2 Corinthians 4:13-18 – Live In The Spirit Of Faith

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 2 November 2025
Underlined words in Scripture quotes indicate words that are in common with the Greek text of the sermon passage. Otherwise, underlining indicates words to emphasize when reading this transcript out loud.

Introduction

• Read my translation of the passage:
  4:11 For we the living are always being given over to death on account of Jesus, in order that the life of Jesus might also be brought to light in our death-prone flesh. So then, death works in us, but the life is in y’all. And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what has been written, “I believed; therefore I spoke,” we also believe, and therefore we speak, knowing that the One Who raised the Lord Jesus, will also raise up and present us together with y’all through Jesus. For it’s all for your sakes, in order that much grace might multiply the thanksgiving by the many to the glory of God. Therefore we do not fault-out, but rather, even though our outer person is decaying, the inner one is being renewed day by day, for the lightness of our stress currently accomplishes an eternal weight of glory in us beyond measure to the extreme! We are not keeping in our sights the things which are seen but rather the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are for a time, but the things which are unseen are eternal.

• Paul’s faith in Jesus made a practical difference in his life that made him winsome as he preached Jesus. Each verse from verse 13 to verse 18 presents a practical, lifestyle result of trusting in Jesus: Prayer, Resurrection-Hope, Thanksgiving, Perseverance, Glory, and Eternal Perspective. Let’s step through all six of them briefly. First...

v. 13 Faith Results in Prayer

• Paul and Timothy open this passage by saying that they have the same faith which was given by the Holy Spirit¹ to David such that David cried out “Save me; I am yours,” in Psalm 119:94).² Here in 2 Cor. 4:13 the apostles cite another of David’s psalms: “I believed therefore I spoke.”

  • This is an exact quote from the Greek³ translation of Psalm 116:3-10 “The pains of death surrounded me, And the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me; I found trouble and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the LORD: ‘O LORD, I implore You, deliver my soul!’ … I will walk before the LORD In the land of the living. I believed, therefore I spoke [saying], ‘I am greatly afflicted.’” (NKJV)

  • The idea is that faith results in praying to God to deliver us through hardships. We wouldn’t try to speak to God if we didn’t believe He existed, or if we didn’t believe He would hear us, or if we didn’t believe He could do anything to help us. It is because we believe in the Lord that we speak to Him and ask for His help, and it is in this context that He delivers us through stressful circumstances.

• This flows from the context of verses 8-12: the Apostles are risking death and experiencing stress, setbacks, persecution, and getting beaten up in the process of preaching the gospel.

  • It is parallel to the earlier statement in 2 Corinthians 3:12 “Therefore, since we have such a hope, we use much openness...” (NAW)

• Do you find yourself asking God for help throughout the day? That is what faith in God leads us to do.

  • While it is good to have a time of focused prayer at some point during the day when you can close your eyes and pray systematically through everything you need to talk to God about, during the rest of the day, you can treat prayer more like an ongoing conversation with a friend (a friend who can read your mind!) and share quick snatches of your thoughts with God about everything as it happens in real-time with your eyes open and your hands busy.

  • If prayer is not part of your life, you can discipline yourself to develop it, much as you would coach a child in developing conversational skills: “Say ‘Yes sir!’” “Say ‘I’m sorry!’” “Say ‘Thank you!’” “Say, ‘Please.’” That’s four categories of prayer, right there in their simplest forms: Adoration (“Yes Sir”), Confession (“Sorry”), Thanksgiving (“Thanks”), and Supplication (“Please”)! Those are all things you can remind yourself to say to God as prayers in the midst of everyday life!

