Last weekend I delivered the Sunday morning message at Calvary Chapel, San Clemente, California. My wife raved about it and suggested that I should turn it into a Catch. That presented a bit of a problem, however, in that the message was a 45-minute condensation of material that usually takes me a weekend with four talks to cover. I’ve even stretched it into a 12-week series before.

I first thought, no way, but then my curiosity got the best of me, and I wanted to see if I could do it. After all, I’ve heard that if you can’t say what you want to say in 20 minutes, it’s not worth saying. TED talks can’t go over 18 minutes.

So this will be a condensation of a condensation like that detergent you bought last week that is 3X’s condensed. I’ll be covering four passages from 2 Corinthians that deal with how to live an effective Christian life. Here is the first:

And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 2 Corinthians 3:4-6

This is quite simply the essence of how to live an effective Christian life. First we must realize that we can do nothing on our own. All of our good work on God’s behalf will not amount to a hill of beans if we are counting on our own strength, cleverness, talent, or anything else that comes from us. We are only sufficient to accomplish anything for God’s kingdom when God makes us sufficient through His Holy Spirit who is alive in us.

But notice that he says there is another way to try and be an effective Christian called the letter of the law. This is actually very common, especially among religious people and a lot of Christians today who are trying to live by an external standard they can conform their lives to.

The problem with this “other way” is that it forces us into a kind of false spirituality; one that’s not controlled by the Spirit but by us living a fake Christianity that may look good, but only on the outside.

This struggle between the fake and the real Christianity is illustrated in this passage by a story Paul then retells about Moses, offering some insight not included in the Old Testament account. You will remember that when Moses came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments, his face was shining from being with God. In fact, it was so bright that the people could not look directly at him; the brightness literally hurt their eyes. So Moses devised a way to carry on by covering his face with a veil. But the reason he wore the veil changed over time. And this is what Paul revealed later on in this chapter:

Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech— unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. 2 Corinthians 3:12-13

The shine on Moses’ face didn’t last. It was just on the surface — some supernatural leftover from being in the presence of God. The key to understanding the significance of this is to realize that Exodus 34:34-35 reveals that Moses wore the veil all the time except for when he went in to meet the Lord in the Holy of Holies once a year. In which case, he would remove the veil, receive a fresh shot of glory on his face from being with God, come out and speak to the people with his face glowing as before, and then replace the veil “until he went in to speak with Him” again. (Exodus 34:35) Thus, whenever the people saw the face of Moses, it was glowing; all the rest of the time it was hidden. Moses was afraid to let the people see his face without the shine and lose heart thinking God had left them. So he devised a clever plan to make the people think his face was glowing all the time. He was living a lie.

What this tells us is that when you try to live the Christian life under your own power, you will end up having to hide the fact that you can’t, just like Moses hid the fact that the glory associated with receiving the law and trying to follow it faded from his face.

Which brings us, finally, to the good news:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18)  

This is the way of the Spirit. It has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God in us. Nor does it have anything to do with hiding for we have nothing to hide. We are in the process of being transformed. We are not in charge of this, God is, and He is going at His pace, not ours. Therefore we are not, nor are we ever in this life, presenting a finished product. There is no need to fake anything — no need to try to be something that we are not. Besides, regardless of what is going on with us, we are reflecting Christ because our focus is on Him.

So, the conclusion:

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)

A treasure in a strange place. Why would you put a valuable treasure in a clay pot unless you wanted to stress the importance of the treasure in comparison? God wants our lives to reflect Him, and that is the essence of our message. It makes no difference what we are going through, God will always show up. It may look messy to us, but it’s always real.

Inside

by John Fischer

Inside

A change is happening on the inside

And it makes no sense for me to hide

What I don’t want you to see

Come see

Everything that lies inside me

‘Cause amidst the mess I’ve made of me

You might see the Lord

‘Cause he’s in the movin’

Got a knife and He’s prunin’

Cuttin’ out the old man

Bringin’ in the new

And it’s foolish to fake it

So I’m lettin’ Him take it

‘Cause He said I’d be like Jesus

When He’s finally through