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Podcast: Hope for Weak People—the Message of 2 Corinthians (Dane Ortlund)

March 04, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

What Is the Book of 2 Corinthians All About?

In this episode, Dane Ortlund walks through a number of key doctrines and themes found in the book of 2 Corinthians, including Paul’s eschatology, what our lives should look like as new creations in Christ, and what Paul’s thorn in the flesh might have been.

Ministry in the New Realm

Ministry in the New Realm

Dane Ortlund

In Ministry in the New Realm, bestselling author Dane Ortlund explores 2 Corinthians to reveal the deeply paradoxical nature of the Christian life—how Christ ushered in the new realm where power is intertwined with weakness.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:01 - Strength through Weakness

Matt Tully
Dane, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Dane Ortlund
It is my pleasure, Matt.

Matt Tully
You open this new book on the theology of 2 Corinthians with a quote from J. R. R Tolkien’s book The Fellowship of the Ring. I know you’re a fan of Tolkien. I know you love The Lord of the Rings. But I imagine there’s more reason to why you would open this book on the theology of 2 Corinthians with that quote. So I wonder if you could start us off by reading the quote and then walk us through why you find that a fitting way to open the book.

Dane Ortlund
Elrond says at the Council of Elrond, “This quest”—talking about the quest with the ring that is going to be laid out before the Hobbits and the everyone else—“This quest may be attempted by the weak . . . .” That’s the key word, Matt. “. . . by the weak with as much hope as the strong, yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world. Small hands do them because they must while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.” “Attempted by the weak”—I just absolutely love that, and it tunnels right into the heart of what 2 Corinthians is all about. Strength through weakness, life through death, comfort through affliction, glory through shame. The passage on “when I am weak, then I am strong” is there in chapter 12 of 2 Corinthians. That’s sort of the pinnacle, as I understand it, of the literary flow—the culmination and climax of the whole letter.

Matt Tully
He sort of comes out and just says it.

Dane Ortlund
He does. Right there. “Thorn in the flesh . . . when I am weak, then I am strong.” Well, Tolkien has an insight into what Paul is talking about when he says that the weak hands actually have even more chance of fulfilling this quest than the strong. It’s hope for me as a weak person, and so I just love that insight there from Tolkien which connects with, really, one of the key points of 2 Corinthians.

Matt Tully
It’s such a counter-cultural message, that when we are weak, we are strong. Weakness, at least in the world’s eyes, is not ultimately a virtue, but it’s what God chooses to use. Obviously, that is counter-cultural in comparison to the prevailing secular world, we’ll say, where we see so much emphasis on greatness and fame and power. But I also am struck that it does feel countercultural even in our church culture.

Dane Ortlund
Oh, for sure.

Matt Tully
Do you resonate with that?

Dane Ortlund
Absolutely. The more Twitter followers this pastor has, the more influence and shaping he is doing for this channel and so on. Matt, we’re so deeply spring-loaded to think in terms of natural, innate strength, even as the world assesses strength, and then just sort of importing that into the church using Christian language and categories. But actually, it’s still the same animating, paradigmatic way of looking at the world—with our own smarts, our own degrees, the louder microphones, the bigger crowds as being where significance and ministry is really going to happen. And Paul just flips that upside down.

Matt Tully
As you have studied this book and written about this book of 2 Corinthians where he’s doing that, have you felt yourself personally confronted or challenged, especially as a pastor in that role?

Dane Ortlund
Yes. And I continue to, and I need to continue to, and I’m sure I’ll look back in ten years at today’s forty-four-year-old Dane and say, Wow, he really needed more 2 Corinthians then. And the sixty-four-Dane will look at the fifty-four-year-old Dane and say the same thing. I studied this letter, Matt, for a year right after seminary. It was 2006–2007, and I just spent the year immersing myself in 2 Corinthians under the oversight of Dr. Hans Bayer at Covenant Seminary, to whom I dedicated the book. And I saw this theme for the first time—strength through weakness—and it came home to me very personally because I saw I am going through seminary studies, my first little preaching opportunities, animated by exactly the mindset of the super apostles. And what Paul was seeking to upend, this idea that more is more, that bigger is better, flashier is more fruitful, and it’s just not the way of God.

