Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day.
Paul does not deny that the body is wearing out; he says something else is happening at the same time, every day.
Today's reflection
Paul does not pretend. Our outer self is wasting away. He has just listed what that looks like in his own life: hard pressed, perplexed, persecuted, struck down. He calls himself and his companions jars of clay, the cheap, breakable pottery every household had and nobody thought of as precious. Some of the cracks came from beatings and prison. Some came from the years.
Most of us know the outer self he means without needing the Greek. The knee that complains on the stairs. The name that will not come when you reach for it. The energy that used to last until evening and now runs out after lunch. Nobody gets to skip this part.
What Paul adds is that something else is happening at the same time. Yet our inner self is being renewed day by day.
Both verbs are in the present tense. The wearing out is continuous, and so is the renewal. Paul does not say the inner self was renewed once, at conversion, and must now hold out against the decline as best it can. It is being made new today, and again tomorrow, on the same schedule as the aches.
That is why he can say, at the start of the chapter and again here, we do not lose heart. He has not fooled himself about the body. He simply has reason to believe it is not the whole story, and a few lines earlier he names the reason: the One who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us.
If you are watching your own jar crack, you do not have to call it anything other than what it is. Grief over a failing body is honest. But look for the daily part. Somewhere in this same day, in prayer, in Scripture, in the kindness of a friend, God is renewing what the years cannot reach.
Why this passage
Context checked: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 follows Paul's defense of his ministry in 4:1-6. He calls the gospel a treasure held in "jars of clay" (4:7), ordinary breakable pottery, and lists what his ministry costs: hard pressed, perplexed, persecuted, struck down (4:8-9). "We do not lose heart" repeats 4:1. In 4:16 both verbs are in the present tense, two continuous processes running side by side: the outer self being worn down, the inner self being renewed. Verses 17-18 set the "light and momentary affliction" against "an eternal weight of glory" and turn attention to what is unseen. The hope named in 4:14 is resurrection, and 5:1 goes on to the earthly tent and the building from God.
Scripture in English is from the Berean Standard Bible, which its publisher placed in the public domain on 30 April 2023.