Death in Us, Life in Others
2 Corinthians 4:10-12 · Roger Henderson · Mar 20, 2022
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 100
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261926231549

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. Nice to see you guys. It's been a while. I think this is the longest we have not been in church in, I don't know, a long time. The first week was a funeral we attended in Tennessee. The other weeks were fun, except the Lord took Vine and I through an interesting situation, which maybe I'll share in a little bit here. We'll see how it works out.

So what I wanted to do, I started in chapter four and was working my way through from verse seven, and I wanted to kind of go back and look at that again. I talked with Mike, and Mike kind of picked up, and he kind of covered what we're gonna do today, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to amplify that some more. So with that in mind, let's kind of go back here, and we'll do a little reviewing, and hopefully this will be edifying So I've labeled this message, Death in Us and Life in Others.

And actually that title actually comes out of the Hungry Heart in several of the, in fact I think there are 16 times, 16, what are they called, devotionals that are in the Hungry Heart that cover verses 10 through 12. So if you're interested you can look them up. One, actually 9.2 is a particularly good one. Maybe you have to look that one up.

It's kind of cool, but it's it says death in us life and others So what's that all about so hopefully we can see what that's about today? Okay, so I'm just kind of this is the outline which I had Developed this from my brother how Malloy And today we're gonna focus, it goes through the wonderful, we start in chapter four in verse one, we kinda go down towards seven there and we see the glorious gospel and the people being blinded to that gospel. And then we see the person of Christ and then we see, the last time I taught back in February, it was on the trials and sufferings. We're gonna review that a little bit. And then we get down to this last section on 10 through 12. that the life of Jesus may be manifest or shown forth, that's what manifest means, in our bodies.

So what's that all about? How does that happen? So let me just reread what was read before here. Let me just move this over a little bit. I'm gonna knock it over if I'm not careful. I don't like to flail my arms, right? Not too much, hopefully. Okay, here we go. And actually, one thing to observe, which I pointed out, you know, if you were here a month ago, that this is one sentence, 7 through 10 is one sentence in the original, and it has one main verb, we have or we are having.

And what's in blue there are the things that Paul is pointing out that every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has. He may not realize that he has these things, he may not want these things, he definitely doesn't want the trials probably, but he has them. And he also has this wonderful verse 10, about caring about in our body the dying of Jesus. That's a pretty amazing statement.

Let me just reread it and we'll go on from there. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of his power will be of God and not from ourselves. We are afflicted in every way or from every side, but not crushed, perplexed but not despairing, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always caring about in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our body. So we're gonna review that and then we're gonna go on to the last two verses 11 and 12.

Our brother Hal calls these our glorious possessions. So I like this, I developed this little picture, it's not rocket science, but I just took the verses and put them in little bubbles, you know. You can do that with PowerPoint, make it look like you know what you're talking about. So, okay, here we go. The first we have, we have this treasure in earthen vessels.

Now this is a wonderful statement about the fact that we have the very person of the Lord Jesus Christ within us. That's what Scripture says and many, many times we're going to look at that maybe more intently today. But we also have, another thing we have in addition to having that, these are all what's called positional truths. They're true of us by God's doing and he asks us to believe it by faith. We may like what he declares about us, in fact we may think some are great, but the one in the middle here we have from every side trials and sufferings.

And he mentions four, afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down. Then he mentions four others that he says Brothers, don't go that far, don't go to the next step. Trust in me, rest in me, and don't go to the next step. Then he also says, the third thing he says in this verse, and this is why I wanted to repeat this, to do this again, we have in the body the dying of Jesus. So what in the world is that all about?

Mike, you know, Mike did a good job, and I think there's just so much more to be plumbed here, so to speak. So those are the three bubbles there. So let's go through it here. Okay, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. So just some wonderful aspects of that. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. It's present tense, continuous action. So you could translate it, we are having, continuously, 24-7. And we're having this treasure in earthen vessels. It's a main verb of that long sentence in 7-12. It's in believers, it's in clay pots or clay jars it's called sometimes.

And this verb, if you look back in the context from verse 6, it's the very glory of God. We have the very glory of God in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we have that great treasure within us. And God wants that great treasure to go forth from us, to be seen. So several things you could say. It radiates in our hearts. We know that it's from God. It's to illuminate other men's hearts. We have the most prized and valuable content.

And kind of a corollary verse here is, My mind's going here. I'm like Courtney, I say, where's my coffee? Anyway, Colossians, in Colossians here we have this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. So Christ is in every believer, whether he realizes it or not.

