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.—2 Corinthians 4:16–18

Introduction

The Acid Test

How do you know that you are a Christian? If you had to limit yourself to one test, what would it be? My favorite preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, proposed one test that he called the “acid test” of Christianity. He started by proposing different options. Some say our profession of faith proves we are saved. He argued that it was insufficient because one could have dead orthodoxy. Some say ethics prove our salvation. Lloyd-Jones said that non-Christians can live moral lives. Some say experience proves we are saved. But the cults also stress experience, and experience is not a reliable guide.

After bringing up each test and showing that each one was necessary, but not sufficient, he finally proposed the “acid test” that was able to incorporate all of them: the hope of glory. He said that this one test includes all of the others because all other counterfeit hopes have been decisively removed so that one can see what is left when the dust settles. All other reasons to have hope have vanished. Now what? He says that when all earthly hopes are lost, a Christian still has hope because his hope is not fixed upon this passing world, but the world to come.

Lloyd-Jones was preaching at a time when a whole nation was on the verge of losing heart. He pastored a church in London during World War II while London was being bombed by the Nazis. It was a trying test of faith for England. People could not look outside their window and see hope. They did not see reasons to rejoice because all they saw was rubble.

Do you know what text he went to in order to see this hope of glory? You probably guessed it: the text we are looking at today. I hope to show you why this one text has been such a hope-giving balm for so many Christians throughout the centuries. There is one hope that is immune to any illness and outside the range of any weapon: the hope of glory. Let’s look at it together and pray that we will do more than discuss this hope. I pray that by the end of this message, you will have this hope. 

Three Contrasts to Give Hope

Where do we look to find hope—especially when circumstances do not seem to cooperate? Paul gives us the answer with three contrasts:

1. Outer decay and inner renewal (v. 16)
2. Present sufferings and future glory (v. 17)
3. The seen and the unseen (v. 18). 

We will look at them one at a time.

1. Outer Decay and Inner Renewal (v.16) 

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

Paul claims that we don’t lose heart from outer decay because of inner renewal (v. 16). The original reads in a way that connects not losing heart and feeling our inner renewal. We do not lose heart, but our inner self is being renewed. Those two statements have to be read together.

The outer self vs. inner self is not simply a body vs. spirit contrast. We are a soul-body partnership. We don’t divide them and only look at one and then the other as if they do not relate to each other. It is viewing one’s total existence from two different angles. The angle of the outer self would look at the whole person from the standpoint of creaturely existence and our mortality. We are going to die. We see the process of decay and deterioration already at work. This is what it means to be part of the old creation.

But we are also a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We can look at our whole being from the standpoint of belonging to the new creation.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.—Colossians 3:9–10 

This “new creation” aspect is what the Corinthians are ignoring. They are staring at Paul from only one angle: his outer appearance. Yes, his outer appearance is breaking down and falling apart. The process of deterioration is plain to see. People who look at Paul according to what can be seen with the physical eyes see only loss. Paul says, "I am not operating in the category of loss, growth and rejuvenation. Though groaning, I am also growing." This renewal or transformation is "day by day."

This inner renewal is the same kind of thing that he referenced back in 2 Corinthians 3:18.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

It also appears in Colossians 3:1:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

We see it once again in Ephesians 2. Notice the link between our spiritual resurrection and the future glory in the coming ages. 

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.—Ephesians 2:4–7

2. Present Suffering and Future Glory (v.17)

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,

We don’t lose heart in suffering because present suffering is the slave of unseen glory (v. 17). Notice four things here. First, affliction is described as “light” and “momentary.” This description appears to be at odds with Paul's earlier assessment of the “affliction” in Asia. It did not seem light because they were “utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8). Note two words in that verse—“utterly” and “burdened” (or weighed down)—because they both show up again in verse 17. More on that in the third observation.

Second, the glory is described in comparison to the affliction. The affliction is light compared to the weight of glory. The affliction is momentary compared to the eternal glory to come.

Third, the affliction really does not compare to the glory. This verse uses two words that appeared in 2 Corinthians 1:8—”exceeding” and “weight.” The affliction was an excessive burden when viewed on its own. But the matter changes when present affliction is weighed against future glory. When they are both put on the scales, the weight of glory launches afflictions out of sight.

In fact, the original language is not just emphatic; it is doubly emphatic. Paul uses a Greek word (hyperbole). This is a word from which we get our English word “hyperbole.” The English word normally means intentional exaggeration. But the Greek word does not mean this—Paul is certainly not exaggerating. The word in Greek means “exceedingly.” The afflictions cannot compare to future glory. Future glory exceeds present afflictions by far. But Paul says it twice to make the contrast even more striking. The repetition of the word in two phrases brings the meaning to something like “exceedingly to a superlative degree.” It is indeed “beyond all comparison.”

Fourth, afflictions and glory are not merely contrasted—they are interrelated. A sovereign God can design suffering to serve our future glory. He does. Suffering is a slave to our glory. Do not look at your suffering and think that you are the one enslaved to it. It is quite the opposite. I love Jonathan Edwards' image here. He said that sufferings are the sharp whittling tool that God uses to carve a bigger cup for us so we can hold more future glory. Yes, sufferings smart because they are sharp. But what if the sharp feeling your soul feels is actually serving you?

