The ministries of the Body of Christ travail until Christ is formed in the members of the Body. It is not Christ-likeness that is formed in us, as though our adamic soul could be changed into the image of God. Rather, it is the substitution of the Divine Nature and Substance of Christ for our adamic nature. We are being converted, not only in image but in actual substance and spirit.

To have a personality like that of Christ is God's gift to us, a gift given on the basis of our making the choices God requires of us.

I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness (Romans 6:19).

Adam cannot imitate Christ. Adam must die and the very Substance and Life of Christ must take his place. Only then can the individual please God, becoming the brother of the Lord.

God is pleased when He sees His Son in us. The Lamb is pleased when He beholds the Bride who has been formed from His own body and blood.

Our light affliction is the tool that God uses to bring our adamic nature down to futility and death in order that the Life of Christ may arise. The result of Divine Life coming forth from Adam's death is the robe of a new, righteous personality which is being fashioned before the Throne of God in Heaven and which will be given to us as a reward at the coming of the Lord from Heaven.

What was Paul looking at and considering?

The invisible, eternal glory of the Kingdom of God.

Why did Paul keep his attention on the invisible things of the Kingdom of God rather than on the visible things of the world?

Because the things of the world are temporary while the things of God's Kingdom are eternal, therefore of infinitely greater value.

What is our "earthly house of this tabernacle"?

Our physical body.

Why do we not worry about the destruction of our physical body?

Because we have "a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

Our "house not made with hands" is the "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" of the preceding chapter. It is the abiding place (mansion) of which Jesus spoke (John 14:2).

Our momentary, light tribulation is achieving for us a solid, eternal glory. This solid glory is our spiritual house that is before the Throne of God in Heaven.

The same thought is stated in I Corinthians 15:44:

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

The weight of glory is our spiritual body, our body of eternal life, our crown of righteousness and life.

A farmer sows seed. The disciple sows his physical body. The farmer reaps wheat. The disciple reaps a spiritual body of righteousness, a robe of eternal life.

Our spiritual body, our house from Heaven, is being formed now. The disciple allows God to bring him down into difficult, painful places. The believer is perplexed, cast down, weak, denied what he or she is longing for, compelled to do things that are disagreeable, sometimes persecuted so severely as to result in his or her physical death.

To be continued.