My view of preaching is that the preacher’s job is to receive from God a word through Scripture, hold it up before God’s people, point them to it, and say, “Look!” He then opens it with connections to Scripture and life, and exults over it in such a way that, by God’s grace, the hearers will be drawn into the enjoyment of it and obedience to it, so that the infinite greatness and beauty and worth of Christ might be manifest in our lives. If a preacher is not exulting over the realities revealed in his text, he’s not preaching.
Therefore, preaching is a happy business. Because even if the text is a hard word that devastates the hearers (and my text is not a hard word), the preacher connects the hard word with the gracious word and the hopeful word, and he catches them as they fall. So, in the end, all preaching is a happy business. Sometimes it’s a toe-tapping happy business, and sometimes it’s a tearful happy business. We preach good news. We preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Whether hard or comfortable, we herald good news, and we do it by exulting over the goodness of the good news. If there is no expository exultation, there is no preaching.
All of that is in part to say thank you. I owe you a debt of thanks for giving me the privilege of exulting over this word with you. Most of the pleasure of expository exultation is owing to the greatness of the good news. But some of it is owing to the sweetness of the fellowship. There is joy in the exultation. There is more joy in the shared exultation. And my experience has been that to preach among the people of Sovereign Grace provides an unusually sweet fellowship of exultation. So, thank you, Bob, and all of you for inviting me.
My happy assigned theme is “Union with Christ and the Promises of God,” and my text is 2 Corinthians 1:20, which says, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.”
There you have all three pieces of my theme: “all the promises of God,” “in him” (union with Christ), and both are connected with “Yes.” In Christ, all the promises of God are affirmed, not denied. It’s yes, not no. In Christ, all the promises of God are secured, guaranteed. For all of you who are in Christ, every promise of God will come true. That’s our text. And it is, as you can see, spectacular.
Travel Plans and the Promises of God
Before we dig in, there is one noncentral observation from the context that I don’t want you to miss because it is so pastorally significant. Paul explains his situation starting in 2 Corinthians 1:15. He says, “I wanted to come to you first,” meaning travel over from Ephesus to Corinth across the Aegean Sea, “so that you might have a second experience of grace,” meaning the grace of a second visit when he comes back from Macedonia, where he intends to go after he visits them. He explains now in 2 Corinthians 1:16, “I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia [probably Philippi or Thessalonica], and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea.”
Now, that did not happen. He explains why in 2 Corinthians 1:23: “It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.” But Paul’s adversaries at Corinth, probably the “false apostles” that he refers to in 2 Corinthians 11:13, who were challenging his authority, were all over this. And they were accusing him of vacillating. They were saying, “He’s fickle. He’s unreliable. He’s a hypocrite. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He says one thing and does another thing. He says he’s planning to come — he’s not planning to come. He says yes, but underneath it’s a no. And this is the one you want to follow as an apostle?”
Paul responds to this criticism in 2 Corinthians 1:17–18:
Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No.
In other words, “I am not a hypocrite. I mean what I say. I don’t tamper with the truth like that.” Now, here is the amazing thing. Up through 2 Corinthians 1:18, Paul is dealing with an ordinary kind of situation. He told them his travel plans. A new situation arose, and it caused a change. People who don’t like him are making it into a failure of integrity, and Paul is responding to this kind of criticism. That’s just an everyday situation that we all deal with from time to time.
But then in 2 Corinthians 1:19–20, Paul attaches that ordinary situation to a cluster of the most profound theological realities. Here’s what he says:
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.
Now, if I did that in my pastoral ministry, here’s what would happen. Someone would say, “Good grief, Piper. Lighten up. We’re talking about travel plans and a few cranks in the church, and there you go talking about the Son of God, all the promises of God, union with Christ, and the glory of God. My goodness. This is overkill.” Now, my pastoral counsel is that you patiently ignore these people and graciously proceed to root your ministry, your travel plans, and all the ordinary things of life in the most glorious realities in the universe. There aren’t too many people in the world who live this way and think this way.
That’s the one observation I wanted you to see from the context. Be known in your church as the person who is so God-besotted, so Bible-saturated, so Spirit-filled that people expect you to connect ordinary life to glorious realities — to God, Christ, cross, Spirit, promises, and glory.
