The Logic of Resurrection Life Text: 2 Corinthians 4:13-15
Introduction: A Faith That Must Speak
We live in an age that wants a domesticated faith. It wants a quiet faith, a private faith, a faith that knows its place and stays indoors. The modern secularist is perfectly content for you to believe whatever you want, so long as that belief has no consequences, makes no demands, and above all, never, ever speaks up in public. They want a Christianity that has had its larynx surgically removed. But the faith delivered to us by the apostles is not some timid, personal preference, like a fondness for a particular brand of tea. It is a robust, world-altering, death-defying, loud-mouthed faith. And it has to be.
The apostle Paul, writing to a church struggling with the implications of a costly faith, grounds his entire ministry not in a feeling, but in a fact. Not in a private sentiment, but in a public event. That event is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. Because that happened, everything has changed. Because that happened, faith is not a mute acceptance of certain propositions. Faith is a spirit, an animating principle that seizes a man and compels him to open his mouth. The logic is inescapable: what you truly believe in your bones, you will confess with your lips. A silent faith is a dead faith. It is a contradiction in terms.
In our text today, Paul lays out the internal engine of Christian ministry and, by extension, the Christian life. He shows us the unbreakable chain of logic that runs from a Spirit-given faith, through the certainty of our own resurrection, to the ultimate goal of all things, which is a tidal wave of thanksgiving crashing to the glory of God. This is the divine economy. This is the logic of resurrection life. And we are called to live in it, and to speak from it, regardless of the cost.
The Text
But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I BELIEVED, THEREFORE I SPOKE,” we also believe, therefore we also speak, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.
(2 Corinthians 4:13-15 LSB)
The Spirit of Faith (v. 13)
We begin with the engine of the whole enterprise.
"But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, 'I BELIEVED, THEREFORE I SPOKE,' we also believe, therefore we also speak..." (2 Corinthians 4:13)
Paul says we have the "same spirit of faith" as the psalmist. He is quoting from Psalm 116, a psalm written by a man who had been staring death in the face. He was afflicted, surrounded by the snares of death, and in his distress, he called on the Lord. And the Lord delivered him. His response to this deliverance was not quiet contemplation. His response was to speak. "I believed, therefore I spoke."
This is the grammar of genuine faith. Faith is not a verb that can be conjugated in the silent passive. It is active. It is vocal. To believe something is to be gripped by it, to have your reality reordered by it. And when your reality is reordered by something as monumental as the God of the universe snatching you from the jaws of death, silence is not an option. Paul is saying that this is not just the psalmist's experience; it is the universal Christian experience. We have that same spirit. The Holy Spirit who authors faith in our hearts also gives that faith a voice.
Notice the logical force: "we also believe, therefore we also speak." The speaking is the necessary consequence of the believing. It is the syllogism of the new man. Major premise: God has acted in history. Minor premise: I believe it. Conclusion: I must talk about it. This demolishes the modern notion of a purely private religion. That is a lie from the pit, designed to neutralize the gospel. The gospel is news, and news is for telling. If you have the cure for cancer, you don't keep it to yourself out of a desire not to offend people who have cancer. And we have the cure for a disease infinitely worse than cancer, which is death itself.
So when the world tells you to keep your faith to yourself, they are asking you to do the impossible. They are asking you to stop the sun from shining. A believing Christian who does not speak is like a fire that does not burn. It is a nonsensical category. The spirit of faith is a spirit of proclamation.
The Bedrock of Faith (v. 14)
So what is it that we believe that compels us to speak? Paul grounds it all in the central fact of history.
"...knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you." (2 Corinthians 4:14)
Our faith is not in a principle, a philosophy, or a set of moral teachings. Our faith is in a person who did something. God the Father raised the Lord Jesus from the dead. This is the lynchpin of reality. If this did not happen, as Paul says elsewhere, our faith is futile, we are still in our sins, and we are of all men most to be pitied. But it did happen. It is an objective, historical, brute fact. And because it happened, it is the guarantee of our own future.
The same God who exerted His cosmos-creating power to bring Jesus out of the tomb will do the same for us. The logic is airtight. "He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus." Our resurrection is not a separate, standalone event. It is part of His. We are "in Christ," which means we are participants in His story. His death was our death. His resurrection is our resurrection. This is not wishful thinking; it is covenantal certainty. We have been incorporated into His body. Where the head goes, the body must follow.
But notice the corporate, communal nature of this hope. He "will present us with you." Our hope is not an individualistic escape plan. We are not being rescued from a shipwreck one by one, each paddling our own little life raft to glory. We are being raised as a people, as a body, as a new humanity. Paul envisions that great day when God will present the apostle and the Corinthian believers together, as a finished work, a completed family. This is covenantal solidarity. Our salvation is personal, but it is never private. We are being built into a temple together. We will be presented as one bride to the Bridegroom. This is why our relationships in the church, our fellowship, our bearing with one another, are not optional extras. We are going to be spending eternity together, so we had best learn to get along now.
The Divine Economy (v. 15)
Finally, Paul zooms out to show the ultimate purpose of his suffering, his speaking, and their salvation. He reveals the grand, doxological economy of God.
"For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God." (2 Corinthians 4:15)
Here is the logic in three movements. First, "all things are for your sakes." All of Paul's afflictions, his imprisonments, his beatings, his relentless labor, were not pointless. They were for the benefit of the church. He endured death so that they might receive life (v. 12). This is the heart of pastoral ministry. It is a sacrificial, substitutionary work that mirrors the work of the Chief Shepherd. The goal is the building up of the saints.
But it doesn't stop there. The second movement is "so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people..." The goal of ministry to the church is not simply the church's own comfort. The goal is that the church becomes a conduit of grace to others. As the gospel is preached, as lives are transformed, the grace of God spreads. It is a contagion. It moves from person to person, family to family, city to city. The church is not a reservoir for grace; it is a channel for it.
And this leads to the final, ultimate movement: "...may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God." This is the end game. This is the point of everything. Why does God want grace to spread? So that more and more people will be giving thanks to Him. Thanksgiving is the fuel of glory. When a sinner is saved by grace, he becomes a thanks-giver. And every word of genuine thanks that rises to the throne is a note in the symphony of God's glory. God is glorified when His creatures, rescued from damnation by sheer, unmerited favor, erupt in grateful praise. The entire machinery of creation and redemption is designed to produce this one thing: a universe overflowing with thanksgiving to the glory of God. Our suffering, our speaking, our salvation, all of it serves this grand, doxological end.
Conclusion: Your Part in the Symphony
So what does this mean for us? It means that your faith has a voice, and you are commanded to use it. You believe that Jesus rose from the dead; therefore, you must speak. You must tell your children. You must tell your neighbor. You must live in such a way that people ask you for a reason for the hope that is in you, and you must be ready to give it.
It means that your hope is not a flimsy wish, but is anchored to the empty tomb. The same power that raised Christ is at work in you and will one day raise you. This knowledge makes you indestructible. They can threaten you, they can cancel you, they can even kill you, but they cannot undo your resurrection. This makes you profoundly free and profoundly dangerous to the kingdoms of this world.
And finally, it means that your life is part of a grand cosmic project. It is not a series of random events. It is a story, and the plot is the spread of grace for the purpose of multiplying thanksgiving to the glory of God. Every time you share the gospel, every time you serve a brother or sister, every time you endure hardship for the sake of Christ, you are advancing that plot. You are adding another voice to the choir, another stream to the river of thanksgiving that flows to the throne of God. Believe it. Therefore, speak it. And in all of it, see that the glory of God is the point of it all.