The Gospel the Manifestation of God.
I. St. Paul speaks of the gospel or good news being hid from those to whom it was proclaimed. St. Paul is not declaring what may be the consequences of rejecting the gospel, but what was the cause of its rejection. He is explaining a fact that was happening continually before his eyes. When he found the Gentiles given up to sensuality, he called them lost. Their minds, he said, were darkened; they were alienated from the mind of God in consequence of the ignorance that was in them, in consequence of the hardening of the heart. When St. Paul found the Jews shut up in self-righteousness and self-glorification, exulting in the law, exulting in their difference from all other men, he called them lost. There was the same blindness, the same hardness of heart, as in the other case. He knew that there was, for he had felt it; he had been lost.
II. Then follows an explanation, drawn from his own experience, of the darkening of the heart which he has been describing in these two apparently different cases. "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not." Could he have uttered a more pregnant truth? A god of this world lay beneath all the superstitions of the nations; ready to develop himself whenever the belief in some higher and better Being, which lived on amidst all confusions in their consciences, should be utterly crushed under the moral corruptions against which it protested.
III. If we understand who it was that was blinding the minds of those who did not believe, we shall understand better what it was that St. Paul wished them to believe what the purpose of his gospel was, what the effect was upon those whose blindness it overcame. This is expressed in the last clause, "Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." Here was the subject of the good tidings: they were tidings concerning God. They set forth the true God, the living God, in opposition to the false god, the dead god, the god of this world, who was blinding the minds of Jews as well as of Gentiles. But this true God, this living God, could not be declared to one or to the other in any words of St. Paul or of any man. He could only be presented in a person; there must be a living image of Him; He could only be seen in the life and death of a man. What St. Paul had to do was to proclaim that God had shown forth such an image of Himself in the world, that it would confound all images which men had made of Him out of nature or out of themselves. Therefore the Apostle was to say, "This good news is none of mine. I have no power to make you entertain it or accept it. My rhetoric, my vehemence, cannot effect a passage for it into your souls. If it could, what would it profit you? The message is concerning a Person: you are called to submit to a living Ruler; you are called to embrace a living Friend. How can a whole heap of words, suppose you took them in ever so readily and liked them ever so much, work in you this obedience, bestow on you this fellowship? God is doing that, not we. He is manifesting His Son in you. His light is shining about you, and seeking to enter into those hearts which must just as much take it in as the eyes the light of the sun. Another god the god of this world is using all arts to intercept this light, to draw a veil between you and it, to put out the organ which should transmit it to you. What I would have you believe is that Christ's light is stronger than the darkness and can break through it all."
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. i., p. 117.
References: 2 Corinthians 4:3; 2 Corinthians 4:4. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1663; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,3rd series, p. 549. 2 Corinthians 4:4. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 97; vol. iii., p. 27; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 2.