Canter Bridge

The apostle Paul’s anguished struggle for reality in his relationship with the Corinthian believers probably explains the precision he seeks in this letter. Theirs may well have been one of those uneasy friendships where everything that can go wrong does. In a crazy-making ecosystem like this, the slightest ambiguity takes a direction that is the opposite of what is intended.

In ordinary life, the word ‘dysfunctional’ comes without effort to our lips. It probably applies here.

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Corinthians 4:5–7 NIV11)

Paul is at pains to explain that his role with the Corinthian church is essential but not central. It is necessary, but not in itself redemptive. In slightly more practical terms, even if Paul’s reputation among them can be rehabilitated, he cannot do that much for them.

Precision.

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord …

This is the beginning of a sentence, the essence of a declaration. It is not the entirety of either. It is important, if we would understand the apostle, to track the minutely angled path of the surgeon’s knife.

Paul and his apostolic companions are only worthwhile to the Corinthians to the degree that they present to them ‘Jesus Christ as Lord’. To confuse the matter, to blur these particular lines, would be a fateful and even final mistake. ‘Jesus Christ as Lord’, a startling distillation of a message that has its irreducible complexities, is a daring compression of that message into the densest imaginable core.

There is nothing about Paul or his colleagues that can do for the Corinthians what ‘Jesus Christ as Lord’ can accomplish. Confusion on this point comes very close to total loss, no matter how frequently and how naively Christian practitioners through the ages allow our personalities and tactics to become an essential part of the redemptive package.

Yet Paul’s sentence does not end here. It runs on, in a kind of concessive afterword: ‘… and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake’. Probably these words are not the object of ‘we preach’, as a strict reading of the grammar would imply. It seems more likely that Paul is conceding, although paradoxically with a kind of insistence, that ‘Jesus Christ as Lord’ has not arrived and perhaps cannot arrive as a disembodied message. Rather, the presence and activity of Paul’s band are necessary for the message to implant itself and take a growing form in the life of the Corinthian community. Even if the proclamation of ‘Jesus Christ as Lord’ is everything, he and his companions are not nothing.

Corroboration of this understanding may come just a bit later when with deeply resonant metaphor Paul allows that …

… we have this treasure in jars of clay to show the the surpassing power is from God and not from us.

Once again, the point is not exactly a function of either-or logic. Paul’s point is not Jesus or us, and probably not a facile ‘it’s not about us’ sloganeering.

It is rather a precise distinction between the transformative potency of ‘Jesus as Lord’ or ‘this treasure’ over against the necessary flesh-and-blood transmission of this message by people who get things wrong.

It is about us, who would claim some genetic connectivity with these earliest missioners. But it’s not.

That might sound like confusion. In truth, it is apostolic precision of an uncommon sort.