Seeing how people respond when someone mentions a biblical-sounding phrase gives a good idea of when they grew up. If you say, “the weight of glory,” and someone says, “Isn’t that a Christian book?” the odds are they grew up around or after 1980, when C. S. Lewis' book The Weight of Glory became freshly available.
Christians across denominations have praised Lewis’ book, but the phrase “weight of glory” has much older roots. It has a biblical origin that reminds us of our true priorities while also helping us appreciate what makes Lewis’ book so compelling.
The phrase “weight of glory” appears in 2 Corinthians 4:17. The apostle Paul wrote this second letter to the church in Corinth with help from his disciple Timothy, who is listed as the letter’s co-writer (1 Corinthians 4:1). Some scholars believe the reference to Timothy means he was the scribe who wrote the letter as Paul dictated the contents.
According to Easton’s Bible Dictionary, the details in the letter suggest that Paul wrote 2 Corinthians while traveling through Macedonia (Acts 20:1-6) and after visiting the Corinthian church twice. Paul covers various topics, from practical concerns like how the Corinthians should best collect money for believers in Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8-9) to spiritual concerns like how God empowers Christians to withstand persecution (2 Corinthians 4:7-12).
Concerns about persecution led Paul to remind the Corinthians what they ultimately put their hope in. They carry Jesus’ resurrected life within them, and that life not only shows through their actions (2 Corinthians 4:10-12) but offers them a long-term vision. Believers are promised a final resurrection when Jesus returns and presents the church to God the Father (2 Corinthians 4:14-15). The suffering Christians experience in this life looks very different if Christians are assured that they will rise again one day. In fact, the suffering we experience for being Christ’s representatives will be honored at the final resurrection.
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh 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 Corinthians 4:17-18 King James Bible, emphasis added)
In other words, “the weight of glory” refers to the greater destiny God has in store for us. Other translations, including the New King James Bible, the English Standard Version, and the New American Standard Bible, also use the phrase “weight of glory.”
So far, this is clear. But how does this Bible verse connect to C.S. Lewis’ book?
The book The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses was published in 1949 containing five sermons and speeches:
“The Weight of Glory” was preached on June 8, 1941, the second sermon Lewis gave at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. The Reverend T.R. Milford first invited Lewis to preach at the church in 1939, and he presented “Learning in War-Time” on October 22, 1939.
Although “The Weight of Glory” is considered one of Lewis’ greatest sermons, it was not always easy to find. Books often go out of print if there is no apparent demand for them, and many of Lewis’ books went out of print after he died in 1963. The Weight of Glory was reprinted in 1965 and 1975 but otherwise was hard to find in bookstores. A few people kept smaller publications that had printed the sermon, like a 1941 issue of the academic journal Theology or a 1942 pamphlet version published by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.
As Brenton Dickieson explains, the situation improved in the 1980s-1990s when editor Walter Hooper collected hard-to-find Lewis articles to produce new books like God in the Dock and arranged for old books to come back into print. A revised edition of The Weight of Glory appeared in 1980 with four more chapters, including famous works like Lewis’ 1940 speech “Why I Am Not a Pacifist.”
Hooper reports in an introduction for the revised edition that “The Weight of Glory” was very well-received. When he preached, Lewis spoke to “one of the largest congregations ever assembled [at that particular church] in modern times.” A warm response, given that Lewis was not a priest or a professional theologian.
If Lewis did not have the usual credentials, why did Milford ask him to preach?
Many people today know Lewis best as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia or as the author of apologetics books christianity.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">such as Mere Christianity. However, the stories about Narnia did not appear until the 1950s and his apologetics career did not start in earnest until World War II.
Lewis worked throughout his life as an academic, teaching literature and philosophy. In the 1930s, he established himself as an author with academic studies like The Allegory of Love, various articles on religion, a science fiction novel featuring religious themes called Out of the Silent Planet, and an allegory about his spiritual journey called The Pilgrim’s Regress. Milford read The Pilgrim’s Regress and invited Lewis to speak at his church. “Learning in War-Time” was the first time Lewis preached.
Joe Ricke discusses in an article for Sehnsucht how busy Lewis became: he went from preaching his first sermon to becoming an in-demand speaker at Christian events to receiving an offer from publisher Ashley Sampson to write a book on the problem of evil. Sampson was another fan of The Pilgrim’s Regress, and The Problem of Pain became the first of Lewis’ apologetics books. Then, in 1941, James Welch invited Lewis to give radio talks on Christianity, talks later edited and published as Mere Christianity.
By the end of the 1940s, Lewis was a well-regarded Christian author known for giving intelligent advice in clear language. By the end of the twentieth century, he was one of the bestselling Christian authors in modern history.
Lewis’ sermon has been summarized in many places, such as Justin Taylor’s Gospel Coalition article for its seventy-fifth anniversary. Since the sermon is fairly short, summarizing it point by point would run the risk of reproducing the entire sermon in different words. However, we can summarize the big picture ideas.
In the sermon, Lewis covers the following points:
These ideas, particularly the argument that some desires are yearnings for holy things that only God can fulfill, come up in other Lewis books like Surprised by Joy. However, Lewis combined all these engaging ideas in a beautifully compact form in “The Weight of Glory.”
The sermon proves especially powerful when we consider that Lewis gave these thoughts at a dark time.
The Pilgrim’s Regress was the reason Milford thought Lewis would make a good speaker, but Milford also knew there was a need that Lewis could fulfill. As Brian McGreevy explains, Britain entering World War II in September 1939 led many to think seriously about life, death, and faith. Christian thinkers who could offer hope and religious education were sorely needed. Lewis rose to the occasion by becoming a chaplain to the Royal Air Force and an apologist for Christian ideas on the radio, in sermons, and in articles.
“Learning in War-Time” has a more obvious connection to the period when it was written. It was a sermon about why pursuing education is a good and honorable thing to pursue even during a war. “The Weight of Glory” may seem like a more general discussion about living the Christian life well. However, reminding people what glory means for Christians is also important during crises.
As discussed earlier in this article, Paul instructs believers to find hope in dark times by remembering their future glory. It is good and important to remember that Christianity promises that whatever we experience in this life, our ultimate hope is in what will come in the future. At the final resurrection, God will reveal the new life we will live in the new heaven and new earth.
Lewis may not talk much about 2 Corinthians 4:17 directly in his sermon, but his words are permeated with the same vision that Paul shares in the passage: craving eternal glory will carry us through the darkness.
When temporary pleasures tempt us, we remember that divine glory is the true pleasure that will fulfill our longings when nothing else will. When death is near, we remember that death is not the end. When we suffer for our faith, we remember to crave God’s approval, not the world’s favor. When people are hard to love, we remember our calling to love others because they may be heirs in that glory, too. As Lewis puts it, we focus not on the sufferings happening now, but on “what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy.”
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