THIS GLORIOUS VERSE: “the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). We have called attention to the double and reciprocal ins—you in Christ and Christ in you. The pervading idea in India is that if you find God, your personality is virtually wiped out; you are a raindrop lost in the ocean of Being. But the Christian concept of “Christ in you” preserves the personality, heightens it, and makes it the glory point for God and you. “Christ in you, the hope of glory”—the hope of glory for God.
The glory of God in heaven will not be that He is seated on a rainbow throne. I’ve seen maharajahs seated on golden thrones especially set up for them in my meetings, but they are gone and their glitter with them. God’s glory will not be in golden streets. The Nizam of Hyderabad, dressed in a towel around his waist and seated in a wheel chair, periodically surveys his dust-laden chests of gold, looking for disturbed dust as a sign of tampering—dust reviewing dust!
The glory of God is not the glory of adoring multitudes chanting His praises. The glory of God is the redeemed. The only glory that God would want is the glory of a grace that redeemed sinners and made them into the astonishingly beautiful persons they are as they bear Christ within themselves. That is the only hope of glory God has—“Christ in you.” When He sees what grace has made out of nothing, and worse—“that will be glory for Me,” says God.
In the Lee Memorial Home in Calcutta, an emaciated little girl of five came up the steps carrying her sick brother of a year and a half. She had been rescued from a locked room in which the mother lay dead. The years went by, and the girl, having passed the BA and her teacher training, BEd, and having taught her first day at school, stood before her father-in-God (a missionary) without a word. She had arrived. Neither spoke. The glory of this redeemed girl was enough for father and daughter.
O God, we know Thee through Jesus. We know through Him that the real joy in heaven is over repenting sinners and redeemed lives. So Thy glory can only be the glory of those who have Christ in them—the one hope of glory. I love Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My only glory is Christ, and the people He transforms through me.