05:22 - Inaugurated Eschatology

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful. We’re actually going to return to some of those specific issues in the book, like the super apostles, and try to dig into what that means and what Paul was getting at in some of these teachings. Some of them are well-known, and many of them are very perplexing to us today. But I want to start with a core idea that you draw out in your book that is present in the book of 2 Corinthians, and it’s this term that we often hear used in theological circles that can be a little bit perplexing to the non-specialists. It’s the idea of the inaugurated eschatology. It’s maybe one of the most jargony sounding theological terms that you or I could come up with here, but it’s actually a really important idea, not just for theology and not just for studying this book but arguably for our lives as Christians. So I wonder if you could unpack what that means and how that plays an important role in understanding 2 Corinthians.

Dane Ortlund
We could spend the whole time talking about this very thing, brother. Greg Beale says it’s like if you put on green-tinted glasses, everything looks a little green. That’s what wearing the lens of inaugurated eschatology is for reading the New Testament, and especially 2 Corinthians. Text after text pops into clarity and brightness and connects with the rest of the New Testament and the whole Bible and where all of human history is going when we have this lens. They're big, fancy words. Who cares about the words? We have to have the idea, though, which is inaugurated, which just means begun. Something’s launched. Something started. Eschatology is last things. So if we open up a systematic theology textbook, probably the last five to ten percent is on eschatology—the last thing’s, the millennium, Christ’s return, and so on. That’s good. That’s fine. That works. But actually, the teaching of the New Testament is that all the things that were going to happen in the end times or the latter days, as the prophets call it, everything the Old Testament was anticipating has already, in the descent of Christ and the Holy Spirit, has already begun in an already but not yet way. In other words, it’s like this. It’s not that some of the promises of the Old Testament have all totally happened and others haven’t started at all. Every single promise of the Old Testament—that Messiah would come, that death would be vanquished, that the dead would be raised, that the Holy Spirit would descend, that the message of good news would flood out to the Gentiles and the nations, and so on—has, in a decisive way, been launched. They are yet to be fulfilled, but the hardest part has been done. So the end times actually, Matt, we are living in the end times. And the key marker for that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When he walked out of the tomb, the new age began. Here’s one way to understand it. If you and I get into Jesus Christ, we not only are justified (declared innocent), we are not only forgiven of all our sins and so on (adopted); also, our spiritual ID card now says “citizen of the new realm” (Phil. 3). And that is who we basically are, not half of each. Dane’s in Christ, so I’m not half old realm, half new. Actually, I’ve been plucked up and placed into the new realm that launched 2,000 years ago. That’s who I now am. And the New Testament, including 2 Corinthians, is arguing at every point to live out of and in light of who you now.

Matt Tully
That’s such an encouraging, amazing truth that we do see in Scripture, but I think the problem with it is that experientially it often doesn’t feel like that’s true. It doesn’t feel like I live in a new realm, a new kingdom where Christ is reigning. It feels very much like Christ is distant. I don’t see him around here. How do you reconcile those two things?

