Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Weight of Glory - N.T. Wright Style


Ellis library north wall, Monroe

I'm sermon-prepping for this Sunday as I preach out of Colossians 3:1-4. One of my commentaries is N.T. Wright's Colossians and Philemon.

As Wright comments on vv. 3-4 he pulls a page out of C.S. Lewis's famous essay "The Weight of Glory." Vv. 3-4 read:

3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Wright writes:
:The life of Christians becomes part of “the mystery,” the secret plan of God, to be revealed at the end of time: that life is not just ‘hidden with Christ in God’ (v. 3), it actually is Christ himself (v.4), our hope of glory (1:27)."

 The hope of every J-follower is not only for the coming of the Lord but for the full revelation of what I am and you are.
 “Then will it be seen with what faithful diligence and perseverance many outwardly ‘unsuccessful’ and forgotten Christian workers have served their Lord. Paul himself, the prisoner, that eccentric Jew in the Romans’ eyes, and a worse-than-Gentile traitor to the Jews, will be seen as Paul the apostle, the servant of the King. These Colossian J-followers, these insignificant ex-pagans from their third-rate little country town Colossae, will be seen in a glory which, if it were now to appear, we might be tempted to worship." (Wright, 133, slight revisions mine)
Paul is saying, for everyone who follows Jesus as Lord and King, that this is how you are to regard your life:  hidden with Christ himself, and on this foundation you are to build genuine holiness and Christian maturity.