A Sermon on 2 Corinthians 4:13-18 was delivered on August 23, 2026. Please visit our Sermon Archives for more sermons in this series.
Introduction: Watch Where You’re Going
Anyone who has tried ice skating or snow skiing quickly learns one lesson: fixate on your feet, and you will fall. Lift your gaze toward where you’re going, and things get easier. Paul applies that same principle to suffering: don’t fixate on the hardship. Watch where God is taking you. Since Jesus has already secured your glorified future, suffering loses its power to crush you when you keep your eyes fixed on what lies ahead.
Look Toward the Resurrection
Paul opens by identifying himself with the psalmist in Psalm 116 — a thanksgiving psalm where someone who cried out from dire straits declares, I believed, and so I spoke. Paul says: same spirit, same faith, same declaration, but in the present tense. I am believing, so I am speaking. What does he believe? That God will raise the dead. Every believer faces death. Doctors, medication, and medical care are good gifts, but unless Jesus returns first, something will get each of us. Paul’s answer isn’t denial; it’s direction. Whatever kills you brings you to resurrection. The worst the world can do to a believer is deliver them into God’s presence. Keep your eyes on that destination and suffering changes shape entirely.
Look Toward the Glory of God
Paul suffered to proclaim grace, and as grace spread to more and more people, thanksgiving multiplied, and multiplied thanksgiving flows directly into the glory of God. That’s the trajectory of everything: Paul’s suffering, the Corinthians’ conversion, the growth of grace — all of it moves toward God’s glory. The Westminster Shorter Catechism answers the question “What is man’s chief end?” with this: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Suffering doesn’t exempt us from that purpose; it becomes one of the hardest and most important places to pursue it. The sermon admits plainly: God may not show us the glory in our hardest seasons this side of heaven. He may simply call us to keep our eyes fixed on his glory anyway.
Look Toward Future Renewal
The passage’s most striking move comes in the contrast Paul draws. On one side: the outer self wasting away: decaying, breaking down, the inevitable physical reality of life in a broken world. On the other side: the inner self being renewed day by day: the new heart, united to Christ, being gradually freed from the vestiges of sin that still cling even to redeemed people. Suffering serves that renewal. God uses it to peel away what doesn’t belong.
Then Paul says something that cuts against every instinct: this suffering is light and momentary. Nobody in the middle of their worst season naturally calls it that. But Paul compares it not to easier seasons but to what awaits: an extraordinary overabundance of an extraordinary overabundance of glory. The Greek stacks the word on itself twice because no single superlative is sufficient. Romans 8:28-30 fills out the picture: those God foreknew, he predestined, called, justified, and glorified. That glorification is already determined. Believers are being prepared right now for something already theirs.
Fix Your Eyes on the Unseen
Paul closes with a principle he will develop further in chapter 5: walk by faith, not by sight. Things that are seen are transient. Unseen things are eternal. When suffering hits, the temptation is to fixate on the point of pain — the diagnosis, the betrayal, the loss, the fear. That fixation makes things worse. The alternative isn’t fake cheerfulness or “putting on a blessed face while life falls apart.” It’s the psalmist’s move — taking the lament, the pain, and the despair directly to God, trusting that he will answer with grace, with glory, and with the reminder that something far better is coming.
Conclusion
Suffering is real, decay is real, and the weight of hard seasons is real. Paul never minimizes any of it. But he consistently redirects our gaze from what is visible and temporary to what is invisible and eternal. The resurrection is coming. The glory of God is the destination. The renewal happening inside us right now is preparing us for an unimaginable weight of glory that makes everything suffered here look, in retrospect, like a featherweight carried for a fraction of a second. Watch where you are going — and keep watching.
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