The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not considered by the world to be a source of power or wisdom. So it is no surprise that as Paul writes this letter, from the world’s point of view he experienced little attention. People were not impressed with Paul. But this does not mean that he experienced no attention at all. On the contrary, he was hounded, slandered, and persecuted—almost to death—as he says in the passage to which we now come. But he did not lose heart in that because his ministry was the greatest ministry there was. What was happening through it and through the lives of other Christians who were also bearing a testimony for Christ was the greatest thing in all the world.
This raises an interesting question: If the Gospel really is as glorious as Paul says it is, and that what happens through the sharing of the Gospel really is the greatest thing in all the world, then how come so many Christians speak about it so little and are so little concerned to have other men and women come to a knowledge of the Christian faith? Is it perhaps because we do not really believe the Gospel is that glorious? Is it perhaps that we are put off by the difficulties and discouraged by the hardships we face?
The fourth chapter of 2 Corinthians deals with the second of those possibilities, and it concerns the experience of the apostle Paul himself. This letter, as I said before, is a very personal letter in which Paul talks about his own circumstances early on, as well as here in our chapter and later on. He endured many hardships in trying to carry out the ministry to which Christ had called him. Moreover, his example is a great one because although he experienced these difficulties, he did not lose heart, as he says in verse 1. He carried on and bore a great witness to the very end. And when Paul came to the end of his life, he could say that there was a crown of righteousness in store for him, which the Lord Himself would give (2 Tim. 4:7). Our outline for this chapter will be in two parts. First of all, you have a description of the ministry itself in verses 1 through 6. Then, second, Paul provides a description of the ministers and their experience in verses 7 through 17. Verse 18 then serves as a conclusion.
It is interesting to look at how he explains this ministry. Paul writes about it in terms of how he went about doing things and how much he suffered in the ministry. At this point we might be inclined to suppose that Paul suffered because of how he performed his work. We know people who are persecuted because of their approach. They can be so obnoxious that it is no wonder at all that people treat them badly and go in the other direction when they see them coming. But this is not the case with Paul.
When writing about his ministry, Paul mentions things that he both did not do and did do. He begins with the three things he did not do, seen in verse 2. The first is that he and his fellow Gospel ministers have “renounced secret and shameful ways.” Now Paul does not mention any specific conduct, but I have an idea. When he puts the two words “secret” and “shameful” together, he is probably thinking of how the missionaries of the various mystery religions in his day went about their work. These mystery religions were a kind of secret religious society. We would call them cults today. Each had a secret knowledge that only the initiates were supposed to have, and which was said to have been passed down from generation to generation. You could be invited as an outsider and learn a limited amount. Then when you had learned a certain amount, you were brought in a little bit closer and were taught a bit more. You would progress in your knowledge of the religion’s secrets until you eventually found the way of salvation, as it was defined by them.
Paul knew that in many of those religions there were despicable sexual practices that went on. Eventually they became, in many cases, nothing but excuses for all kinds of illicit sexual activity. I think what Paul is saying here is that as he went about with the Christian Gospel, he was well aware that there were other people traveling around with the messages of these mystery religions, which, because of the nature of these religions, were gathering up adherents. And yet, Paul says all these other religions are contrary to the truth and righteousness of God, and he has renounced them all. We see how this applies in our own day. It is true that, strictly speaking, in the United States we do not have these ancient mystery religions. But we do have an influx of the Eastern religions, as well as various cults where some of the overtones of these ancient ideas are present.
