Preached at Brampton Ash, Afternoon of the 16th Sunday after Trinity, October 5, 1862.
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”—2 Corinthians iv. 17, 18.
Many of us have said to ourselves as we have read these verses, ‘Yes, it is no wonder that St. Paul should say that he might well bear any afflictions if he could reckon upon an eternal weight of glory to come after them in a few years. And he was so unlike us, so unlike most people who have been upon this earth, that he might fairly cheer himself with this hope. But which of us can? What afflictions of ours can ever work for us an eternal weight of glory? How dare we ever dream of such a reward for anything that we ever have suffered, or ever shall suffer here?’
My friends, I have had this thought in my mind, as some of you may have had it in your minds. But when I read the chapter we have read this afternoon, the one out of which these words are taken, I see that the thought is not good for anything; I see that St. Paul was not separating himself from other men, or trying to prove that he had better claims on God’s goodness and love than they had. I see that he was learning all his life through to give up any claims of his own, to put himself on the level of the most helpless and the most ignorant. I see that that was the great lesson which God was teaching him by his afflictions. He was better than we are, because he had learnt it, and we have not learnt it. If we would get it by heart, if we would profit by God’s schooling, and give up boasting of ourselves as he did, we should share the hopes which made even very sore trials look so light to him.
You remember that he was once a very proud man. He thought God favoured his nation and hated all other nations. He thought God favoured his sect in that nation, the sect of the Pharisees, and hated Sadducees and all other sects. This pride led Saul of Tarsus to abhor the disciples of the Lord Jesus. Their Master had eaten and drunk with publicans and sinners. They said that He had taken the nature of all men, and died the death of all men, and risen again to be King of all men. Though they had not yet preached this Gospel to the heathens, Saul of Tarsus saw that they would soon break down the barrier between them and the Jews. So he wished to destroy them, and gave himself up heart and soul to the work of destroying them.
As he journeyed towards Damascus with this intent, there shone a light about him brighter than the light of the sun. He fell on his face. He heard a voice speaking to him. The Son of God made him understand that he was going upon an evil errand. The Son of God made him understand that He cared for those whom Saul persecuted. And now it became evident to Saul that this Lord was his Lord, that all which was good and right in him came from this Lord; that in himself apart from Him there was nothing good. And now he learnt that he must do the very things which he had cursed the Apostles of Jesus for designing to do. He must tell people who were not Jews, people who had been worshipping idols, that God cared for them, and had sent His only begotten Son to deliver them from the tyrants to whom they had sold themselves, and to adopt them into His family. “When,” he says, “it pleased God to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” That is to say, he felt that the Father had made known His Son to him as the only root of all good in him, as the only Saviour from evil, on purpose that he might proclaim to all people everywhere, ‘He is the root of all good in you, He is the Saviour from all your evil.’
That became hereafter his work. In performing that work he had to endure those afflictions of which he spake. His countrymen persecuted him for his faith in the Son of God, as he had persecuted the older disciples. They told him that he did not care for being a child of Abraham; though he had been showing forth the goodness of the covenant which God had made with Abraham, by preaching that the seed of Abraham was come in Whom God had promised to bless all the families of the earth. The Jews told him that he did not care for the law of Moses; though he was certain that it had never been so dear to him as since he knew that Jesus his Lord had kept it all, and had sent His Spirit to write it on men’s hearts. The rulers and the priests of the Gentiles to whom he preached, were as inclined to persecute him as the Jews; for they found that he drove men away from the worship of their God, far more than the other Jews, who said that none had any portion in the true God but themselves. St. Paul had much to bear, he says, from false brethren; from men who pretended to believe in Christ, and did not really regard Him as a deliverer from sin, but went on in sin as much as before they confessed Him. Sometimes it seems as if the Apostle suffered most from bodily torments. But I suspect his worst afflictions were from battles with the enemies of his spirit; from the tempter who would have persuaded him to shrink from his duty and to distrust God’s love, and to fall back into the pride and bitterness out of which Christ had raised him. “We wrestle,” he says in one place, “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
All these together one would not have thought were light afflictions, and yet he calls them so; when he weighs them against the blessing to which they were leading him. And what was that? He had found out that the Eternal God, He who is, and was, and is to come, is not as he had supposed the enemy of the human race, but its Redeemer and Father. He had believed that the Father so loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son to die for it. He had believed that this Father was sending forth His own Holy Spirit, to bring men’s spirits from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to Himself. He had believed, for the Spirit had taught him of a righteousness, and truth, and love, which could not change, could not pass away; a righteousness, truth, and love which are in God Himself, but which He has shown to men in the life and death of our Lord.
