May 20, 2018 The Inner Man by Conley Owens Deacon

So, as you all have noticed, my voice is a bit rough today. So I'm not going to be able to go for very long, but I'd like to share some thoughts from Second Corinthians and talk about how they apply to the Lord's Table.

Eyes of Faith and the Inner Man in 2 Corinthians 5

So specifically, what Corinthians says about having eyes of faith, how that means that we should view others in our unity in the Lord's Table. So if you'll go ahead and turn to Second Corinthians chapter 5.

I'd like to read the end of the end of chapter 5, starting in verse 11. And a lot of us are familiar with this chapter because of the final verse. Now, I might mention this verse once or twice, but I just want to give you a heads up that that's not going to be the focus of what I'm going to be telling you.

So try to yeah, try to absorb the other sentences in this passage. First Corinthians—or Second Corinthians, excuse me—Second Corinthians 5, beginning with verse 11. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.

But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart.

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.".

So what Paul is concerned to communicate here to the Corinthians is his sincerity. It's a theme that comes up very much in this epistle. And for those who have been here on Wednesday nights, you'll remember that just this past Wednesday night, we talked about the plans that Paul made at the end of 1 Corinthians.

He said in 1 Corinthians 16 5, I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may help me on my journey wherever I go.

For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. So he has this plan to spend much time with the Corinthians, and one of the large issues that 2 Corinthians revolves around is the fact that he did not fulfill this plan.

And 2 Corinthians 1, at one of the final paragraphs starting in verse 15, because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia, and have you send me on my way to Judea.

Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time? So he's asking, you know, when I made these plans with you, was I just saying them so that, you know, you'd be happy that I was coming, but I wasn't really intending on fulfilling that?

As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus, and Timothy, and I, was not yes and no, but in him it is always yes, for all the promises of God find their yes in him.

That is why, through him, that we utter our amen to God for his glory.". So he's saying that not only is he a sincere person, who means yes when he says yes, and means no when he says no, but on top of that, the foundation of our faith is found in truthfulness, and it plays into the way we act.

When we say amen, and you know, we don't do this so much here, but at a lot of churches, you know, the pastor will give a very loud questioning, amen, and let everybody know now it's time to say the amen, right?

So we say the amen because of the truthfulness of what God said, that it is so certain that our lives and hopes are wrapped up in it, and if that's the case, then someone who is his messenger cannot be saying yes and no at the same time.

And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us, and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. But I call God to witness against me.

It was to spare you that I refrain from coming again to Corinth.". So we talked a little bit about this in Sunday school, about the significance of swearing, of oaths. And so he's saying, you know, when I said yes, was I really meaning it?

And now he swears, borrowing authority from God in some sense, to end the dispute and say, no, I was sincere. I did mean it. The only reason I didn't come to you was because of the circumstances that would have made it too painful.

In specific, he said in 1 Corinthians, he didn't want to make a short trip. He wanted to come and make a longer trip, but he ended up having to make a short trip, because when he heard reports back from 1 Corinthians, the situations from Corinth, the situations that he was describing in 1 Corinthians were not settled.

They were still problematic, and so he had to make a short visit that was painful, and painful enough that he felt it better to just give it time, and not come back for the long trip that he had planned.

And Paul emphasizes, and continues emphasizing, his sincerity, that the things he does, he is sincere in. None of it is, none of it is fabricated. He says in 4 verse 7,. For we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that their surpassing power belongs to God, and not to us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to destruction. We are in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. Always caring in the body, the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

He's showing that all the things he does, he does with a noble cause. And at the end of 2 Corinthians 2, he says,. For we are not like so many peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.

So he's comparing himself to, as you later find out in 2 Corinthians, the super apostles, these people who have come in, and I am personally not convinced that they were necessarily teaching a false gospel, but they were falsely calling themselves apostles, even though they were not, claiming that they were the ones who had founded this church, and that they were the ones doing the initial ministry.

And they were denigrating Paul. And Paul is saying that he is not like them. He instead is a man of sincerity. He is very concerned about this, about letting the Corinthians know his sincerity. And he says in 2 Corinthians 5, 12,.

We are not commending ourselves to you again. Now what he means by that is not that he's not commending himself in the sense of that he's not explaining the legitimacy of his ministry, because that is what he's doing.

What he's saying is he's not introducing himself again, writing himself a letter of recommendation. He argued in chapter 3 that the Corinthians themselves are his letter of recommendation, since they are the work that he has—they are the result of the work that he has done.

They are the fruit of his labor. And so he needs no letter of recommendation. But at the same time, they have become ashamed of him because he is constantly surrounded by death, because he is constantly beat down and does not look anything like, you know, a glorious apostle should look like in their minds.

So he says, excuse me, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. Right? This is sincerity. He wants them to not be boasting about outward appearances or concerned about outward appearances, but to be concerned about what is inside the heart.

And he wants them, essentially, to have eyes of faith. It is through having eyes of faith that they will be able to see Paul for who he really is. He says, So he doesn't want to be regarded according to the flesh as he looks outwardly, as he looks beaten down and destroyed.

He wants to be looked at as God would look at him. And if they saw him this way, they would see something glorious. He says, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. He looks like a dull pot, but inside of him is something valuable.

And if the Corinthians were not focused on the externals but could see inside, they would see Paul for who he really is. And chapter three talks about how glorious Paul's ministry is because he has been given this new ministry, this new covenant, to minister.

Moses's ministry, the old covenant, was so glorious that Moses had to veil his face because of the glory that was on his face. And if that's the case for what Paul calls the ministry of death, because the old covenant consists so much of laws that needed to be obeyed or else there would be death, how much more glorious is Paul's ministry?