• Another result of faith shows up in...

v. 14 Faith Anticipates The Resurrection

• If there’s any question as to who raised Jesus from the dead, the Bible tells us it was God the Father⁴:

  • 1 Peter 1:3 “Blessed is God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, in accordance with His having a bunch of mercy, re-birthed us into a living hope through the resurrection⁵ of Jesus Christ from the dead” (NAW)

  • 1 Cor. 6:14 “And God both raised up the Lord, and will raise up us through His power.” (NAW)

• And here in 2 Corinthians 4:14, “He who raised Jesus… will also raise us⁶”

  • Up to this point, it seems that Paul and Timothy have been speaking figuratively about suffering for the sake of Christ being a kind of death: 2 Corinthians 4:10-11 “Always carrying around the dead-state of [the Lord] Jesus in our body, in order that the life of Jesus might also be brought to light in our body. For we the living are always being given over to death on account of Jesus, in order that the life of Jesus might also be brought to light in our death-prone flesh.” (NAW, cf. Rom. 8:11)

  • But here it seems to shift to literal death and the future resurrection⁷ (the verb “raise” in v.14 is future tense), and this is especially in connection with the return of Christ, like Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-16 “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose^* again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus… For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise^* first.” (NKJV)

• And in the Gospel of John, Jesus Himself promised us:

  • John 5:25 “Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.” (NKJV)

  • John 6:40 “and ...everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise^* him up at the last day.” (NKJV)

  • John 11:25 “...I am the resurrection^* and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” (NKJV)

• Matthew Henry commented that, “Hope of the resurrection kept [the apostles] from sinking. They knew that Christ was raised, and that his resurrection was an earnest and assurance of theirs. This [Paul] had treated of largely in his former epistle to these Corinthians [chapter 15]. And therefore their hope was firm, being well grounded, that he who raised up Christ the head will also raise up all his members ... The hope of the resurrection will encourage us in a suffering day, and set us above the fear of death...”

• But the resurrection is not the whole story of the future glory of believers. (The wicked will also be raised, but not to a glorious future.) That’s why the second verb “He will present us” is important; it has to do with our eternal relationship with God after our resurrection; it is the context in which we will experience perfect love from our perfect God and Father; it also implies that we will be given a position that will open up meaningful things for us to do in the presence of God for eternity:

  • Ephesians 5:25-27 “...Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless.” (NKJV)

  • Colossians 1:21 “And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight…” (NKJV)

  • 1 Peter 5:10 “And after y'all have suffered a few things, the God of all grace who called y'all into His eternal glory in Christ Jesus will Himself renew y'all, He will confirm, strengthen, and establish.” (NAW)

  • Jude 1:24 God is “...the One who is able to keep and to stand⁸ y'all stumble-free excitedly before His glory unblemished” (NAW)

• The words “with you” also imply community in heaven with fellow-believers.

  • We will be present with the Lord in heaven together with everybody else whom God loves and has called to be with Him forever!

  • That’s why the visions of heaven in the book of Revelation have so many people there!

  • (Now, if you’re not a “people-person” like me and that sounds daunting to be in a crowd for eternity, remember that your ability to love other people will be perfected, and everybody else will be perfected too, so it’ll actually be great!)

• There is one more prepositional phrase in verse 14 which is crucial to our doctrine, and that is the phrase “through Jesus.”

  • A few Greek manuscripts read “with Jesus,” and most English versions follow that word­ing, and indeed we are (in a mystical sense) “with Jesus” in His burial and resurrection:

    • Romans 6:4 “Therefore we were buried with⁹ Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (NKJV, cf. Col. 2:12)

  • But I think the emphasis here in 2 Cor. 4:14 is that we will be resurrected and presented to God “by/through Jesus,” which is the reading of the vast majority of Greek manuscripts.¹⁰

    • 20^th Century commentator Philip Hughes explained, “By this Paul does not of course mean simultaneously with Jesus (for ‘He is the firstborn from the dead’: Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5), but by reason of our identification with Jesus in whom we are elected to everlasting life. Paul's meaning is to be sought in the teaching which he has already given in his earlier letter to the Corinthians, where he shows (1 Cor. 15:12ff.) that apart from the resurrection of Jesus from the dead there is no resurrection to life for us.”

  • The only way we can have the grace of eternal life is by means of Jesus Christ!

• When you trust Jesus to make you right with God, you can not only pray to Him for any help you need, you can also be confident that you will be resurrected to eternal life, and you can look forward to the return of Christ! A third result of faith is in…

v. 15 Faith Results In Thanksgiving

• The “all¹¹” that is “for your sakes” in v.15 is all the work of God in giving us resurrection life described in verse 14, and also the hardships endured by the Apostles in vs. 8-9 to preach the Gospel throughout the world.

