Light Affliction and Eternal Glory

Next Part Light Affliction and Eternal Glory 2

"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works 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 Cor. 4:17, 18

From the cradle to the coffin, affliction and sorrow are the appointed lot of man. He comes into the world with a wailing cry, and he often leaves it with an agonizing groan. Well is this earth called "a valley of tears," for it is wet with them in infancy, youth, manhood, and old age. In every land, in every climate, scenes of misery and wretchedness everywhere meet the eye, besides those deeper griefs and heart-rending sorrows which lie concealed from all observation; so that we may well say of the life of man that, like Ezekiel's scroll, it is "written within and without, and there is written therein lamentations, and mourning and woe."

But this is not all. The scene does not end here. We see up to death, but we do not see beyond death. To see a man die without Christ is like standing at a distance, and seeing a man fall from a lofty cliff– we see him fall, but we do not see the crash on the rocks below. So we see a man die, but when we gaze upon the lifeless corpse, in the case of him who dies without a saving interest in Christ, we do not see how his soul falls with a mighty crash upon the rock of God's eternal justice. After weeks or months of sickness and pain, the pale, cold face may lie in calm repose under the coffin lid, when the soul is only just entering upon an eternity of woe!

But is it all thus dark and gloomy both in life and death? Is heaven always hung with a canopy of black? Are there no beams of light, no rays of gladness, that shine through these dark clouds of affliction, misery, and woe that are spread over the human race? Yes; there is one point in this dark scene out of which beams of light and rays of glory shine. It is as if looking up in a dark and gloomy night, when the heavens gathered blackness, we saw all at once the clouds rent asunder, and the cross of Christ hung up in the sky, from every point of which beamed forth rays of unspeakable glory.

So it is with the children of God as they journey through this valley of tears– they are afflicted like other men, their fellow sinners and fellow mortals, and often a larger portion of affliction falls to their lot than to those whose portion is in this life. By these sufferings and sorrows they are bowed down with grief and trouble, and all is dark and gloomy without and within; but a ray of light falls upon their soul; they look up, and they see a once suffering Jesus, now sitting at the right hand of the Father, and around his glorious throne they view a band of immortal spirits, who have come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Those are the great "cloud of witnesses" to the love and faithfulness of a covenant God, who seem to speak from heaven to earth and say– "Brother, suffer on! The cross before the crown; the cup of wormwood and gall, the baptism of suffering and blood, before the pleasures which are at God's right hand for evermore." They are thus encouraged "to run with patience the race set before them, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of their faith; who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

The Apostle, in the words before us, would thus cheer us onward, and show unto us why we should, not only with all patience but all joy, endure the sufferings that God may think fit to lay upon us in this time state. He unravels this deep mystery of present suffering; he solves that dark enigma which has perplexed so many saints of God, which filled Job with confusion, set Asaph in slippery places, and made Jeremiah curse the day of his birth. He stands forth, as a heaven-taught interpreter, to explain the dealings of God; as a divinely-commissioned ambassador, he unfolds the counsels of the King of kings, and proclaims aloud to the suffering church of Christ, in words full of peace and blessedness– "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works 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."

In opening up, with God's blessing, the spiritual meaning of these words, I shall–

I. First, show how our affliction, in this present state, is but light, and endures, speaking comparatively, but for a moment.

II. Secondly, what the blessed fruit of this light affliction is– that when sanctified by the Spirit and grace of God, it "works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

III. Thirdly, how it does this; that is, in two ways– first, by enabling us to look not at the things which are seen, that are temporal; and secondly, by enabling us to look at the things which are not seen, which are eternal.

I. How our affliction, in this present state, is but light, and endures, speaking comparatively, but for a moment. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment." That little word "light" may not exactly express the present feelings of your heart. You may feel, on the contrary, that your afflictions are very far from being light. They press you down to the very ground; they are just now exceedingly heavy; and sometimes they bow down both body and soul into the dust. Nor does the other expression of the apostle seem to suit your case; for instead of your afflictions being "but for a moment," they have already been spread over many months or years; and it seems at times, from their peculiar character and nature, that they must continue to be spread over the remainder of your life.

But neither our feelings nor our forebodings are to be taken as proofs of how the matter really stands. We must receive God's testimony, which is and ever must be infallibly true, and not take the testimony of our feelings or fears, which is necessarily fallible and usually false.

But let us cast our eye a little more closely upon the afflictions that God's saints are especially called to endure, for it is of believers that the apostle speaks. It is THEIRafflictions which are light, and endure but for a moment; it is their griefs and sorrows which "work for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." And these afflictions, by way of clearness, we may divide into two leading classes. There are, first, temporal afflictions– those trials and sorrows more peculiarly connected with our present state, which the children of God have in common with all mankind; and there are, secondly, spiritual afflictions, which, as connected with the work of grace, are necessarily confined to the family of Christ.

