After we receive Christ a new personality begins to enter us, a personality born from above. Its ambitions, motives, and thoughts are contrary to those of our old nature. The new man is Christ in us. He is the Kingdom of God. In order for Him to grow our old nature must be struck down continually.

Our old nature will fight furiously for its life, but it must be killed for it cannot inherit the kingdom of God. It is the new man who is blessed of God. If we will allow the Lord to crucify our old nature, the Lord will renew and bless our new nature each day. This is how we grow in Christ, how Christ grows in us. This is the Kingdom of God—the transforming of us into the image of the glory of the Lord.

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; (II Corinthians 4:17)

Here is a direct statement of the relationship between our tribulations in this world and the glorious inheritance that is our goal. Our momentary, light affliction is achieving for us a state of joy beyond all human comprehension.

Notice the expression, "eternal weight of glory." A weight of glory. What is this weight of glory?

Since the following verses (Chapter Five) discuss our body from Heaven, we conclude that the weight of glory is a body of glory fashioned from the substance of eternal, incorruptible resurrection life.

As we are being transformed upon the earth, a body corresponding to our transformed personality is being prepared in Heaven.

Every death and resurrection we experience in Christ is adding "weight" to our body being prepared in Heaven. We are experiencing the fashioning of our own resurrection from the dead. Our body in Heaven is being transformed as we experience the sufferings and the resurrection power of Christ.

The bodies of people on the earth often do not fit their true natures. It is not uncommon to find a giant of a man in a small body, a weak individual in a powerful body, an ugly woman in a beautiful body.

But this will not be the case in the resurrection from the dead. At that time, each person will receive a body that reveals what he has become through Christ. Here is the perfect justice of God. It is entirely fitting that our body to come should be being fashioned in Heaven as our inner man is being renewed upon the earth.

It is folly to attempt to avoid all suffering and imprisonment while at the same time hoping to receive glory when we "get to Heaven." If we are not transformed by the Life of Jesus we will be naked in the Day of the Lord. It is now that our inheritance is being fashioned. We will lose our inheritance if we wait to go to Heaven in order for the work of transformation to take place.

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens. (II Corinthians 5:1)

To be continued.