Dane Ortlund
Oh, it’s absolutely true. Here’s the deal. I rolled out of bed this morning, and all my anxieties, fears, many regrets, things I’m ashamed of came flooding over me. And if you ask me thirty seconds into consciousness this morning, Dane, do you belong? Tell me what you feel at a visceral level—old realm or new? I am immediately blurting out, I’m an old realm wretched, wretched guy! The point of the New Testament is to take that thought by the scruff of the neck, and preach to it what is actually true. This is why we do quiet time. What’s the point? Start your day reacquainted with, re-aglow with, sparkling and radiant and resplendent with the wonder that actually, you do belong to the new realm. The whole point of this is you don’t feel what you are. You don’t feel that way, but actually you are. I’m part of the new temple. The Holy Spirit is in me. I’m in Jesus Christ. I’m out of Adam and into Christ. There’s an overlapping of the ages, so I still in some way feel the vestiges of the old man of Adam clinging to me. That’s why I woke up that way this morning. But actually, here’s what my grandfather would say, preaching on John 4 two generations ago. He said, “Start every day with the fullness that you have in Jesus Christ.” I want to do this interview, this conversation with you, mindful I am totally invincibleized, secure, safe, on my way inexorably into the new heavens of the new earth. What am I worried about? Why would I ever bother to worry about another thing? I belong to the new realm.

Matt Tully
But it’s interesting, though, that there is that word inaugurated, which, as you said, implies it’s begun. We’ve launched. But it’s not yet complete.

Dane Ortlund
Correct. Right.

11:11 - All the Promises of God Find Their Yes in Christ

Matt Tully
The overarching message of the book is that the new realm has begun, that we are in Christ and we’ve been launched into that with this sure hope in the future. But in the here and now, the world is turned upside down. Weakness is strength, and Christ’s strength is fulfilled in us. With that in mind, I want to look at a few key passages throughout this book. Many of them will be well-known; some of them might be less well-known but are nevertheless pretty perplexing to us as we come across them when we read this book. And I wonder if you can help us understand what they mean and then connect them to the overarching message of this incredible book. The first is a well-known passage and it has to be 2 Corinthians 1:20, where Paul utters this classic line that we’ve all heard: “for all the promises of God find their Yes in Christ.” We hear that a lot, but I think sometimes it’s just kind of thrown out. We might not be very precise in our thinking about what that actually means. I think you’ve kind of got at this a little bit already, but unpack that for us.

Dane Ortlund
Oh my goodness. There’s a whole world of books and sermons inside that one tiny, pregnant little part of a verse, Matt. I think the Greek text literally or woodenly is something like “and all the promises of God, the Yes in him.” There’s a jaggedness at times to the syntax of 2 Corinthians. I’ll come back to the verse in a second. Murray Harris, in his commentary on 2 Corinthians, says the syntax of the Greek text, in a way that doesn’t even come through fully in the English, reflects the agitated state in which Paul is writing—the emotionally raw state that he’s writing out of. And you can see that in phrases such as this. Here’s how I understand it. I would like to grow in my understanding of it. Here’s where I am in my current, present state of development. Paul is saying all the times in the Old Testament when God would say anything to his people to the effect of I am going to do this for you or I am going to do that for you—yesterday one of the pastors at our church was preaching Isaiah 7 about the coming Emmanuel; it was on the promises of God—every time God has made promises to his people of protection, deliverance, forgiveness, coming salvation, help, comfort, those promises, which are words from God to his people in the Old Testament, got up and walked around in flesh and blood 2,000 years ago in a Galilean carpenter named Jesus Christ, who in his life, death, and resurrection clinched all of those promises and caused them to be irreversibly, decisively true for anyone who gets into him so that the promises of God throughout the old Testament land on and are inherited by anyone who’s in Jesus Christ, whether they are a part of ethnic Israel or not. So Jesus is the one who proves, who fulfills, who clinches, who decisively fulfills. Paul says, Yes. They’re all Yes in him. So he’s the culminating point of them all.

Matt Tully
Someone might hear that and might criticize that by saying, Well, that requires that you spiritualize all these promises we see in the old Testament to the nation of Israel—promises of land or of physical blessing that God would give to them. Is that true? Is that what we’re doing when we say that all of those find their fulfillment and they’re clinched in Jesus?

Dane Ortlund
Yes, but it depends on what one means by spiritualize. If we mean by spiritualize that there is not ever going to be any concrete or physical manifestation or fulfillment of those promises, no.

Matt Tully
You’re saying there will be?

