“For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”
If you are like me, you have to take apart these verses phrase by phrase to get it! And even then, we question ourselves knowing there is “so much more.” The “treasure” is transparent, yet, at the same time, obscure!
The reason for this confusion is not just the wording, its the “surpassing power.” It doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to God! We are finite but God’s power is infinite. So, we need eternal light shinning into our finite dark places to see spiritually. It’s the “us” part posing our biggest problem; the “us” part is not only finite but hinders the light. But, on the other hand, the “us” part is what God loves and He provides resurrection (surpassing) power! This is the mystery of “Christ in you.” This mystery is slightly diminished in those with a personal hope because we are witnessing a Knowing coming from His resurrection power actively imparting Life and faith into our hearts. God is working within us to will, and to do, His good purpose.
There are different ways to examine this fascinating scripture but an overview might invite us into this labyrinth at another time for another adventure.
Read these two verses together and notice how they separate themselves by different perspectives. In verse six we are given a view coming solely from God, “For God who said” while verse seven starts, “But WE have ...”. This second verse is contrasted between God’s provision in verse six and our possession, “we have“ in verse seven. The first verse God provides knowledge of His glory but in the second verse possession is conveyed to us but not His power, it is retained, “But We Have this treasure … the surpassing power .. not to us.”
We possess knowledge from the face of our Lord Jesus, revealing the glory of God. God places this reality of His glory in our hearts with the additional capacity to grasp and understand His internal presence. God is providing us a pathway into the righteousness of Jesus. Abraham believed and it was accounted to him as righteousness. This is a bookend of FAITH sitting on one end of our shelf life because we experience the glory of God within us.
Now look at verse seven. The resurrection power of Jesus is dwelling in clay jars showing God’s presence and power within us. Our life’s power source discloses the nature of our relationship in Jesus Christ. As a clay jar, we can do nothing spiritually even though we want to do everything … to be a good clay pot, a good holder of stuff! This speaks to our inability to be who we are and our infectivity without benefit of our possession, the treasure. Faith is also implicit. This is a bookend sitting on the other end of our shelf life and is SANCTIFICATION.
Sanctification is nothing more than making our pot wholly matching our treasure. We are nothing without our treasure and our job is to meld the two together. The treasure is Holy, making us holy since we are created one with the treasure, “in Christ Jesus.” This is the mystery, we are, in fact, created to be holy as the treasure is holy! But it is up to us to bring the jar into subjection to our new creation in Christ Jesus, the treasure. It is God’s power working in us so we can accomplish what He has already accomplished. We are allowed to participate with and in Him. This is our sanctification bookend, bringing our jar into the glory of our treasure.
In the first verse we have justification by faith (believing) and in the second verse we have sanctification through believing faith. Anything that is not of faith is sin. So basically, what we have in these two verses is the formula for being who we are intended to be in Jesus. We are now justified, it is a done deal! God has provided it and Jesus said it, ”it is finished.” That means we are now made righteous and created new in His righteousness. It is now up to us to nail ourselves to Jesus’ cross, share His suffering and in His surpassing resurrection power share His victory. We are saved and being saved, both are in play. We are both sanctified and being sanctified! We are saved in bookend #1 and we are being saved in bookend #2. We are in the middle making Life happen!
We should perhaps briefly review what it looks like to be born again, or created in Christ Jesus. When you are born again you become a new spiritual person. Before you are born again your are a natural person, that is, the natural world is your resource and you hone your skills and understanding to make things tick in a natural way. When you are born again, this is no longer who you are! You are created new and become a “Spiritual” person. This means you acquire a “spiritual” sense to hear and understand spiritually. It is a new sense like hearing, taste, smelling, feeling and seeing. This Spiritual sense puts you in touch with our living God who gives you a peace that passes understanding. Your spirit is joined to the Holy Spirit of God and you are taken from the domain of man’s darkness and staked down into the domain of God’s truth in Christ Jesus. This is what is meant in 2Cor. 5:17 when it says the old has passed away and the new has come. You now are a spiritual person and you are freed from the slavery and bondage to sin. You are literally birthed in Christ Jesus having His seed of righteousness and His nature. You are justified, made righteous and there is now no condemnation to you because you are in Christ Jesus.
