10. The Hope of Glory
Ten
The Hope of Glory
Throughout these ten chapters, I have been examining a foundational concept, namely that we can’t begin to live the life of a Christ-bearer on our own, and that the sum of the matter is that in us we have Christ, and He makes it possible for us to show the world what the kingdom of God is like, “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:26–27, NIV).
Christ in you. Christ in me. When we surrender our lives to Him, He comes into our spirits. And “he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17, NKJV). Therefore, it is not two spirits, mine and His, holding hands as it were, or locked together in the same room. It’s two spirits melding into one. The Creator and Sustainer of the universe dwells in the depths of my being. This does not make me a god, but it makes me more and more like God.
Every one of us can be “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19, NKJV). This is fullness in the fullest sense, the fullness of “Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23, NKJV). Now “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20, NKJV). My old life has been superseded by the fullest Life possible. Christ, the hope of glory is here in me—and He is in you.
This is not to say that we are clones. Our Creator made each of us as different as He did the snowflakes. Enfleshed in humanity, He displays the infinite number of facets of His character. My personality is not all bubbly and fun and charming, but yours might be. Each of us shows forth a set of God’s traits. Christ, the hope of glory, dwells in each of us and works in us differently, causing us to reflect His glory to those around us.
We need to revive our awareness of what that hope of glory can do in us and through us. Jesus Christ Himself lives in us and He is our hope of glory. This is something far, far beyond our wildest hopes and dreams. Over the course of our lives as Christians, we will become more like Him because He is working in us, and we will thereby taste heaven, but we will never be able to fully understand the glory of His kingdom until we get there. I wonder if one of the reasons God doesn’t give us more clues about what heaven is going to be like is that we would never manage to keep our minds on our work if we knew. It would be like telling little children ahead of time where the Christmas presents are hidden.
God Calls Us by Name
What He does tell us is that He calls us by name, personally, daily. “Thus saith the LORD that created thee, . . . I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine” (Isa. 43:1, KJV). People who engage in public relations know the importance of using a person’s name. Whether or not we call people by a name and what name we use are deeply significant, often a dead giveaway of our attitude toward a person. (For example, contrast the husband who calls his wife “sweetheart,” with the one who routinely calls her “mommy.”)
In an airport, most of us pay little attention to the announcements coming over the public address system, precisely because it is the general public that is being addressed. But if we hear our own name, we come to life very quickly. When Mary went to the garden tomb on the first Easter morning, she did not know the Lord right away. She took Him to be the gardener until He spoke her name. That brought recognition. Instantly she responded, “Master!” In recognition of our individuality, the Shepherd of our souls issues a personal call. Sheep know the voice of the shepherd and will not follow a stranger. “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (John 10:3, RSV).
I once took a little dog through a course in obedience school. One of the lessons he had to learn was to respond to my voice only. There were forty-nine other dogs and their masters in the circle, and commands were given by more than one person at a time. Each dog had to distinguish, out of all the noise, the one voice that called to him. So do we who are trainees in God’s obedience school. We learn to love the sound of His voice, and our obedience to Him, in matters large and small, changes us into His image, “from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18, KJV). That is a promise.
We are supposed to be saints. Saints are not merely that small number of men and women who have been canonized officially. According to the New Testament, saints are those who belong to Christ, in whom Christ lives. We are meant to be saints not only when we get to heaven, but right here in this world—without necessarily having our circumstances changed. We won’t become storybook princesses or heroes, but we will be changed into the image of Christ.
Response Is What Counts
What counts the most is our response to everything. It is not what happens to us, but how we respond and how we look to God for strength and guidance. Two thieves were crucified next to Jesus. One of them recognized his guilt, understood who Jesus was and what He could do, and responded with repentance for his sin. Jesus told him, “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise.” The other responded with venom. Their immediate circumstances were unchanged. Both thieves were still nailed to their crosses, dying. Their response made all the difference.
Once I was in turmoil about some things somebody had said to me. I lay awake at night, mentally enacting whole scenes and conversations in which we would “have it out,” dragging everything into consciousness, pitting what she said against what I said, what she did against what I did, defending and offending, complaining and explaining.
Then I read this: “Turn from evil. Let that be the medicine to keep you in health” (Prov. 3:7–8). And this: “Love is kind. Love is never quick to take offense. Love keeps no score of wrongs. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance” (1 Cor. 13:4–5, 7). Then I found the prescription for what ailed me: “Let your bearing toward one another arise out of your life in Christ Jesus. . . . He made himself nothing . . . humbled himself . . . accepted death” (Phil. 2:5, 7–8, NEB).
What a relief! I no longer had to cogitate about how to handle my feelings or plot and plan how to confront my friend or rehearse just what I would say. My bearing toward her would arise out of my life in Christ Jesus. I couldn’t do it myself. He could, and He would enable me. Trusting Him to do that, I calmed down. With an untroubled spirit, I could love her, still at a distance, but without the inner turmoil. He helped me from start (bringing my attention to His Word) to finish (drawing peace and love from his Holy wells of supply)—and I became a little more like my Master.
How Does This Transformation Happen?
Day after day, Christ is formed in me in the midst of the circumstances of my life, because those circumstances are the visible evidence of the will of God. An all-loving and all-wise Father apportions everything to me, measuring it out with care to achieve a holy makeover. Does Elisabeth need more patience? More love? More trust? More joy? Does she need help in her response to Me?
