Beginning in verse 7, Paul begins to talk about the ministers. He refers to himself, but the use of the plural is significant. Paul is not appealing to his own experience alone, drawing attention to how much he suffered. Yes, he is speaking personally because he has a personal relationship with these Christians. But he is speaking in more general terms. The suffering that he has experienced is true of the apostles as a whole, and, to some extent, of other people as well when they try to bear a witness for Christ.
Paul likens ministers of this glorious Gospel to jars of clay. In Harry Ironside’s commentary on 2 Corinthians he takes this as a reference to the story of Gideon in Judges 7. Gideon had been called by God to drive out the Midianites from Israel in his day. He amassed this great army of 22,000 people, but God said it was too big and allowed anyone who wished to return home. As a result, many of them departed, leaving Gideon with only 10,000. But God intervened again and said that this was still too many. He wanted Gideon to take everyone down to the river and give them a drink. God told Gideon to observe how each man drank. If anyone lies down on the ground and laps the water like a dog, they are to be discounted. But keep the ones who kneel down and use their hands to get a drink. That left Gideon with only 300 men.
God then gave instructions for the battle. They surrounded the camp of the Midianites by night, and they were given trumpets and clay jars to go along with their torches. They were to put the torches in the earthen vessels to cover the light, and then they surrounded the camp and stood there. They had a trumpet in one hand, and they had the torch with the clay jar over it in the other. They were told to blow their trumpets, and then break the clay jar, causing the torch to blaze forth.
Now did you ever think of going into battle like that? You have a trumpet, a clay jar, and a torch, while the enemy has weapons. Well, if you remember the story, you know that the Midianites were already terrified because God had given them a dream that they were going to be destroyed. So when the Midianites saw the Israelites’ torches break out, the LORD caused them to draw their swords and turn on each other. Gideon stood there watching all this and seeing how God had won the battle for Israel.
Now I do not know that this is what Paul had in mind, although it would be interesting to make those parallels. When he says that “we have this treasure in jars of clay” (v. 7), I think what he is referring to is not a torch but actual treasure. We would not put gold bullion or silver coins in a clay vessel today, but in the ancient world that is what you carried heavier things in. Even when the Roman generals came back from their victories in far portions of the world, they brought back their treasure in clay vessels. But of course when Paul talks about treasure, he is talking about something much more valuable than gold or silver; he is talking about the glory of this Gospel. And he likens the apostles to the clay jars who carry the Gospel and proclaim it to others. The apostles do not have any value in themselves, but God has been pleased to entrust His ministry to them.
What matters is what God puts in the vessel, and from our point of view, what matters is whether or not we make that vessel available for God to use. Your life is a vessel, and you can hold that back. You can say, “No, I want it for myself. There are all sorts of things I want to fill it up with. I want to fill it up with pleasurable experiences. I want to fill it up with the wisdom of the world. I want to fill it up with fame, prestige, and money.” If that is what you want to fill your life with, that is what you get. However, because all those things are perishable, what your life contains perishes when you do. Or you can do what Paul did. You can give that vessel over to the Lord Jesus Christ and allow Him to fill it up. He does not fill it up with things that perish. Instead he fills it up with the glory of the Gospel, and he uses you to spread this great treasure to other men and women.
But this does not mean that our way is easy. Earlier Paul was talking about himself as being part of a procession, as a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ who leads us in triumph. And from the world’s point of view, that is precisely the way Paul has been treated. In verses 8 through 12 he mentions in a general way the kind of difficulties he and the other apostles endure, and later on, in chapter 11, he is going to talk in specific terms about how he suffered.