1. TEMPORALafflictions. As men, fallen men, partakers of flesh and blood, heirs of that sad legacy of sin that Adam left to all his ruined race, and living in a world of sorrow and woe, we must needs have our measure of those temporal afflictions that were entailed upon all the posterity of our first parent. Looking at those, then, in a broad and general light, we may distribute them into various classes– such as bodily afflictions, family sorrows, providential trials. In fact, every suffering of body or mind that people are subject to by reason of the fall, comes in its measure upon the heads of God's children. And as the Lord, for wise reasons, sees good to lay the heaviest weights where they are most needed, temporal afflictions, generally speaking, fall in larger measure upon them.

1. How many of the saints of God, and some of them dear friends of my own, are at this moment lying on beds of affliction and languishing. Nor do I know scarcely a Christian whose soul is really thriving before God, who has not some measure of BODILY affliction. In fact, it seems almost needful that we should have a certain measure of it. I myself for many years have had a large experience of bodily affliction, which has been one of my heaviest crosses, and has cut the very sinews of all that worldly happiness and pleasure which healthy men seem to enjoy. I, therefore, not only well know its nature, but I trust also in some measure its necessity, and the benefit it communicates to the soul when sanctified by the grace of God.

We are such foolish, giddy creatures that we are hardly fit to be trusted with health. It is like putting an inexperienced rider upon a high-tempered, spirited horse– he is unable to control the animal which he rides, and a heavy fall that may cripple him for life may be the consequence of his getting upon its back. When we are in vigorous health and strength, the blood seems to bound through every artery and vein; we are full of high spirits, life, and animation. It seems as if there was abundance of happiness in the world all around us, in the sun and sky above us, in the fields and flowers beneath us, in the balmy breath of spring that blows upon us. To breathe, to live, to move, to walk, all are pleasurable for their own sake, when the body is in strong, vigorous health, the appetite good, the spirits buoyant, and air and exercise exhilarate and delight the physical frame. It is said of the pure air of Australia, that it is a delight even to breathe it. Thus we would delight in life for what life is and has, be content with breathing 'earthly' air, and, left to ourselves, would make our Paradise below the skies.

To overthrow this heathenish sensuality, this godless 'love of living'; to put a bitter into every natural sweet; to lay a daily cross upon the shoulder (for if health is the greatest temporal blessing, the lack of it must needs be the greatest temporal misery); to drop gall and wormwood into the cup of life, the Lord sees fit in most cases– for we cannot lay down a rigid rule– to lay affliction upon his children, and in very many cases to give commission to illness and disease to invade their earthly tabernacle. By this they learn that the happiness of physical health, which after all, is but the happiness of a bird or a butterfly, is no more to be theirs; that this avenue of pleasure is forever shut against them; and that a fallen body has for them its pains and sorrows as well as a fallen soul. Thus the world is marred to them, with all its pursuits and pleasures; they see nothing below the skies really worth living for, or capable of affording happiness; and when, under all the pain and languor of their afflicted body, they find the Lord near and dear to their heart, 'sanctified illness' is proved to them far better than 'unsanctified health', and pain of body a far less evil than pain of conscience.

2. FAMILY afflictionsform another frequent source of grief and sorrow to those that love the Lord, and whom the Lord loves. Many of the most eminent saints of God have had to drink of this most bitter cup in a large measure. What afflictions of this nature befell DAVID! How he, if possible, would have given his own life for that of his rebellious son Absalom– so deeply did he feel his death, and as Joab reproached him, would sooner have lost all his fighting army than that one beloved idol.

How arrow after arrow from the same quarter pierced also the tender heart of the patriarch JACOB! Every shaft that quivered in his bosom came tipped with some family sin, or some family sorrow. It needs must be so more or less with most. Our earthly happiness is much derived from our families. We love our wives, we love our children; they are dear and near to us, a part of ourselves; and these ties, so tender and so close, form a main part of the sweetness that is in any earthly lot. That we may not, then, set up these 'family idols' as our household gods, nor cleave too closely in affection to them, it needs must be that gall and wormwood should be dropped into this cup, lest it prove too sweet; lest we love our wives, children, relations, and friends too dearly; lest they usurp the place of God, and by becoming idols, chain and fetter us down too closely to earth.

Entangled in these silken ties, we would grow more and more attached to this life; and in proportion as these fibers of sin and self entwined themselves more closely around our heart, would they eat out the life of God, and drain away all our spiritual strength and vital sap. As, then, to save the oak, the ivy is cut down, so the axe must fall to sever these too ensnaring, these too tender ties. And as they become cut or loosened, more room seems made for the things of eternity– more room for the Lord Jesus Christ, and for those spiritual affections to expand and grow, which, as drawn up by the Sun of Righteousness, spread themselves upward to that heaven where he is, and whence they came down.