Dane Ortlund
There will be, yes. All who are in Christ are going to be walking around on this planet, as I understand it, this earth in what the Bible calls the new heavens and the new earth in actual physical bodies that eat and drink and so on. But yes, you don’t have to first sort of try to become a Jew in order to then be a part of the promises that were given to the Jews, because Jesus is the one who was the Jew. He was the final one. And so you get into him, and you get all those promises, as I understand it.

15:33 - Weight of Glory

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful. Another really well-known passage, and maybe one of the most famous passages in the whole book, is 2 Corinthians 4:16–18. Paul contrasts the light and momentary afflictions that we sometimes face in our lives with the eternal weight of glory that we’ll experience in the age to come. Walk us through what he’s saying in these verses and how that fits, again, with the broader message of the book.

Dane Ortlund
Do you not love this passage, Matt? If our entire Bible was 2 Corinthians 4:16–18, that would be enough to live on and be happy about. Maybe just for the sake of anyone working out and not with a Bible in front of them as they listen—

Matt Tully
You might want to grab a Bible for the rest of the conversation.

Dane Ortlund
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

Now, the key here, Matt, is we don’t want to understand outer self as just my skin and inner self as my heart and soul. That’s true, but actually, the language used here is the outer man and the inner man. And what he’s talking about is the old Adam and the new Adam.

Matt Tully
Because I think we can read this as, My physical body is the problem.

Dane Ortlund
Yes. Right.

Matt Tully
It’s what’s kind of dragging me down, and someday I’ll be rid of it.

Dane Ortlund
Thank you. Excellent clarification. And that’s not what’s going on. Actually, the biblical understanding of the body is that the body is a good thing. It’s good. It’s Gnosticism or Platonism to think we just need to shed this body and fly away and be a soul forever. The body is good. In Dane Orland—and I’m in Christ—there are remnants of the old Adam clinging to me. I belong fundamentally to Christ, the new Adam, not to the old Adam. So the old Adam is, inevitably as I go through life, is wasting away; the new Adam is being renewed day by day as I look to these eternal realities. What’s actually happening is pain, anguish, affliction, suffering, disappointment, discouragement, illness—in God’s wise, fatherly providence, by the Spirit when united to Christ—are actually fostering, nurturing the development and growth and nurturing of the new man in me. I’m not getting any more united to Christ, but the new man—the what Tim Keller called the glory self, the one that I was made to be and destined to be—is getting fostered and nurtured through what Paul calls “light momentary affliction.” We know that he was not talking about merely garden variety sufferings. He catalogs them in chapter six and chapter eleven of 2 Corinthians. Profound afflictions. But these hard things are preparing for us. In other words, it’s not just that I go through anguish in this life and then in the next life, the risen life in the new heavens and the new earth, is going to make up for all the anguishes of this life; but actually, the hard things of this life are going to actually be a part of the glory and resplendence of me in the next life. I like to put it this way. Our scars here will be transformed into beauty marks there. That’s what I take from that word “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory.”

Matt Tully
I think sometimes we can wonder how that will work. In what way? Will we look back on this time and just see God’s hand? Will it be that he is building our faith in the present? How will that actually work for us?

Dane Ortlund
Well, I would not want to try to answer that in a real dogmatic way. That goes beyond the Scripture. The answer is I don’t know. I don’t know. I could speculate. All I know is if Jesus actually rose, if this Galilean carpenter plunged down into death and down through the ignominious death (he died a shameful death) up into resurrection life and is now seated at the right hand of God in all glory and every knee will bow to him (Phil. 2), if he went through what Paul Miller calls the “J-curve,” and if I’m plugged into him (united him)—I have, in one sense, already gone through it and in another sense, I’m going through it 10,000 times throughout my life—and I am going to be raised as well, then all I know is that’s the pattern and the inevitable destiny result. How is it all going to piece together? I don’t know. But I do know that I look back and I see an actual Christ who was raised, and that is the pattern that I’m part of actually, and it will be reflected in my own life. So, I don’t know. I don’t want to overly speculate, but we can have great confidence that these afflictions are preparing an eternal weight of glory because of Christ and what he experienced.