• This grace is “abundant/multitudinous” so there is plenty of “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense” to flow into your life to bring salvation and comfort in every hardship. (This verse, by the way, is what inspired the first half of the title of John Bunyan’s autobiography, Grace Abounding To The Chief of Sinners... and it can be your life story too!)

• But the blessing does not dead-end with you receiving abundant grace through the ministry of the gospel! God has a larger purpose, described in the rest of verse 15:

• “...in order that abundant/much/spreading/extending grace might multiply/increase/cause to abound/overflow the thanksgiving by/through the many...”

  • In other words, God’s grace is multiplied towards us, giving us eternal life, in order that we – “the many¹²” people who are saved (more and more of us as the Gospel is preached in more and more places) – will be all-the-more thankful to God for His grace toward us!

  • For what it’s worth, the KJV got the Greek grammar wrong here; the “thanksgiving” doesn’t cause the “grace” to “abound,” the “grace” causes the “thanksgiving” to “abound!”

    • Romans 5:20 “...where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” (NKJV)

    • Colossians 2:6-7 “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.” (NKJV)

  • In chapter 1, a more-limited reason for thanksgiving was introduced, and that was the money which the Corinthians were collecting to give as a gift to the poor Christians in Jerusalem, but Paul used similar language in that narrower context as well: 2 Corinthians 1:11 “Y'all are collaborating... in order that this gift from many persons... might be given-thanks-for by many on account of us.” (NAW) And it shows up again in 2 Corinthians 9:11 “...you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God. For the administration of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God” (NKJV)

  • If a financial gift was reason enough to thank God abundantly, how much more is God’s gracious gift of resurrection life!

  • John Calvin commented, “[E]very blessing that God confers upon us perishes through our carelessness, if we are not prompt and active in rendering thanks.”

• But not even multiplying the number of people thanking God for Jesus’s salvation is the ultimate goal; the ultimate goal is at the end of v.15, namely, “the glory of God.”

  • That was to be the case in the narrower application of the financial gift, according to 2 Cor­inthians 8:19 “...this gift... is administered by us to the glory of the Lord Himself...” (NKJV)

  • And it is to be the case in the broader application of all of God’s grace that abounds to us:

    • 1 Peter 2:9 “Y'all, however, are a select kind, a priestly royalty, a holy ethnicity, a people made to be around Him in such a way that y'all might extol the virtues of Him who called y'all out of darkness into His marvelous light” (NAW)

    • Ephesians 3:21 “to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (NKJV)

• Is it your ultimate goal to give glory to God? Are your thoughts and words filled with thanksgiving to God for how His grace abounds to you? This is the lifestyle of Christian faith, yet it is also a discipline in which you can mature and become more and more consistent in. Just like prayer takes time and intentionality, so also praise and thanksgiving take time and intentionality. The next result of faith is in…

v. 16 Faith doesn’t Fault-out

• We’ve already seen this statement in verse 1 - “Therefore… we don’t lose heart/we don’t fault-out/faint,” and now v. 16 puts an end-cap on it, repeating the same words is summary.

  • We noted in the sermon on verse 1, that the other passages in the Bible that use this word for “fault-out/faint/lose heart” teach us that we don’t stop praying (Luke 18:1), we don’t grow weary in doing good (Gal. 6:9 & 2 Thess. 3:13), and we don’t let tribulations overwhelm us emotionally (Eph. 3:13).

  • Here, it seems to say that even the aging and weakness of our physical body will not cause us to fail in our faith in Jesus, because our soul – our inner-self – is kept up in good operating condition by the Holy Spirit, so we can relate to God as well as ever, with no breakdown in faith or love for God!

  • So this “outward man” is a different idea than the unregenerate “old man” in other passages¹³. Here, we’re just talking about our physical body.

  • Geneticist Dr. Robert Carter (who has spoken for one of our church events) has esti­mated¹⁴ that there are approximately 90 new harmful genetic mutations added to each human generation, and natural selection cannot weed them out fast enough to overcome this genetic entropy. Not only does that process leave our descendants closer to extinc­tion due to declining health, it also operates in our own lifespan such that the older we get, the more our body stops functioning properly. Paul was right when he said that “our outward man is decaying.” But, he says, the spiritual part of us is not decaying:

• Faith doesn’t fault-out, not because our faith is strong but because God renews it every day.

