Nothingness and Nobodies

I relish Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians – the most personal and poignant of Paul’s wonderful epistles, it seems to me.

I relish chapter one. All the promises of God, Paul reports ecstatically, find their “Yes!” in Jesus (v.20).

I relish chapter two. “Who is sufficient to represent Christ in the world?” Paul asks (v.16). “Only simple folks will do – who simply stand in God’s presence and speak what they speak by his grace” (v.17, my paraphrase).

I relish chapter three. No one can be competent for service in themselves: not one of us. If we are competent at all, it comes only and always from God (vv.4,5).

And I relish chapters four and five, maybe especially. (But I relish the rest of the book, too.)

Here is a morsel that I have savored recently…

“For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:5,6).

God needed nothing to build the universe. Out of nothing itself, in fact, God created everything. It is the doctrine of creation “ex nihilo” – out of sheer nothingness, God created the world. “What is seen was made from things that are not visible” (Hebrews 11:3).

And God needs nothing to create faith in our hearts. He needs no worthiness on our part – no prior suitability, special aptitude, or spiritual fitness. God creates the faith that saves us out of sheer nothingness, “ex nihilo.”

God creates faith in our hearts, St. Paul explains here, in a manner directly parallel to the creation of the universe itself. Faith bursts into being with no antecedent whatsoever. It is spoken into being, as God speaks light into darkness. It is called into being, as God calls dead men from the tomb. It emerges by pure miraculous fiat, without precedent and without precondition – as sheer and outrageous as the galaxies that swirl into being when God breathes, “Let there be light!” (Genesis 1:3). “Let there be faith,” says the Creator of all things (cf. John 14:1). “The centurion answered Jesus, ‘Only speak the word…'” (Matthew 8:8).

And this is how God builds his Kingdom in the world. God employs nobodies. He calls them from nothingness. Out of no-accounts and no-names – even “things that are not” – God creates his Kingdom (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:28). He calls them into his family. He makes them his very own (cf. Matthew 10:1ff). He speaks them into existence, as he breathes fire into the stars.

And he does so as he does every good thing in the spiritual life: by grace, through faith, “ex nihilo.”

“God… didn’t choose you because you were big and important,” Moses reminds us elsewhere. “The fact is, there was almost nothing to you” (Deuteronomy 7:7, The Message). “I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you,” echoes St. Paul. “Not many influential, not many from high-society families” (1 Corinthians 1:26, The Message). “God deliberately chose… ‘nobodies’…” (v.28). “The Lord spoke and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:9).

Do you hear him?

“You did not choose me but I chose you,” says Jesus with creative power. “And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last…” (John 15:16).

“You are the light of the world,” says Jesus with creative authority. “Let your light shine…” (Matthew 5:14,16).

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” says the King of kings. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:18,19).

Jesus chose no-account Paul, once long ago – “the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle” (1 Corinthians 15:9). He made him what he could not be, graced him with what he could not earn, and sent him into ministry (v.10). God made him his ambassador (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Do you hear him? Listen closely. You may discover that God’s grace speaks you into service, too.