‘Now, these,’ he said to himself, ‘are eternal things; this truth and love and righteousness will be the same always. I know but a little, a very little of them yet; ages upon ages must unfold them to me, but I am sure they cannot grow less. The more glimpses I have had of God’s goodness, the more wonderful it has seemed to me; the more high and deep and wide. I see that His love passes knowledge, and yet that we may every day grow to know something more of it; something more of what it can do in overcoming evil, and in raising those out of evil who have yielded to it. What a reward is that! My afflictions have taught me to enter into God; to feel that the greatest delight I can have is, to let His charity govern me and possess me, and draw me on. The opposition of my countrymen, the rage of the heathen mobs, my pains of body, the temptations of the devil—all have forced me to take refuge in God; in His wisdom which I cannot measure; in His love which I cannot sound. Nothing short of this love can suffice for me; any love which has bounds to it, which prohibits any sinner from approaching it, would not have raised me out of my evil, would not keep me out of it; I must sink and be lost if I have not that to rest upon.’
Here, then, was that eternal weight of glory which the Apostle tells us of, and which he says his light afflictions that were but for a moment were working out for him. It was not a glory that belonged to him, or which ever could belong to him. The sun rose in great glory this morning—you in this parish may have seen it—people in the furthest end of England, of France, of Germany, may have seen it; there was the same glory about all; all might behold it and rejoice in it. I have sometimes seen sunsets of which I could only say—what a weight of glory is there; one can scarcely bear it; one feels as if one should be crushed by it! so St. Paul felt about that eternal sun and glory of God. ‘I cannot see it,’ he says, ‘it is not a thing for my eyes to take in, as they take in the glory of the sun. The eternal things are not seen. But it is all real. It compasses the universe more than the light or heat of the sun compasses the universe. It warms and lightens the universe more than ten thousand suns could. And this will one day burst upon us. There will be a complete unveiling of the Son of God, who gave Himself a sacrifice for all men. Every eye shall see Him, and those also—like me—who have pierced Him.’
And so you will not wonder how that all through this chapter, St. Paul is speaking to the Corinthians as if what he lived for was that they might share this weight of glory along with him. They had given him much trouble; he had great cause to complain of them, but his complaints are always that they are too much lifted up in themselves, that each is seeking some prize or glory for himself. He wants them to know that God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness is now shining into their hearts to give them the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He wants them to feel that if any miss this light—if there is a veil over the Gospel to any—it is because the God of this world, the spirit of pride and vanity, blinds their eyes that they may not see how God’s glory is the humiliation and passion and death of Jesus Christ. He would have them understand that sufferings and sorrows—all these afflictions which are but for a time—are God’s ways of delivering men from this blindness, His way of teaching them to seek for that love, which is for all and for ever.
Dear friends, that love of God, that glory of God which is for all and for ever—is for us English as much as it was for the Corinthians; for us in the year 1862 as much as it was for those to whom St. Paul preached: Oh! let us hear his voice speaking to each of us, and saying ‘Brother, it is for thee; for thee the Son of God poured out His blood! for thee He overcame death! for thee He lives and pleads at His Father’s right hand! for thee He sent His Spirit that thou mightest claim thy place as one of God’s beloved children; that thou mightest possess the inheritance which He has prepared for them that love Him. Take thy portion of afflictions, whatever it be, that God sends thee here. Receive them as a Father’s love-tokens to thee. Remember that He laid all first upon that Son in whom He delights, the Son who was with Him before the worlds were. Remember that He would use them to bring thee out of death to His eternal life; out of darkness to His perfect light; out of the vain glory which we covet for ourselves to the weight of glory which will be manifested to all creatures in the great day of redemption, when He whose face was marred more than any man’s shall be revealed in the glory of His Father and the holy angels.’