But the problem is that people only see that glory if they have eyes of faith, if they have the veil removed. He switches from talking about Moses's veil to the people's veil. The people essentially have a veil over their hearts.

And if the Holy Spirit removes that, then they can see him as he is with eyes of faith. They can see one who has a glorious ministry rather than a shameful ministry. So like, for example, you know, right now, do you see a guy who can barely talk and forgot to wear his belt this morning?

Or do you see, you know, someone who is doing the work of the Lord? There's a big difference in the way we look at people depending on if we were looking with eyes of faith or if we are just looking at the outward appearances.

In verse 7, he says, yeah, verse 7, he says,. So Paul is willing to continue on doing the things he's doing because he walks by faith knowing that his ministry is glorious, even if outwardly it looks shameful.

In the previous chapter, chapter 4, it said in verse 16, day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. So his outer self is wasting away. His inner self is being renewed day by day. Now, this is not contrasting the body and the soul.

He's not saying my body is wasting away, but my soul is being renewed. The body and the soul are a unity. One fancy way of saying this, and I'll explain it, but they're just saying Pauline anthropology is aspectival, not partitive.

What that means is Pauline, right, having to do with Paul, anthropology, his view of man. When Paul talks about man, he's talking about aspects of man rather than parts of man. When he talks about man, he's talking about two different angles, not two different parts.

So he's not saying, you know, I've got this outer part that's dying because then he'd be like less himself at some point. But his outer self is the way he is viewed from the outside. His inner self the way he is viewed as God would view him without the superficialities of his outer death that he's experiencing, the outer shame, is glorious.

And this is the way that Paul wishes to be viewed. In 5 .11 he says, Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God. In other words, God sees who we really are.

And I hope it is known also to your conscience. So I hope you also have those spiritual capacities by which you can see into who I really am. So I'll think for a minute about what this says about your own view of yourself.

When you view yourself, do you view yourself according to the flesh or do you view yourself as God views you as one who is forgiven? Hopefully you view yourself as the way that God views you because if you're viewing yourself by outer shame and by the way other people think about you, this is why so many self-help books are needed.

It's because people are concerned about the world's perspective rather than God's perspective. If someone who has been saved, someone who has been redeemed by Christ, sees themselves the way that God sees them, there is no need to worry about the way that other people see them because they know, they know the truth.

They know that they have been forgiven. Now think also about how this should affect the way that you view others. Now when I look around, I see all different kinds of people and you know, I run into a lot of Christians and not all of them do I really want to spend all that much time with.

Sometimes, sometimes I don't see something glorious. I see something lowly. I see something that's not that flattering and it is not, when I am feeling that way, I'm not viewing others with eyes of faith.

I should instead be viewing them with eyes of faith. Now you might say to yourself, well, you know, Paul is concerned about his sincerity. He's talking about how he's sincere. He's so sincere that I think we read this that you know, yeah in verse 13, if he's in his right mind or even if he's not, he's sincere.

Well, what if my problem with my brother or sister is the fact that they're not sincere? What if it's with their sin? Well, Paul explains the basis on which we are to have this inner view, the view of the inner man as opposed to the outer man.

He says in verse 17, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So he is saying that if that if Christ has died for someone, then they are reconciled.

Their sins have been forgiven. If this person is a new creation, then even the fact that they still have sin in their life does not mean that you suddenly get to keep looking at that old creation because, you know, it was a little more visible in that moment.

You must continue to look at the new creation. The old has passed away. The new is here. Verse 14 said, Now it might sound like Paul is saying that the love of Christ controls him because he's seeing Christ's love, and it's a self-sacrificing love, and therefore he must be self-sacrificing, which is it's true, but that kind of misses the larger arc that I'm pointing out here.

He is saying that if this is true that Christ died for all, meaning, you know, those for whom he died, not all indiscriminately, but if he's died for believers, then all those believers are dead. And when you look at the outer deadness of another Christian, you're looking at something that you should be considering as dead as opposed to looking at them as they are alive in Christ.

So when you are focusing on of course this does not mean that you should not still address matters of sin, but if you're looking at other people and those parts where they fail, where they fail to live up to God's law, you are not recognizing that that outer man ultimately is dead, and instead the inner man must be considered.

Unity at the Lord's Table

Now this is the foundation of the unity that we have. Unity is incredibly important for us, especially here as we approach the table. Unity is a significant part of what the table signifies. First Corinthians 10 said, "'Cup of blessing that we bless!

Is it not a participation in the blood of Christ, the bread that we break? Is it not a participation in the body of Christ? For there is one bread. We who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.'".

So the Lord's table, it represents unity. That's why it's frequently called communion, right? Come union? Because we are unified at this table. And we cannot have that unity if we are focused on outer views of man, viewing people as the world might view them, viewing the outer man that should be dead and considered as little or nothing, since it is a visible thing that Paul says will pass away.

But that which you cannot see, you can only see with your eyes of faith. That is eternal. So if we look at the outward, we are likely to not have much unity. We might have some for a season, but it will not be lasting unity.

We can only have a continued unity if we look at people as God looks at them, if we look at them as ones for whom Christ has died so that the old can pass away and the new can remain. With that, I'll close in prayer.

Prayer for Unity and the Final Hymn

Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would be with us as we come to this Lord's table. And I pray that you would keep us unified in looking at the inner man rather than the outer man, and recognizing our brothers and sisters as those for whom your Son has died.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Our final hymn this morning is number 177, Beneath the Cross.