When I was discussing some minor ailment with a friend recently, he said to me, ‘Well, we are all outwardly wasting away.’ Not altogether helpful, but undoubtedly true! Paul draws a series of contrasts here (vs 16–18). Outwardly wasting away, but inwardly being renewed; brief trials but lasting glory; visible things that are temporary, but unseen things that are eternal. Living with these paradoxes, Paul is neither perplexed nor frustrated, but emboldened (3:12; 4:1).

The key issue is the towering truth of the resurrection. I happen to be writing this note on Easter Sunday. ‘The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!’ Here and now we are risen with Christ (Colossians 3:1) and one day, beyond ‘the changes and chances of this fleeting world’, we will stand in his presence (v 14). This changes everything. 

Moreover, this secure future with Christ flows back into our present trials and tribulations, putting them into perspective and firing us to speak life-changing truth, and display amazing grace for the good of those around us and to the glory of God (vs 13,15). Are you feeling a bit less disheartened?

‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’¹

This passage begins and ends with faith. Faith is the ability to trust in that which we cannot see or touch, but which we are confident is both true and real (v 18). Faith is not therefore, as some claim, an illusory trust in that for which we have no evidence. Rather, the evidence is that God has raised Jesus from the dead (v 14) and is therefore able to do the impossible, to bring life from death. 

When we consider all the troubles Paul had to endure (and we are not yet through), it is amazing to us that he did not just give up. Reliable tradition tells us that he would finally crown it all as a martyr in Rome in about ad 64. Yet he could have avoided all that suffering by opting for an easy life, perhaps by continuing to make his living as a prosperous tent-maker. Most of us have our limits, but apparently not Paul. He endured, and in this passage we see why and how.

It helped that he was seeing progress in his work. More and more people (v 15) were being reached by God’s grace. In Troas he had found an open door for the gospel² – only his anxiety about Titus and Corinth led him to leave. More converts meant more thanksgiving and glory for God. His sufferings were not in vain. Most of all, however, he was inspired because he could see a future reality, unseen in the present but prefigured in the resurrection, a vision of future glory that would abundantly outweigh all present troubles. By contrast, all these were light and momentary (v 17). Imagining this glorious God-given future can inwardly renew us (v 16) and constantly impassion us. It is not  beginning the race only but completing it that really matters.

‘And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.’³

¹ 2 Tim 4:7  ² 2 Cor 2:12  ³ Heb 12:1,2