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. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:4-6)
Piper unpacks six observations coming from this text in order to make clearer how human thinking and divine revelation work together in the rise of saving faith.
1) The glory of Christ is seen in the gospel.
This text shows that we were (apart from Christ) blind, but now (with Christ) we see. When we were blinded, what were we kept from seeing? The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Jesus is so glorious, and that glory is displayed most clearly and essentially in the cross. Just as the heavens declare the glory of God, the gospel declares the glory of Christ. It is futile to try to separate the glory of Christ from the reality of the facts of his gospel. "If we stop thinking about the gospel, we will not see the glory of Christ."
2) The glory of Christ is really there.
It makes no sense to talk about being blinded to the glory of Christ in the gospel if it isn't really to be found there in the first place. And since it is really there, we must be blind to miss it. In our lost-ness, we desperately need to be healed of our blindness, so that we might see this glory and be saved. Just as the man in John 9 was born physically blind for the glory of God, that the works of God might be displayed in him (John 9:3), I believe I was born spiritually blind, in order that the Spirit's work of sight-giving regeneration in my heart would itself glorify Christ, even as it opened my eyes to see that very glory! God is sovereign, even over the effects and out-workings of our sin, and in his sovereignty he weaves such a beautiful, Christ-exalting tapestry. What we mean for evil, God works out for good, and nowhere is this reality seen more clearly than in the victory of Jesus over death in his own dying and rising.
3) The glory of Christ is seen through the facts of the Gospel.
Paul states, "what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake." A reading of Acts reveals the pattern and heart of this proclamation of Christ in Paul's ministry; it is bound intimately with the facts of the gospel, and Paul aims to know nothing among the people but Christ crucified and resurrected. He knows that he is preaching to blind people. He knows the Holy Spirit must do a work of sight-giving, and in that way he is utterly dependent on the Spirit's work. And yet, he still chooses - by God's design and not his own ingenuity - to proclaim the true facts about the central events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection because he knows that in them - more than anywhere else - Christ's glory is most clearly evident. Because Christ's glory is most clearly manifested there, God delights in bringing about faith through a receiving - a seeing and believing and treasuring - of these truths. God uses our minds, though they are afflicted by adulterous tendencies, in the rise of faith because Jesus is most glorified that way. God uses the mind in order for Jesus to be more clearly perceived.
4) The decisive ground of saving faith is God's gift of sight to the eyes of the heart.
"The glory of Christ in the gospel is the decisive ground of saving faith because saving faith is the receiving of Christ as infinitely glorious and supremely valuable. Or to turn it around: since saving faith is a receiving of Christ as our highest treasure, therefore the ground of that faith is the spiritual sight of Christ as supremely beautiful and valuable." Christ's glory - not our goodness - is the grounds of our salvation. Sight of that glory is the means by which faith arises. That sight involves the mind and heart grasping what Jesus did in the gospel. And all of this is a gift of God, that we might praise his glorious grace.
God, who invented light itself, has caused the light to shine in our hearts. God gives us the sight and shines the light. To him be all glory! "Decisive in our seeing is God's causing light to shine in our hearts." New birth happens when we see the glory of God in the face of Christ, and we are given new hearts. This has profound implications for our thinking! We saw, a couple of entries ago, that our adulterous hearts poison our thinking, but with new hearts (which still must battle sin) we are enabled to think with the mind of Christ.
Piper writes, "How can such a darkened, sinful heart produce a way of thinking that gives rise to saving faith? The answer is that God's illumination and regeneration produce a profound change in the way the heart perceives reality." With new hearts, we can think with renewed minds, and in that way our minds can now be put to the service of our faith, and it can serve in our call to love Christ with our whole selves. While blind, the command to love God with our minds is impossible, and it is with the miracle of sight that we can now use our minds aright.
5) Saving faith is reasonable.
Belief and conviction in the Gospel is reasonable belief and conviction. Edwards writes, "By a reasonable conviction, I mean, a conviction founded on real evidence, or upon that which is a good reason, or just ground of conviction." The rise of faith goes beyond what mere reason would produce, but that does not make it unreasonable.
6) This is the only path to spiritual certainty.
Writing about the path to spiritual certainty within the context of his ministry to the Houssatunnuck Indians, Edwards writes...
"Unless men may come to a reasonable, solid persuasion and conviction of the truth of the gospel, by the internal evidences of it... by a sight of its glory; it is impossible that those who are illiterate, and unacquainted with history, should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all. They may be without this, see a great deal of probability of it; it may be reasonable for them to give much credit to what learned men and historians tell them... But to have a conviction, so clear, and evident, and assuring, as to be sufficient to induce them, with boldness to sell all, confidently and fearlessly to run the venture of the loss of all things, and of enduring the most exquisite and long continued torments, and to trample the world under foot, and count all things but dung for Christ, the evidence they can have from history, cannot be sufficient."
The mind is indispensable in coming to faith, and once faith has arisen, the mind is useful for fueling the fires of that faith, but mere reason is never enough. We can only use reasons and evidences to come up with probabilities of likelihood. But God wants us to know that we have eternal life (1 John 5:13). And perhaps you would be willing to stake your life on a __% chance, but God wants you to have greater assurance than that. The certitude comes from an apprehension, a seeing of Jesus' glory in his gospel. And that is a work of the Holy Spirit. I pray, and I bid you to pray as well for a greater sight of Jesus, for greater certainty of the truths of the Bible, that we might press with much more urgency into the business of the Kingdom - in love, spreading this Gospel and becoming like Christ.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes... (Romans 1:16)
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