Images of an Inexhaustible Union
Now let’s go to 2 Corinthians 1:20. It says, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” What does “in him” mean? The way I would say it is this. Beneath all our biblical efforts to conceptualize or picture what this attachment to Jesus is like, there is a reality, a union, that is unfathomable and inexpressible, which we will never exhaust with words or doctrines, but which the Bible gives expression to in many ways. That means there’s always more underneath, but the revelations, the pictures, and the conceptions that the Bible does give of this reality are indispensable and glorious.
For example, consider just briefly five such ways of expressing this inexhaustible union.
1. Called into Fellowship
First, 1 Corinthians 1:9 says, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The point where the union happens is the effectual call of God. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified” (Romans 8:30). There is a sovereign call that is predestined and effective in bringing into being a new reality. We call it new birth. We call it new creation. It’s the creation of spiritual life where there was deadness, spiritual sight where there was blindness, and faith where there was rebellion. All of it happens because simultaneously there comes into being a union with Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 1:9, the call of God is described as a call into the koinōnian (“fellowship”) of his Son. It’s coming into participation in the Son, a sharing of life in the Son, a oneness with the Son.
2. Union of Life
Second, that union is called a union of life. Colossians 3:4 says, “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” The union is such that Christ is my life. In Galatians 2:20, Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The uniting is so profound that there is a kind of “no longer I, but Christ.” Yet the verse goes on to say, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The “I” that is Christ is the “I” who trusts Christ. That’s our conscious experience of the subconscious, unfathomable “not I, but Christ.” So, this is a union of life. He is my life in this union.
3. Members of His Body
Third, there is the picture of each Christian being one with Christ as members of his one body. First Corinthians 12:12–13 says,
Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
Christ is not head of the body here. He is the body. And the body is one — and every Christian an appendage. The hand is in the body, and the body is Christ. The foot is in the body, and the body is Christ. “The body is one.” So, it is a union of members in a body, who is Christ.
4. Members of His Family
Fourth, in adoption and new birth, God brings us into a family union where we are fellow heirs and have a single spiritual DNA. Romans 8:16–17 says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” The family union is such that we are coheirs with the Son of God.
Peter explains in 1 Peter 1:23, “You have been born again, not of perishable seed [DNA] but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” Paul concurs with his reference in Galatians 4:29 to those who are “born according to the Spirit.” The Spirit becomes the DNA that makes us not only legally part of the family by adoption, but also, by some unfathomable supernatural genetics, we are one with Christ by the new birth, with the same spiritual DNA as the Son of God. So, this is a union of family identity.
5. Counted Righteous
Fifth, I’ll mention one more picture of this inexhaustible union — namely, the judicial experience of union with Christ. The union becomes our righteousness. Philippians 3:8–9: “that I may . . . be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” In union with Christ, a righteousness not our own is ours.
In summary, being in Christ means we are called into his fellowship. In that fellowship, Christ is our life. We are one with him as members of his body and one with him as members of his family. And in him we are counted righteous with his righteousness. All of this results in 2 Corinthians 1:20: all the promises of God are yes for us in Christ. In his fellowship, in his life, in his body, in his family, in his righteousness, everything he has and ever will have is ours.
Every Promise Secured in Christ
“All the promises” means every good that God can conceive of is ours in Christ. First Corinthians 3:21–23 says, “So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” That’s the same as saying, “All the promises are Yes in him.” Romans 8:32 ties all the promises to Christ’s death as the way he secured them for all who are in Christ: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” “Graciously give us all things” is the same as saying, “All the promises are Yes in him.”
- No good thing does he withhold from those who are in Christ (Psalm 84:11).
- He will put his Spirit within you and cause you to walk in his statutes in Christ (Ezekiel 36:27).
- Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life in Christ (Psalm 23:6).
- Everything will work together for your good in Christ (Romans 8:28).
- He will never leave you nor forsake you in Christ (Hebrews 13:5).
- He will strengthen you, he will help you, and he will uphold you with his righteous right hand in Christ (Isaiah 41:10).
- He will finish the work he began in you in Christ (Philippians 1:6).
- No one will be able to snatch you out of his hand in Christ (John 10:27–29).
- He will raise you from the dead in Christ (Revelation 2:10).
- He will make known to you the path of life so that you find your way to God, in whose presence is fullness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures forever in Christ (Psalm 16:11).
