The life and work of St. Paul

SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS, 411
God gave the sufficiency. And what a glorious ministry! If the ministry of the
Law tending in itself to death, written in earthly letters, graven on granite slabs,
yet displayed itself in such glory that the children of Israel could not gaze on
the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which was rapidly fading
away, 1 how much more glorious was the Ministry of Life, of Righteoxisness, of the
Spirit, which by comparison outdazzles that other glory into mere darkness, 2 and is
not transitory (8 S6^r>). It was the sense of being
entrusted with that ministry which gave him confidence. Moses used to put a veil
over his face that the children of Israel might not see the evanescence of the transient ;
and the veil which he wore on his bright countenance when he spoke to them reminds
him of the veil which they yet wore on their hardened understandings when his
Law was read to them, which should only begin to be removed the moment they
turned from Moses to Christ, 3 from the letter to the spirit, from slavery to freedom.
But he and all the ministers of Christ gazed with no veil upon their faces upon His
and in their turn seeing that image as
glory reflected in the mirror of His Gospel ;
in a mirror, 4 caught that ever-brightening glory as from the Lord, the Spirit.
How could one entrusted with such a ministry grow faint-hearted ? How could
he as Paul's enemies charged him with doing descend into " the crypts of
shame ? "
Utterly false s were such insinuations. He walked not in craftiness ;
he did not adulterate the pure Word of God but his ; commendatory letter, the
only one he needed, was to manifest the truth to all consciences in God's sight.
in the
There was no veil over the truths he preached ; if veil there was, it was only
darkened understandings of the perishing, so darkened into unbelief by the god of
the present world, 6 that the brightness of the gospel of the glory of Christ could
not illuminate them. He it is Christ Jesus the Lord, the image of God He it is,
and not ourselves, whom Paul and all true Apostles preached. He had been ac-
cused of self-seeking and self-assertion. Such sins were impossible to one who
estimated as he did the glory of His message. All that he could preach of himself
was that Christ was Lord, and that he was their slave for Christ's sake. For God
had shone in the hearts of His ministers only in order that the bright knowledge
which they had caught from gazing, with no intervening veil, on the glory of
Christ, might glow for the illumination of the world. 7
A glorious ministry ; but what weak ministers ! Like the torches hid in Gideon's
pitchers, their treasure of light was in earthen vessels, 8 that the glory of their victory
over the world and the world's idolatries might be God's, not theirs. This was why
they were at once weak and strong weak in themselves, strong in God "in everything
being troubled, yet not crushed ; perplexed, but not in despair ; persecuted,
but not forsaken ; flung down, but not destroyed ; always carrying about in our
body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order that also the life of Jesus
may be manifested in our body. For we, living as we are, are ever being handed
over to death for Jesus' sake, in order that the life of Jesus also may be manifested
in our moiial flesh. So that death is working in us seeing that for Christ's sake
and for your sakes we die daily but life in you. The trials are mainly ours ; the
blessings yours. Yet we know that this daily death of ours shall be followed by a
resurrection. He who raised Christ shall also raise us from the daily death of our
1
ill. 7. The word " "
till in the E.V. of Ex. miv. 83 seems to be a mistake
"
for when." He
put on the veil, not to dim the splendour while he spoke, but (so St. Paul here implies) to veil the
evanescence when he had ended his words KarapyoG/xcu (1 Cor. i. 23 ;
ii. 6 vi. 13 xiiL ; ; 8, 11 ;
xv. 24^-4wenty-two
times in this group of Epistles).
'
* iii. 10, 11, ou JeSofaarai TO Se5oa