[Audio of this message may be heard here. The manuscript is below. Note that the sermon was not preached from the manuscript, so there may be slight differences between the two.]
“Just Once Before I Die”
A Controlling Vision
2 Corinthians 4:1-6
1 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 only to those who are perishing. 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.
Everybody lives their lives on the basis of a controlling vision. A controlling vision is the spiritual, psychological, and mental grid through which you process and respond to reality. A controlling vision is whatever dominates your sight, your heart, your mind, your perceptions, and your worldview to such an extent that it drives your actions and virtually dictates what you will and will not do in the daily living of your lives.
For instance, I think I could make the case that personal pleasure is the controlling vision of large swathes of modern American culture. So, in ways subtle and explicit, conscious and unconscious, professed and denied, many people in America have their actions dictated and determined by an overall controlling vision that sees personal pleasure as the greatest and highest good and joy in life. So everything they do, whether they would admit this or not (whether they even know this or not!), is driven by this controlling vision.
Your controlling vision is your heart’s desire and passion. Your controlling vision is the last thought in your mind when you go to sleep and the first thought in your mind when you wake up. It might be a vision of massive personal wealth. It might be a vision of success and fame. It might be a vision of power. But whatever it is, you can count on this fact: it will drive and determine who you are and what you will be.
2 Corinthians 4:1-6 is just one of the many, many places where God’s Word reveals the controlling vision of the early church. And what was it? What was it that dictated the fellowship, worship, worldview, actions, speech, writings, and convictions of the early church. It was this: the glory of God in Christ.
God’s glory was the controlling vision of the early church, and if any church today is going to be able to claim with any legitimacy to be a New Testament church, God’s glory will simply have to become its controlling vision as well.
This is precisely why we have defined a New Testament church as “an authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God,” and this is why our depiction of this definition represents the glory of God as that upward action in which the entirety of the church’s mission and purpose rests.
If we are to become a New Testament church, we must become glory-driven. I believe this is precisely what Paul was saying of himself and the early church in 2 Corinthians 4:1-6.
I. We are to live and preach an honest gospel before God and the world. (vv.1-2)
So controlling is this vision of the glory of God that Paul adamantly asserts that the apostles will have nothing in their behavior that might potentially obscure, cover up, or in any way darken the glory of God.
1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways.
To act disgracefully or in underhanded ways is to cause others to be unable to see God’s glory. When we draw attention to ourselves by sinning instead of to God by magnifying His glory, we participate in the great tragedy of the modern world: blindness to the glory of God.
Furthermore, Paul continues in the latter half of verse 2 to say that their preaching and their sermons are pure and simple and true so that all may see the glorious truth about God in Christ:
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.
In other words, Paul is not concerned that people consider him smart. He is concerned that they consider God glorious.
He is not concerned that people consider him witty. He is concerned that people find God beautiful.
He is not concerned that people consider him effective. He is concerned that people consider God sovereign.
He is not concerned that people find him interesting. He is concerned that people find God holy.
He is not concerned that people find him engaging. He is concerned that people find God amazing.
Paul’s great concern is that his behavior and his speech magnify the glory of a gracious God. He has a view of God that is so glory-immersed that it will not suffer petty distractions that blight or blunt or obscure who God is.
Paul had seen the blinding glory on the road to Damascus. It was a glory that knocked him flat and that brought him home, and he would not rob the world of this all-controlling vision.
What about us as a church? What do our actions cause this community to say about God? How does our speech reflect on Him? How does our fellowship, our communion together, our worship, and our life together reflect on God?
When this community looks at us and studies us, are they drawn into a grand recognition that God is glorious, beautiful, powerful, holy, and majestic?
What if the awful and awesome reality of this truth could settle firmly and resolutely on our minds? What if we saw our jokes around the water cooler as saying something definitive about the glory of God? What if our whispered comments say just as much to those around us about God's glory - or at least our view of it - as our open hymn-singing does to those who sit by us in the pew? What if our children are daily forming their view of God's glory on the basis of their parents' actions? What if our lives are testimonies - good or bad - to the glory of God? What if the controlling vision of our lives inevitably shapes the controlling vision of those who observe and are influenced by us?
Surely this is why Paul insists that he lives an open and honest life and preaches a simple and honest gospel before God and the watching world.
