Speaking out!
What motivates a person to speak out regardless of the personal
consequences? This is a question that Paul raises twice in the space
of too chapters. It is also one that we all ask from time to time. Why
preach the gospel if it leads to ridicule, personal deprivation and
hostility? For Paul it was not a matter of feeling that he was the
best qualified or had superior credentials. It was, rather, a question
of conviction--a conviction that compelled him to speak out, even when
it was not to his advantage to do so. What was this conviction? It was
the certainty that he who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will
also raise us with Jesus (v. 14). [2]
Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature
is being renewed day by day.
The outward person is that aspect of the self that is wasting away.
This involves more than the body. It is the progressive weakening of
our natural faculties, emotional vitality and physical stamina. In one
sense all human beings are in the process of wasting away. We begin to
die as soon as we are born. The demands of the ministry merely
exacerbate this process. Henry Martyn once said, "If I am going to
burn out, let me burn out for God." The present tense denotes an
ongoing process--we are in the process of wasting away. The passive
suggests the inevitability of this process. The progressive weakening
of our physical powers is a foregone conclusion.
The inward person, on the other hand, is being renewed day by
day. Day by day accurately renders the Greek idiom hemera
kai hemera. The idea is of a progressive renewal that matches step for
step the process of physical decline. The Greek verb for renew
means "to make new again" (ana + kainoo). Paul appears
to have coined the compound to express this developing spiritual
reality. The deposit of the Spirit within us sets in motion a
regenerative overhaul of the self that culminates in complete
transformation at Christ's return (1:22; 5:5). [3]
Consider going with
theme of spiritual renewal in the midst of worldly and physical
stresses. Alexander von Humboldt tells of a tree in South
America called the cow-tree. It grows on the barren flank of a rock
that its roots are scarcely able to penetrate. To the eye it appears
dead and dried, but when the trunk is pierced there flows from it a
sweet and nourishing milk. This is not unlike the Christian, who
outwardly may appear to be withering and dying but within possesses a
living sap that is welling up to eternal life. [4]
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we
have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens. 2 Cor 5:1
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[1] quoted from http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/IVP-NT/2Cor/Faith-Prompts-Outspokenness
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[4] ibid
