Prayer of Thanksgiving: Thank God that he sent Jesus to live a perfect life for us and died the death that we should have.

Prayer of Supplication: Ask God to increase your faith and enliven your spirit to do good works

.Bible reading and commentary:

Read: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18

The Christian life is paradoxical because it is built on the ultimate paradox, the death of Christ, where perfect divinity and beauty were horribly killed. Through that tragedy, life for sinners blossomed. We are comforted because of his affliction (2 Cor. 1:3-11), accepted because of his rejection. We live because he died. When we live life in light of the gospel, we begin to understand Paul’s paradoxical logic.

In verse 7 Paul pictures our bodies as ‘jars of clay’, an image of fragility. But God commits the stewardship of Jesus’ gospel to such ordinary people as ourselves. We are not considered wise by human standards, we are not influential or important as the world sees it (1 Cor. 1:26-27).

Verses 8-10 say that we are afflicted in all kinds of ways. We are sometimes under pressure on all sides, perplexed, persecuted and struck down. What happened to Jesus may very well happen to us, so that every day we reveal and share in his death. Every Christian does not experience all these things but all Christians experience some of them. These spiritual battles take their toll on us. ‘Our outer nature is wasting away.’ Even though the battle is spiritual it will take its physical toll. We would be dishonest if we did not admit their existence. We are as vulnerable to disease and accidents as other people but additional troubles arise from our Christian faith and testimony. But if we focus our attention on what is merely visible to the human eye, the battle we are engaged in seems hopeless because the odds are so huge. But we do not give up! We press on to the goal just as Jesus did.

The gospel enables us to deal with difficult momentary experiences because it assures us of the permanence of God’s promises. When we are momentarily afflicted we are certain we will not be crushed because Jesus was crushed on our behalf (Isaiah 53:5). When we are persecuted, we know that God will not forsake us because Jesus was forsaken in our place (Mark 15:34). When we experience death we need not fear, for we know that we will experience resurrection life because Jesus bore the penalty of death on our behalf (2 Timothy 1:10).

Paul claims that these paradoxes exist to show that surpassing power — beyond human control or fathoming— belongs to God. In addition, the fruit of gospel faithfulness in momentary affliction is a picture of our witness. As we believe and speak the gospel (2 Cor. 4:13) during the most difficult times, the result is that grace extends to more and more people, and God is seen to be more glorious (v 15).

Although there are many counterfeit gospels, our gospel is self-authenticating. We do not have to resort to underhanded methods or hidden agendas or shameful ways to get people to receive our message and we don’t have to ‘soften the message of sin’ to try and ‘win people to Christ.’ God forbid—we should renounce all these approaches. We do not use deception and we do not distort God’s Word. We preach the gospel as it is presented in the very Word of God.

Behind this confidence is the hidden and all-powerful ministry of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. No matter how difficult it may be for people to accept the truth about themselves as sinners — which the gospel demands — God the Holy Spirit convicts them of its truth. The Spirit endorses the message when we present it in its full beauty, without compromise and without fear of what people may say or do in reaction to it. We can rely upon the Spirit’s power to make them recognize the truth of the gospel.

God makes his light shine into people’s hearts as he has done in ours. This is what theologians call regeneration or new birth. It is as dramatic and powerful a work as creation itself. It requires as great a power to shine into people’s hearts to give spiritual understanding of Jesus’ identity and work as it did to command light to shine out of darkness at the time of the creation. At new birth, men and women are made spiritually alive in Christ. God performs this miracle as the gospel—the new covenant is preached. When we proclaim the gospel as we should, we do not proclaim ourselves, but Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as other people’s servants for Jesus’ sake. God then does his own unique and perfect work.