Are you the type that makes New Year’s resolutions? Some years I have, and some I haven’t—but I always engage in extended reflection between December 25–January 1.
As I drove to work this morning and looked out my window (safely!) across an open field, I saw the brightness of the dawn clouds and a plane surging up into them. The glorious morning sight had me thinking about the future rather than reflecting on 2020. In the distant and immediate future, humanity is offered glory.
Reflecting it, displaying it, beholding it—however you say it, glory and human purpose are tied together. It’s all over the Bible: humans have been made to hope in God’s glory. Humans are hoping creatures, willing to live despite all odds, improvising and adapting and overcoming, trying and trying again. We hope because we were born to do it. Hope isn’t a little additive in the morning joe of those glass-half-full people: it’s our lifeblood. And the ultimate goal of hope is beholding and partaking in glory—the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13).
This hope is ultimate because one day we are invited into the fullness of His glory, seeing Him face to face.
This hope is immediate because we are invited to transformation, day by day, through His glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).
‘Hope in glory’ is an emphasis scattered throughout Scripture, and Paul gives it focused treatment in 2 Corinthians chapters 3–5. But what is “glory,” this word we rarely use anymore outside of religious and athletic contexts? In the Old Testament, the root of the word for “glory” meant heaviness and weight. Used of the Lord, it described His majestic nature, and human reactions throughout history have been to stand or fall in recognition of how inexpressibly powerful and good He is. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul says that the Spirit of God has now initiated something even more glorious than all that the Old Testament prophets experienced. The prophets had prepared the way for more glory, and now Christ is on the scene to transform people from the inside out.
The Corinthian letters were written to Christ followers in communities where weightiness and honor (a.k.a. “glory”) was ascribed to everything the Christians didn’t stand for. Paul wrote to a culture that honored might and power trips to tell them that weaknesses and falterings were pathways for the glory of God to shine through. His letters tore through layers of shame, telling these fledgling communities that a different way of life was waiting for them, where the old honor codes of domination and self-seeking lifestyles would drown in the light that comes from being a new creation.
Maybe in 2021, you need to hope again—or perhaps you need to take inventory of what you’re hoping in: are your greatest hopes big enough to last you into eternity?
Maybe in 2021, you need to reject shame that was never yours to own. Maybe you need to know that you were born to get up again. Maybe you need to stop thinking of brightness and lightness as weakness and instead as ultimate reality: you’re going to meet Him who lives in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16).
Maybe in 2021, you need to think of glory as your transformation.
Little wonder that these thoughts made this morning feel like New Year’s Day. As I drove I said aloud, “I was made to hope in God’s glory.”
So were you. Say it for yourself: “I was made to hope in God’s glory.”
And we know that hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given to us (Romans 5:5).
And so as you start crafting New Year’s resolutions for 2021, or as you reflect on this past year, why don’t you let glory factor in?
Looking to a brighter 2021 (come what may; but inside of me, it’s going to be a whole lot brighter),
Renée