Exposition of 2 Corinthians 4:1-2

The church is so busy distracting itself with nonsense that we have forgotten the gospel.  Jesus told us in the Great Commission in Matthew 28 to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded.  The job of the church is to connect people to Him. That is why we proclaim God's Word.  Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. (Romans 10)

In 2 Corinthians 4:1-2 the Apostle Paul makes several statements about what he did and did not do with the gospel message.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. ² But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. ³ And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

Let’s consider the context of this passage for a minute.  A huge theme of this letter to the church at Corinth is the defense of Paul’s ministry.  He had been attacked, maligned, made fun of, and criticized.  False apostles and flashy, gifted preachers had confused the Corinthian church and convinced them to believe (it says in 11:4) in a different Jesus, a different spirit, and a different Gospel than what Paul preached to them.

In 4:1 Paul tells us that the ministry he has been given is from God and through God’s mercy. Because we have been given God’s great mercy, we have the strength to go on and not give up.  Starting in verse 2, Paul speaks of himself and his ministry in contrast to what these other false apostles and preachers have said and done. In this verse, Paul makes four statements that will challenge you to think about how we share God's truth - how we use the Word of God to connect people to Christ.

First of all, Paul says, “we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways.”

There are three significant words in this statement.  “Renounced” means literally to “Speak away”  - to state openly and clearly that something is not a part of your life.  It implies being open and transparent; confessing that which is hidden.

“Disgraceful” refers to those areas of life that we don’t want to talk about because we are too ashamed. It’s dark and dirty, and we don’t ever want it to see the light of day.

“Underhanded” is translated as “hidden” in the King James Version.  This word is the same Greek word from which we get the word “Cryptic.” It implies something hidden away deep inside you that you don’t want to let out.

Paul does not say specifically what these disgraceful and underhanded ways are, but from the context we see that this is about the ways that false teachers are handling the word of God.

It comes down to a matter of truth. If God's Word is true, then any time we mess with it, we are reducing the potential connection that people can make with the living God. This is why Paul spent a lot of time confronting false teachers. Anyone can stand up and talk about God and Jesus and sound sincere, but that doesn't matter. God's truth and the lies that we come up with are always at war.  As a pastor, one of my jobs is to confront false ideas using the truth of the Bible. Those false ideas are everywhere, in fact, they are right here among us because we are sinners who would rather hear false ideas than true ones. Let's go on:

Secondly, Paul says,  "we refuse to practice cunning" 

This statement could be literally translated as, “we don’t walk in trickery or craftiness.”  We don’t use methods that are deceitful.

Now, we don’t know exactly what kind of tricky and crafty methods these false apostles and preachers were using.  There are some hints in the letter, like in 2:17 where he says “we don’t peddle the word of God for profit.”  In 11:7-10 it seems that Paul was criticized for not asking for money from the Corinthians.  Putting these hints together, it looks like these false apostles were trained, gifted speakers who were eloquent and dynamic, but were teaching false doctrine and making good money doing it.  They were fakes.

There was a guy who desperately needed a job.  He heard there was an opening at the zoo, so he applied. It turns out that the zoo had lost their gorilla, and they asked him to wear a gorilla suit, jump around in the gorilla cage, and swing on the bars.  He wasn’t sure about it, but he needed the money.  He put on the suit, got into the cage and just sat there for a while.  After an hour or so, some kids came up to the cage and threw him some peanuts.  Now the guy loved peanuts, so he got up, started jumping and swinging around, and the crowd grew.  They kept on throwing peanuts, and he kept jumping and swinging till finally, he swung himself so hard that he flew out of the gorilla cage and landed with a thud on the floor of the lion cage next door.

He saw the lion pacing back and forth, looking at him with a hungry stare.  So he started yelling, “Help! I’m just a guy in this gorilla suit!  Get me out of here!”  Suddenly the lion pounced on him, pinned him to the ground, and said, “Would you shut up!  You’re going to get us both fired!”

I think many people see Christians as tricksters who are always trying to get a new angle on them.  The media certainly portrays Christians in that light whether they are or not.  That is why clear, open transparency is so vital to making those connections.

We don’t need gimmicks.  We don’t need to give away money and Ipads to get people to come to church.  We need God's truth demonstrated in regenerated, transparent lives.  We have the life and hope that a dying world desperately needs.  If we feel we need gimmicks and trickery to connect people to Christ, maybe we don’t even know Him ourselves!

If you buy a bag of apples, would you buy apples wrapped in black plastic?  If you bought a case of apples, wouldn’t you open the box and look through them to see if any were rotten?  Wouldn’t you rather see the fruit that you want to buy?   Making clear connections between lost people and the gospel demands that people can clearly see the fruit of your life.  There are no gimmicks, no trickery, no rotten, hidden fruit.  Just real, clearly seen fruit of a genuine relationship with Christ.

Third, we don't "tamper with God's word."

