“The Gravity of Glory”

Monday, November 16, 2020

On the surface, 2 Corinthians is a letter navigating a conflict between a church planter and a church over personality disputes. But, as we watch it unfold, we realize that is something much more than that. Throughout it, Paul laces some of his deepest and richest theological insights, which hit at the very core of Christian motivation and identity. In a particularly dense section toward the center of this letter, Paul reveals the two forces that compel his ministry and ought to guide the Christian life.

Yesterday we looked  at love, the greater of the two. Specifically, the love of Christ poured out on the cross was the primary thing that gave meaningful movement to Paul’s life and being (2 Cor. 5:14-15). To put it in John’s language, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Not only should our motivation be derived from the love of God in Christ, but our inclinations also find their source and their shape in that love.

The second force is equally worth our consideration. It is hope. These are not competing forces; rather, they work in tandem. If love is the inertia that pushes us from behind, hope is the gravity pulling us forward. Paul describes this force as an eternal weight of glory, a heaviness of hope that made all other things seem light in comparison (2 Cor. 4:16-18). The substance of this hope is that we might have new bodies, lasting, glorious bodies. (This, of course, dovetails quite nicely with the ideas about the New Creation we considered last week). Notice the two metaphors Paul mixes to describe this hope - dwellings and clothing (2 Cor. 5:1-5). The tent, or body, in the body in which we dwell now is passing, fit for destruction, not because it is inherently bad or fated to be done away with but because it is looking forward to the transformation. We long for the day when our mortal bodies are swallowed up by life, and we dwell in our eternal dwelling (bodies), which have been built by God (2 Cor. 5:4). Put another way; our hope is not to be unclothed (out of our bodies), for that would bring shame and nakedness (2 Cor. 5:3). Rather, we long to be further clothed (given newly transformed bodies), which God is preparing for us (2 Cor. 5:2, 5). All the afflictions we face now in the body (2 Cor. 4:16-17) will give way to the glory that God has in store for us. Our longing for this, our hope, pulls us forward to meet that reality.

One last thing to consider in light of all of this. While we dwell in these temporary bodies awaiting our eternal ones, we must realize that what we do in these bodies will echo for eternity. How we live life in the here and now will determine how we will live, or perhaps better, IF we will live in the hereafter (2 Cor. 5:10). Thus, hope is a powerful kinetic force, pulling us forward to eternity, much like the moon’s gravitational pull beckons the waves. As the waves move toward their destination, the landscape of the shoreline behind them is demonstrably different. So too does what I hope for change my reality at present. What is your hope?

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