Devotionals

“Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with complete frankness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.”

What kind of hope do we have, Paul? This passage starts by referencing “such a hope,” which means that Paul is not referring to hope in general, or maybe any kind of hope we would wish. There is a very specific kind of hope Paul is referencing in this passage, and it is the key to understanding accurately what this passage is about. Elsewhere in 2 Corinthians, Paul describes the hope we find in the proclamation of the Gospel message. As Christians, our capacity and willingness to reveal Christ to the world is directly proportional to our experience of the Hope of Christ. This week contrasts those who preach boldly, with those who preach with stuff in the way. What can get in the way for us?

“But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds,”

For Paul's community, the stuff that got in the way was the Old Testament and the Law of Moses. Here, Paul is using those verses to describe the distinction between God’s revelation through Moses and God’s revelation through Jesus. Moses was commanded by God to put something between himself and the people when he proclaimed the word so that the Glory of God which was reflected off Moses face wouldn’t harm the people. From the very beginning, Paul said, the law was a poor reflection of God because there was stuff in the way. Jesus has no such limitations. Jesus is the pure reflection of God, and we, when we act like Jesus, can become pure reflections of God as well!

“but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 

Removing the things that interfere with our connection to God in our life is no easy task. It would be trite to say it’s something you, “just do.” Understanding this is imperative for Paul. He is trying to draw together a huge number of seemingly unrelated threads and show how doing one thing can cause a chain reaction that accomplishes a lot of unexpected growth in our life. For instance, we might not see the proclamation of the Gospel as linked to our embrace of Freedom in Christ. Paul, however, does. For us to become free in Christ, according to Paul, we become slaves to the Gospel. This is good news because the burden of Jesus is light and all that jazz. But we are slaves to it nonetheless. If we are slaves to the gospel, then we will be proclaiming in the way Jesus did and boom, we have the connection. Perhaps take some time to explore this and other threads we see in this passage. Try to find places of connection you might not have seen before.

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

There is amazing power in amplification. Oftentimes we make our spirituality about what we can accomplish on our own, and elevate to great esteem those with a large capacity for work. In that way, we are no better than the secular world. This isn’t how the Gospel is supposed to work, however. Even Jesus knew he couldn’t do God’s will by himself. When we gather as a group of people, all in the process of looking at the same savior and copying everything we can to the best of our ability our efforts become multiplicative instead of additive. Instead of one plus one equalling two, we end up in the powers of ten. Two Christians are a hundred times better than one, three a thousand, four ten thousand and so on. Each Christian is an order of magnitude that is amplified across the body when we pursue the same goals. The only hope the enemy has is to distract us with infighting, pride, and legalism. The only hope is for the enemy to put veils in between us.

“Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.” 

The work of Gospel proclamation is hard. From the day you are born to the day you die you proclaim, with every action and inaction, who your God is. To tune our hearts so that we follow God in every moment takes great discipline, and great self-forgiveness for the times you fall short. Don’t lose heart and give up! The end result is worth it! Hope is nothing to casually discard, this world is in short supply of it. If you are a source of hope for the world around you people will flock to you. But that means leaning hard on God’s mercy so that hope can live inside you and become the boldness to show others where that hope comes from.

“We have renounced the shameful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.”

Don’t cut corners. Don’t have, as scriptures say, “A form of Godliness while denying its power.” Don’t fake it. Be frank, as our opening verse suggested. Be open. Be honest. Be you. Trust that you are enough and that sometimes God makes a huge feast out of 5 loaves. You may only feel like two, but that’s enough. Be transformed into a clay jar and then let God fill it till it overflows. Give your love freely to all whom you meet in Jesus’ name so that everyone who meets you might see love and not bitterness, anger, factionalism, pride or selfishness. Remember a keyword from this verse: practice. Everything worth doing takes lots and lots of practice. If you don’t fail you aren’t practicing, you are performing. We don’t perform faith, we practice it. May God lead and guide your practice of faith by the mercy of God’s Spirit!

