Seeing the Invisible (7)

 

 

“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?