Treasure in Clay Jars

I want us to turn our attention to 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 7 for our meditation this morning: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” When you look at 1 and 2 Corinthians, Paul wrote more to this church than to others like Philippi, Thessalonica, or Colossae. They received more because they had more problems. The first letter, broadly, was about conflict inside the church. A cursory reading of 1 Corinthians shows the struggle from the very first chapter—a party for Paul, a party for Cephas, a party for Apollos, all in one church and unable to get along.

Second Corinthians is different. Here the conflict is with the apostle himself. The church cannot comprehend what is going on with their man of God. If the first letter dealt with the fruit—the symptoms of comparison, boasting, and division, the things that come out of a bad tree—the second letter goes to the root. And the root issue is a gospel issue. When people compete and cannot get along, Paul turns them back to the gospel and asks, in effect, what have you actually signed up for? That is 2 Corinthians: one of the most passionate, most difficult, and deeply pastoral of Paul’s letters, yet often neglected, both in academia and in the church. We hardly hear sermons from it, because it feels depressing—chapter four has a list of suffering, chapter six has a list of suffering, chapter eleven has an extended list of suffering. We would rather turn to some Old Testament narrative and be encouraged. But I invite you to look at the crux of the whole letter, which is here in chapter four, verse seven.

The major issue in this letter is that the apostle Paul is battered and bruised. You are looking at a man chipped and cracked from the outside. His letters are powerful, but his bodily presence is unimpressive. There is confusion in the church and complaints about his apostolic ministry. Is he spiritual? Is Christ really in him? Imagine that—he is the very one God used to bring them to the saving knowledge of Christ, yet after a few months and years they are doubting whether he is a man of God at all. In the ancient world, illness and suffering were regularly regarded as signs of divine displeasure. If you went through suffering, failure, or loss of a job, people were quick to say there must be some divine displeasure—go offer a sacrifice, go and worship, give some money, get things right. These same believers had once looked at the cross—which the world calls failure—and said, no, there is power here, there is wisdom here. They had a different attitude toward suffering and toward Jesus on the cross. Yet a few months later they look at Paul’s suffering and say, we are not sure you are a man of God. Their perspective had changed; they had been shaped by the spirit of the culture around them.

Paul did not cover any of this up. Many of us hide our failures—the lost job, the entrance exam we did not crack—and tell no one. Paul was open: yes, this is what I am going through, I am suffering in my body, I planned to come to you but my travel plans fell through. In this man, worldly wisdom, strength, honor, power, and success are all missing. And right there we come to the heart of his response in chapter four, verse seven. I want to read it in Eugene Peterson’s rendering in The Message: “If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives.” Unadorned. Unimpressive. From this verse I want to reflect on three things.

The first lesson is that we must have a correct understanding of the divine call. Otherwise, somewhere along the way, we will either pass wrong judgments on others or struggle ourselves, asking why we are going through such things. To grasp this, look for a moment at the culture of Corinth—which, honestly, is not so different from a city like Bangalore. Most of the people in Corinth were freedmen: men and women who had once been slaves under oppression but had either been granted or had purchased their freedom. They carried a story of liberation—we were in bondage, we had a master, but now we are free—and they used their skills to gain money. The Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca records a proverbial saying about the wealthy of the first century: of a rich man it was said, “he had the bank account of a freedman.” That was their testimony: my grandfather struggled, my father struggled, but now God has helped me, God has given me money, God has given me success. They had once been slaves and were now set free, and they advanced through sheer hard work—with vigor, venture, and aggression they converted the skills they learned as slaves into financial gain, accumulating wealth because they wanted to make a statement before others.

One line captures it: in Corinth, perhaps more than in any other city of the first century, social ascent was the goal. Grandfather lived small; I have a three-bedroom house, now five bedrooms—upward, always upward. Bigger, brighter, faster. That was the air of Corinth, and it had drifted into the church. So when they looked at Paul and saw no eloquence, no beauty, no power, they concluded he was a failure and asked, where is Christ in you? Listen to their specific complaints. In chapter one, verse seventeen, they say he cannot even make his travel plans happen—some apostle. In chapter two, verse seventeen, they question his preaching, as if he changes his message to suit the situation: one sermon in Jerusalem, another here—an attack on his integrity. In chapter three, verse one, they ask for letters of recommendation. Once they had seen the beauty of the cross and asked for nothing; now they want to know which Bible college he attended, who gave him credentials, which organization he belongs to.

It continues. In chapter ten, verse ten, Paul admits some say his letters are weighty but in person he is unimpressive—and he answers, yes, that is exactly what I am. In chapter eleven, verses seven through eleven, he did not accept money from Corinth, and some said the reason he refused was that he had no real apostolic authority. In chapter twelve, verse one, they say he has no visions and revelations, while other ministers—the ones Paul ironically calls “super-apostles”—have visions, grandeur, and blessing; look at them and you feel like following Christ, but look at Paul and you do not. In chapter twelve, verse twelve, they say he lacks the signs of an apostle; in verse sixteen, they accuse him of taking financial advantage. On every side he is pressed down, shaken, and bruised, wasting away with nothing to defend himself externally. And it is precisely there that verse seven comes: “But we have this treasure.”

