God’s Pressure Cooker, Pt.1

Practical Help from 2 Corinthians 4:7-18

As a child, I well remember the sound of a whistle blowing to indicate that dinner was almost ready. It was the release valve on one of my mom’s favorite cooking utensils, her pressure cooker. She used the cooker to prepare vegetables and other dishes that needed to be cooked in water at high temperatures.

The pressure cooker is an interesting device because it is designed to help water exceed its normal properties. If one puts water in an open pot and applies heat, the water will begin to boil when it reaches 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). It will rise into the atmosphere as steam and be lost for cooking purposes. If you put the water in an enclosed pot, however, the steam is trapped. The water achieves, if you will, a higher temperature and is able to cook more effectively in a shorter amount of time. Pressure under controlled circumstances produces greater effectiveness and productivity, making water do what it cannot naturally accomplish.

Most of us feel like we have spent time in the pressure cooker. At different times in our lives, we have experienced intense pressure, perhaps coming from many different directions. We may wonder why life must be so painful or so hectic or so stressful. Given our own way, we might wish to escape the pressures of this world by abandoning our responsibilities or fleeing our circumstances. God, however, has a purpose in applying the heat in our lives.

In the first seven chapters of Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians, [1. Paul does not leave this theme behind when he enters the more combative section of 2 Corinthians, chapters 10-13. He declares that our warfare is spiritual, not carnal (10:3-4); he refuses to boast of his labors but affirms that all glorying should focus on the Lord (10:12-18); he lists his sufferings as the key vindication of his apostolic calling (11:16-33); and he gives the famous statement that Christ’s power is magnified in his weakness (12:9-10).] the apostle establishes and supports the thesis that the power of the gospel is made perfect in the weakness of gospel ministers. Indeed, believers suffer so that they will be enabled to comfort others in their sufferings (1:3-7). Paul himself “despaired even of life,” but God graciously delivered him (1:8-11). Paul acknowledged his own utter insufficiency for the eternal task committed to him (2:15-16). Indeed, every minister must proclaim that his adequacy is found only in God (3:5). Paul’s own ministry was approved in “patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings … as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (6:4-5, 10). When he came into Macedonia (from which he was writing this epistle), his “flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears … (but) God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us” (7:5-6). Obviously, Paul was conscious of two associated truths: God’s mighty power is working through his ministry; that power is being channeled through his suffering. John Piper noted this Pauline theme in Future Grace:

It is a biblical truth that the more earnest we become about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and the more devoted we become to reaching the unreached peoples of the world, and exposing the works of darkness, and loosing the bonds of sin and Satan, the more we will suffer. [2. John Piper, Future Grace (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 1995), 342.]

Second Corinthians 4:7-18 is a central passage in the book relative to this key theme. In this text, Paul presents to the Corinthian Christians the premise, the process, the purposes, and the promise of God’s pressure cooker.

The Premise of God’s Pressure Cooker

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us (2 Cor. 4:7).

Paul has begun the fourth chapter by emphasizing the gospel ministry. He renounces worldly methods, viewing his ministry as the “manifestation of the truth” (verse 1). Because of the opposition of the “god of this world,” this gospel is hidden to unbelievers, whose minds have been blinded. Clearly, human methods will not avail to remove this blindness. Therefore, Paul says, he doesn’t proclaim himself as the answer. He displays Christ Jesus as Lord; he is merely a slave, both to the Corinthians and to Christ (for Jesus’ sake). The Corinthians are believers not because of Paul but because the God who created the world has chosen to display His glory in the Corinthian believers through the revelation of Jesus Christ to them.

When he speaks of a treasure, then, he is speaking of this glorious gospel. The word Paul chooses is the source of our word thesaurus and originally spoke of the place where one kept his most valuable possessions. Gradually, the word came to signify the valuables themselves.

Where has God chosen to store this most valuable possession? Amazingly, Paul writes, God has entrusted this treasure to earthen vessels. The Corinthian Christians would have readily connected with this illustration because, as Polhill points out, Corinthian “pottery had a worldwide reputation.” [3. John B. Polhill, Paul & His Letters (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1999), 214.] Clay jars were common in the ancient world and could be employed in a variety of tasks, some menial and some degrading. Only in dire extremities would one entrust his most valuable possessions to a common household pot. God, however, has done just that, choosing us as the vessels to whom the glorious gospel has been committed.

Lest we slip into a Gnostic error, note that Paul is not describing our bodies, as though we ourselves are valuable but we happen to be trapped in clay bodies. No, that would miss the whole point of this context. Our bodies are not alone the vessels; we are the vessels. In comparison with the value of this glorious message, we are mere clay jars, unworthy of the honor and incapable of the responsibility posited in us. Why would God do such a thing?

Here is the premise for the remainder of Paul’s discussion in this chapter. God has placed the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ in clay pots so that the excellency of the power would obviously reside in God and not in us. The word excellency is translated from a compound Greek word that has the sense of “throwing beyond” or “surpassing.” If God has called us to the ministry of the gospel—and every Christian is so called in some sense, and if the ministry involves the supernatural overcoming of satanic forces and sinful blindness, where will the power come from to accomplish this work? Paul clearly teaches that God has entrusted this gospel ministry to plain clay jars so that He will get all the glory for all that is accomplished.

