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος). Because of how Paul speaks of Satan in texts like Ephesians 2:1-3 and John in John 12:31; 16:11, this could speak of Satan here in 2 Corinthians 4:4. However in Isaiah 6:10, God is telling Isaiah to preach so that the people will be blinded as a judgment by his message. Blinding is seen in Isaiah 6:10 as God’s judgment. In 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12, Paul says that those who are perishing (cf 2 Corinthians 4:3), who did not love the truth and so be saved, will be given a deluding influence by God as a judgment to confine them to destruction when Jesus returns. If one were to compare 2 Samuel 24:1 with 1 Chronicles 21:1, one would see Yahweh and Satan performing the same act: inciting David to take a census of the people that David later confesses to be sin. It is as if through the activity of Satan God judges Israel (cf. 2 Samuel 24:1 where Yahweh is said to be angry with Israel and thus incited David to become prideful and sin). That what one could argue is that the “god” referred to here is none other than Yahweh himself! Whether or not that is the case is still open in my mind, but it is something to consider.

Now finally look a 4:3 and its connection with 4:4, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.” The Greek terms translated “In their case” refers back to the participle “perishing” (ἐν τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις is a dative masculine plural participle; ἐν οἷς is a plural masculine dative relative pronoun). Thus those who are blinded and unbelieving are said to be perishing. Our turning away from God’s glory as our treasure and delight to unbelief leads to our being made blind and thus condemned to a state of perishing when we die or Christ comes back! That is our dilemma that God must save his people from.

So how does God save us from this plight? I think Paul outlines this in 4:6. But first a word about “light” in 4:4 as it relates to 4:6. The term “gospel” is a genitive of source for “light” in 4:4. In other words, the light shines forth from the gospel. Or one could say that the mind is illumined to the glory of God by the gospel. The gospel is the center of the whole thought. It gives off light to the mind to see the glory of God that it displays. With that brief word lets follow 4:6.

First God “speaks” to the gospel to shine forth its light. The quotation “Light will shine out of darkness” is most likely intended to take the reader back to Genesis 1:3-4 and the creation account. There God spoke and light came blazing forth. He gave the command for light to exist and the light obeyed. So to here. God commands that the gospel shine forth its light and the gospel does so.

Second, the light shines into the human heart. Paul says in 4:6, “God…has shone in our hearts.” God speaks to the gospel to release its light into the heart of a person. But the word ἐν should be understood to mean to come inside and stay there. The light blazes into the heart from the gospel and conquers the darkness that is there.

Thirdly, the heart is illuminated for the first time to see the glory of God. Paul says, “God…has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” The person who has the light enter their hearts sees in the gospel the glory of God radiating in the face of Jesus. The heart which had been prevented by darkness and unbelief and resistance is now able to see the glory of God in Jesus hanging on the cross as a propitiation for sin and in the empty tomb and Christ now sitting at the Father’s right hand reigning as Lord, mediating God’s authority. “I once was lost but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”

Fourth, the heart sees the supreme worth of God, the heart now knows of God’s infinite beauty. And now it delights in God, it treasures God, it desires God because of what it sees in the gospel of Jesus. The heart now looks upon Christ and sees in the horror love and one worthy to lay down its own existence for. It sees God and looks at him with joy and eager expectation. It comes to God, freely and willingly, and trusts the work of Christ as the bridge to that glory. It traverses the cross and the old self dies. It enters the grave and leaves behind the previous life. It exits through the empty tomb to walk in the newness of life pursuing God himself, so enraptured with who he is.

And to conclude I have to say, this is what Calvinists mean by irresistible grace or effectual call. It means that God speaks to our hearts in such a way that the heart willingly comes to him for salvation. God does not coerce the will, he illumines the mind to see true beauty and splendor that is only found in God. He awakens the soul to true happiness. The soul was dark and resistant to God. It was in rebellion to God and considered God its enemy. But God spoke in such a way that that the mind and soul saw who God truly was in Jesus Christ and saw it to be irresistible. There is no turning of arms, putting a gun to someone’s head and saying, “You will believe or I will kill you!” God only aroused in the soul a desire that was not there because sin and its corruption had so put down. I will come back to this in a couple of posts for I will star the application section sermon in my next post in this series.

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