2 Corinthians 4:4

Note

The verse before said that the gospel is veiled to those who are perishing. This one gives the reason, and in giving it Paul describes the gospel in some of the brightest words he ever wrote: the light of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Since chapter 3 Paul has been speaking of veils: the veil over Moses' face, the veil over the hearts of those who read him, the veil removed when anyone turns to the Lord. This verse names the power behind the covering. Two verses later he goes back to the first day of creation: God, who said "Let light shine out of darkness," has "made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). The God who called light into being now shines the light of Christ into human hearts.

The Greek strings its genitives together: ton phōtismon tou euangeliou tēs doxēs tou Christou, ‘the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ’. phōtismos (φωτισμός) is light spreading outward, illumination, a word found in the New Testament only here and in verse 6. At the centre stands euangelion (εὐαγγέλιον), and what the gospel carries is the doxa (δόξα), the glory, of Christ. Because Christ is the eikōn (εἰκών) of God, to see His glory is to see God: "The Son is the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). The verb that keeps the light out is tuphloō (τυφλόω), aorist etuphlōsen, ‘blinded’.

The KJV's "the glorious gospel of Christ" turns the genitive into an adjective; the BSB's "the gospel of the glory of Christ" keeps it, so that the glory is the gospel's content. The KJV's "lest the light … should shine unto them" follows the Textus Receptus, which adds autois, ‘to them’; without that word the BSB reads the verb augazō as ‘to see’: "so they cannot see the light." The LSV, "that there does not shine forth to them the enlightening of the good news," keeps the rare noun as "enlightening." The KJV has "the god of this world," the BSB and LSV "of this age," for the Greek aiōn.

"The god of this age" has generally been read as Satan, whom Jesus called "the prince of this world" (John 12:31). Wesley exclaims, "What a sublime and horrible description of Satan!" Wesley, and he notes that the god of this age has done more than cover: "Not only veiled, the eye of their understanding" Wesley. On "the image of God" he writes, "He that sees the Son, sees the Father in the face of Christ" Wesley. Matthew Henry adds: "It is pleasant to behold the sun in the firmament; but it is more pleasant and profitable for the gospel to shine in the heart" Matthew Henry.

The verse was argued over early. In the second century, teachers who held that a higher god stood above the Creator took "the god of this age" as proof of a second god. Irenaeus answered that Paul often transposes his words, and that the sentence should be read as saying that God has blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world Irenaeus, Against Heresies. However the phrase is taken, the church has read the verse as speaking of one God, the Creator, who shines the light.

The verse says that not seeing the gospel is bound up with a darkness larger than any human power. But the God of verse 6 is the one who called light out of darkness, and that light shines in the face of Jesus Christ.