The Eternal Weight of Glory

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” II Cor 4:16-18

As I was contemplating the recent torture deaths of Israelis by the Hamas I was reminded that our bodies are simply our outer garments which are going to be cast off by all of us soon enough. In the meantime, everyone’s outer body is deteriorating as it heads toward certain death. On the other hand, our true self is our “inner self”, our soul/spirit. This is the eternal part of us that, if we accept Christ, we live with God forever. H. A. Ironside has commented: “We are told that our material bodies are completely changed every seven years … Yet we have a consciousness of being the same persons. Our personality is unchanged from year to year, and so with regard to the greater change as yet to come. The same life is in the butterfly that was in the grub.” Our inner self can actually continue to be renewed even while our outer self is “wasting away”. This renewal is accomplished by God Himself but we can further it by “putting off the old self” and “putting on the new self” (Ephesians 4:22-23), that is, by dying to self and yielding to God’s Spirit that resides within us.

The “light affliction” and the deteriorating body are preparing us for an “eternal weight of glory”. In the sermon/book “The Weight of Glory” C. S. Lewis explores the Christian concept of heavenly glory and argues that it consists of two qualities: (1) a welcoming acceptance and acknowledgment by God (“Well done, thou good and faithful servant”) and (2) a brightness or luminosity of the glorified bodies of the saved. The “weight” or burden of glory, according to Lewis, consists in the realization that the redeemed shall be approved by God and “delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son.” In Hebrew ‘”weight” and “glory” come from the same root. It is because the coming “glory” is so “weighty” that the present “affliction” seems so ‘”light”. It is not simply that the “glory” is the compensation for the “affliction”, rather, the “glory” is the product of the “affliction”.

Do not lose heart. Do not look to the things that are seen which are temporary but look to your unseen soul/spirit which is eternal and, as a Christian, is being renewed by God day by day to prepare you for a future weighty glory in eternity.