What does 2 Corinthians 4:12 mean?
This summarizes what Paul has written in the previous verses. Death is at work in him and his co-workers for the gospel of Jesus. For Christ's sake, they are regularly afflicted, persecuted, perplexed, and struck down. They live on the verge of death in fragile human bodies. On the other hand, God has kept them, against serious opposition, from being crushed, from total despair, from being abandoned, and from being destroyed. The fact that they keep going is evidence that God's power is working through them and not their own.Some among the Corinthians have accused Paul of being a false apostle because he experiences so much suffering. His response is that the life of Christ is at work in the Corinthians exactly because he has been willing to keep going through that suffering, enabled by the power of God. The implication is that instead of challenging his credentials, the Corinthians should be grateful to God for what Paul has endured to bring them life through the gospel of Jesus.
Second Corinthians 4:7–18 explains that the priceless treasure of knowing God's glory through faith in Christ is kept in the fragile containers of human beings. In this case, this refers to Paul and his co-workers who preach the gospel. Their suffering is enormous, but God keeps them from being wiped out. They don't quit because even after they die, they know they will be resurrected, as Christ was. Then they will spend eternity with Him in a glory that will far outweigh and outlast the comparatively lightweight and momentary suffering of this life.
Paul insists that he and his co-workers for Christ would never act in a way that is disgraceful or dishonest, though he knows some are blinded by Satan from believing their message about Jesus. They cannot see the light of knowing Christ as God. That knowledge is a priceless treasure stored in the fragile containers of Paul and his friends. No matter how difficult their suffering in this work, Paul refuses to quit. He is confident that he will be resurrected after his death and then all his pain on this side of eternity won't even be worth comparing with the glory there.