20:41 - A New Creation

Matt Tully
That’s such an incredible comfort, especially in a book like this which can seem a little bit negative. Paul focuses a lot on the bottom of that curve, of being low with Christ, but there is this final destination. Another well-known verse is 1 Corinthians 5:17. It’s maybe the most famous verse from the book. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” I wonder if you can start by answering what are some of the common ways that people might misunderstand what this verse is saying?

Dane Ortlund
It’s a commonly misunderstood verse. There’s no verb in the Greek. It’s like Romans 8:1. “Therefore, if anyone in Christ, no condemnation.” Paul is so excited about what he’s saying he doesn’t even have a verb. “If anyone in Christ. New creation.” It’s almost like we need an em-dash in English. Some people would say, If anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creature. That’s kind of weird. What does that even mean? If anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creature. No, I don’t think that’s the point. Or we might say, If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation. That’s better, but we’re still not quite there. Here’s what Paul’s saying. I’m ninety-eight percent certain this is what Paul’s saying, Matt. If anyone is in Christ—the Holy Spirit took me and plugged me into Jesus Christ, there to stay, you can’t get disunited from Christ. Jesus would have to get put back down in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea for me to get disunited from him. I’m in him. If you get in him by God-given faith, then you are also necessarily, at the same time, ushered into the dawning new creation. So this new realm that launched—that quietly erupted—in the cosmos when Jesus walked out of the tomb and when the Spirit descended, this constellation of events in the first century, we are now in the new creation and everything that means. We talked about inaugural eschatology earlier. The Eden 2.0 has actually begun. It doesn’t feel like it because the old, fallen age is overlaid with the new creation that has begun. But for believers, for the church, is the reflection. It’s the reality of the new creation in this miserable, dark, black, fallen, sinful world. And so we have been pulled into that. It’s almost like—how would you put it? There was a garden of Eden back in the day; it’s almost like the church is a new garden of Eden that we have been put into to tend and eat the fruit of and so on until Christ comes a second time, and then the old age passes away forever. But for us, the old has passed away and the new has come. That is what defines who we are and when we now live. It’s largely a when question. We are now in this dawning new age. It’s amazing.

23:43 - From Sin to the Righteousness of God

Matt Tully
Yeah, it is amazing. It requires us to have faith—to believe things that we can’t even see and feel sometimes, but it’s true. Alright, maybe a perplexing passage.

Dane Ortlund
Oh boy.

Matt Tully
Second Corinthians 5:21. And this is a verse that I can distinctly remember wrestling with at one point in my life. Paul says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” There’s a lot going on there. There are a lot of pronouns in that verse.

Dane Ortlund
There are.

Matt Tully
Help us understand and walk us through who Paul is referring to at different points, and then in particular, how can he call someone sin?

Dane Ortlund
Oh my. These are deep theological waters, so we want to tread carefully but boldly going where the text has us go. Paul’s been talking about reconciliation—Christ coming so that sinners can be reconciled to God. That’s the context. Not justification; that’s the law court. It’s not sanctification; that’s the temple. It’s not adoption; that’s the family. Reconciliation is friendship. That’s the metaphor being used here. Not merely a metaphor, but that’s sort of the arena being used here. We were estranged; now we are reconciled. And how does that happen? Verse twenty-one, as he just read says, “For our sake he [God the Father] made him [Christ the Son] to be sin”—that does not mean to become ontologically or innately sinful. We always want to test every Scripture against the rest of Scripture. So reading in the light of the whole Bible, he bore objectively, not subjectively, but he bore objectively the sins of all those whom he was reconciling. Those who were estranged. “. . . made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin”—so Christ came into the world. If sin is blue, our problem is not that we’re walking around the world and we’re doing things that have no blue to them but then every once in a while we do something that’s totally blue. Rather, all of our thoughts, words, and deeds have some tint of blue to them. We’re sinful. Jesus is one person who ever lived on this planet, walked on this earth who had no blue whatsoever in anything he ever did, said, or thought. But when he went onto that cross—his whole life of rejection and especially on that cross—he was swallowing down, drinking down, being treated as; he was taking all the blue of all of his people onto himself and receiving the thunderous condemnation that all our blue deserved. He was made to be sin. “. . . him to be sin who knew no sin”—to take down all the blue who knew no blue. I’m just trying to clarify here.

