AP

2 Corinthians 4:3-4  And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.  In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

When we come to ‘see the light’, to have our eyes opened to the glory and wonder of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is so liberating an experience that it makes us wonder how we could have gone on for so long in the darkness of unbelief.  I realise that for some of us, this ‘seeing the light’, has been part of our experience for as long as we can remember, because of the consistent witness of godly, praying parents and teachers, but for others of us it is not until adolescence or adulthood that the veil is taken away.

The culture I grew up in, the ‘air I breathed’ throughout my childhood, was much more conducive to understanding the relevance of John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”) than the ‘air we breathe’ today, in our God-denying, ‘wisdom-of-Man’ culture that pervades our nation (and world), but, even so, it was not until I was 17, after more than 12 years of regular Sunday School and Youth Group attendance and involvement, that I finally ‘saw the light’.

The culture the Apostle Paul was addressing in first century Corinth, the ‘air’ they ‘breathed’, was much the same as ours today.  When ‘the god of this world’, Satan, first convinced Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that it would  be better for them to take charge of their own lives instead of listening to, and obeying, their Creator God, it had a genetic effect on the whole human race, so we are all born with sin-affected eyes that are blinded to everything God reveals and does.  Even the wonderful Good News of the life-giving Gospel, Satan manages to veil from us and our minds are blinded.  I can vouch for the truth of this in my own experience, and for the fact that it was God himself who had to remove the veil to enable me to see and embrace the ‘glory of Christ’, and everything that his Life, his Death, his Resurrection and his Ascension achieved for me!

I can really identify with how John Newton, the drunken, blaspheming, slave-trading sea captain, felt when it happened to him: “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved; how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed”!  This experience has also helped me to know the most appropriate thing to do when other people, with whom I share the Gospel message, give the impression of having no idea what I’m talking about: PRAY that the Holy Spirit will remove the veil from their eyes.  It’s not about logic, or clever argument, or convincing proof; it’s about God’s amazing grace, as John Newton and I, and countless others, have found.

As Paul had said in his first letter to Corinth: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.  For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)

– Bruce Christian