Bible Bedrock: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels…”
“We have this treasure
in earthen vessels…”
– 2 Timothy 2:21 (King James Version)
A finite language cannot completely portray the infinite. So different illustrations are necessary in order to complete the picture of our relation to Him.
Look at the number of times the Bible calls us vessels. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” We are “vessels, sanctified, meet for the Master’s use, prepared unto every good work.”
Now you see at once the beauty of the illustration: a vessel is a hollow object made to contain something. And God has made us vessels.
Of course, if God makes us vessels, He fills us. God doesn’t fool with His creation; if He made anything to be filled, He must see to it that it gets filled.
This is our receptivity. The whole function of the vessel is to receive something.
Now get this clear: the vessel never becomes the liquid, nor the liquid the vessel. I add this because we humans are so proud that there creeps into us the idea that we can be deified. That is blasphemy. There is no such thing as self-deification, except that of Satan, the pseudo-God, and what we share with him. The divine can dwell in the human, but forever the human is the human and the divine the divine. God has said, “I will not give My glory to another.”
That is the vital importance of the vessel illustration: we are forever the container, He is that which we contain.
Taken from “The Key To Everything,” by Norman Grubb, Published by CLC Publications, available at clcpublications.com.
