God’s servants; God’s treasure in earthen pots
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📚✭Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, since we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. 2 📚✭But we have renounced hidden, shameful ways, not behaving with craftiness, or handling the word of God deceitfully, but by making the truth clear we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 📚✭But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are lost. 4 📚In their case, the god of this present world✭ has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ✭, who is the image of God✭, would not shine into them✭. 5 📚✭For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 📚✭For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face✭ of Jesus Christ.7 📚But we have this treasure✭ in earthen vessels✭, so that the exceedingly great power may be of God, and not of us. 8 📚✭We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 📚persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 📚We are always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also might be revealed in our body. 11 📚For we who live are always being handed over to death✭ for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also might be revealed in our mortal body. 12 📚So then death is working in us, but life in you.
13 📚✭Since we have the same spirit of faith as what is written, “I believed, and therefore I have spoken”, we also believe and therefore speak, 14 📚knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus, and set us with you in his presence. 15 📚✭For everything is for your sake, so that the grace that is spreading to many might overflow to the glory of God through the thanksgiving of many.
16 📚✭For this reason we do not lose heart✭. Even though our outward man is wasting away✭, yet the inward man is being renewed✭ day by day. 17 📚For our light affliction✭, which is but for a moment✭, is producing for us✭ an eternal weight of glory that far exceeds it, 18 📚✭while we look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.