Resilient Faith

A greater hope from 2 Corinthians 4.

Photo by Cristina Hernández on Unsplash

Everyone wants to be resilient. The word has become common in military and first responder spaces, because the alternatives are so common. Pressure, disappointment, grief, weariness, loss, and weakness are not foreign to any of us, we could say it is normal and expected. As a pastor I carry burdens that wake me up at night. Mothers feel the long, slow erosion of sleepless years, first in nurturing a baby, then in prayers for wayward kids. Saints sit in hospital chairs and hold the hands of those they love dealing with all manner of bad news. We long for endurance, for steadfastness, for courage…

Christians should honor and acknowledge that very longing. We feel it too, we yearn for something better. The Bible however, offers us something deeper still: a vision of weak people sustained by a strong God, of suffering people being made glorious, of mortal bodies that house an immortal hope.

That vision finds its clearest expression in 2 Corinthians 4:7-18.

Treasure in Jars of Clay

Paul begins with a striking image. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7). A jar of clay was the most ordinary container in the ancient world. Cheap and fragile, easily chipped, easily broken, not strong. Paul is not flattering himself or his readers. He is telling the truth about what we are.

The treasure, however, is not ordinary. It is the gospel of the glory of Christ shining in our hearts (2 Cor 4:6). Fragile vessels carry priceless contents. And this is by design. God places his treasure in clay so that the surpassing power is unmistakably his.

Christian resilience starts here. It is not the strength of the strong. It is the borrowed strength of the weak who cling to Christ. The deepest resilience the world has ever seen has always belonged to people who knew they were dust.

Affliction felt, Not Denied

Paul does not romanticize suffering. He says it like this. “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:8-9).

Notice the honesty. Paul does not pretend the pressure is of no matter. He does not say believers float above sorrow or remain untouched by hardship, like some type of cherub on a cloud. The first half of every line tells the truth about life in a fallen world. Afflicted. Perplexed. Persecuted. Struck down. This is the reality of life for the apostle Paul. It is the normative experience for many Christians across the world.

The second half of every line tells the truth about life in union with Christ. Not crushed. Not despairing. Not forsaken. Not destroyed. Affliction is very real, but it is not the final word. Grace meets the believer in the pressure and refuses to let go.

Christian resilience tells the truth about pain and tells a greater truth about the God who sustains us in it. Jars that are not proclaiming the strength of themselves.

Cruciform Endurance

Then Paul adds deeper colors to the picture. “Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor 4:10).

The Christian life is not a return to baseline. It is a pattern, the pattern of Christ. We are joined to him in his death, and his risen life is at work in us. Suffering becomes the very place where the risen Christ is displayed through ordinary believers who Christ holds close.

Resilience, then, is more than bouncing back. It is being shaped and formed and sanctified. The Christian is not trying to recover the person he was before the trial. He is being conformed to the Son who entered the trial for him.

This is why the shame of the cross is not embarrassing for the Christian. It is the signature of our hope. The pattern that saved us is the pattern that sustains us. Friend, it is the pattern that should sustain you.

Inward Renewal

Paul then sets a sober reality and a glorious one in the same breath. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16).

The body wears down. Bones ache, hair thins, strength fades, illness arrives. We get lost in confusing situations. Paul does not pretend otherwise.

What Paul teaches is how to interpret weakness by and through the eyes of faith. The body may experience affliction, but faith interprets affliction. The eyes water. The chest tightens. The shoulders sag. Beneath all of this, by the work of the Spirit through the Word, something else is happening. The inner self is being renewed. New mercies arrive every morning. The soul, fed by Christ, grows stronger even as the body slows. As we continue to take our steps toward the grave.

This is one of the quiet miracles of the Christian life. Saints who can barely stand can still worship. Saints who cannot remember names can still remember the Shepherd. The outer man wears down while the inner man grows more beautiful by the day.

The Weight of Glory

Then comes one of the most staggering sentences in the Bible. “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4:17).

Paul does not say his suffering felt light. He said earlier that he was so utterly burdened beyond his strength that he despaired of life itself (2 Cor 1:8). He knew what crushing pressure felt like. From the other side of the scale, weighed against the glory to come, even his apostolic sufferings registered as light and momentary. If we measure our affliction by our perceptions, we will be overwhelmed, but if we measure it by faith, we can’t help but see.

The Christian does not call suffering light because it feels light, but because glory is heavy.

This is faith doing its proper work. Faith does not pretend the pain is small. Faith sees the glory as great. “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” (2 Cor 4:18). The visible is loud, a megaphone. The unseen is true, as Lewis once said, suffering is a megaphone. Resilient Christians train their eyes on the eternal until temporal weights begin to feel their proper size.

The Practices of Resilient Christianity

How does this resilience come to ordinary believers? Through the means God has given. The Christian life is built on faithful, ordinary practices. Extrodinary afflictions require ordniary methods.

The Scriptures. The Word of God is the food of the inner man. Daily reading, careful study, slow meditation. The renewal Paul describes flows through Scripture into the heart.

Prayer. Honest, persistent, dependent prayer. Resilient saints are praying saints. They cast their burdens on the Lord because they know he cares for them (1 Pet 5:7).

Gathered worship. The Lord’s Day is a weekly resurrection morning, a regular taste of the world to come. The church gathered around the Word is one of God’s chief means of strengthening weary believers. Encouraging and being encouraged, so necessary in our isolated world.

Singing. Songs of truth carry doctrine deep into the soul. The saints in every generation have sung their way through sorrow. “When sorrows like sea billows roll.”

Fellowship. Burdens are bearable when they are shared. The body of Christ was never meant to suffer alone. A resilient Christian is a connected Christian.

The Lord’s Supper. A regular, tangible reminder that we are united to a crucified and risen Savior. The bread and the cup preach to us when our hearts are too tired to preach to themselves.

Service. Looking outward to the needs of others lifts the soul from the gravity of its own sorrow. Saints who serve are saints who endure.

Remembering the resurrection. Christ is risen. Death has been undone at its root. Every grave in a Christian cemetery is temporary.

Fixing our eyes on unseen things. This is the daily discipline of faith. Looking past what is loud to what is lasting.

These practices are channels through which the Spirit normally works to renew the inner man, day by day, until faith becomes sight.

A Sure and Steady Hope

Christian resilience is not a posture we manufacture; it is not a set of bootstraps to pull up. It is the fruit of life in Christ. We are resilient because Christ is risen. We are resilient because the Spirit is renewing us from within. We are resilient because the Father has promised never to leave us or forsake us. We are resilient because glory is coming, and glory is heavy enough to outweigh every sorrow we will ever carry.

The treasure is real. The jar will not be destroyed until its work is done. On the last day, even the jar will be raised, glorified, and made fit for the treasure it has carried all along.

Take heart. The God who began this work will finish it (Phil 1:6). The inner self is being renewed today. The unseen is being prepared for you. The day is coming when the weight of glory will fall on a people who once felt only the weight of sorrow, and they will say with one voice that he has done all things well.