The Weight of Glory

The Weight of Glory is another interesting piece of writing form C.S. Lewis. In this writing, Lewis tries to relate to his thoughts on the glory of the Christian after this earthly life. I found this selection to be a bit more difficult to follow, but I will try to explain my understanding of what Lewis is trying to get at as best as I can.

The first thing in this selection that jumped out at me was Lewis' assertion that the imagery we are given in the Bible is more symbolic than anything. The book of Revelation, for instance, is full of beautiful imagery of what heaven looks like, but that imagery is meant to point us to a higher, more spiritual reality. For instance, in Revelation 21: 21 (KJV) we read: "The twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the streets of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass." This description gives us the idea that the new Jerusalem, heaven, will be a place that is filled with majesty, but to think that the majesty of pearls and gold is anything in comparison with the majesty of God is foolish. God is far higher, far more wonderful than anything that this earth has to offer. Think a minute about Moses, who was allowed merely to see a small fraction of God's glory (Exodus 34: 29-35), but he had to wear a veil to conceal his face because it shone with the glory he had seen! Even this is a picture of God's true glory, which is far greater than bright lights.

So, God is glorious. The new heavens and the new earth will be glorious. The glory of God and heaven is symbolized in the Scripture, but the true nature of this glory is far beyond those earthly symbols that we are given. So what will our glory be? C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

"Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures - nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. I am not forgetting how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of self-admiration."

So, there is a satisfaction we can take when God is satisfied with us, and this is our glory. God glorifies us because He has weighed us in the balances and found us perfect. How can that be? Now, this is where I believe C.S. Lewis falls short. He seems to indicate that there is a possibility that we could be weighed by God and fall short. For instance:

"In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased form the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside - repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakable ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities."

For those of us who are Reformed, we know this to be untrue. We do not hang over two possibilities. There are those who are predestined to eternal salvation, and those who are eternally predestined to be thrown into outer darkness. For the elect (those predestined to eternal life), there is satisfaction in the blood of Christ. Christ died for us and so we are justified before God, there is no possibility that we could be lost. Our glory, then, is found in the fact that the elect, who are by nature unworthy of any favor from God, receive that favor as a free gift, and are able to love God. This is in contrast to what we all deserve, eternal damnation, which is demonstrated to us by the death of the ungodly. For the elect, the fact that God saved them is a mystery, because they can look at the ungodly and see that they are no different then them by nature, but by no act of themselves have the grace of God put in their heart by the Holy Spirit.

Our glory, then, certainly has a weight to it. From our point of view, we could just as well have been damned to Hell, but instead we are brought into the bosom of the Father. By this fact, we praise God eternally for what He has done in redeeming us who are thoroughly unworthy in ourselves. In this sense, we receive glory so that we can give glory to God! And the weight of our glory is this, that we have a sincere desire to spread the gospel, that God will call forth His people! This is love for God. This is love for Christ. This is love for our neighbor. This is our glory!