Why did Paul declare such a lavish truth in 2 Corinthians 1:20? Because he was fighting for his apostolic life and their faith, joy, and love, which he would defend through his own faith, joy, love. His defense began in 2 Corinthians 1:18. Paul is saying, “It’s this faithfulness of God, this guarantee of the Holy Spirit, this union with Christ, and this fulfillment of all the promises that enables me to keep on rejoicing through affliction so that the overflow of my joy will be your joy. That’s how I love you. That’s how I pour out my life for you. I don’t manipulate, I don’t deceive, I don’t exploit you. I love you.”
Paul is not just defending himself; he is inviting the Corinthians, and us, into this life in the promises of God — sustaining joy in affliction, overflowing in love for others. He says, “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No” (2 Corinthians 1:18). My life is built on the faithfulness of God to all his promises. He continues his defense in 2 Corinthians 1:22: “[He] put his seal on us and [gave] us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” He is saying, “My life is built on God’s Holy Spirit seal that his promises stand.” Therefore, 2 Corinthians 1:20 says, “All the promises of God find their Yes in him.”
Joy in Affliction, Overflowing in Love
Let’s turn to see how Paul in the rest of this letter moves toward joy in affliction — sustained by promises, overflowing in love. He sounds the note immediately in 2 Corinthians 1:4 that this is where he’s going: “[God] comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” This is comfort in affliction — joy in affliction — for the sake of love.
Then there is this amazing statement in 2 Corinthians 7:4: “I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.” Lest we pass by the word affliction too lightly, listen to his list of afflictions in 2 Corinthians 11:
Labors . . . imprisonments . . . countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. (2 Corinthians 11:23–27)
Now, here are his words again from 2 Corinthians 7:4: “I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.”
He says it again in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10. The Lord refused to take away his thorn in the flesh.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Gladness in calamities? Here it is again in 2 Corinthians 12:15: “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?” This is gladness in affliction, overflowing with love.
“In union with Christ, a righteousness not our own is ours.”
Here is one more text on this point. Second Corinthians 13:9 says, “We are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for.” It’s gladness in weakness, overflowing in love. How in the world did Paul maintain such a life of suffering with joy for decades? The answer is this: “All the promises of God are Yes in Christ.” Here’s the way he expressed it in 2 Corinthians 4:16–18. How does he not lose heart?
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison [that is a promise that is Yes in Christ Jesus], as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
By faith, he looks to the unseen and banks his life on the promise that all the afflictions happening in this world are not meaningless but are preparing for him an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. By this, he not only survives but rejoices in all his affliction. Second Corinthians 7:4: “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.”
Our Glad Amen
With one more clear, indisputable demonstration, he shows that this promise-sustained joy is the source of love. In 2 Corinthians 8:1–2, he describes how the Macedonians became a model of generosity for the Corinthians. Paul was collecting money for the poor in Jerusalem. Here’s what happened in Macedonia. In 2 Corinthians 8:8 he calls it “love.” This is one of the most amazing texts in the Bible on the spring and power of love:
We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. (2 Corinthians 8:1–2)
Where did this wealth of generosity (this love) come from? He says it is the overflow of their abundance of joy. And what kind of joy was this? What were they so glad about? It wasn’t the absence of affliction. It wasn’t the absence of poverty. Contextually, one answer is left from 2 Corinthians 8:1 — “the grace of God.” Paul says, “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia” (2 Corinthians 8:1). This is the grace that says to sinners, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the promises of God are yes for you in Christ Jesus.” They believed, and despite affliction and poverty, their joy was so abundant that it overflowed in love to the poor whom they didn’t even know.
In the second half of 2 Corinthians 1:20, Paul brings it all to a climax with these words: “That is why [namely, because all the promises of God are Yes in Christ] it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” Amen is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew expression for yes. Amen! Truly! Surely! Yes!
So, what is Paul saying? He is saying, “The response of my life (2 Corinthians 1:20) will not be a grumbling No to God’s promises. My life will not be a self-pitying, reclusive No to God’s promises. My life will not be a loveless No to God’s promises. My life, in all its afflictions, will be a radiant Yes to the promises of God. When God says Yes to me with all his promises, my response is Yes to him. I say, ‘Amen! Yes, they are true. Yes, they are enough. Yes, I am content. Yes, I am glad to spend and be spent for your souls.’”
And from such a life — promise-sustained, overflowing in joy, poured out in love — Paul says God gets great glory (2 Corinthians 1:20).