In the age of Facebook and Instagram, we’ve become experts at crafting our personal image to enhance our best characteristics and hide the worst. Paul saw this coming: “In the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self” (2 Tim 3:1-2). We were called to love and glorify God, but we continually choose to glorify ourselves instead. So Paul had to remind us who we really are:
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. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. (2 Cor. 4:6–7)
How well do clay pots hold up? Go to Israel and poke around any archaeological site. You’ll find fragments of clay jars lying all over the ground. They’re called potsherds: broken pieces of pottery that could have been made two or three thousand years ago. As old as these ancient relics are, most archaeologists won’t even waste the energy to bend over and look at them, because there are just so many of them. They’re everywhere! That’s because clay jars and pots back then were like the styrofoam plate-lunch containers we use today. They were cheap, fragile, and disposable. You would use them a few times, then just throw them away.
That’s how Paul portrayed himself and the rest of us. It wasn’t to denigrate anyone; it was to help us fully grasp the difference between the container and the contents inside. Compared to the treasure, we’re insignificant, weak, and unattractive. We’re styrofoam! You can dress up a styrofoam container with some nice artwork, but it’s still just styrofoam.
Paul was bursting our self-satisfied and self-reliant little bubbles. In 2 Corinthians 5, he used another metaphor: he said we’re not buildings but tents. Three times he repeated it. How many hundred-year-old tents are still in use?
We’re cheap containers carrying a 500-carat diamond. That’s the size of the Star of Africa, which was cut from the largest diamond ever discovered. It was unearthed by miners in South Africa in 1905, and they wanted to send it to England as a gift for King Edward VII. They put a big crate on a boat, with dozens of armed guards surrounding it twenty-four hours a day, all the way to England. But the real diamond wasn’t inside the crate. That was just a diversion. They put the Star of Africa in a cardboard box, wrapped it up with brown paper and a string, took it down to the post office, and sent it to London through the mail! The most valuable jewel in the world traveled across the globe in a flimsy cardboard box.
Inside that kind of feeble container we have the same power that brought suns, moons, and planets into existence: “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ [in other words, “Let there be light!”], has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). And the more dingy, dirty, and banged-up the box is, the better the treasure inside looks. It shows that the “surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (v. 7).
Don’t try to be a koa-wood box. You look much better as a plate-lunch container holding a priceless jewel.