2019.03.07 Hopewell @Home ▫ 2 Corinthians 4:8-15

Read 2 Corinthians 4:8-15

Questions for Littles: What four things have happened to the apostle and his companions in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9? What four accompanying results have not ended up happening? What are they carrying about (2 Corinthians 4:10)? How often? For what reason—what does this display in them? What are they currently doing (2 Corinthians 4:11a)? But what is always happening to them? What does this display in their mortal flesh (verse 11b, cf. 2 Corinthians 1:8-10)? In whom else, then, does the life of Jesus operate (2 Corinthians 4:12)? Why do the apostle and his companions speak (2 Corinthians 4:13)? Who has been raised (2 Corinthians 4:14a)? Who will be raised (verse 14b)? With whom (verse 14c)? What spreads through each one for whom this life and this resurrection and this future are true 
(2 Corinthians 4:15)? What does this cause to abound? Unto what end is all of this thanksgiving?

In this week’s Epistle reading, we learn why it is so important that the “victorious Christian life” be lived in the midst of much trouble and suffering: precisely because it is gaining the victory.

When the victory is gained in this manner, it is obvious that the excellence of the power is of God and not of us (2 Corinthians 4:7). When the victory is gained by those who are being displayed as under a death sentence (cf. 1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 2 Corinthians 1:8-10), it is obvious that the life that is in them is not actually from them but from someone else (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). When the victory is gained by those who are being displayed as under a death sentence, it is obvious that the life that comes through them to others is not actually from them but from someone else (2 Corinthians 4:12). And when the victory is gained not by escaping death but by passing through it and conquering it, it is obvious that the unendable life that results comes from the same place as Jesus’s own resurrection.

Well, when we receive something that is not at all from ourselves but entirely from Someone else, this produces not just thanksgiving but abounding thanksgiving (2 Corinthians 4:15). And when thanksgiving to God abounds in this fashion, this further glorifies God! This is the joy of the believer—to bring glory to the God who has given him life out of death in Jesus Christ!!

What troubles and inabilities currently complicate your life? If you are a Christian, then Whose life is the Lord especially displaying in you in these particular situations? If you are not, then why should you expect ultimately to fail? What is the right response of seeing that Jesus’s life is our only life and power?

Suggested songs: ARP66A “O All the Earth” or TPH265 “In Christ Alone”