I think those who suffer more like Paul will probably have a bigger cup. I don’t know that for sure. But what I do know is that all of our cups will be full with a glorious joy that far exceeds the pain of suffering to a superlative degree.

3. The Seen and the Unseen (v.18)

As [because] 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.

We don’t lose heart because we can tell time: the tangible is temporary and the immaterial is eternal (v. 18). The reason that Paul can make this contrast is because he knows where to look and where not to look. Basing everything on what can be seen leads to a distorted picture because there is more to the story than what one can see. By definition, failing to account for all the information leaves the picture incomplete and the conclusions inconclusive.

Paul’s point is that there is a way of looking at things that will lead to the wrong conclusion. On the one hand, tangible things seem more real than immaterial things. But on the other hand, tangible things are temporary things. You don’t want your future based on things that won’t be there in the future. The unseen things are harder to grasp, but they are eternal. Now notice why walking by faith and not by sight is so difficult. Paul says you have to keep in view the things that can’t be seen.

C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity (168–169):

What is concrete and immaterial can be kept in view only by painful effort. That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes [and hurts and hates] for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. . . . We can do it only for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us.

I want to help you in the painful effort to keep the concrete and immaterial in view. How do we listen to that other voice and keep that other point of view in view?

Application

1. Be Honest About the Signs of Death You See and Feel

It does not do any good to ignore the signs of death, deterioration, and destruction around us. Christianity is not a flight of fancy. It is not a fantasy land filled with imaginary things that do not correspond to reality. It is not escapism, like making up an imaginary friend because you are lonely. 

See the things that sting. Don’t ignore them. Don’t try to pretend they aren’t there. Don’t respond with anxiety (wear out), anger (lash out), or escapism (drown out). Anxiety takes the pain and tries to deal with it all on your own. You put the burden on your shoulders to try and solve it. You wear yourself out.

Anger would lash out at the person or circumstance causing the pain or barring the path to happiness. This kind of person is explosive. They are always like a ticking time bomb. They stuff things for a while, and then the boom is bigger and the lashings are harder so they hurt more—sometimes people even lash out at themselves.

Escapism would seek to ignore the pain by drowning it out. Escapism cannot deal with the pain by addressing it, so it tries to wash it away with a flood of other things like sex or drugs or food.

Christianity can deal with the sting of pain and rejection and loss. Christians can look at the cold, hard, brute facts without turning to drugs or sex or raiding the refrigerator. Circumstances should not steal our joy. As Elizabeth Elliot says, “the secret of joy is not me in a different set of circumstances, but Christ in me.” Suffering is simply a more urgent invitation to run to our sanctuary. Don’t trust in temporary shelters that are like the little pigs’ house of straw or sticks. We have a stronger sanctuary!

2. Don’t Minimize the Signs of Life You See and Feel

There are signs of life here. The glory has not completely departed. There are sunrises, smiling children, and tears that come from laughing so hard that you cry. There is good food, good friends, and all the other good things that a good God gave us to be enjoyed. 

If you are a Christian, there are also signs of life within. When the darkness closes in, that inner light reminds you that the hope of glory has not been extinguished. Why is it that the church has grown and gotten stronger through persecution? Some things are true even when you cannot see them.

3. Don’t Forget that God Sees More Than You See

Discouragement is actually a form of arrogance. Here is why. Discouragement sets in when people takes all that they see and add it up. If the sum total is high enough, they feel hope. If it dips below a certain level, they feel discouraged.

Yes, God sees what you see. He sees the circumstances and situations that have you feeling discouraged. If God sees what is discouraging us and then doesn’t do anything about it, we may feel more than downcast. We feel more dejected because we feel rejected by God. He sees what is going on but does not do anything to change it.

Do not allow cynicism and hopelessness to take root in your heart. They will bear very bitter fruits in your soul and choke away all hope come from thinking what you see is all that there is to see. We have already made the case that you become like what you look at. If you look too long at what is bitter, you will become bitter.

But those feelings are finite because we cannot see all that there is to see. God sees far more. He sees the secret things that no other eyes can see. If we were to take God’s perspective, we would also adopt God’s outlook. The future does not look bleak to him,  so it should not look bleak to us either. This is where trust comes into play.

Are we really so arrogant that we think we see it all? Trust! Faith comes when the heart knows that God sees what we see and also sees more than we see. He sees it all. He knows it all because he knows what he is going to do. Believe like Abraham did—he believed that God was able to do what He had said. God said that he is working all things together for the good of those who love him. They are glorified (Romans 8:30). Light and momentary afflictions are working for us (serving our future glory), preparing an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. God is at work even when you don’t see him working. Sufferings are serving glory even when you do not comprehend the carving.

Conclusion

Pilgrim Longings: Leashed Now and Unleashed Later

What do we do with the longings that stir us and move us? Tim Keller helpfully points out that longings are not to be ignored because they correspond to some created reality.

