Behold God's Glory

seventh sunday after the epiphany – The Transfiguration of our lord

Shepherd of the Hills Ev. Lutheran Church (WELS)

2 Corinthians 4:3-6

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

(NIV 2011)

I don’t know who finds it more frustrating, the one who can’t see it, or the one who can, but can’t get the other person to see it.  “It’s right there!” shouts one in frustration.  “Where?  I can’t see it!” responds the other.  They are both looking at the same scene, but only one is able to zero in on the object in question.  Or, they are looking at the same two-in-one illusion, and one sees one image, and the other, another.  Aside from potentially causing a great deal of frustration, even if one of them fails to ever see what the other does, it certainly would not have any bearing, positively or negatively, on either individual.  After all, such things are not a matter of life or death.

Not so in the case of Paul’s words this morning to the Corinthians.  He too poses a situation in which one party is unable to see something clearly, but in his scenario, it absolutely is a matter of life and death.  Paul writes, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing” (v.3).  What a tragedy!  What an absolutely awful thing to consider, that those who so desperately need the gospel, the good news of Jesus, can’t even see it.  It is hidden from them.  Does this not tear at your heart?  Doesn’t it break it in two to know that so many are perishing, and it’s because they can’t even see the one thing they need – the gospel!  It’s significantly easier for us to write off unbelievers if we see them as stubborn enemies of the cross.  Then it is easy to resent them and be bitter toward them.  But what if we took a different view?  What if instead of taking the view, “they’ll get what they deserve,” we treated them as those who are helplessly lost and blind, and don’t even know it?  One unbeliever might be merely indifferent, and another might very well be an arrogant blowhard who openly despises Christianity, but since they’re both in the same boat of blindness, can we have anything but pity on them?  What if we realized where the real blame needs to be placed?  What if we realized that the real fault does not belong to the unbelieving blind, but to the one who keeps the gospel hidden from them?

It’s no big secret who that is.  Paul writes,  “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (v.5).  Who is the god of this age?  He hides behind different philosophies and ideologies, he pits reason against religion, he calls lies truth, he thrives on indifference, and he’s getting more and more bold even to attack the Christian church head on with increasing ferocity.  The devil will use whatever he can as a veil to keep the unbeliever in the dark.  Satan will stop at nothing to keep the light of the gospel from piercing that veil of unbelief and exposing the darkness that clouds those who are perishing. 

Satan’s success at keeping the gospel veiled to those who are perishing has had a disastrous impact on churches as well.  As the church has witnessed the evil one’s astounding success at keeping the gospel veiled, many have wrongly drawn this absolutely devastating conclusion: the gospel no longer serves as an effective tool in bringing people to the light of Christ.  “If the good news of Jesus has been preached and people still remain veiled in darkness, then the good news must no longer be getting it done.”  Such a conclusion undermines the church by downplaying the only tool God has entrusted to it to win hearts and souls to Jesus: the gospel.  So, like Esau, the church sells its birthright for a pot of stew.  The door is opened wide and anything and everything becomes fair game for winning the lost.

If the gospel doesn’t do it, then let’s “adjust” the gospel a little bit so it’s more in line with what people want to hear.  The mention of “sin” doesn’t really seem to be terribly popular with the world today, so that might be the first to go.  And, if something so “terribly offensive” as pointing out sin is going to be avoided, well then, one doesn’t really need to hear the law, for all that does is accuse, convict, and condemn man in his sin.  And, once the law becomes increasingly absent from any church’s message, then one has to revisit the role that Jesus plays, if not to live, suffer, and die to pay for our sin.  But of course a church can’t call itself “Christian” without some mention of Christ, so then he suddenly takes on a new role, kind of like a magic genie who has come to grant wishes and remove all of life’s problems.  He promises happiness and success to all who do as he did and live as he lived.  The sin-bearing Substitute is relegated to nothing more than eye-catching Example.  Look, we’ve taken the old, tired, ineffective gospel, and we’ve made it “relevant.”

If changing the message alone doesn’t do it (and why would it when so horribly altered from the pure gospel?!?), then maybe changing the atmosphere within the church will.  People don’t like to go to church anymore, but they always seem to enjoy concerts, so what can we do to make church less like church and more like a concert?  Step one, remove any and all symbolism that would identify a place as being a church.  Step two, make sure the praise band is front and center, so that it doesn’t feel so “churchy.”  Step three, consider incorporating coffee and comfortable couches so that people can enjoy the show.  Step four, build skate parks and jungle gyms for the kids to hang out in during church, so that they actually look forward to coming to church.  Nevermind that “church” looks less like church and more like a coffee house or a McDonald’s playroom.

But… what happens when changing the message and/or the atmosphere doesn’t work?  Sadly, at that point it isn’t such a stretch for reason to rear its ugly head and lead some to falsely conclude, “God just simply must not be all that interested in saving people anymore.”  See what happens when the devil effectively leads the church to sell out the gospel?  The church forgets what the gospel is in the first place!  It forgets John 3:16:  “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   It forgets what God wants for all people:  “[God our Savior] wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).   It forgets why Jesus came into our world in the first place:  “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8b).   Surely God still desires that every last soul join him for eternity in heaven!

And in spite of the devil’s best efforts, many will. Though the god of this age has blinded many, he hasn’t blinded all.  Listen to the unparalleled hope Paul holds out to us. He writes, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (v.6).  Satan hasn’t blinded all; he hasn’t blinded you.  God’s light has shone itself in your hearts and removed the veil of unbelief so that you can see forgiveness and salvation.  You now see.

Your case is not so unlike that of an unbelieving man who became blind, but eventually through this hardship became a believer.  A friend one time shared his sympathy with the man, to which he replied, “Do not pity me; I am fortunate. If I still had my eyesight, I might be blind yet. Now that I have become blind, I have learned to see. I could never see Jesus before, and I was not interested in him. But I see him now, and I am much happier today than I was before I became blind.”  When an operation later restored his sight, he said, “May God protect and keep me, so that the things these eyes now see may never again lead me away from the light my inward sight beholds!” (Encyclopedia of Sermon Illustrations, 81)

So just what brought that unbelieving man to faith in Jesus, even in the midst of physical blindness?  The very same thing that brought you to faith; the very same thing that has ever brought anyone to faith: the gospel.  You see, even in the cases of those who to whom the gospel is veiled, there is nevertheless only one thing that will ever change it, and that is more of the same gospel.  To draw the conclusion that the gospel has somehow become ineffective, or will ever become ineffective is to miss the key truth in these verses sandwiched right between Paul’s reference to those veiled in unbelief and those with the light of Christ in their hearts.  Paul knew full well what alone could remove the veil: “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord” (v.5).

If the gospel appears not to be working, the correct answer is not to replace it with something else, but rather to preach it all the more.  The glory of God’s gospel is Christ, no more, no less.  Christ is God’s glory because without Christ, there remains a veil of separation between God and men.  Sin bars all from God’s presence, and unless the matter of sin is addressed, there is no reconciliation, no relationship with God.  But Christ addressed it by becoming it; he became sin for us. We’ll be reminded of that bittersweet reality once again during the season of Lent, beginning this week on Ash Wednesday.  Christ’s glory, the same glory that was on stunning display on the Mount of Transfiguration for the disciples to behold, is the same glory that Christ would attain through his sorrowful suffering emphasized for the next 40 days.  May we never tire of putting Christ on display as we preach Jesus Christ as Lord, and behold God’s glory.  Amen.