The Weight of Glory Beyond All Comparison
[This message was shared during a memorial service in Columbus today.]
2 Corinthians 4:14-18
I want to focus on just one verse of our Bible lesson, verse 17. There, the apostle Paul says, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…”
Here, Paul compares life in two different realms, the earthly and the eternal. He speaks of life in this world as a “light momentary affliction” which is preparing us for an “eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,.”
The word translated as “affliction” is in the Greek in which the New Testament was originally written–thlipsis. That word is often rendered in English as “tribulation.” Literally, it means to be pressed down, forced into the constraints of a time or a place we would rather not be. It was from such a place that a dear friend of ours used to pray to God, “I want to be in a different movie!”
The things that afflict us in this life are many.
Cancer can press us down, hem us in.
Death and grief can press us down.
Being the caregiver for someone who is dying also presses and constrains us.
Whenever afflictions of any kind are happening to us, they seem to be anything but “light” or “momentary.” They weigh us down and seem to go on forever.
But there is hope!
Jesus tells us: “In the world you will have tribulation [thlipsis or affliction, just like in our reading]. But take heart [Jesus says]; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Jesus has overcome all that weighs us down.
He has overcome our sin and the condemnation we deserve for it by offering His sinless life on a cross. At the cross, Jesus bore our sin.
Jesus has also risen from the dead. Through this—His resurrection—He broke down the dividing wall between God and us. Jesus opens eternal life to all who, through the power of God’s Word, believe in Jesus.
It’s these God-given promises of forgiveness and eternity that Paul is talking about when he refers to an “eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
Unlike the tribulations we endure in this life and the tribulations that inevitably end our lives on this earth, God’s weighty glory outshines and outweighs and outlives everything.
To live in the glory and the presence of Jesus is what all who trust in Him are promised by Jesus.
And so, Jesus tells us in another place in the Bible, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26)
What a promise! That promise, sealed by Jesus’ death and resurrection, means that at the moment that Cindy passed from this life, she passed into the presence of Jesus in Whom she believed.
And one day, Jesus will call her from the dead to live in the new heaven and the new earth He has prepared for all who believe.
We do suffer and we do grieve in this world.
But cancer does not have the last word over our lives.
Nor does death.
Our sins and imperfections, which would otherwise separate us from God forever, don’t have the last word either.
It is Jesus and Jesus alone Who will have the last word.
Folks: In Jesus, all your sins are forgiven and there is life forever with God.
If, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, you turn from sin and death (something I find myself doing all the time, every single day)
and believe Jesus’ promises to you, you know that one day you too will hear Jesus call out to you: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34)
Amen