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Two recurring themes in scripture are creation and redemption. In this story, we have God creating light as His first act of creation. Jesus is the light of our world and the verses that follow for this week will display Jesus as that light; a light that overcomes evil and brings into view the fullness of God’s created intent for humanity and the good news of our redemption. Keep these two themes in mind, creation and redemption, as you read the verses for the remainder of this week.

For the reader: I am using the NRSV for the verses from Luke because a better translation of the Greek word peirazo is “test” rather than the more common translation as “tempt”. I believe it shifts our perspective if we think of the devil as testing rather than tempting Jesus, given Jesus is God incarnate.

 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tested by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over he was famished.

It might be easy to miss the role of the Spirit in Jesus’s encounter with the devil, but the Spirit is the one who led and sustained Jesus all throughout His ministry. This story begins with the Spirit of God leading Jesus into the wilderness for forty days and is reminiscent of the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in the desert. Notice it says he ate nothing. This is the humanity of Jesus having to endure physical starvation while also enduring this encounter and test by the devil. I wonder how we would hold up under these circumstances. While we could go without food for forty days, most of us cannot imagine it, nor can we imagine having to endure a protracted spiritual battle with evil. As you eat a meal today, give thanks for the bounty that you enjoy in God’s creation.

The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ”

In response to the devil’s attempt to have Jesus question his identity, Jesus quoted scripture from Deuteronomy 8:3, “One does not live by bread alone.” Jesus seemed to compare the strength that comes from God with His awareness of physical hunger and that awareness won because it revealed that there is more to life than food or physical comfort. He chose hunger over satisfaction and comfort, precisely because he is God’s Son. Remember, Jesus had just been told he was the Son of God from the voice of God from heaven. Now, the Devil was challenging His identity, “If you are the son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” The devil does the same thing to us by challenging us as to whether or not we have been redeemed and forgiven by God because of the grace God offers us through Jesus. Perhaps the lesson for us is not to let physical comforts be more important than spiritual comforts, and to always remember the source of both our creation and redemption.

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And the devil said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ”

In this second test, the devil used the concept of unlimited earthly power that he would give to Jesus if Jesus would only compromise His standing as God’s Son and redeemer of humanity. But Jesus was wise to the devil and once again quoted from Deuteronomy 6:13a when he replied, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” Jesus’s use of scripture gave him just the perspective and power he needed to avoid the slippery slope of compromise. Do we use scripture to give us strength when faced with the lure of power and authority?

Then the devil led him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ 11 and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ” 12 Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Once again, Jesus countered the devil’s attempt to call upon God or assume God would save Him by quoting from scripture, Deuteronomy 6:16, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Each time the devil tested Jesus, Jesus used scripture as His defense. Jesus stood firm in the face of each and every test - hunger, power, and supernatural power - to save Him from harm. Jesus knew the devil was wrong. However, just because a person can quote Scripture or any other authoritative source, does not automatically make the interpretation right. Jesus will not test God. He trusts Him. He needs no spectacular proof for Himself, and no proof by miracle will compel belief. What do you still need to believe that Jesus is the Son of God? What do you need to acknowledge in your own life that might be holding you back from trusting in God? And perhaps what you need isn’t physical comfort, power, or worry about harm, but rather the assurance that God loves you enough to ensure your salvation and eternal life through the gift of His own Son.

13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

As we begin the season of Lent, perhaps it would be a good time to reflect on this passage and realize that Jesus used scripture as a defense against the wiles of the devil. We are faced with tests, trials, and temptations in our daily lives but today, we have the benefit of having the Bible handy in order to consult it, read it, and pray with it. The point is not that we look up passages to get specific directions to follow in case of tests, trials, etc. The point is that we read scripture in order to be in conscious contact with God, to be connected to, and in the company of, God’s Spirit. I want to encourage you to use this season of Lent to allow God to speak to you through the words of scripture by reading scripture daily.