Okay, so now we get the bad news. Actually, it's not to be bad news. I mean, it's hard to handle this, but this is news that God wants us to know. The second possession we have, we have from every side trials, plural, and suffering. God has appointed us to trials and suffering.

And kind of the key verse in that thing, if you're looking for a verse to hang your hat on, You go to Thessalonians, I should have a First Thessalonians there I think. Actually I corrected that and this time around I forgot to re-correct it. I think it's First Thessalonians. 3.2 says, we sent Timothy, if not I'll let you know or check me out here.

We sent Timothy, this is Paul speaking, we sent Timothy to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith. so that no one would be disturbed by these afflictions. They were undergoing afflictions as God ordained afflictions. For you yourself know that we have been destined or appointed for this." So Paul is sharing that this is part of the Christian's life. So the tense of this we have been destined to or appointed to is passive voice. So God is the, He is the one that's performing the action and we're the recipients of that action. We're undergoing the trial that God has destined for us.

It's indicative mood, which is the mood of reality. And it's present tense. And present, whenever you have present tense in the Greek, it's continuous action, and I like what our brother Hal has, it's continuous in your life, don't expect it to end. I think that's kind of a sobering thought, that don't expect it to end. So that's part of this, that's possession number two.

And so I just, for completeness here, I'll put the, so here are the four, you notice here that We have these, being afflicted but not crushed, being perplexed but not despairing, being persecuted but not forsaken, being struck down but not being destroyed. So I think what the Lord is showing us here is that He shows us that we're gonna have afflictions, being perplexed, persecuted, struck down, but there's another step. The believers, and we have examples in Scripture, the Apostle Paul and our Savior, they went the next step, and that's not where God wants us to be. He does not want us to go beyond, and we can be perplexed and be despairing, and He doesn't want us to go there, and He's provided the Holy Spirit to comfort us and to show us we're not to take that next step, but it can happen.

So in each of these pairs, the first one is to be true and not the second. Then Hal shares here, God is purposeful. Every one of your appointments to trials is measured for fulfilling God's eternal purpose in Christ. Okay, so that's all we did in the past. So now, today's verses. Notice I took verse 10 and I coupled it, it's that one long sentence, so now I wanna couple it with the last two verses.

Always caring about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake. so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh." So the death, the definite article is there. So the death works in us, but the life in you.

Okay, so we're gonna, so let's start out and look at the first part of verse 10 here. So this is our third possession. We have, it doesn't read real well, we have always caring about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. And we continuously, this is a positional truth. We continuously have this. And I think this is probably one of the overlooked positional truths that we don't, we talk about, Dr. Schaefer, Louis Ferry Schaefer, he has in his writings the riches of God's grace, 33 things that are true of a believer at the moment he's saved. I have forgotten, I don't know whether this one's included or not, but I don't remember it exactly, but it's a tremendous one. It's a vital one. We're always caring about, in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus. So you say, Boy, I don't remember that, right? It's just not something that comes to mind. So let's look a little bit closer here. Always, at all times, it never stops. It's never a time when it's not true.

So part of the Christian life is that we're caring about the dying of our Savior in our body. Boy, you see, that sounds, my head's hurting here, right? I wasn't taught that in wherever. Anyway, caring about, it means to bear about, to carry about or to bear about. Body is just a typical body for the body as a whole.

It's a believer's body. The putting to death is nekros, which is the Greek word for death. So a summary here by my brother Hal Malloy, whatever the trial or circumstances in our life, we are bearing or caring about in our bodies the dying or putting to death of the Lord Jesus.

And actually, this is gonna be, this is a good thing. You may think, boy, Roger's gonna lay it on here, it's gonna be, I'm gonna walk out of here, my head down, it's gonna be really bad. No, this is a good thing, because it's gonna, Paul's gonna show us here, this is a vital thing to living the Christian life, having the dying of the Lord Jesus being effectual in our body. It sounds kind of morbid maybe, but it's wonderful.

Okay, so here's some charts I have used from my brother Hal Malloy. So if you were here on September 19th, 2004, you would have heard parts of this message. Okay, actually, there are some people sitting here. I heard Wayne on the tape. Wayne was here. Bob and Margaret were here. They weren't here today. Who else is here? That might be it.

Actually, Mike was there, but you had to be in the class, Mike. I had to hear you talk. Sorry, you were in your class. This was a Sunday school class. Sorry, I'm giving you a hard time here, but you had to be in the Sunday school class on September 19th, 2004. Anyway, okay, here we go. So first question comes up.