With this in mind, lets tackle the issue of being righteous and living in a clay jar. Paul, dealing with this in his letters to the churches, refers to putting on the new man or putting on Christ Jesus. What Paul is referring to in these passages is sanctification. He is referring to the character we show by our attitudes and behavior. In other words, we have been made righteous spiritually but our natural behavior is still intact. We have wants and desires that have not been reconciled to who we now are in Christ. We are reconciled spiritually but our body-soul is not.
This can be a little confusing, so think of our natural self in terms of a mind, a will to choose, and a heart of emotion and our physical body. When we are born again we become a spiritual person but these natural things are still intact. This is why many, including myself some years ago, believe we have two natures. We do not! It seems like we do but once the Spiritual light comes on everything will fall into place. Let me simply quote from Romans 8:
“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. … But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” -Romans 8:9-10.
The three components of our natural self (will, mind, heart), excluding our physical body, comprise what we generally refer to as our soul. We also have a spirit which some will include in this soul grouping and others omit. When we are born again our spirit is literally joined to God’s Spirit. Now our soul (will, mind, heart) is directly exposed to God’s own Spirit through our spirit. Jesus makes the point to Nicodemus in John 3, “That which is born of spirit is spirit and that which is born of flesh is flesh .. you must be born again.” Our identity in God’s view is changed. We were a natural person, now we are redeemed, purchased by Jesus; our identity is changed from servant to friend, we are now sons and daughters, we are now heirs. Our home is no longer on earth and our sins are forgiven. We have become righteous in Christ Jesus and there is therefore, now no condemnation.
One more thing! We now have access to the resurrection power of Christ to put to death the things of the flesh, the things that do not glorify our heavenly Father, the things not righteous, as we are, because we are in Him. In other words, we are righteous and our identity is in Jesus Christ our Lord. But our soul, our clay jar needs our heavy attention!
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”
Because of the knowledge we now have in us, because we have been birthed by God to be new creations in Christ Jesus, we now have the opportunity to glorify God by making our clay jar pure like He is and allowing other to see and share what God can do in their lives as well.
I just returned from a gifted trip into Tijuana, Mexico. There we saw God shining His Light into the hearts and lives of men who were drug dealers and users. We saw God’s Light in the eyes of orphan children because Jesus is shining love into them. They are now in the care of believers who minister to their needs. We saw a growing church where people are given shelter from the Tijuana streets and nurtured in God’s word of Truth. We saw God’s surpassing power in the faces of 20 plus ex-cons with glorified hearts and heard their collective strong resurrection voice of song and praise. These servants of God now know the “surpassing power” of God’s glory within their own personal experience.
But we also saw at a dump site, children left unattended with nothing to do, with scant provisions. We saw cardboard shacks thrown together for privacy and shade. Our hearts were wrenched, sprained and twisted by the plight of bright young children void of love and caring affection. God has shone His Light in your heart and mine so that we might be able to shine His glory, this treasure placed in our hearts, into these, still living in darkness. What we have is indeed a treasure! We have been tasked with the responsibility of exposing it to other vessels of clay, to those living in dumps as well as those living at the marina.
The more we grasp God’s Light, the more we experience His Love growing and growing grace into a personal knowledge in Him. Light will turn into Love when we nurture and mine the eternal treasures placed into these clay shells in which we live. God’s glory is shinning within us and others see it when we reveal who we really are in Christ Jesus. That’s how we let our Light shine into the darkness of other’s. But we ourselves are still mining this treasure which is already in our possession. We are still discovering who we are in Christ Jesus. Now we see through a glass darkly, knowing we shall know fully, even as we are fully known, face to face. May we be faithful and answer God’s call to our own personal ministries.