Matt Tully
A visual picture.

Dane Ortlund
Right. “. . . who knew no sin, so that”—what’s the result? He took all our sin on him so that in him there’s union with Christ. In Christ, if you get united to him, in him we (believers) might become the righteousness of God. So the way Luther would say it is Christ, the heavenly bridegroom, came to us harlots and he married us and he took all our filth, all our uncleanness, all our faithlessness and adulterous ways toward God. We had this massive debt, and he took this debt onto himself and he paid it and he gave to us—there was almost like a financial transaction—he gave to us his righteousness. Theologians call it “the great exchange.” Calvin speaks of it in terms of clothing. We were naked. Christ was clothed in white robes, and he gave us his white robes and on the cross took on our nakedness. Actually, he literally did do that, but also metaphorically and spiritually he took on our nakedness—the great exchange. So we actually are accounted—Romans 4 is very clear on this, as well as Galatians 3—accounted righteous, legally innocent, and positively righteous before God in the heavenly law court.

Matt Tully
And here’s where we’re striking at the very heart of the gospel, at the very heart of what it means to be saved. I think sometimes the tricky thing about this verse is just the idea that he became sin. It sounds ontological. It sounds like somehow Christ’s essence was changed into sin itself. But you’re saying that’s not what’s going on here.

Dane Ortlund
No, it’s not. But I think Paul puts it that way because he’s trying to get at just how profound and searching and deep it was that Christ bore our sins. In other words, Paul wants us to understand he didn’t save us in a detached, stiff-arming way, in sort of this keeping at a safe distance, holding his nose towards sinners kind of way. He really bore all our sins. I think that’s what we’re supposed to take from that.

28:40 - The Thorn in the Flesh

Matt Tully
Another very well-known passage but also somewhat perplexing. Second Corinthians 12:7 and the following verses. Paul talks about the thorn in his flesh. What do we know about what that might have been? I know there are lots of theories and we’ve heard different ideas about what that was. What do you think Paul was getting at with that?

Dane Ortlund
I don’t know, nor do I want to guess. I don’t think we should try to guess, though people have tried to do that. I think if Paul wanted us to know, he would’ve told us.

Matt Tully
So you think it’s strategic on Paul’s part, so to speak, that he didn’t tell us what this was?

Dane Ortlund
I would guess so because the more he narrowed it in and said, I was talking about this particular difficulty, then the more those of us who aren’t facing that particular difficulty may have trouble actually applying this. But we all know what it is to feel like you have a thorn in the flesh. And the word here doesn’t mean a tiny little quarter-inch-tall rose thorn. It’s actually the same word used for what the condemned were impaled upon.

Matt Tully
Oh, wow.

Dane Ortlund
A stake. So we need to feel that as he talks about his fault.

Matt Tully
This is really painful.

Dane Ortlund
This is excruciating. This is death-bringing, this kind of thorn.

Matt Tully
Do you think that it was potentially his own sin, a failing on his own part, that he was struggling with, or is it more likely to be something that was not of his own doing but he was still pained by it?