What's the dying of the Lord Jesus? What's it speaking of? So there's some possibilities here. Is it speaking about Christ's death for our sins, plural? He died as our substitute? We just had this verse in our class today. He is a propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world. So is this speaking about His death as our substitute? Is that what's going on by bearing about the dying, bearing about the body of the dying Lord Jesus? Or is it about Christ died unto the sin nature?

Romans 6.10, this is where, you know, if you think about this, We have the root of the problem and we have the fruit of the problem. This speaks of the root of the problem, the sin nature. Every believer has a sin nature.

We'll talk about that shortly. So this is talking about the Lord Jesus, He died with respect to. And it's the idea that He disconnected us or freed us from the influence of that sin nature. We can choose it by choice, but we no longer have to. So He died for the sins of the world and for the sin nature. And there's a third one, which is probably not too likely, or does this refer to our physical suffering in fellowship with our Savior? We suffer because we are identified with Christ, and because we're Christians, as Christ suffered, we suffer with Him, is that fact? So I believe what's being spoken of here is the middle one. This is talking about the sin nature. It's dying with respect to the sin nature.

All right, so now, I boldly go where no man dares to go. I'm gonna take one of Hal's charts and disassemble it and reassemble it. Without our brother Hal being here, anyway. Hopefully this is instructive. If you say, Roger, you blew it in this one, then I'll hang my head and leave, whatever.

Anyway, okay, so the believer's makeup. This is supposed to represent a believer, the body of a believer, and the core of a believer is his mind and heart. But within that mind and heart, there's a soul. And Schaefer says the soul connotes the immaterial part of man, which is related to life, actions, and emotion. So we can represent that by this little box showing the soul and how it has mentality, senses, conscience, emotions, and will, which I think are all in line with what Schaefer talked about.

Okay, we also have something called a sin nature. And this is brought out earlier in 1 John. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. So that speaks of a sin nature. So here's a little box. If you read scripture carefully, you'll see it talks about the flesh. And it talks about the flesh actually contains a sin nature.

So you can represent this man here, this believer, he has a soul and a sin nature. And the next, he has a spirit. Schaeffer has a spirit as a part which relates to worship, communion, and divine influence. So here's man's spirit. And the wonderful thing for a believer is his spirit, as a result of his trusting Christ as his Savior, he has the very life of our Savior. And the Holy Spirit is showing us the things of Christ, so he pictures that as our spirit with our new nature in Christ.

So we have three components within the body of a believer. And here are a couple verses that relate to this. If Christ is in you, and it's true he is, that could be since Christ is in you, though your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.

Then Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. So clearly by a multitude of scriptures Christ lives within the believer. So this is the playing field, if you will, of the believer.

So now we're going to take the next step. Next step is we add a few more little parts to this. We see that the sin nature is influenced by the world system and by Satan, so that the advocates of the advocates, the detractor from the believer is the world, the flesh, and the devil. So those all are impacting, they can't be impacting our new life in Christ, but they can be acting our sin nature. And the bottom little part is just talking about walking by sight or by faith.

So now, a very important verse in this picture is this verse, Galatians 5.16, but I say walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. So the way that our brother Hal tried to show that was that he created a little connection here between the the inner part of the man, his will, his whole thing, and our new nature. And it says, when it says walk by the Spirit, so he has walking you could put in there, abiding, you could be trusting, anything that involves faith. So we're to walk by the Spirit, we're to walk in our new nature, our new life in Christ.

But that's not the whole story. Verse 17 brings in some issues there that cause contention in the believer's life. Verse 17 says, For the flesh sets its desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things you please. So the way he chose to show that was, we have desires emanating from the flesh, the sin nature, impacting us. At the same time we have desires from the Holy Spirit. about the life of Christ.

So one key thing that I had missed on how I looked at this, if you've been a member of Holly Hills, you've probably seen versions of this over the years. When I missed this time around, I said, boy, I didn't notice that before. I can be abiding in Christ, walking just like it says, but walk in the Spirit, but guess what's happening?

I'm getting these guys from my sin nature, boom, boom, boom, and isn't that our life? I'm driving along, and Sam cuts in front of me, cuts me off. At that point, I can say, boy, he shouldn't have done that. He broke all kinds of laws. I'm going to go after him and show him. I'm going to write this. Well, what's happened?

We most likely have changed, we've connected over there to our sin nature. So while we're walking in Christ, we can be affected by the desires of the flesh, in addition to the wonderful desires of the spirit. Okay, we're gonna leave that picture there because we're gonna use that picture, you're not gonna see it again, but we're gonna use that to understand the rest of the verse. So hopefully that was instructive, we'll see. Okay, here we go. always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.

