Sometimes people talk to me after the church service. Some people say to me, "You make it so simple, so easy to understand." I am pleased with that because we are not in the business of trying to sound profound. Our job is to make it as clear as we can. Some say, "Well, I read it, and it isn’t all that clear to me." That is true. These are God’s ways, not our ways. What we need to do is have the darkness in our minds dispelled, and the fog in our thinking removed, and then we will see things clearly as God presents them to us in his Word.

In defending his ministry, Paul said there are three things he did not do. First he stated that he had renounced "secret and shameful ways." When Paul used the word "shameful," he generally used it to refer to sexual sin. In his usage here, he is probably thinking of the way the missionaries of the various mystery religions in his day went about their business.

What you have here in this last portion of 2 Corinthians 3 is the culmination of that great doctrine of the image of God introduced way back in the very beginning of the Bible in the first chapters of Genesis. That doctrine has four stages. Back in the beginning of Genesis, we are told that God made the man and the woman in God’s image. That is the first stage. Theologians have some difficulty talking about what that means, but it certainly means that the man and woman were made like God as personalities and like God in moral righteousness.

In the second section of this portion of 2 Corinthians, Paul begins to talk about his ministry. This is where he explained how he went to Troas. He was supposed to meet Titus there, but Titus didn't come, so Paul grew restless. The Lord had opened a great door of opportunity for him, but he was still restless. He was so concerned about the Christians at Corinth that he wanted to go on. So, he left Troas. Finally, somewhere in Macedonia, Paul met Titus.

We are studying Paul's second letter to the Corinthians and our study brings us to chapter 2, verse 5. From this verse through to the end of chapter 3 is a very diverse portion of the letter. If you analyze it in terms of the type of material Paul presents, you find three different things... I find, however, as I look at this section and reflect on these three things, that they also describe what God is doing in the world. And because they speak of what God is doing in the world, they speak about the most important thing that is happening in the world today.