How does God best get the glory in our ministries? The rest of the text will suggest that God receives the glory when suffering and persecution show us our own inadequacy and drive us to Him for strength. Paul embraced the pressure cooker because he knew that when he was weak, God was strong, and that the ministry of the gospel would redound to God’s glory alone.

The Process of God’s Pressure Cooker

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed (2 Cor. 4:8-9).

To illustrate the fact that the power is God’s and not ours, Paul shifts his metaphor a bit in verses 8 and 9. There is a very close connection between verses 8-10 and verse 7. In the AV, the translators supplied “we are” in verse 8 in order to provide a finite verb to govern the nine participles that are going to follow. In fact, however, Paul says that the power is not of us, who are troubled on every side, etc. We might rearrange and paraphrase the verses to capture the flow: Troubled, perplexed, persecuted, cast down, bearing about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus, we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the surpassing greatness of the power would be clearly His and not ours.

In short, verses 8-10 demonstrate the premise asserted in verse 7. These verses are not some special or exceptional case. They reflect Paul’s normal expectation for the life of ministry. How, then, does the life of ministry demonstrate where the power really lies? These verses show us that process, employing military metaphors.

First, the gospel minister is troubled on every side. The word means to press in upon and pictures an enemy phalanx that has, perhaps, gained both flanks and is marching with swords drawn directly against us. The gospel minister often finds himself hard pressed by the world, his own flesh, and the devil. God is allowing the heat to be applied to the earthenware vessel. But, Paul triumphantly says, we are not distressed. Pressed but not distressed! We see the whites of our enemies’ eyes, but we have no plans to panic. The word translated distressed pictures an army bottled up in a ravine with the enemy crushing down upon it with no apparent way of escape. But, Paul says, we are not distressed.

Reverting to my metaphor, note that pressure cookers have an important feature that prevents the pot from exploding. The whistle that I heard as a child was the release valve, and it notified my mom that maximum heat had been attained and the work had been accomplished. God, of course, does not require notification, but Paul gratefully acknowledges in this text that in the midst of the pressures of gospel ministry, though pressed on every side, there is a way of escape.

Second, the gospel minister is perplexed. Paul almost seems to contradict himself here. After assuring the Corinthians that the gospel minister is not cut off in a ravine and crushed by his enemy, Paul uses a word that implies one is cut off from resources, in perplexity as to where to turn, hemmed in by his enemies. One might picture a band of soldiers circling their supply wagons and hunkering down against a mighty onslaught. They have no remaining rations of food; the water is running out; their supply of arrows is expended and only half the men have usable swords. Where can they turn?

Paul uses a strengthened form of the same verb to give the triumphant answer: but not in despair. No matter how cut off one may feel, the gospel minister can always look up. That supply line is never severed.

Third, the gospel minister is persecuted, a word that literally means to hunt down and attack. Our band of soldiers has broken out of the siege and is on the run. The enemy is bearing down upon them. Have you ever felt that the trials of life were pursuing you, dogging your every step? Paul had quite literally been persecuted, but he exclaims that he has never been forsaken. When we are on the run, we rarely feel that we are running towards God, but Paul promises that God never abandons the minister of the gospel.

Fourth, the gospel minister is cast down, a Greek word that literally means “to cast down”! Yes, the enemy has caught the soldiers and is brutalizing them. If ever the enemy seemed to be in control, this is the time. What a consolation then to read that we are not destroyed. God is still in control.

You may wonder, though, whether any of this really applies to your situation. After all, you’re not a minister of the gospel; you’re a housewife, or a chemist, or an elementary school teacher. The trials you are facing are not persecution, per se; they’re gall stones, unruly children, a hectic calendar, and neighbors who ignore you no matter what you try to do to win an audience with them. Does this passage apply? Are these the kinds of pressures Paul is talking about?

In fairness, Paul’s model involved pressures of mostly a very different kind. When we read his catalog of sufferings in 11:23-33, it is obvious that his gospel proclamation generated violent responses all across the empire. You and I may or may not be called upon to suffer in precisely the way Paul did.

Three things, however, incline me to think that Paul has a wider application in view. He is clearly describing all Christians in verse 7, and the following verses are grammatically developing that basic premise. God has entrusted every Christian with the Great Commission ministry of proclaiming the gospel so that the lost will be saved and the saved will be edified. Furthermore, God is at work in every Christian doing His painful work of sanctification, weaning us from this world, pruning us, and burning away our dross (to mix several biblical metaphors). As the believer involves himself in ministry, God will inevitably allow obstacles, pressures, and even persecution to befall him.

Second, the language Paul uses can apply to a variety of trials and tribulations. Persecution, perhaps, has the most direct connection with our profession as Christians, but all of the suffering that God allows in our lives is intended to make us more like Christ and therefore more faithful and effective ministers of the gospel.

That is, in fact, the third observation I would make. The reasons Paul lists in verses 10-15 for the suffering God allows in our lives apply just as much to gall stones as to thrown stones. Note the flow of the argument: if Paul could respond like this to the life-crushing forces unleashed against him, how should we respond to the whatever pressures most of us face?

What, then, is the process by which we are made to recognize our humble state and by which God is exalted in our eyes as all-sufficient and all-powerful? As we engage in gospel ministry, we are pressed but not distressed, hemmed in but not cut off, pursued but not abandoned, cast down but not destroyed. But why would God put us through all of this? There are many scriptural answers to this question, but Paul gives four powerful ones in the next six verses.

Originally published Winter/Spring 2009