2 Corinthians 4

Treasure in Clay: The Drama of Hidden Light

2 Corinthians 4 reads like a staged psychodrama in which the theater is human consciousness and the players are shifting states of mind. The opening lines, therefore seeing we have this ministry as we have received mercy, announce that a function has been entrusted to awareness: to embody and broadcast a realized state. This ministry is not a job anywhere out in the world; it is the responsible use of imagination inside the skull. Mercy received is the moment of inward awakening, the recognition that imagination has been bestowed and now must be used without falling back into the old tricks of self-deception.

Renouncing the hidden things of dishonesty and not walking in craftiness describe the first act of inner integrity. The mind that elects to become honest ceases the private manipulation of evidence, the rationalizations and secret scripts that serve fear. Handling the word deceitfully, in this language, is the habit of misusing the creative sentence you speak to yourself. The antidote is the manifestation of truth: when the inner image is honestly held and allowed to become vivid, it commends itself to conscience. Conscience in this drama is the audience of the inner court, the impartial witness that recognizes authenticity. To commend oneself to every man’s conscience in the sight of God is to align private imagination with the universal witnessing presence within.

But the scene quickly acknowledges resistance: if our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost. The lost are not geographically lost but psychologically asleep. Their imaginal faculty is hijacked by habit; they live by appearances and therefore cannot perceive the gospel that is an inner revelation. The god of this world who hath blinded the minds of them which believe not is the reigning consciousness of the senses and the ego. It is not an external devil, but the well-worn conviction that outer things are the source of reality. This blinded state prevents the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, from shining. Here the 'image of God' is the living imaginal principle, the creative selfhood that forms inner pictures which afterward appear. When imagination is dormant, the glory held within cannot reach perception.

For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake is the pivotal psychological correction. The speaker differentiates between the small self — the personality that seeks recognition — and the creative 'Christ' within, which is the operative imagination. To 'preach Christ' is to present the imaginal state rather than personal argument or charisma. The ministering voice becomes servant to the creative presence; it speaks from the confidence of an inner scene already lived. This is why God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts. The command is not historical; it is a statement about how the human mind works: when imagination gives birth to a vivid inner light, it dissolves interior darkness and gives knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The 'face' here is the focused, sensorial image that one wears when imagining; it is the visible aspect of inward reality.

But that treasure is kept in earthen vessels, and this image is crucial to the psychological reading. Earthen vessels are the fragile body-mind garments, the habitual personality that houses the divine imagination. The paradox is intentional: the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. The weakness, mortality, and limitations of the personality are not obstacles to the creative power; they are the theatre in which the power can be recognized as not originating in the small self. This fragile container makes obvious that whatever power appears is not merely human pride but something greater that works through human imagination.

The catalogue of opposites — troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed — is a psychological map of transformation. Each phrase charts a state of mind during inner work: conflict, bewilderment, social or internal opposition, and collapse. But the repeated qualifications signal the presence of an undisturbed center: the imaginal life persists even while the personality experiences crisis. The dying of the Lord Jesus carried about in the body is the continual self-crucifixion of the egoic identity. As the imaginal Christ enters, the old self must yield forms it once protected. This dying is not mere negation; it is an alchemical process so that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. In other words, the creative consciousness must die to the small identity in order to become visible in ordinary life.

For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh reads as a paradox of identity. The 'we which live' is the conscious observer that has discovered its imaginal nature; being 'delivered unto death' means repeatedly surrendering self-definitions so that the living imagination may show itself through everyday sensations, actions, and relationships. So death worketh in us, but life in you points to the dialectic that unfolds when an awakened individual becomes the vehicle through which others experience the life of imagination. The outward resignation of ego paradoxically gives birth to the inner life that uplifts others.

We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak is an instruction in creative psychology. Speech follows belief because inner conviction forms a natural expression. Belief is not a passive assent; it is the sustained imaginal act that produces the corresponding speech and action. Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus speaks to the certainty of resurrection as an inner law: what imagination makes alive in you it will one day reveal as lived reality. The promise is not moral reward but psychological inevitability when the creative faculty is rightly used.

For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God reframes grace as the inexhaustible creative faculty present in every human imagination. Thanksgiving is the feeling of fulfilled expectation; when inner images are held with gratitude they gather power and become visible. Gratitude thus becomes the amplifier that returns the fruit of the imaginal work to the awareness of its source.

The key verse that functions as the play's final exhortation is for which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. The outward man perishing is the ongoing surrender of surface identities; the inward man renewed day by day is the daily regeneration of imagination through practice. Renewal is not a single event but a sustained habit of cultivating inner scenes. This incremental process is why our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. The 'affliction' is the discomfort of changing habit; 'moment' signals the psychological reality that inner shifts often feel acute but are short-lived relative to the long-term structure being built. The 'weight of glory' is the substantial inner reality that accrues when imagination is consistently employed.

While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen is the moral of the play: attention creates form. The seen things are transient outputs of current belief; the unseen are the imaginal causes. To fix attention on unseen realities is not to deny outer circumstances, but to reorder attention so that imagination becomes primary. The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal because they are the cause. Once this principle is understood, Scripture ceases to be a chronicle of external events and becomes a manual for inner dramaturgy. The characters — the god of this world, the light, the earthen vessel, the dying and living Lord — are psychological states that interact within the theater of mind.

Reading the chapter this way, the text becomes an invitation to practice: receive mercy as an inward awakening, renounce self-deception, let the imaginal light shine despite resistance, accept fragility as the vessel for power, and persist through the death of old selves so that the living image within may show forth. This is not abstract theology but a care for the inner stage where the imagination writes the script that later the senses perform. In that script, resurrection is the daily consequence of a faith enacted imaginatively, and glory is the cumulative weight of inner scenes patiently held until they stand manifested in the world.