C.S. Lewis said “All joy . . . emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings” (from an unknown letter).

Tim Keller has a great argument in the Reason for God that shows the reason for our longings. Each longing or hunger we have corresponds to something that God made. God designed something to satisfy hunger: food. God designed something to satisfy sexual desire: sex.

These things are real, but they appear to be on a leash. They never take us far enough. We always stop short. In fact, we find that having only stirs up more wanting! Why?

A fallen world and fallen people are like leaky buckets. They are not designed to hold eternal joy. “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

Here is the most helpful quote from Lewis that puts it together.

It was when I was happiest that I longed most. ... The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing ... to find the place where all the beauty came from.— C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

The point of pilgrim longings is to point to the place where all the beauty came from. That place is actually a Person. One day those longings will be unleashed. Hear Romans 8:19-21:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 

Why do we cry? We cry because everything in us screams, “something went wrong.” Everywhere we look, we see reasons to lose hope. The world can be a place of great delight, but it can also be a place that knocks the wind out of you just as fast. Why do things go wrong?

The wrong creates an “eager longing.” Someday the longings will be set free from futility and slavery to corruption. God subjected the creation to slavery to decay in order to serve hope. Did you see those words right there again in the text? 

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.—Romans 8:19-21

We are moving from slavery to freedom—from suffering to healing—from deterioration to new creation! The wrong serves the right by creating an eager longing for the right. One day our rejoicing will be full and not partial because everything will be right. Right now we are sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Imagine when all is made right and we are always rejoicing and never sorrowful. What will that be like? 

The leash might remind you of the analogy I used last advent of my dog, Kaiser. For those of you who were not here, I talked about running with my dog. He loves to run. I ask him, “You want to go for a walk?” He gets out of his cage—he is whining and pawing at the door because he knows what is coming. But when he gets out, he has a leash. He has to run with me at my pace. I slow him down. He is straining at the leash. But then we come to the park and the wide open places to run. I let him off the leash and watch him run like the wind with ears back and tail up. It still brings me to tears to see him do exactly what God created him to do.

But my dog, dear friends, is only a “first sketch.” Listen to C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory:

When humans should have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.

Dear friends, we were made to glorify God by enjoying him forever. God made dogs to run fast. He made us to worship. We worship by enjoying God through doing all that he made us to do. The new creation is not going to be boring. It is staggering to think of all of the ways that we will enjoy God.

I especially love to think about what glory will look like there for those who have suffered much here. The mute will sing. The deaf will hear. The blind will see. The lame will run. The frail will be strong. Jesus came in his first coming and did some of these miracles in order to heighten our longings and show us the signs of what God’s complete reign will look like on a small scale. What will glory look like on a full scale, friends? Is your heart yearning for the glory?

I started with a quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It is good to hold authors to the same standard that they set for others. Did he pass the acid test? At the end of his life, he reached a point where he asked people not to pray for his healing because he could not handle the thought of being held back from the glory. When he lost all ability to talk, he still testified to the power of this passage. His daughter was reading her Bible by his bedside, and he pointed fervently and excitedly to this passage about the eternal weight of glory.

I saw the same fierce fervency in my Grandpa’s eyes. His body was wasting away. His spirit was fiercely alive with the hope of glory. I saw him become more ferocious for the gospel than I ever had before.

Do you have that longing? Are you fiercely resting in the gospel as your exclusive hope for future glory? As a pastor, there is nothing more joyful to me than to walk with saints at the time when they pass through the dark waters of death to the other shore. There is nothing worse as a pastor than to walk with people who have no hope because they know they are going to drown. All other hopes have been taken away and they have not known Christ, so there is no hope of glory.

The world to come is a place where disappointment is impossible. Did you hear that? Think about it. All of our expectations are finite. If God is infinite, then it will be impossible for finite beings to be disappointed with what an infinite Being of pure love, perfect wisdom, and almighty power would prepare for us. Remember how a few weeks back I showed you my hand diagram of disappointment being the distance between what is expected and what is experienced? The hope of glory is much different. This time, what will be experienced exceeds what is expected to a superlative, immeasurable degree. You can put your hopes as high as possible, and you will find that they were child’s play compared to what God has prepared. 

That should not surprise us because our joy comes from our relationship with an infinite Being. I am pleading with you to let Christ define all of your hopes in your life, because he is your life. Listen to Colossians 3:3–4:

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

He is your life. You are hidden with him. You will not know yourself until he appears because your real life is wrapped up with Christ. If you do not know Christ, it is impossible to have the hope of glory because he is the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27 says, “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." 

Let’s cling to the hope of glory together.

Closing Song: "Fullness of God"

 

Discussion Questions

• The hope of glory is hard to keep in view because it is concrete (solid) but immaterial and can only be kept in view by painful effort. What do you do to keep the hope of glory in view?
• What will you do differently this week as a result of what you have heard?
• Is there someone the Lord has brought to your mind who would need to hear the truth of these verses? If not, ask the Lord to give this burden to you so that believing would become speaking.