What had Paul been saying just before this? From chapter three, verse seven, through chapter four, verse six, he speaks of the glory of the gospel; and immediately after, from verse eight to eighteen, he speaks of the power of the gospel. Glory on one side, power on the other—and right in between, this single verse. He had just said that he is a minister of a new covenant more glorious than the old, that we have turned to Christ so that the veil is removed (chapter three, verse sixteen), that we have communion with Christ. You would expect such a man to be successful in every way—that is the whole struggle. Ask Paul who is inside him, and he answers from chapter four: Jesus, the image of God (verse four); Jesus, not merely a miracle-worker or a guru, but Lord (verse five); Jesus, on whose face the knowledge of God’s glory is displayed, and whom our hearts now host (verse six).

Then it begins: “But we have this treasure.” People ask whom you follow, and you say, Jesus—the Lord of lords, the King of kings, the image of God. Yet when they come near you, they do not see that. The verse opens with a “but.” There is a contrast. We have every spiritual experience—we pray, we fast, Jesus has touched us, Jesus lives within us—but seen from the outside we are jars of clay. What do these jars represent? Something vulnerable, open to hurt, weak, not self-sufficient; fragile, easily broken, unimpressive. Earthen vessels are both weak and inferior, fragile and expendable. And here is the point: the divine call upon our lives is not to turn us into golden jars. Many preach as though it were, but the call is to carry Christ—that is the gospel.

What is the greatest thing that has ever happened to you and to me? Not that I got a job. Not even that I was healed of cancer. The greatest thing is that I was heading to hell, but because of his sacrifice I am reconciled to God—saved, adopted, redeemed. People may come near and say, brother, I don’t see anything; you claim to be reconciled and bought with a price and adopted into his family, but when I look at you, at your home, at your children, I don’t see that God is with you. Take courage today. Even when your external man is wasting away, the treasure remains inside you. Paul calls it a jar of clay in verse seven; “our body” in verse ten; “our mortal flesh” in verse eleven. The gospel is not about beautifying the externals—the body, the mortal flesh—it is about a treasure within. When he says in verse sixteen that outwardly we are wasting away, he means our physical life, what people can see, our bank balance, our worldly success—all of it shrinking and fading.

Listen carefully, because this is true of every one of us. All of Adam’s descendants are wasting away, not Paul alone. It is not obvious when we are young, when we can play badminton or football, go to the gym and lift. No one looks at us then and says, you are wasting away. But we are. With diet plans, exercise, and supplements we can improve the quality of life, reduce the risk of disease, and slow some effects of aging—but the death rate remains one hundred percent. Some seventy billion cells die in the average adult every day; when we are young the body replaces them, but after a certain age the balance is gone. Our skin wrinkles, our bones weaken, our eyes dim. Paul calls it wasting away, and for him it was intensified by persecution—not natural decay alone, but the toll of being out there in ministry, exposed to many troubles. Yet, he says, under the skin we are being renewed day by day; a moral transformation is happening because of our communion with Jesus.

God wants to speak to some of you specifically today. If disease is wearing you down, yes, we may look to God and pray, and I believe Jesus can heal—but in some situations he allows us to pass through pain and momentary affliction. Even when the body is wasting away with sickness or any other challenge, know that under the skin the salvation power, the resurrection power, the gospel power is at work in us, so that when people come near they do not see pomp and glory but the glory of Christ working within. Affliction can come in spite of your devotion and because of your devotion—both ways—and that pressure within is the gospel power working in us.

The second lesson is the divine wisdom. The call is not to make us beautiful but to prepare us to host this treasure—and to carry it we need divine wisdom. Twice Paul says, “we do not lose heart” (chapter four, verse one, and verse sixteen). That stops me. Here is one man standing against a whole church, against the culture, against the prevailing worldview—they are all on one side, he is cornered—and he says, we do not lose heart. What is the secret? Paul was captivated by the divine wisdom revealed in Christ. In chapter four, verse four, he speaks of “the god of this age,” a small-letter god, who blinds the minds of unbelievers so they will not look at Christ, the image of God, and worship him. But in verse six he speaks of the Creator, the true and living God, who said at creation, “Let light shine out of darkness” (Genesis 1:3), and who has shone that light in our hearts so that now we look at Jesus and truly see him.

Without divine wisdom, look at Jesus and what do you see? As Paul says in chapter five, verse sixteen, “from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view; though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.” From a worldly point of view you see a man from Nazareth, Joseph’s son, the carpenter’s son—weak, tired, sitting down. You look at the cross and hear him crying out, and you ask, how can he be God? People called him a Samaritan, demon-possessed; can anything good come from Nazareth? But when the light shines in our hearts, we look at the same cross and say: this is no mere man; this is God dying on my behalf; this is the Son of God. That is a miracle of divine wisdom enlightening the heart.