  • That “abundance of power... from God” in v. 7 comes into our “clay pots” “day by day!”

  • In the midst of the Lamentation over the destruction of Judah due to God’s wrath against their idol-worship, Jeremiah says, “Your mercies are new every morning” (Lam. 3:23).

  • Titus 3:5 “...according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (NKJV) The Holy Spirit brings renewal to us.

  • Isaiah described the renewal like this in ch. 40:29-31 “giving power to the faint and to the ones who have no strength He will increase might… But those who wait on Yahweh will renew strength; they will take wing like the eagles; they will run and not tire; they will walk and not grow faint¹⁵.” (NAW)

  • Psalm 73:26 “My flesh and my heart fail¹⁶; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (NKJV)

• This renewal is primarily of our thinking and knowledge and feelings:

  • Col. 3:9-10 “...you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (NKJV)

  • Psalm 51:10 “Let it be a clean heart that You create for me, God, and a steadfast spirit that You renew in my inside¹⁷.” (NAW)

  • Ephesians 3:16 “...He [will] grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man” (NKJV) … 4:23 “and to be renewed¹⁸ in the spirit of your mind” (NAW).

  • But 1 Thessalonians 5:23 mentions the body as well: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (NKJV)

• So faith doesn’t lose heart and fault-out. It keeps praying and praising God and looking forward to Christ’s return. The fifth result of faith in Jesus is...

v. 17 Faith Through Affliction Works Glory

• In the original Greek of v.17, the phrase “the lightness” is the subject and this is followed by the prepositional phrase “of our affliction/stress/ tribulation.” It is an allusion to Jesus’ state­ment, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” in Matthew 11:30, which is the only other time this word for “light” occurs in the Greek New Testament.

• Now, this doesn’t mean there weren’t tremendous stresses on Paul and other believers. We’ll see in chapter 11 his list of tribulations, and they were indeed staggering.

• But Paul and Timothy call the stress they currently experiences in following Jesus “lightweight” in comparison with the hyperbolic weightiness of the glory which Christians get to experience here-and-now, and even more in eternity.

• The Greek word translated “momentary” in most English versions, is an adverb, and since adverbs modify verbs, I think it should modify the verb, “working/producing/achieving/pre­paring,” as in, “The lightness of our affliction is working currently/at this moment and eternal weight of glory.”

  • This parallels the doctrine of the previous verse, that our “being renewed” comes “day by day,” not just in the by-and-by, but starting now and every day from now!

  • I realize that all the standard English versions instead make the word for “momentarily” an adjective describing “affliction,” but of all the English versions I looked at, I think the NLT came the closest to what I think the Apostles intended, that “our present troubles… produce… glory….”

• Now, it’s true that there is still more glory yet to be revealed. Paul wrote about that in Rom­ans 8:18 (“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time¹⁹ are not worthy to be com­pared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” ~NKJV), but here, Paul is asserting that the stresses we are undergoing are even now in the present working out glory in us.

• This is not to say that “by [suffering] afflictions we merit the inheritance,” but rather “that afflictions are the path through which the heavenly kingdom is arrived-at.” (J. Calvin)

• And it is an “eternal weight of glory²⁰”

  • 2 Timothy 2:8-12 “Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel, for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer²¹, even to the point of chains; but the word of God is not chained. Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him. If we endure, We shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us.” (NKJV)

  • 1 Peter 5:10 “And after y'all have suffered a few [things], the God of all grace who called y'all into His eternal glory in Christ Jesus will Himself renew²² [y'all], He will confirm, strengthen, [and] establish.” (NAW)

• And this “weight of glory” is, as it were, “absolutely off-the-charts,” according to Paul.

  • He uses the word in v. 17 from which our English term “hyperbole” is derived. It literally means to “throw over” or “overflow.

  • It’s the same word used to describe the “abundance” of God’s power that keeps our fragile, clay bodies together (in verse 7).

  • But nowhere else in the entire Greek Bible is this word for “excess/far more/beyond meas­ure” repeated like it is here. This doubled prepositional phrase is the most intensely-em­phatic expression of “abundant excess” anywhere in the Bible, and it describes the amount of glory which is coming to you as you endure the trials of following Jesus in this life.