Dane Ortlund
Even there I wouldn’t really want to try to speculate, brother. We don’t know the content of the thorn, but we do know the intent of it. He says, “The thorn was given me”—he says it twice in the text—“The thorn was given me to humble me.” so maybe it was a sin, but maybe it was just a suffering that could still be given to humble him. He says in 2 Corinthians 12:7, “. . . to keep me from becoming conceited.” To keep pride in check. “. . . because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation. He’s been carried up into the third heaven. It means the heart of heaven. He’s had these sublime visions and heard words he couldn’t even repeat (it says that earlier in the passage). “. . . because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.” At the beginning and end of the verse—he says it twice—he says, “to keep me from becoming conceited.” So these are deep theological waters because he says it comes from Satan. A messenger from Satan. Satan was quite happy to bring this thorn to Paul. However, the final purpose of it was to humble Paul to keep pride in check. I’m pretty sure Satan would be glad for pride to grow in Paul. So I conclude that on the one hand this thorn is from Satan. That’s the smaller circle. But there’s a wrap-around circle that actually this thorn is from God, painful as it was, because the ultimate purpose was to bring deeper humility into Paul’s life. That’s very comforting because when adversity flows into my life and it seems quite clear that this is demonic, this is Satanic, I can take comfort in the fact that even that is within the larger wrap-around category of God’s fatherly providence.

31:49 - Examine Yourself to See if You’re in the Faith

Matt Tully
Maybe a last perplexing passage from the book. Second Corinthians 13:5. That’s where Paul calls his readers to examine themselves—he uses that word examine—to see whether you are in the faith. And then he goes on in the following verses to talk about this examination being a test. And I think that can be a difficult passage for Christians sometimes, and it makes us wonder, Do I need to constantly be worrying about my salvation? Do I need to be constantly worrying that I’m going to fail some test of faith that God is going put in front of me and prove myself to be not a real, genuine believer? How do you take that verse from a pastoral perspective?

Dane Ortlund
Yeah, great question, Matt. Robert Murray M’Cheyne said, "For every one look at yourself take ten looks at Christ. Famous statement. That’s a very accurate, proportionate, extrapolation out from the teaching of the New Testament. It’s not take zero looks at yourself and ten looks at Christ. Here’s the one look right there. Second Corinthians 13:5. Do hold up a mirror. Hold up a mirror. Dane, hold up a mirror every so often and ask yourself. The point here isn’t, Are you having at least thirty minutes of prayer per day? The point is, Are you living the kind of life that is exhibiting the death and resurrection of Christ? That’s the point here—in the immediate context and in the flow of all of 2 Corinthians, as you know. So we do that. We do hold up a mirror. Unhealthy, superficial, presumptuous Christians never hold up a mirror. However, for every one time we do that, M’Cheyne is right, ten times or a hundred times we hold up a window and we look at Jesus Christ himself, which is what we’re doing throughout the whole of 2 Corinthians and all the New Testament. So I think that’s a helpful ratio and proportion. Yes, examine yourself. Dane, don’t get presumptuous. Don’t put it in cruise control or autopilot. There is something healthy about examining yourself. However, all of us to some degree, and maybe some of us really a lot, can become overly introspective. I read David Brainerd’s journals. It’s just painful after a while. He’s so painfully introspective. It’s healthy in small doses, but I can’t take too much of it. At the end of the day, we look out. Look within, then look out, out, out, out to Christ. The sunflowers in Kansas, they say, as the sun goes over the orbit of the sky on a given summer day, the sunflowers trace the sun. They actually turn physically with the sun to be looking at it. That’s a good picture of a healthy Christian life—looking out to Christ.

34:33 - Key Verses

Matt Tully
Alright, last final three questions—three linked questions. I’ve mentioned a lot of different verses from this book. Now it’s your turn to share some key verses for you. First question is, What’s the most motivating verse for you as you think about the book of 2 Corinthians? What’s the verse that makes you want to live for Christ, to be faithful to him, to enjoy the unity that you have in the new realm with him? What would you say to that?