My paraphrase of this statement is “we don’t deceitfully twist the Word of God according to our selfish motivations.”  We’ve already seen that the false apostles did tamper with and twist the Word of God.  This statement is closely connected with the last one, “We don’t use deception.”  But in this statement, Paul is not talking just about crafty methods, but about actually taking God’s truth and twisting it for our own benefit: having our personal agenda for personal gain at the expense of God’s truth being clearly communicated.

One of the ways that people distort the Word of God is by taking things out of context.  I hope you have noticed that I have tried to help you understand the entire message of 2 Corinthians.  In understanding the Bible, it has been said, “Context is King.”  The Bible is an entire love story, from beginning to end, with one cohesive message, which is remarkable considering there are 66 books with many different human authors written over thousands of years in several different cultures and languages.

But many people today think the Bible is like a fortune cookie.  You crack it open and find some pithy saying that is supposed to be helpful to someone when they need a pick me up.  Don’t just try to find the verse that says what you are looking for.  Spend time with it.  Memorize the Word.  Let it soak in.  Read it to your kids morning, noon, and night.  If you are too busy to put God’s Word in your family’s life, you are too busy.  My prayer is that every home represented here today would be utterly immersed in the Word of God.

The fortune cookie Bible study method reminds me of a story I heard about a man who began to study the Bible.  His wife was thrilled because she had always wanted him to study the Bible.  He stopped studying the Bible after He found the verse he was looking for.  What he found was something he thought said that wives are to shut up and submit.  Context is King!

People (Christians especially) also distort the Word of God today by making it more friendly.  By making it easier to market – by taking the bite out of it so that people will like it better.   We were just talking about gimmicks.  Making the Scripture  “user-friendly,” or,  “politically correct” is a deception and a distortion.

In the classroom setting of one Peanuts comic strip, on the first day of the new school year, the students were told to write an essay about returning to class. Lucy wrote, "Vacations are nice, but it's good to get back to school. There is nothing more satisfying or challenging than education, and I look forward to a year of expanding knowledge."

Needless to say, the teacher was pleased with Lucy and complimented her fine essay. In the final frame, Lucy leans over and whispers to Charlie Brown, "After a while, you learn what sells."

God's truth seldom sells well. Jesus' saying that no one comes to the Father except through Him doesn’t sell.  Telling people that Hell is a reality doesn’t sell.  When we don’t tell the whole truth of the message of Christ because we want to be politically correct, we are liars.

The fourth statement of Paul in verse 2: “but by the open statement of the truth"

Literally this statement says “by the manifestation of the truth.” In other words, "Proclaiming the truth with absolute clarity."  So what happens when we set forth the truth plainly?  Look at the next phrase at the end of verse two: but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.

What does that mean?  Look back at 3:1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you?

Remember, Paul is defending his ministry.  He wants to remind the Corinthians that they know him.  They heard him preach, and they responded. But apparently some of the false apostles showed up with letters of recommendation or letters of introduction. 

The word “commend” in both places means, “to bring together.” To make an introduction; to make a connection. This fourth statement is a summary of the previous three expressed in a different, but positive way.  In proclaiming the truth with absolute clarity, we do the other three.  We renounce disgraceful and underhanded ways.  We don’t use cunning, and we don’t tamper with the Word of God.  So the final question here is why does that help make the connection between a lost person and Jesus Christ?

For this reason: the Bible says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. When we mess with it, twist it, jumble it up, people don't hear the Word of Christ, they hear something else. They just hear our opinion or our experience or they hear what some ear-tickling money grubbing preacher is telling them to sell something.

There have been times in my life when I have not proclaimed the whole Gospel.  I have said to people “God loves you.”  But I didn’t tell them, “You are in the same boat as everyone else, destined for destruction apart from the hope and the light and the glory of Christ.”  I told a lie.  I didn’t set forth the truth plainly.  I believed that my lie about God was more potent than God’s truth about Himself.  I missed the chance to make the connection.

Here’s the rest of the passage: ⁴ In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵ For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Only the full light of the Gospel of Jesus is going to cut through spiritual blindness, and that light from God’s Word is reflected out of our walk and our talk.  When people look at your life, what do they see? Even a better question is what would they hear from you?

There was a preacher who had befriended a brilliant lawyer and had invited him to his church.  The lawyer was an agnostic but eventually agreed to come.  He came and sat on the third row – the preacher was ecstatic until a young, mentally handicapped man came up the aisle and sat right next to the lawyer.

The preacher worried about what the lawyer would think, and worried more, when, during the invitation, as the audience stood and sang the song, the preacher saw this young, mentally handicapped man lean over and whisper something to the attorney, who soon left the building.  All week long the preacher debated and agonized over calling his friend and apologizing for whatever the young man had said or done, but he decided not to call.

The next Sunday the lawyer returned and as soon as the invitation was offered, he came forward and professed his faith in Christ. The preacher asked what it was that persuaded this brilliant agnostic to become a Christian.  The lawyer said, “It was last week.”  The young man who sat beside me asked, “Do you want to go to Heaven?”  I was so offended at the question that I said ‘no.’  And the young man said, “Well, go to hell then.”  The lawyer said, “I’ve been thinking about that all week and just couldn’t get it off my mind.”