• If the reality of that could sink into your mind, how would that change the way you are living this week? Would you suffer hardships a little more cheerfully, knowing how temporary they are and that the glory to come will far outweigh them for eternity? That leads us into the last result of faith in this passage in...

v. 18 Faith Keeps An Eternal Perspective

• The “distress” of the “current” time, the “decaying of our outer man,” the “affliction,” “perplexity,” “persecution” and “knock-downs” may be all that we can physically “see” right now, because they are realities in the here-and-now of this sin-sick world, but if we fix our eyes on those things, we will miss the glory.

• “‘For the things that are seen are temporal.’ Therefore the afflictions are so too. ‘But the things that are not seen are eternal.’ Therefore the crowns are so also... Let us not then, in order that for a single moment (for such is this present life) we may live luxuriously, draw on ourselves punishment through endless ages: but let us toil for a moment, that we may be crowned for ever.” ~J. Chrysostom

• “The word which is here rendered look signifies to take aim at... [The Greek word is scopew, from which we get the word “scope,” like one would use on a hunting rifle.] This is a very steady intuition which a man ha[s] of the mark which he is aiming at, or the end which he designs; he must always have it in his eye.” ~Howe’s Works, p. 543.

• Can I put it very practically? Secular news and entertainment and social media will fix your eyes on temporal things, so if you look at them more than you read/listen to the Bible, your eyes will be fixed on the things that are seen instead of the things that are unseen, and you will miss out on glory. (I am not saying that Christians can’t use news and media, but we must use it in such a way that it does not direct our gaze too earth-ward.)

• We are to “fix our eyes on Christ, the [eternal] author and finisher of our faith” in heaven, as the author of Hebrews exhorts us, and that means keeping what is eternal in view. Hebrews 11 really develops this idea: “1 Now, faith is the understanding of things being hoped for; it is the making of a case concerning matters which are not being seen” 3 With faith we figure out that the worlds have been fixed-up by the word of God such that it was not out of visible²³ things that what is seen came into being… 6 On the other hand, without faith, it's impossible to be well-pleasing, for it is necessary for the one who approaches God to have faith that He exists and that He becomes the payoff to those who are seeking Him out… 13 Faithful throughout, all the [patriarchs] died, not having received the things promised, but rather, having seen and welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that that they are foreigners and pilgrims upon the earth… 24-27 With faith, Moses, after he was grown, declaimed being called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, having chosen instead to be ill-treated together with the people of God than to have temporary enjoyment of sin, having decided that [experiencing] the insulting of the Messiah was greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, since he was looking off to the payback. With faith he left Egypt behind, not having been frightened by the wrath of the king, for he persevered as one who sees Him who is unseen [ἀόρατον].” (NAW, cf. Rom. 8:24)

• “We… make it our end and scope, not to escape present evils and obtain present good, both of which are temporal and transitory, but to escape future evil and obtain future good things, which though unseen, are real, and certain, and eternal.” ~M. Henry

• “For we walk by faith, not by sight,” Paul and Timothy will write later in 2 Cor. 5:7(NKJV)

  • 1 Cor. 2:9 “… ‘What eye did not see, and ear did not hear and [what] did not come upon the heart of mankind’ is what God prepared for those who love Him.” (NAW)

• The apostle John also teaches us to have this eternal perspective through faith.

  • In 1 John 2:17 he wrote, “...the world and its desires are being phased out, but the one who does the will of God remains forever.” (NAW)

  • And his vision of the weight of glory in heaven has lifted the eyes of Christians for all time: Revelation 21:1-7 “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea... And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ ... I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.” (NKJV)

Conclusion

• May the faith that God has given you

  • keep your sights “on the grace to be given you when Christ is revealed” (1 Pet. 1:13)

  • and give you perseverance to let hardship in following Jesus work fabulous glory in you,

  • and keep you from giving up,

  • but enabling you to pray

  • and give thanks in all things,

  • while you eagerly await for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed (1 Cor. 1:7)!

2 Corinthians 4:13-18 – Comparison of Textual Traditions & Versions^A