And so, transformed “through God’s mercy,” Paul has been given the ministry of bearing the message that transforms its recipients. Because he has been sent from God, his proclamation can embrace neither “deception” nor the distortion of anything that God has said in the past (4:2). Thus, where the message remains obscure, one may be sure that such obscurity is not a result of the proclamation but a result of the work of the enemy, the god of this age (cf. John 12:31), who has blinded the minds of those who persist in unbelief to the light of the gospel. Neither can the proclamation promote its bearer but only its subject, Jesus Christ, the Lord who is the very image of God (and therefore the true and second Adam, the beginning of a new creation [see 2 Cor. 5:17]). Only through Christ can t…