doctor's life support

8th February: The Inner Nature

Therefore, having this ministry ... we do not lose heart ... What we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake ... But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power b

Paul's constant preoccupation is with the work of God in the heart of the believer. As doctors our constant and proper preoccupation is with what he refers to as the outer nature, this body which begins to deteriorate so early in its biological history. This preoccupation can easily induce in us a despondency. No matter how successful our treatment may be, no matter what marvels of surgery may be performed, the body is inexorably wasting away. Two-year survival, ten, twenty, what's the difference? It will soon be gone.

But this outer man, which we examine and explore in a hundred ways with hand and eye, needle, scope and imaging, is not to be written off as of no account. Only while it serves the owner can he pursue this pilgrimage, this quest. It alone affords him the opportunity to receive new life for that inner man which through an eternity must fire his resurrected body. It is on the basis of `things done in the body' that we shall be judged. The marvel is that for the Christian the winter of senility and the dark night of death are not the end of the road -- rather they are the beginning of the best of all. Then, that inner man which by God's Spirit has been nurtured within the believer will be clothed again with an incorruptible body, perfectly fitted to take up that new life in the presence of God where Christ the perfect man has already gone.

Hear then Paul's word of encouragement:

We do not lose heart... 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 4:1,18).

Further reading: 2 Cor 4:1-18.

AMB