We are to live an honest gospel before the world. We are to preach an honest gospel before the world.
His glory, not our advancement, should serve as the controlling vision for our lives as individuals and as a church.
II. The lost are blind to the beauty of the glory of God in Christ. (vv.3-4)
There are those who cannot see the glory of God, Paul tells us. They are the lost, those who are outside of Christ. Hear the word of God:
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 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.
The gospel “is veiled only to those who are perishing.” Why? Because somebody has blinded them. Who? “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.”
And who is the “god of this world.” Let us remember that in Ephesians 2:2 Satan is called “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience." He blinds the world to the reality of the glory of God.
And what is the price of their blinding? What can they not see? Paul tells us that they are blinded “to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.”
What a great, grave, and deep tragedy it is to be lost! The lost cannot see the glory of Christ who reflects the glory of God.
Let us remember when we fail to have God’s glory as the controlling vision of our lives that the lost are those who cannot see the glory. Those who are saved can see it because they had to see it to be saved! They can see it against all odds and over all obstacles.
When Acts shows us our brother Stephen being stoned to death by the offended Jews, we see him look into Heaven, see the Lord Jesus, and become so overwhelmed with this vision of glory that he calls on those who are stoning him to likewise look and see the glory. That's how powerful a vision of the glory of God is for God's people!
When the slave trader John Newton came to know Jesus Christ he renounced his sordid past and clung instead to the sight-giving glory of God that was revealed supremely in the person and work of Jesus Christ. John Newton most famously described the power of the glorious gospel of Christ in the immortal words of his beloved hymn, “Amazing Grace”:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
But the lost will not look upon the glory of God because their hearts are darkened by their own sinfulness and rebellion.
Oh dear brothers and sisters, how tragic would it be to be uninterested in seeing the glory of God?
III. We are conduits of the glory of God in Christ. (vv.5-6)
The conclusion is obvious enough: if the world is blind to the glory of God in Christ, and if the people of God have beheld His glory, then it is our joy and responsibility to serve as conduits of the glory of God in Christ. If the glory of God is manifestly incarnated in His Son Jesus, and if Jesus resides in His people to such an amazing extent that the church is called “the body of Christ,” then we should be conduits of God’s glory. We should reflect God’s glory.
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.
What an amazing image God’s Word gives us! He likens the presence of the glory of God in our hearts to the presence of light in the dark void into which God spoke creation.
Paul reminds us that God said, “Let light shine out of darkness.”
He is taking us back to Genesis, back to the beginning, back to creation itself.
Think of the black, inky, lifeless darkness in the beginning. There was nothing there. There was only a void, an absence, a nothingness. God creates "ex nihilo," from nothing.
And then God in His infinite holiness and wisdom speaks into this void. And God says, “Let there be light!” And when God speaks it, light explodes in resplendent beauty and in immeasurable glory.
There was no light…and then, through the creative word of God, there is light and life and the universe comes into being!
So too our hearts were dark and dead in sin. There was no life there. Our hearts were oceans of death and rebellion. And into that void God spoke life through the gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Our hearts were dead, and God said, “Live!”
Our hearts were dark, and God said, “Light!”
And into our hearts God spoke “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
The 7th century Syriac church father, Sahdona, captured this reality well:
“We should…worship and glorify him who raised our dust to such state, recounting ceaselessly the holiness of him who mingled our spirit with his Spirit and mixed into our bodies the gift of his grace, causing the fire of his Holy Spirit to burst into flame in us. For ‘he has shone out in our hearts’ which had been submerged in darkness.”1
I ask you, if our hearts are to contain and reflect the glory of God in the same way that the universe reflects the glory of God, can it not be said that we are necessarily and truly to reflect the amazing and life-changing glory of God?
On Tuesday night, my father and I had the unique privilege of attending a dinner in honor of John Rucyahana, the Anglican bishop of Rwanda. I did not know what the Bishop would tell us, but we were honored to be invited and we went with expectant hearts.
Bishop Rucyahana is a man small in stature, but when he stood to speak at that dinner, all eyes and ears and hearts were transfixed by what he said.
He told of spending thirty years in exile in Uganda. Then he told of the horrible massacre and genocide in the country of Rwanda in the mid-1990’s. In that tragedy, 1,000,000 people were killed in 100 days. 1,000,000 people in 100 days! The Bishop shared with us that they are still finding mass graves of murdered Rwandans to this day.
