“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day”

(2 Corinthians 4:16)

Every Christian can learn from the example of Paul on how to endure the loneliness, disappointment, pain, and persecution they face. It was his vision of God’s glory revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. We all get worn down. Everyone here today at one time or another will lose heart! Ekkakos, from kakos meaning bad, literally means to give in to evil. It can convey the idea of becoming weary in or tired of doing something, and can convey the idea of losing one’s motivation in continuing a desirable pattern or conduct. Instead, the person becomes fainthearted or despondent in view of the trial or difficulty. Such persons are at risk of losing their motivation to accomplish their intended goal.

Ekkakos conveys the idea of becoming exhausted, giving up, and becoming a coward. Ekkakos is a strong Greek term which refers to abandoning oneself to cowardly surrender. Our redemption is drawing almost near. Take heart! Don’t quit running the race, fighting the good fight of faith. Ekkakos is also used in the sense of treating someone badly. It became a Christian technical term expressing the unflagging pursuit of the goal of service to neighbor, or of apostolic ministry, as well as the tautness of the determined heart that does not let up or lose courage.

In the book of Acts we can see how Paul’s life was radically changed, for sure his perspective on life, including his sufferings. That vision is the foundation for living a triumphant life. Because of the astounding realities of all that was his in Christ and the new covenant, Paul could not lose heart. No amount of trouble could make him neglect his calling, privileges, or duty. Based on the reality of God’s glory revealed in Jesus Christ and God’s mighty care in his life, Paul gives three heavenly reasons for earthly endurance.

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

And let us not forget chapter 9 of Acts that radically changed Paul’s perspective on life, including his sufferings. That vision is the foundation for living a triumphant life. Because of the astounding realities of all that was his in Christ and the new covenant, Paul could not lose heart. No amount of trouble could make him neglect his calling, privileges, or duty. Based on the reality of God’s glory revealed in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and God’s mighty care in his life, Paul gives three heavenly principles that enabled him not to lose heart.

He exhorts believers to value spiritual strength over physical strength, value the future over the present, and value eternal realities over temporal realities. Now let us ask what areas Christians are being inwardly renewed day by day.

Trusting the Bible

The young Christian reads the Bible because God has created a desire within them to do so. Do you remember Mary Jones walking to Bala in her bare feet to purchase her own copy of the Scriptures in the Welsh language? Mary would have been fascinated by the ministry she heard each Sunday which took her through chapters of the Scriptures and which explained the teaching to her, and drew out lessons and applications that she might have missed. So she longed for her own Bible and finally got one from the hands of Thomas Charles himself.

She would read a passage and she would ask it questions: What does this tell me about God? What promises does God make me? What duties does He require of me? The more she read the more she understood. She began to remember whether certain statements were on the right or left pages of her open Bible, at the top or bottom of the pages, left or right columns. And as she became familiar with the Bible she grew in appreciation of its beauty and perfections.

“O how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine” (Psalms 119:97-98). Like the psalmist in the first psalm, her very delight was in the law of the Lord. Her knowledge of her Savior and His great redemption was constantly being renewed by her growing familiarity with the Bible. The more she read the more she found she could trust the Bible. Even the prepositions of Scripture became important to her. She lived by every word that had proceeded from the mouth of God’s Scriptures!

Learning Contentment

We bring our own fallen personalities to Christ. We are restless, frustrated, angry, discouraged, ambitious sons and daughters. It is not easy for us to become content with the ways God deals with us. There were the early simple answers to prayer in the provision of a sunny day, or a ticket for the big game. Then God begins to test us: the delays, the unanswered prayers, the heartache, the falls and opposition. The unhappiness and coldness of heart we discover within us.

We want to plead as an excuse for our restlessness, our own special personalities and needs. We say that we can’t help acting as we do. Other Christians we judge to be more docile while we are naturally fiery and leaders. We have vision. We are dynamic. Let others be content to be foot soldiers; we would be generals. Then Father God presses us with the duty of contentment with the chores He gives us to do, where He sets us in life, what roles He calls us to fulfill, what the mundane tasks and duties He sets for us might be.

He teaches us to submit to Him. He may let us have our own way, and then how painful an experience that is. He enables us to look into the cup He gives us to drink and to say, “Let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but thine be done” (Luke 22:42). Increasingly we are renewed as we learn contentment with God’s good and perfect will! Let us not forget the book between Acts and 1 Corinthians: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

Evangelistic Earnestness

During Paul’s last imprisonment he was still the world’s greatest evangelist. He was conscious that the palace guard had heard the gospel through his being in jail adjoining the palace in Rome, and that made his years in chains sweeter. “So that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else” (Philippians 1:13).

He wrote letters counseling Timothy and Titus that indicated how alert he was to the needs of their churches on Crete and in Ephesus. He never chafed at the terms of the great commission. He was dying for men and women to be saved. He said, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3). That was his spirit. It was purified and made more holy as he entered old age.

So often we see evangelism as the province of the young, but the young are not best equipped for it. They are good followers but not good leaders. But do they have examples to look up to in those who have been Christians for many years? Are the old ones only full of warnings of wild evangelism rather than being actual examples of true evangelism? Are those retired men and women rather cynical about their own youthful zeal, that it was foolish and immature? Of course, much of it was. But does that excuse those who have been known by God for forty years never giving a word of witness, never inviting anyone to the services, never praying for anyone personally to be converted?

We are not encouraged merely to criticize those ungodly aspects of what the world calls evangelism. We only have the right to involve ourselves in every form of biblical evangelism. Shouldn’t the righteousness of God become ever brighter as the years of our pilgrimage pass? Shouldn’t God’s love for sinners become increasingly amazing to us?

Do you know that you could pick out two evangelistic sermons from Spurgeon’s ministry, one preached at the beginning of his ministry in 1856 and one preached at the end in 1891, and it would be a challenge to tell which was which? The same passion, the longing for men and women to be saved, the freeness of the offers of grace, the pleading with sinners to come to Christ was there at the end of his ministry as it was at the beginning. In all the controversies he endured and the illnesses he bore so bravely, the inner man was being renewed in evangelistic earnestness day by day.

Remember those great last words of his hero, George Whitefield, the night before he died in 1770: “Lord Jesus, I am weary in thy work, but not of thy work. I have not yet finished my course, let me go and speak for thee once more in the fields, seal thy truth, and come home and die.”

The outer man decays. That is the inevitable reality of our fallen world. We get worn down by trials, by age, by disappointments, by the daily grind of living in a fallen world. But worn down does not mean worn out. The inner man, ah, the inner man is being renewed day by day. Through trusting the Bible more deeply, learning contentment with God’s perfect will, and maintaining evangelistic earnestness to the very end, we find that even as our physical strength fails, our spiritual strength increases. We value eternal realities over temporal ones. We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. And in that daily renewal, we discover that we do not lose heart. We cannot lose heart. Because the same glory that arrested Paul on the Damascus road, the same Christ who transformed his life, is transforming ours, day by day, from glory into glory. Worn down, yes. But worn out? Never.