And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak, (14) knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you. (15) For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God. (16) Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. (17) For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, (18) while we do not look at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (5:1) For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

The second letter to the Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul. He was fully convinced of the truth of the Christian religion and that the deliverance of the faithful is from God in Christ – that as the body of Christ was raised from the dead by the power of the Father, so shall our bodies be raised from the dead. The spirit of faith is the human spirit in fellowship with the divine.

The outward man/the physical man is perishable – how well we know that. The inward man is the spirit, the soul, the real man reborn by the power of the Spirit. As the physical man diminishes, the inward man increases. Paul contrasts affliction as “light affliction” but of the glory to come as a “weight of glory” – the overwhelming nature of future glory. Things that are seen are all the incidents and circumstances of this present life. Things that are not seen are objects of faith; immortality, eternal life – these things are not subject to time limits and we are urged to give our minds to things which are eternal. Look at things not seen; things which are seen are temporary but those things not seen are the real things.

c.s.Lewis delivered a beautiful sermon at Oxford College in 1941 – the war years in England. “It is written that we shall “stand before”Him, shall appear, shall be Inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…….to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…..to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a son – it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

nature of future glo