“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” (2
Cor. 4:18).
Now, after
having considered the immediate context of 2 Corinthians 4:18, and then pondering
4:6 and 5:16, let’s please go to the beginning of Paul’s letter and view what he
writes by seeing the invisible. It is important for you to read these passages
in your Bible, due to space limitations I will not be quoting them in their entirety.
In 1:1 – 11 Paul
writes of a time of intense suffering, so intense that he and his companions
were “burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of
life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves.”
Many of us have
had our own times of suffering, sorrow, and despair. Many of us have had moments
or extended seasons when the pain of life seemed more than we could bear, when
we thought that we would never know peace and comfort again, when the chasm
between our suffering and comfort was so wide and so deep that we despaired of life.
What did we “see”
during those times? What did Paul and his companions “see” during the time that
he writes of in 2 Corinthians? Was Paul seeing through the visible into the
invisible? Were we seeing through the visible into the invisible, or were our
eyes fixed on our visible circumstances?
When we are suffering
our tendency is to see our immediate circumstances and to evaluate life through
them. Our natural tendency is to place ourselves and our suffering at the
center of the universe and seek to alleviate our pain. Was this the perspective
and response of Paul and his fellow workers?
In 1:3 Paul styles
God as “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all
our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any
affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
He continues, “For
just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is
abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and
salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective
in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer.”
Paul saw beyond
the visible into the invisible, and seeing the invisible he saw that his
sufferings were a means of comforting others with the comfort with which he was
comforted by God. In other words, Paul saw that his sufferings were not about him,
but about the grace of God being poured through him to others. Paul did not see
himself as the center of the universe, he did not view his sufferings as being
centered on himself, but rather he saw, in Christ, that others were to be the
beneficiaries of his sufferings.
This is something
that Paul could not have seen were he simply looking at visible circumstances. When
we encounter suffering our natural inclination, and understandably so, is to escape
the suffering, to alleviate it, to relieve the pressure. Our natural tendency is
to focus on the visible which is causing us pain.
But Paul says, “Hold
on here, there is more to our suffering than meets the natural eye. We are suffering
so that we may comfort others with the comfort that we will receive from God.
All that is happening is happening for the “comfort and salvation” of others.
Not only this,
but Paul also writes that we are experiencing “the sufferings of Christ,” and
that these are “ours in abundance.” In other words, Christ calls us into the “koinonia
of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10; Colossians 1:24). This is a mystical
mystery in our union with Christ, a mystical mystery in the Body of Christ;
this is an element of seeing the invisible, of looking beyond sufferings which
are temporal to the suffering of the Lamb who is eternal and whose sufferings bear
eternal fruit to the glory of the Father.
“We had the
sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but
in God who raises the dead.”
Paul sees beyond
the visible, beyond his feelings, beyond the sense that the sentence of death is
upon him, that he was a man facing execution (the visible includes our feelings
and our natural thoughts, which is to say that our feelings are unreliable as
is our “natural” mind). Into the invisible he “sees” that they had the sentence
of death “within themselves” so that they would not trust in themselves, but in
God who raises the dead. All self-sufficiently was put to death so that total
surrender to Christ and total reliance on Christ might become their way of
life. “Not I but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Perhaps we ought
to stop and point out that Paul does not deny the reality of the visible, he
does not deny affliction and suffering, he does not deny the experience of
having the sentence of death; to do so would be to deny the sufferings of
Christ. We do not deny the pain of suffering, the agony of despair, the
seeming uncertainty of this life; rather in the midst of these things we look
beyond the visible into the invisible and we see Jesus Christ, we see the Lamb,
we see the higher purposes of God being worked out in our lives and the lives
of others – we see the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ.
Make no mistake,
this is not positive thinking, it is not positive confession, it
is not blaming the devil for suffering (though we do not deny spiritual
warfare), it is to enter into the sufferings of Christ on behalf of others.
Paul could write
2 Corinthians 1:1 – 11 because he was not looking at the things that are seen
but at the things that are not seen, he was not basing his life and thoughts
and feelings and actions on the temporal, but on the eternal.
What about us?