So what's he trying to say here? I thought Hal did just an amazing job here. Our body, our sin nature resides in our body. We just saw that. The Lord Jesus died unto our sin nature. Unto our sin nature, right? We were identified and baptized into his death. He died and we died. And the reason that's important, the reason he had to die, I showed you the picture of the sin nature and I showed our new nature.

Well, the unbeliever doesn't have a new nature, right? He only has his own spirit. And there's a connection between His sin nature and His soul. There's a permanent connection there. So Lord Jesus died to disconnect us from that connection, to set us free from that. It's still there, but we're not connected to it anymore, and we have to trust or walk by faith in the Christian life.

So positionally, it says in Galatians 2.20, I'm crucified with Christ.

Positionally, our sins are on the cross. And that's kind of key. If our sins are on the cross, then this begins to help us a little bit here. Since we are bearing or caring about our sin nature, we still got it, if you believe what I said is true, we still have that sin nature, they're impacting us in our bodies, we also must be bearing and caring about His dying unto our sin nature. The Lord, and that's why it's important that it has to be the dying unto sin. He wants to keep that sin nature where it should be, on the cross.

Remember positional, conditional situations? What we see positionally in the Christian life, we want to make our condition match our position. So for that to be true, that's why this verse is true. Always bearing about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus. We're bearing about his payment, or his, not his payment, but his dying unto the sin nature, to free us from that sin nature.

So this is another wonderful positional truth that is to be believed. But this is only the positional part of this statement. And it goes on. So here we have a representation of that. Another picture from Brother Howe. He shows the sin nature with a cross on top of it. That positionally, our sin nature is on the cross. So he shows that we're carrying that about in our bodies.

Hopefully we're gonna see why that's important here. Okay, well actually this verse tells us why it's important. It says, the B part, that the life also of Jesus might be manifest. So Christ's life is to be manifested as a sin nature, bearing that about, the sin nature is held in its place, not being active in our life, and we can manifest the life of Christ.

So how is this to happen? So verses 11 and 12 will tell us how that's to happen. So 11 starts off, for we believers who live, the living ones. So it starts out with talking about a believer and how he acts. And this is just what we kind of discussed a little bit already.

Those walking in newness of life, those walking according to the Spirit, those abiding in Christ. Kind of three kind of complementary ideas. It's a believer, this is the life that he's living. He's living the Christian life. He's walking by faith in his Savior, and he's not walking according to the flesh, he's walking according to the Spirit. Okay, what's gonna happen there? The rest of the verse says, it says, for we who live as Christians, walking about, trusting in Christ, are always being delivered unto death.

So our being delivered is present tense and passive. So what's interesting here, this is not something we're to do, this is something we are to believe. So he says we're always being delivered over. So the Holy Spirit here desires to deliver us from our sin nature. and it's to give over. It's used in the sense of delivering a person to be kept by another.

The sin nature is always to be kept in its rightful place, given over to the cross. So if you think about, many times we'll say here at Holly Hills, you know, death is separation. It makes a little more sense if you kind of think of that God's desire from these verses is that Christ's death be effective in our Christian walk. So his death to our sin nature, unto our sin nature, disconnected us from that sin nature.

And that's what's in view here. It's a different way of saying it and maybe confusing, but I think that's what's being said. Okay, let's continue. Here's some discussion points. The response of our sin nature to trials always results in a temptation or solicitation to sin. And that's what, hence that previous discussion there about being perplexed but not taking the next step, being cast down but not destroyed. The Lord realizes that our sinful nature can take the next step. It can take worry that can be turned into something much worse, into anxiety, into depression and so on. And He doesn't want us to go there.

That's what the sin nature does. It does what it always does. The desire of the sin nature is to tempt us to abide in self, while the desire of the Holy Spirit is us to abide in Christ. The Holy Spirit constantly reminds us that we are dead to sin. Imagine that the Lord Jesus, you can imagine that as a picture there, if you like different kinds of pictures, that crosses over our sin nature. That's a picture I think the Lord wants us to understand. This is a lifetime process, present tense, continuous action, passive voice, the Holy Spirit is acting as we trust in, as we trust in the Lord, walk by faith, the Holy Spirit is keeping the sin nature with a cross over it, if you will. And that's the reality in a believer's life. And here's a kind of a corollary point. If you look in James, James talks about trials and temptations. He said, So here's an interesting observation.