3. Many, again, of the Lord's people are heavily weighed down with POVERTY. God has chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith, as knowing that "the love of money is the root of all evil," and therefore mercifully cuts the root to prevent the evil. Poverty starves a good deal of 'self-indulgence' by denying the means; and thus the poor are cut off from the gratification of many "foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition" by the very lack of means possessed by the rich to gratify them. Still, if poverty has its blessings, it has its miseries; and under them many who fear God deeply groan.

2. SPIRITUAL afflictions. But these temporal afflictions (though the Lord often makes them very heavy to his children, whose feelings are tender, and who often, through unbelief and fear, misread his mind in sending them) are all light compared with those of a spiritual nature, and which, as such, are of course peculiar to the saints of God. What is loss of health, of family, of friends, of property, to the hidings of God's face– to guilt of conscience– to distressing fears as to the reality of the work of grace upon the soul– to anticipations of that tremendous wrath of God which is revealed in a broken law? What are all the temporal afflictions that may be heaped upon one's head compared with the frown of the Almighty, the arrows of his wrath, the touch of his weighty hand, or dismal forebodings of sinking forever beneath his offended justice and most terrible displeasure?

An arrow in the conscience, shot by the unerring bow of God, will make a man truly and deeply miserable until it is extracted by the same hand that inflicted it. The wound that God's Spirit gives can only be healed by the balm that God's Spirit applies. Spiritual griefs weigh heavy; heart sorrows sink deep; distress of mind and guilt of conscience penetrate into every recess of the soul. And they have this peculiar ingredient in them– that makes their stroke so bitter– that they all seem but foretastes of heavier and deeper woes to come, and that without hope or help, relief or end, through a miserable eternity.

Let afflictions of a temporal kind be heaped upon your head– they cannot always last; they must sooner or later come to a close, and if not before, they must cease with the ceasing of natural life. But anticipations of God's terrible displeasure– fears lest you should die without hope and sink into everlasting despair– this is truly overwhelming when it falls upon the conscience as a dreaded or almost certain reality. What aggravates the feeling of all these dismal fears so much is the terrible conviction that when temporal trials come to a close, eternal sorrows only begin.

But besides this, there are many and various spiritual afflictions which are consistent with a good hope through grace; no, with a sweet assurance of coming off more than conqueror; but these I cannot now enter into, as I have scarcely begun with my text. I therefore pass on to show how they are "light."

But how can the apostle call them "LIGHT?" We do not feel them so. Does the man of God write here with the pen of the Holy Spirit, when he so contradicts our feeling and experience? Is he describing the sorrows and sufferings of the saints in their right colors when he says they are light? "How can they be light if I feel them heavy?" –so reasons our heart. But the Holy Spirit, we may be well assured, makes no mistake here. He describes things as they really are– as they are in God's sight, which must be right– not as they are in our view or apprehension, which may be, and usually is, altogether wrong.

But let us see if, with God's help and blessing, we cannot cast some ray of gospel light upon this expression, and not merely assent to it upon the apostle's authority, but set to it also the seal of a living, gracious experience.

1. First, look, then, at YOUR DESERVINGS.See what you have merited by your disobedience– how you have brought yourself under the curse of God's righteous law. Take a retrospect of your past life. Cast up the sins that you have committed from the time that early reason dawned– sins of infancy, of boyhood, of youth, of manhood; sins before the Lord was pleased to enlighten you by his Spirit and call you by his grace. Take a review, next, of your slips and falls since you were called– think how you have sinned again and again against light and conscience, love and blood. What ingratitude, rebellion, pride, self-righteousness, carnality, and worldliness you have been guilty of! What lusts you have harbored– what feelings of envy, jealousy, and wrath you have indulged, even against the saints of God!

Look at the poor returns you have made to the Lord for those temporal favors which he has bestowed so abundantly upon you, and the still poorer returns for the spiritual mercies which he has so kindly heaped upon your head. Put them into one scale and all your afflictions, both temporal and spiritual, into the other. Are your afflictions heavy now? Weigh your deservings against your afflictions– then examine the scale and see whether your afflictions are heavy or light. "No," say you; "I am satisfied now; if I had my afflictions doubled, tripled– aye, I might go on and say increased a hundred-fold, all, all would be lighter than my deservings; all, all infinitely less than my sins committed against a holy God merit at his hands!"