Immediately following the genocide, the Bishop was given the opportunity to go to Rwanda. He found himself in a van with 10 Christian pastors. The van rode through the streets of that war-torn land. The bodies lined the streets and, in some places, were piled high in grotesque piles. They saw countless homeless children whose parents and siblings had been macheted to death. People whose limbs had been cut off. Women and girls who had experienced untold horrors. Mothers who had been forced to set their own children on fire. Mutilations. Murders. Homes destroyed. Communities burned to the ground. Everywhere: death, death, death.
As the van worked through this nightmarish landscape, the Bishop and the other pastors were horrified by the terrible vision. They had seen a vision of shocking terror. They had seen a vision of evil. And the vision was so horrific that four of the ten pastors in that van had to be hospitalized for a time for trauma.
How does one overcome such a vision of wickedness? How does one overcome this vision of pure, shocking, evil?
The Bishop looked around him. He saw all of it. He took in this vision of terror. And yet that vision found no root in John Rucyahana’s heart. Why? Because another vision had already taken root there. And this vision was the antithesis of what the pastors beheld on those streets. A vision of beauty dwelled in the Bishop’s heart. He was looking at a vision of terror, but he had embraced a vision of the glory of God. He was seeing the bodies on the streets, but he had already seen the body on the cross.
You see, Bishop Rucyahana was faced with competing visions, but there was no doubting which vision would control him. He knew that the darkness of the vision of death around him could not withstand and could not overshadow the bright light of the vision of the glory of God in Christ.
And so the Bishop went to work. For years now he has been telling people who watched their families die horrible deaths that the glory of God can drive out the spirit of fear, bitterness, and hatred that has gripped so many of their hearts. He has been telling people that the glory of God in Christ is more powerful than anger. He has been telling people that the glory of God of Christ is more powerful than the desire for vengeance.
He told us at that dinner that people are catching a vision for who God is in Christ and for how Christ Jesus can change their lives. And he told us that the gospel of Christ is transforming lives. Victims are forgiving those who killed their families. Those who committed these deeds are finding grace and forgiveness and mercy. Communities are being rebuilt and the mourning is giving way to joy.
Bishop Rucyahan explained to Prison Fellowship what was happening in his heart: "Without God, I would hate such killers with all of my heart, but with God, I can truly say that I love them. We cannot wait until the pain is over. We must forgive now, like Jesus did while He was on the cross."
Do you see what has happened? Rucyahana is a conduit for the glory of God in Christ. He is bearing witness in the midst of a rebuilding and still-hurting nation to the glory of God in Christ. He has embraced it as a controlling vision and he is calling others to do the same. And you cannot help but be impacted by a man who has a vision of and for God's glory! Afterward, I watched my dad struggle to speak to the Bishop, so overwhelmed was he with the beauty of what we had heard. I embraced the Bishop and told him that I considered it the singular honor of my life to meet him. Why? Because he is great? No. Becuase it is rare indeed to be in the presence of a man who's controlling vision and passion is the glory of God in Christ!
Some of you are going through difficult times. Some of you keep looking for ways out of the nightmare. Can I suggest to you that your controlling vision will be that reality that will either keep you mired in the valley where you are or will cause you to see it for what it is: a dark valley that can be illuminated by the bright light of the glory of God? Can I suggest to you that as the glory of God illuminates your own path – even in and through dark valleys – you will increasingly become a conduit through which the dark paths of others will be illuminated? It is true! It is true!
Friends, if we have seen Christ, we have seen the glory!
If we have seen Him preaching the Kingdom, we have seen the glory!
If we have seen Him healing the sick, we have seen the glory!
If we have seen Him doing the will of His Father, we have seen the glory!
If we have seen His cross, we have seen the glory!
If we have seen the empty tomb, we have seen the glory!
If we have seen Him ascending into Heaven, we have seen the glory!
If we have seen Him promise to return again, we have seen the glory!
If we are the church, we have seen the glory!
And if we have seen and beheld the glory, let us allow God in Christ working through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to shine that glory to the whole world!
1. Gerald Bray, ed., 1-2 Corinthians. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, vol. New Testament VII (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), p.231.