2 Corinthians 1:9 Indeed we ourselves had the response of death in ourselves, that we should not base our confidence on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
Whatever is broken by God will enter into death in order to pass through death; once it passes through death, it will enter into resurrection, and once it is resurrected, it can attain to God’s goal (2 Corinthians 1:8-9; Philippians 3:10-11). (2014 Fall ITERO, msg. 4 outline)
In this book (Second Corinthians) the apostle is presented as a pattern of a person living Christ in five aspects for the church:
(1) not basing his confidence on himself but on God, who raises the dead (1:9), which includes related matters such as conducting himself in the world not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God (1:2) and being one with the unchanging Christ of the faithful God (1:18-20);
(2) being attached to Christ, anointed and sealed by His Spirit, and captured, subdued, and led by Him to scatter His savor (1:21-22; 2:14-16);
(3) being sufficient of Christ as the spiritual alphabet to write living letters with the life-giving Spirit of the living God (3:3-6);
(4) having the shining of the glory of the new covenant (3:7-11); and
(5) being transformed into the image of the Lord from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit, by beholding and reflecting like a mirror His glory with unveiled face (3:16-18).When the apostles were under the pressure of affliction, despairing even of life, they might have asked themselves what the issue of their suffering would be. The answer or response was “death.” This led them to the vital decision not to base their confidence on themselves but on God, who raises the dead. The experience of death ushers us into the experience of resurrection. Resurrection is the very God, who resurrects the dead. The working of the cross terminates our self that we may experience God in resurrection. The experience of the cross always issues in the enjoyment of the God of resurrection. Such experience produces and forms the ministry (1:4-6). (2 Corinthians 1:9 Footnotes)
