For Paul, Christian ministry and the Christian path are inseparable from the idea of poverty understood in a Christian sense. The idea of poverty was connected with the path...
For Paul, Christian ministry and the Christian path are inseparable from the idea of poverty understood in a Christian sense. The idea of poverty was already connected with the path of righteousness in the preaching of Isaiah of Jerusalem, eight centuries before Christ came. By the time of the Gospel, this connection was already seen as traditional: poverty and righteousness were synonyms.
Naturally, poverty was understood here not as a material condition, but as a spiritual state. Even a person who was materially quite well off could feel poor before God. The issue was not wealth or poverty, but the degree to which a person was ready to rely on God or on his own wealth.
A poor person in the spiritual sense became such when he realized that his life was bound up with God's presence, that the path of righteousness is unthinkable apart from His presence, and that the person himself cannot help himself in this regard by anything of his own. Everything a person has brings him no closer to God, and what does bring him closer is not in his possession; he can only receive what is needed from God, if God wills to give it to him. But what is received from God must be kept, and here much depends on the person himself.
This is exactly how the path of righteousness was understood in some rabbinic schools of Gospel times, as well as in earlier eras. And the Savior's words about the blessedness specifically of the poor confirm the truth of this understanding of righteousness. The Kingdom can be found only in this way, only by this path. It cannot be either earned or obtained by one's own strength, but it can be received and kept. Or lost, if one is spiritually careless.
That is why the apostle speaks of "earthen vessels," which have no value in themselves: only the contents are valuable, not the vessel itself. And poverty carried through to the end is death to the world in Christ. A person has died to this world; in this world he is nothing. But the life of the Kingdom is revealed in him more fully the less he is "alive" from the point of view of the untransformed world. And the more such people there are in the Church, the more fully she reveals herself to the world as the body of Christ - what she is meant to be according to the design of her Founder.
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4:7 But we - Not only the apostles, but all true believers.Have this treasure - Of divine light, love, glory. In earthen vessels - In frail, feeble, perishing bodies. He proceeds to show, that afflictions, yea, death itself, are so far from hindering the ministration of the Spirit, that they even further it, sharpen the ministers, and increase the fruit.That the excellence of the power, which works these in us, may undeniably appear to be of God.
4:8 We are troubled, etc - The four articles in this verse respect inward, the four in the next outward, afflictions.In each clause the former part shows the "earthen vessels;" the latter, "the excellence of the power." Not crushed - Not swallowed up in care and anxiety. Perplexed - What course to take, but never despairing of his power and love to carry us through.
4:10 Always - Wherever we go. Bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus - Continually expecting to lay down our lives like him. That the life also of Jesus might be manifested in our body - That we may also rise and be glorified like him.
4:11 For we who yet live - Who are not yet killed for the testimony of Jesus. Are always delivered unto death - Are perpetually in the very jaws of destruction; which we willingly submit to, that we may "obtain a better resurrection."
4:12 So then death worketh in us, but life in you - You live in peace; we die daily. Yet - Living or dying, so long as we believe, we cannot but speak.
4:13 Having the same spirit of faith - Which animated the saints of old; David, in particular, when he said, I believed, and therefore have I spoken - That is, I trusted in God, and therefore he hath put this song of praise in my mouth. We also speak - We preach the gospel, even in the midst of affliction and death, because we believe that God will raise us up from the dead, and will present us, ministers, with you, all his members, "faultless before his presence with exceeding joy." Psa 116:10.
4:15 For all things - Whether adverse or prosperous. Are for your sakes - For the profit of all that believe, as well as all that preach. That the overflowing grace - Which continues you alive both in soul and body. Might abound yet more through the thanksgiving of many - For thanksgiving invites more: abundant grace.
4:16 Therefore - Because of this grace, we faint not.The outward man - The body. The inward man - The soul.
4:17 Our light affliction - The beauty and sublimity of St. Paul's expressions here, as descriptive of heavenly glory, opposed to temporal afflictions, surpass all imagination, and cannot be preserved in any translation or paraphrase, which after all must sink infinitely below the astonishing original.
4:18 The things that are seen - Men, money, things of earth.The things that are not seen - God, grace, heaven.