Exhortation to Athanasius Presbytery (CREC)

One of the exhortations that ministers really need to hear from time to time is the exhortation not to lose heart. The reason they are tempted to lose heart is that the blindness and adamantine stupidity of sin simply seems invincible. What are we to do when the assigned task is to preach to hearts that are granite cold? This could happen when appealing to unbelievers outside the covenant in evangelistic work, or it could also happen with professing covenant members who have as much a veil over their hearts as any wizened Pharisee ever did.

With this in mind, it is striking that in the midst of some of the most unvarnished descriptions of the obduracy of unbelief in the Bible, we find Paul saying that because of a particular kind of hope we have, we are very bold (2 Cor. 3:12). We find him saying that, having “this ministry,” we do not lose heart (2 Cor. 4:1), and repeating this again — we do not lose heart (2 Cor. 4:16). The odd thing is that this encouraging exhortation is found in the middle of what can only be called a pretty hard knuckled assessment of the human condition.

This whole section is an explanation of how to reach people whose minds and hearts were blinded by the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4). The reason we are not to lose heart in this mission is because this mission is absolutely impossible. Cheer up — things are far worse than we thought.

The problem is corrected by an act of creation, one that can only be compared to God speaking light out of darkness in His first great creative act. “For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). But what is involved prior to that? What is involved in what might be called the ministry of pre-creation? What are we to be doing before God speaks that word?

This is why we need to understand the nature of the darkness that God’s light shines in. We are talking about light and glory. What is going on here? Paul’s argument here is tightly woven, so we must pay close attention.

The old covenant was a ministry of death, but even it came with glory (2 Cor. 3:7-10). Because that glory was transient and fleeting, Moses put a veil over his face so that the people would not see the glory departing (2 Cor. 3:13). Watch this veil carefully because it moves. We know it is a moving veil, not a series of different veils because Paul says at one point that it is the very same veil (2 Cor. 3:14).

Moses put a veil over his face, and Paul argues that this action veiled more than just his face. He says the minds of the Jews were hardened (veiled), and in the next verse he says that their hearts were veiled (2 Cor. 3:15).

Now when someone turns to the Lord, the veil is removed (2 Cor. 3:16). But follow the analogy out. When Moses is veiled, the people looking at Moses are also veiled. When a man is converted to Christ, he comes to behold Christ. When this happens, the worshipper has an unveiled face (because it was removed, as v. 16 says), and Christ has an unveiled face (because His glory is not transient). He never veiled His face the way Moses needed to. We are transformed from one degree of glory to another because we are looking at the (unveiled) glory of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). In our approach to God, for those truly regenerate, we are privileged to know the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).

In a sense, however, there are two hooks we must unfasten when we labor to remove the veil. The face of Christ is unveiled in the gospel, but for those who are perishing, that gospel is veiled (2 Cor. 4:3). The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see this everlasting glory

What we are after in our ministries, then, if we want this to be an encouragement to us, is not to strive in the first instance for a ministry that is high, low, or middle. We ought not to strive for preaching that is long, short, or middling. We ought not to strive for a liturgy that is plain, complicated, or non-Euclidean. What we must long for is a ministry that is unveiled, one that reveals the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Let me finish with the most recent thing I learned from my Dad, which was, as it happened, just last Saturday night. I was driving him home after our sabbath dinner, and he told me something he had just noticed in the book of Acts. He said that he had noticed that when Paul was converted on the Damascus road, he saw the glory of God (Acts 22:11). He was not disobedient to the heavenly vision — as he had been disobedient the first time he had seen God’s glory. He had earlier seen the glory of God reflected in the face of Stephen (Acts 7:55), and that time it had set him off in a murderous rage. This was the same man who wrote these words for us in 2 Corinthians. He knew what it was to hate glory from behind a veil, and to love it when it came for him the second time.

There are three things, then, for us to take away from this. First, we must worship the unveiled face of Jesus Christ, and proclaim Him with our own faces unveiled. Second, we must do it in a way that self-consciously invites the Spirit of God to take away the veil of stupor that we are frequently confronted with (2 Tim. 2:25). And last — because this is the nature of our ministry — we should be encouraged and not lose heart.