And this divine wisdom is paradoxical—unexpected, counterintuitive, upside down, against all natural anticipation. The incarnation itself is divine wisdom: God in human flesh. The cross is paradox: I see strength there, the world sees weakness; I see wisdom there, the world sees foolishness. With that understanding Paul faces his sufferings and says, we do not lose heart, because he sees himself as part of a vast storyline. It began with Abraham—a seventy-five-year-old pagan from Ur who could not even summon the courage to protect his own wife. Would such a man become the father of nations? Yes—there is divine wisdom. Again and again in the Old Testament God breaks the conventions. The firstborn was reckoned powerful, yet God repeatedly chooses the younger: Abel rather than Cain, Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than Esau. Among Jacob’s twelve sons it is the fourth, Judah, and the eleventh, Joseph, who receive divine favor. At the end of Genesis (chapter 48, verses 13 to 19) Ephraim receives Jacob’s blessing ahead of his older brother Manasseh. Everywhere a different wisdom is at work.

Look at Exodus: the weak Moses, who begs God to send someone else, is the one chosen to lead. In Numbers it is the ridiculous speech of a donkey through which God finally gets Balaam’s attention. In Deuteronomy chapter seven, God tells Israel: I did not choose you because you were great, but because you were few. In Joshua it is a woman, and a prostitute at that—Rahab—who proves the decisive factor in the conquest of Jericho, not the strong. In Judges it is Gideon, unexpected again. In Ruth it is a poor, husbandless, foreign woman who becomes the one God uses. Through all of Scripture God’s wisdom is hard to comprehend; you need the Spirit’s work to see what God is doing. So Paul says, in effect: you look at me as you might have looked at Abraham, at Moses, at David—unexpected, unlikely—but God is at work.

I can testify to this myself. My family, relatives, and friends say, Joe is preaching? He was never like this—shy, timid, fearful, unwilling to face anyone; fine one-on-one, but not before a crowd. Yet today there is grace, there is power. When we are weak, he proves himself strong in our lives—that is his wisdom. Look at the Gospels: Jesus does not go to the rabbis, Pharisees, Sadducees, or aristocrats to build his team. He chooses twelve—four fishermen, a zealot, a tax collector, all of them nobodies. Look at that team and say, these are the people who will turn the world upside down and make it new—and it happened, because it was divine wisdom. The wisdom revealed on the cross is still at work in your life. If you sit here weak today, or full of questions, God has invited you into that story, a divine paradox. He will use you in the midst of your troubles. Even when you are sick in body, you may lay your weak hand on the sick and pray, and God will work. In a world chasing gold, God is still looking for clay. The call is not to make us the treasure—he is the treasure; I am only the jar—but to understand his wisdom, which redefines power and success: on the cross, self-giving, sacrificial love is the true power and the true wisdom.

The third and last lesson is the divine purpose. Paul is clinging on, hanging in there. Ask him whether he feels like giving up, and he says, no, I will not lose heart—because I have the treasure, because I am part of God’s wisdom, and because there is a divine purpose. To grasp it, look at that word “treasure.” What is the treasure Paul speaks of? At least three answers are possible. It could be Jesus himself—spoken of in verse four as the image of God, in verse five as Lord, in verse six as the one who reveals the knowledge of God’s glory. It could be the gospel, named in verse four. Or, because of the parallel language, it could be the ministry: in verse one Paul says, “we have this ministry,” and in verse seven, “we have this treasure.” For all of us who serve, and especially those who proclaim the word, know this: it is by mercy that God has called us and placed this treasure within us—not because of our parents, our eloquence, our stature, or our personality. By sheer mercy the new-covenant ministry has been entrusted to us.

Paul’s point is that God does this deliberately. When people see my family, my house, whatever I have, they should not be drawn to me—they should look only at the treasure. The divine call is a resurrection call, a radical call; the divine wisdom is a paradoxical wisdom; and the divine purpose is that no one be attracted to us. The treasure is placed in jars of clay on purpose, so that people will not look at the jar and say, how splendid. The more the cracks, the more the treasure is seen. There was a man named Sir Oliver Franks, British ambassador to the United States just after the Second World War, during the Cold War. He passed sensitive information from Washington back to Britain, and he was careful about how he did it. For ordinary matters he used the telephone; for more sensitive matters, the diplomatic bag. But the most sensitive information of all he would not entrust to the phone or the diplomatic bag—he would place it in a plain, ordinary envelope and send it. Why? Because it was hidden in plain sight. A diplomatic bag announces that something important is inside; an ordinary envelope draws no attention at all.

A clay jar is ordinary and unassuming, unlikely to attract notice—and that is precisely the divine purpose in making some of us weak, vulnerable, and unimpressive: so that people will be drawn not to us but to the One within us. Some of you are like that ordinary envelope. No one looks and says, what an impressive person—but they sense the treasure, and they say, yes, that is the man, that is the woman of God. If you are seated here today broken and discouraged, full of questions—perhaps a loved one has died an untimely death you still cannot comprehend, perhaps it is finances or health, and everything around you feels shaky—I want you to believe there is a purpose in it. Even when you feel that God is not working, he never stops working; he is still writing his letter through you. The treasure is carried in ordinary clay jars. We are cracked pots, but the light shines through the cracks.