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144 How Can We Know the Christian Scriptures Are True?
himself but took the reproaches of men that he might accept us into his
fellowship to the glory of God (Rom. 15:2, 7). When Paul proclaimed
the glory of this crucified Christ, in the fullness of the gospel, he believed
that he had given an adequate ground of saving faith.
The Beauty of Christ Embodied
The second focal point of 2 Corinthians 4:5 is this: the person who proclaims
the Lord of glory is a slave for Jesus’s sake of those he is seeking
to persuade: “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as
Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” In other words,
the proclaimer embodies the beauty of the proclaimed. He freely lays
down his God-given freedom and takes up the role of slave and puts
himself at the disposal of others for their good (Phil. 2:5). There is a
clear cause and a precise purpose of this behavior.
The cause of this self-giving behavior is found five verses earlier in
2 Corinthians 3:18: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of
the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree
of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
The one who proclaims the glory of Christ as Lord must have seen
that glory. And according to Paul, you cannot see the glory of Christ
and remain unchanged. Beholding the glory of the Lord we are being
transformed.
The promise that the apostle John gives in his first letter, that “when
Christ appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is”
(1 John 3:2), is already being fulfilled, as we behold the glory of Christ
in the gospel. That is what Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians 3:18. We
tend to become like those we admire. This means that we, like him, set
aside our rights and do not seek to please merely ourselves, but rather
we become servants for the benefit of others. Beholding the beauty of
Christ’s character, we begin to share it.
The purpose of this transformation into a self-giving servant role
is to provide another display of the glory of God as the ground of
faith—an embodied display. So we present the glory of Christ not only
in our gospel but also in our lives. While proclaiming the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, we also become
the light of the world, so that men may see our good deeds and glorify