To love God is to love His will. As I learn to love His will, I am united with Christ, who loved His Father and the Father’s will to the radical degree that He allowed Himself to be crucified. As I love God and His will and allow myself to be crucified with Him, my hope of glory becomes brighter and brighter. Increasingly, I am opening myself to the pervading presence of His Spirit in me.
The apostle Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal. 2:20–21, NIV). Paul is almost stumbling with excitement over his words, pouring them out, trying to articulate in human terms this mind-boggling mystery. He goes back and forth: “have been crucified” . . . “I live.” Somehow, this paradoxical, inexplicable transformation takes place.
Unruly Wills
The Book of Common Prayer contains Collects, which are short prayers comprising ideas gathered or collected from the day’s readings. Here’s the one for the Fifth Sunday in Lent:
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners. Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise, that among the swift and varied changes of the world our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
It takes no specially profound understanding of the Bible to know that we do not begin to measure up to its standards. And nothing is more difficult to conform to them than our “unruly wills and affections.” On our own strength, we are not going to get beyond our natural emotions. But God wants to transform (Yes, He really does!) every aspect of our inward selves as we bring our wills and feelings under the control of His lordship. The glorious character of Jesus Christ is formed in me as I bring my will and affections to Him—every one of my emotions, all my decisions, every ounce of my willpower, voluntarily putting myself under His loving tutelage and authority.
The Difference Christ Makes
Someone who faithfully follows Jesus can expect, inevitably, to be transformed into someone who radiates peace in the midst of turmoil and bustle, a person of meekness and quietness of spirit even when under provocation.
Meekness and quietness of spirit is not the same as weakness. Moses is said to have been the meekest man who ever lived, yet he had great strength. We are being changed into the likeness of Jesus, who was both the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah.
Not much in our world teaches us to be meek. My college debate training certainly didn’t teach me about meekness and submissiveness. I am not naturally submissive anyway. My mother used to tell me, “Don’t argue with me, Bets. Do what I say.” Even when she was very old and we had friendly arguments, she’d concede, “Well, I never could argue with you!” We had very different personalities. But Jesus Christ has been working in me for all the years I have known Him. He is making a difference in me, making me meek, gentle, humble.
Meekness is one of the fruits of the Spirit and it is a key to the troublesome matter of judgmentalness. If we are truly meek (caring not at all for self-image or reputation) we will speak the truth as we see it. Contrary to the notion that the only pronouncement in the Bible about judgment is “judge not,” we have been commanded to judge ourselves and our fellow Christians. (If you find that hard to believe, see 1 Corinthians 5 and Galatians 6:1.) But we must judge in love, recognizing our own sinful capabilities and never-ending need for grace, as well as the limitations of our understanding. If we are to do the will of God in this matter, we must do it by faith as we do every other thing, taking the risk of being at times mistaken. We may misjudge, but at least we can be honest and charitable. If we were not to judge at all we would have to erase from our Christian vocabulary the word is, for whatever follows that word is a judgment: mama is a cook, Davey is a baseball player, George is unemployed. Many of those judgments are positive ones.
Jesus told us to love our enemies. How are we to know who they are without judging? He spoke of “dogs,” “swine,” “hypocrites,” “liars,” as well as of friends, followers, rich men, the great and the small, the humble and the proud, “he who hears you and he who rejects you,” old and new wineskins, the things of the world and the things of the kingdom. Jesus, the Meek One with whom we are yoked, the One who cared least of all for His own welfare, made those judgments.
One of the outstanding characteristics of a meek spirit is teachability. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30, NIV). To take His yoke upon ourselves and learn from Him means we bend our necks under the same yoke that Jesus did when He submitted to the will of the Father. The picture is of the double-oxen yoke, two oxen walking side by side at the same speed, working in harmony. Jesus calls it My yoke, which means He has allowed it to be laid upon His neck first. He’s not asking us to bend our necks to anything with which He hasn’t been saddled already. With His yoke firmly across our spirits, we find it easier to “walk the walk.” Getting in step with Him is almost unavoidable. We are a team.
The Glory of Peace
Jesus has a kind of peace that the world can never give, and He promises to share it with us.
I know people who literally bring peace into a room. One of them is my dear friend, Myra Walters, who is a Welsh lady and a medical doctor, one of the sweetest, quietest, calmest people I have ever known. During the last weeks of my husband Add’s life, she would come to the house every day for ten or fifteen minutes just to see him. We three knew that there wasn’t anything she could do for him as a doctor, but she would just walk into his room like an angel of the Lord, bringing peace. I could see my husband relax as every day she would walk over to the bed, take his hand, bend way down, and say, “Tell me how you feel, Add.” It was if he was carried through from one day to the next by God’s peace, brought in by Myra.
My father gave me Isaiah 41:10 when I went away to boarding school: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (KJV). God will keep that promise for all of us. Christ is in me, He who is the hope of glory.
Whenever we feel we are falling far short, let’s remember another wonderful promise from Isaiah 50:7, “For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (KJV). If you feel you have made such a mess of things that you will never reflect the image of Christ, remember you are not responsible to do it. The life of Christ in you will reproduce itself.
When we are redeemed, we become new creatures. Anything becomes possible. Jesus is in the business of making us new men and women. He died so that He could live His life in us, making us Life-givers.
When you call, the LORD will answer. “Yes, I am here,” he will quickly reply. . . . The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy you with all good things, and keep you healthy too; and you will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.
Isaiah 58:9–11, LB