2. But again, look at the word "light" in this point of view– compare your sufferings and afflictions with the torments of those who are lying forever beneath God's terrible indignation. Listen to the groans, the cries, the blasphemies of the damned in hell! Compare your afflictions with theirs. Have you a good hope through grace? Has the Lord Jesus Christ ever been made precious to your soul? Do you ever believe that you shall be with him in the realms of eternal bliss? Compare your afflictions, though they may be heavy in themselves, with what the lost are now enduring in the realms of eternal woe! Are your afflictions heavy now?

3. Again, compare your afflictions and sufferings with those of the Lord Jesus.Was your back ever mangled with stripes? Was your head ever crowned with thorns? Were nails ever driven through your feet and hands? Did you ever hang upon the cross amid the taunts of jeering foes, the forsaking of disciples, the hiding of God's face, the withdrawing of the light of the sun, and the sins of millions charged upon your head with all the wrath of God due to them? Did you ever sweat great drops of blood? Was your soul ever bowed down within you, so that you were baptized as Jesus was with a bloody baptism, and drank the cup of suffering to the last dregs? Look at the suffering Jesus! Behold the Lamb of God in the garden and on the cross!

Where are your sufferings now? A little bodily pain; a little languishing for a time; not quite so much money as you would like; a child afflicted; a husband, perhaps, more a trial than a comfort! Do you mean to compare these afflictions with the sufferings and sorrows of the God-Man? Viewing then, the matter in this light, can you now say that your afflictions are heavy?

Well may the apostle say "our light affliction!" Yet Paul's afflictions were not light. Read the catalogue (2 Cor. 6 and 11)– the perils he endured by land and sea; the times he was shipwrecked, scourged, stoned, cast into prison, besides all his spiritual griefs and sorrows! Yet he could say, looking to them all, "our light affliction!"

But were it ever so heavy, he stills says it is "but for a MOMENT." What is time compared to eternity? A drop compared to the ocean; a grain of dust compared to the world in which we dwell. These are insufficient comparisons. Time and eternity never can be compared together. Suppose that your afflictions were to last through life, and suppose that your life were prolonged to the utmost limit of human existence; no, more– that all the afflictions that could be endured in body and soul were rained upon your head– every disease that could rack your body, every temptation that could distress your mind, and every agony ever endured by a saint of God– a matter which is not to say absolutely impossible, but at least exceedingly improbable. But say that all the afflictions of Job were yours– of Jeremiah, Jonah, David, Paul, the ancient martyrs, and those who yielded up their lives at the stake at Smithfield, or in the fires of the Inquisition– say that all these met upon your head.

When death closed the scene and your happy soul was translated from the body into the realms of eternal bliss, what would that past scene be in your estimation as you looked down from the battlements of heaven upon the earth beneath which had been the scene of all those sorrows and afflictions? Only a moment!

But it is not likely that you would have all these afflictions heaped upon your single head. The Lord will never lay upon any one of his children more than they can bear. "He knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust." He is very tender, very compassionate, will never break a bruised reed, nor quench a smoking flax. It is but for a moment usually; that is, not merely as compared with eternity, but even with the duration of present life, that the Lord lays affliction on his children. You may have a severe illness, but health, or a measure of it, again returns; a loss in providence, but it is in some way made up to you; a family bereavement, but time mitigates your grief, or a good hope of the departed relieves the acuteness of the sorrow; a very painful trial from a tender quarter, but some gracious support is communicated with it. Thus, though affliction, and sharp affliction too, comes, yetit is not all suffering either as regards duration or intensity.

There is such a thing, when the Lord blesses it, as "glorying in tribulation," as "receiving the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit," and blessedly proving "as the sufferings of Christ abound, so consolation also abounds by Christ." Under the heaviest afflictions, the Lord usually grants the greatest support, and in the deepest sorrows gives the sweetest songs. Or, if not so, there is still a promise given, or a smile, or a word of comfort, or a look of love, or a beam of his favor that comes glancing across the dark clouds and lights it up with heavenly glory.

Though the path to heaven is a path of tribulation, it is not all suffering, nor is it always extended over a man's life, so that he has no respite or reprieve. There are intervals when the Lord suspends his afflicting hand, cheers the soul onward with his gracious smile, and giving us to see what the end of all his dealings is– the good of the soul, his own glory, and heaven at the end– enables us with Moses to choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Thus viewed, well may we say with the apostle, "our light affliction;" and when we cast our eyes beyond the narrow precincts of time into the opening realms of eternity, we can fully agree with him in declaring that all the afflictions we can endure in this present state are "but for a moment."

Now I hope, with God's blessing, I have cleared up the enigma, if ever it was an enigma to your mind– thrown, it may be, a little light on what might have puzzled you, when, filled with rebellion or self-pity, you were looking at your troubles and sorrows with the eyes of unbelief.

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