It's easy to see the external cross, right? We see that, we have pictures all over the world. In our travels and on our cruise, we saw these churches and they have, unfortunately they have a dead Christ on the cross there, not a risen Savior on many of the churches. So we see the external cross and we probably understand that, that probably is well understood even by unbelievers. The external cross shows us that Christ died for sins, but what they don't show us, what we don't, not as well understood is there's the internal cross with a cross over our sin nature, holding it, keeping it where it should be, disconnected from our life. It's not so obvious as Hal says, but still a fact that we are constantly being delivered over to death. Our faith response, wrecking ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. So that's where the Lord wants us to be.

And so the result of that, if you notice verses 10 and 11 both have the same result. They both say roughly just what the B part here of 11 says, that the life also of Jesus might be manifest in our mortal flesh. So Christ's life will be seen only when our sin nature is where it should be, disconnected from our life.

It's still there, it's still possible, and it does happen. I think every believer can testify to that, but it's to be in that place of death. Separation, death equals separation. So speaking about this being manifested, here is God's eternal purpose being fulfilled in our trials and suffering, His glory being revealed, In our trials and sufferings, Christ's glory is only manifest as the life of the flesh, which contains a sin nature, is in the place of death, inoperative. Only then is the life of the Lord Jesus revealed.

I think we don't quite grasp that, we don't quite see that, and I think that's important. The Lord has given us these verses for us to see that truth, to see that, boy, you know, when I respond to that sin nature, and we do, we all do that at some point, then Christ can't be seen in our lives, and the Lord wants Christ to be seen in our lives. Now, don't go home and start to do a checklist. No checklists allowed. Walk with the Lord, trust in Him, rest in Him, and that's where He wants us to be.

And when that happens, that picture's in, the cross is over your sin nature. I really like that picture because it kind of gives me great comfort to see that my Savior loves me so much that He says, We're bearing about His cross work over our sin nature. I mean, that's huge to me. That's really powerful.

The Christian life is nothing short of the life of the Lord Jesus being reproduced in us. And this is a corollary verse. When Christ, who is our life, He is our life, is revealed and it goes on. Okay, so I got a couple summaries for you summary fans and last thought fans. Okay, this is cool. So now, also we have a summary verse. Verse 12, which is actually a title to my message. So death works in us, but life in you. So let's just think about that. The ramp up to that verse is what we just covered. So here's a few summary points. We have this treasure of the glory of Christ in us.

We saw that. We also have the sin nature with all of its desires in us. External trials ordained by God, remember these are ordained by God, stimulate the sin nature, fear, worry, anger, et cetera. When by faith, and that can be, we see it walking by faith, abiding in Him, whatever scriptures we read that talk about that, when by faith we appropriate Christ's death and our death to these desires of the sin nature, then the surpassing greatness of His power and glory of Christ is manifest through us.

So that's a ramp up to this verse. So then, it's a summary statement, so then, here are the results, is what Paul's saying. The death working in us, so what does he mean? Actually, after doing that, it should be pretty easy. The death, Christ's death, and our identification with that, works, puts forth power, works effectually.

Others do not see this work. Others do not see the cross over our sin nature. It's for our benefit, that's the middle voice. Only the Lord sees that. What they do see When that happens, they do see the result of that. They see Christ's life going out from us. They're seeing His life coming out from us.

So the second part of the verse, the life working in you. The life is Christ's life again. It's manifested and then works in others. So that life goes out from us, it impacts others. Others may come to faith as a result of that possibly. Others may be convicted or whatever it might be. But his life is seen by others and works in others. God is glorified.

So as you die to the sin nature, Christ's life is shown to and in others. And here's our title, Death in Us, Life in You. Okay, first or two final thoughts. Okay, summary of 10 through 12. Actually, this is a repetition. Hopefully it's helpful. This is a moment by moment appropriation of the cross on our life.

The self must die or be separated. Remember, death is separate. The self must die or be separated so that Christ can live through us. the new man abiding above, the old man abiding in the place of death on the cross. For others to see Christ through us, there must be death to the old man in us. Death in us, life in others.

Okay, one last, so actually what I like, Hal had this as a corollary passage, and I had not thought about this before, this is pretty cool. Philippians 3, 10 through 12. That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering being conformed to his death. In order that, or with a purpose that, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead, not that I have already attained it, or I have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. So hopefully that was kind of heavy stuff. I would say this is Holly Hills 101, which I just did. Hopefully, we've done it accurately through all these years, and my prayer is that it would be helpful to you.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for your life and the life that has been given on our behalf, Lord. Thank you for your life, and we just thank you for your wonderful word, and we pray that the Holy Spirit would apply it to us, Lord. We ask it in your name, amen.