The Weight of Glory

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:17

On the evening of the eighth of June, 1941, Lewis climbed into the pulpit of the university church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford and preached a sermon that many consider the finest thing he ever wrote. Its title came from Paul’s words to the Corinthians. Its subject was heaven, and what it means for a creature to share in the glory of God.

Wanting too little

Lewis began with a startling claim. Most modern people, he observed, assume that the problem with human desire is that it is too strong; that we want too much, and should learn to want less. Lewis turned this upside down. The promises of Scripture are so great — joy, glory, the vision of God, the inheritance of all things — that, measured against them, our fault is a poverty of desire, not an excess of it. We are offered infinite joy, and we settle for small and passing pleasures, because we cannot imagine anything better.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:9

This was the argument from desire, which we met in an earlier chapter, turned into a sermon. Lewis believed that the hunger in the human heart is a sign of what God intends to give, and that the right response is not to suppress it but to direct it towards Him.

What glory means

He then asked what the Bible means by glory. The word, he noticed, can suggest fame or brightness, and both seemed at first unattractive — fame because it sounds like vanity, brightness because it is hard to see why anyone should want to glow. But on reflection he came to see that both meanings are true. The glory promised to the believer is, first, to be noticed and approved by God — to hear from Him the words, well done. Nothing could be further from vanity. It is the pleasure of a child praised by a father, of a creature that has pleased its creator. And glory is, second, a kind of radiance, a sharing in the beauty and life of God Himself, so that we become what we were made to be.

His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. MATTHEW 25:21

Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. MATTHEW 13:43

The weight of our neighbour’s glory

The sermon ends with its most famous and most searching passage. If every person we meet is destined for eternity — either to share God’s glory or to be shut out from it for ever — then no human being is unimportant. The people we pass in the street, the colleagues we work with, the family members who annoy us, are not passing figures in a temporary world. Each of them will exist for ever, and each is becoming, day by day, something either glorious or terrible. And our dealings with them help to push them one way or the other.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. 1 JOHN 3:2

Lewis drew from this a conclusion about how we should treat one another. Lewis did not mean that Christians should go about with long faces; laughter and play belong to the Christian life too. He meant that we must take people seriously — must treat them with a respect and a love that recognise what they are and what they may become. Every neighbour carries a sacredness that, in Lewis’s view, only the bread and wine of the Lord’s Table could exceed. Our friendships, our marriages, our daily courtesies are all part of the great work of helping one another towards glory.

Weighing it

The Weight of Glory is a masterpiece, and its teaching is deeply biblical. Its recovery of the glory promised to believers, its insistence that heaven is the fulfilment of our deepest desires, and its call to take our neighbours seriously are all of great value.

Evangelical readers may wish to make one point clearer than Lewis did. The glory promised to the believer is not earned by faithfulness, though faithfulness will be rewarded. It is a gift, given to those who are in Christ, and it rests on His merits, not ours.

And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. ROMANS 8:17

And the remark about the holiness of the neighbour, set beside the sacrament, reflects Lewis’s own sacramental churchmanship. Readers of other traditions will want to put it in their own terms. But the point beneath it — that the people around us bear the image of God and are destined for eternity — is the plain teaching of Scripture.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Have you been settling for small pleasures when God is offering you infinite joy? Name one.

2. Read 1 Corinthians 2:9–10 and Romans 8:18. Let the greatness of God’s promises enlarge your desire.

3. Think of the person you find most difficult. Remember that he or she will exist for ever, and pray for that person.

4. Consider how you speak to and about others. Does it reflect the respect due to an eternal being made in God’s image?

5. Ask God to let you hear, at the end, the words well done, and to make you faithful in small things now.

A PRAYER

Father of glory, You have prepared for those who love You things that no eye has seen and no heart has imagined.

Forgive me for wanting so little, and for settling for small pleasures when You offer me Yourself.

Teach me to see every person I meet as an eternal being made in Your image, and to treat each one with love and respect.

Bring me at last into Your glory, to hear Your voice say well done, through Jesus Christ, in whom all Your promises are yes. Amen.