Dane Ortlund
Oh, I love that. Here’s the first one that leapt to mind, Matt. We were just talking about the thorn in the flesh. God could have removed the thorn, or he could have left the thorn and provided grace. Those would’ve been two different solutions to help Paul out, and he did the second of those. He said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Matt, I don’t ever want to get too smart for that or too strong for that. I always want to stay in the sweet spot, in the power zone—oh, what a silly phrase. I want to stay in the zone of I am weak, and that is where the power of God actually resides. My weakness is not a problem. My wife and I were just sharing in our small group last night how weak we are feeling in our parenting right now. We are just at our wits end. That is safe ground because that is where God’s power is irresistibly drawn. If someone comes to me and say, Dane, I’m struggling with my parenting and I say to them, Well, here are four handy tips. Here are seven steps. Go implement and do likewise. What’s wrong with you? That’s not where God’s power is. God’s power is drawn to weakness. I need help! I’m at the end of my rope! My power is made perfect in weakness. Paul doesn’t say, Okay. I guess I’m alright with weakness. He actually goes the other way and says he boasts in weakness. He takes deep comfort in his own felt inadequacy. Well, I can relate to that. I can do the Christian life given that. So I just love that.

Matt Tully
One last verse. What’s the most confronting verse in this book that would confront the ways that we so often think wrongly about who God is and who we are?

Dane Ortlund
Alright, I’m going to go to chapter seven because all through, and we haven’t talked about it yet, but all through 2 Corinthians Paul is relentless about the interpersonal realities that he is distressed by in the way that these Corinthians are being drawn away. And also the comfort he takes in his teammates in ministry. Matt, this was a new discovery for me in the writing of this book where he says, in 2 Corinthians 7:3, to the Corinthians, “You are in our hearts.” Okay. You might find that on a Hallmark card. You will not find the rest.

Matt Tully
I’m pretty sure there’s a Disney movie that has a theme song that says that.

Dane Ortlund
But we will not find the following in a Disney movie: “to die together and to live together.” It’s to co-die—it’s one Greek word—and to co-live. Again, one Greek word. Paul uses the language of dying together—co-dying and co-living—two other places. In both of them he’s talking about us co-dying and co-living with Christ vertically. Here he takes that reality of co-dying and co-living, flops it on its side, and it’s talking about a horizontal reality, and he’s saying, You, Matt Tully, are in my heart to die together and to live together. What does that mean? I don’t really know. I can probably see about three and a half percent of the glory of what that means. Apparently, because you and I, Matt and Dane, are both in Christ, therefore we are both, in some sense, we are in one another in that there is this profound Spirit-wrought solidarity and union. First Corinthians 12 says when one body part suffers, we all suffer. When one rejoices, we all rejoice. When my toe is stubbed, the rest of my body feels it. When Matt is hurt, I feel that. “You are in my heart to die together and to live together.” How does that confront me? I don’t live that way. I would like to proceed in the rest of my life as a pastor, as a father, as a friend, with this reality of other believers who are in Christ—it’s not true for unbelievers; it’s other believers—are in my heart to die together and to live together. How might that inform the way we interact with one another? The way we talk with one another when the other person is not present? The way we greet one another in, church, small group? Everything. So that is a wondrous text to fuel depth of Christian togetherness and fellowship and love.

Matt Tully
That’s such a great example of a short text that draws on some of these theological ideas that are rooted all throughout this book, that when you actually think about it, the implications are almost unending for how we live our lives today.

Dane Ortlund
So true.

Matt Tully
Dane, thank you so much for taking the time today to talk with us, to walk us through this incredible book of the Bible—just one book of the whole Bible. We appreciate it.

Dane Ortlund
Matt, I’ve told you off-air many times, and I need to tell you so everyone can hear. You are amazing. Everyone who’s heard you knows this, so let me state the obvious—you do an amazing job of these conversations. I love working with Crossway. I love you, and it is so much fun to talk with you.

Matt Tully
Thank you, Dane. Likewise.

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