Glory Lost, Glory (Re)Gained

Father, we do rejoice, for through Jesus the Son you have done great things, and you are continuing to do great things in our midst, in our land, in our church, in our lives. And we pray that you would do so this morning, to show us your glory in the Word, to teach us what we do not know, have not learned, may have forgotten, to convict us of sin, to transform us from one degree of glory to the next, and to be already preparing us for that great revealing of glory that will be ours one day together with Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Our text this morning is Romans 3:23. Romans 3:23. I will pick up our reading at the end of verse 22. We read from God’s Word:

“For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

You may be thinking, I like the slow pace, but come on. Seeing where this is going. A verse this week, a verse next week, and for the next several weeks. Well, there’s a lot to talk about as we come to these major, most important themes, not only in the book of Romans, but in our lives – words like justification, redemption, grace, gift, righteousness, propitiation, faith, and here this morning, glory. You may be thinking, though, “Alright, I love that verse. This is one of the most well-known verses in the Bible, and I understand, pastor, some of the nuances we’ve been dealing with, and what we’re coming to – justification – these are complicated doctrines, but this verse is not only one of the best-known verses, but it doesn’t seem that difficult to understand. Doesn’t it basically mean we’ve all messed up? Nobody lives up to God’s standard. And we all know this. If we were somehow to rank the top five verses that the most people have memorized – now, it helps that this is a short one. Those are the ones to memorize. My kids are always telling me, when you have to pick the Covenant Day School verse of the year, just one of these years (because we have to memorize it) could you do “Jesus wept,” Dad? It’s a lot to focus on for one year. So, you know this verse. Some of you have grown up with this verse, known it as long as you can remember knowing anything. Or you learned the Romans Road, and this is the first stop on the Romans Road.

So why do we need a whole sermon on this verse? Well, it’s true. It is well known, and in a general sense, it is well understood, but I don’t believe that it is carefully understood. Notice there are these three statements: end of verse 22, “there is no distinction.” We’ve seen that throughout the book of Romans already. God shows no partiality in how people receive salvation, because everyone has the same need for salvation. The remedy is the same, because the diagnosis is the same. We’ve seen this so many times, that no one is righteous by works of the law. So, there’s no partiality with God. Being Jew, Gentile, male, female, rich, poor – doesn’t get you closer, it doesn’t mean you’re farther away, because you have the same problem, and there is one solution. Then the second statement, verse 23, “for all have sinned.” There are several related words in the Bible. Sin, transgression, iniquity, evil, wickedness. They’re sometimes used interchangeably, though they may have slightly different nuances. Sin means missing the mark. The clearest definition is 1 John 3:4, “Sin is lawlessness.” So, there’s lots of things you can say about sin, but that at its most basic level, sin is lawlessness. You and I sin when we fail to keep the law. When God gives us his commandments and we do not keep the commandments, we are sinners. We sin. We miss the mark. And then this third statement, “and all fall short of the glory of God.” Now, here’s what I think most of us do. Most of us read that statement as saying pretty much the exact same thing as the previous statement, just in slightly elevated poetic language. So, if you memorize this verse – most of us have at some point, though we probably haven’t really thought carefully about what these two halves mean, and as they rest upon us, they tend to get conflated. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They’re more or less saying the same thing, we think. We’ve all broken God’s law, and we have all fallen short of God’s holiness and perfection.

But what I want you to see this morning is that these two phrases – though obviously related, we’ll see how – they are not redundant. Paul is not saying the exact same thing. In fact, he’s saying something quite striking with this second phrase in verse 23, which will be our focus this morning. Now, look at your Bible, because when you stop to think about it, it’s surprising what Paul says. Now, we know this verse, so it rolls off our tongue, but if you were just going through Paul’s train of argument, you would think that his statement in verse 23 would read this way: all have sinned and fall short of the righteousness of God. Verse 21, “Now the righteousness of God has been manifest.” Verse 22, “The righteousness that comes through faith.” And then you go to verse 24 – the verb “justified” is the same Greek root – that dikaioo root in noun form, righteousness. So, there is the same Greek root again. And then in verse 25, “this was to show God’s righteousness.” Verse 26, “It was to show his righteousness.” So, if you understand that the word justified in verse 24 is the same Greek verbal root translated righteousness as a noun, verse 23 is the only verse in the paragraph not to talk about the righteousness of God. So, you would think that Paul would say there’s no partiality. Why? We’ve all sinned – and I’ve just been talking about the righteousness of God manifested and revealed, that you received by faith – and all of us fall short of that righteousness on our own. Why does Paul not say that? Could have said that. That’s all true. Why does he want to say something slightly different than what he’s saying in the other verses in the paragraph? Why this turn of attention to glory? That’s what we’re going to think about for the rest of this message.

Glory: the Greek word doxa. We sang a gloria patri, a glory to the Father. We sing a doxology. You all know that word. A doxology is a praise to God. That’s the Greek word. The Hebrew word kabod or kavod, which denotes weight or heaviness. So, figuratively, glory is what is weighty, what is awe-inspiring. It is used for splendor, honor, wealth, abundance. And when talking about God or spiritual things, that word doxa or kavodis usually translated “glory.” Now, at this point in my sermon preparation, I thought we could do a whole study across the Bible. We could trace out those two words, kavod in the Old Testament, doxa in the New, and develop a theology of God’s radiant, wonderful, terrifying, otherworldly, joyous, heavy-felt glory, and there would be some merit in doing so. But as you think about how can we best interpret this verse? And this helps you as you think about interpreting your Bible. We could go and do a big, massive study of glory in the whole Bible, and that would get us in the conceptual ballpark, but better to understand verse 23 is to trace out the intricate argument that Paul has been making already in the book of Romans, because glory – doxa – is absolutely one of the key themes in this book. And intentionally I have not dwelt too much on the word so far, having in my mind we’re going to do one verse, 3:23, and I’ll trace some of these dots again. And if you know Romans 8, that is the Mount Everest of the Bible. It’s also the Mount Everest of glory, so we’re going to come back to this theme again in chapter 5 and chapter 8, several other times, but just thinking about this first unit in the book of Romans, really chapters 1-4 – we haven’t gotten to 4 yet – but 1-4, there are seven uses of this word group, the doxa group, translated as glory in six of those. I’ll show you the one where it’s not, but same word. I want us to trace through with an eye – and some of them we’ll spend time on, some of them we’ll move quickly – but with an eye to understand what does Paul mean that you and I fall short? And notice the verb tense, that “have sinned” is described in the past. Of course, we continue to sin, but it’s referring to something that took place. We’ll come back to that. And falling short is something that we continue to do. You and I continue to fall short of the glory of God. Now, we can be, 2 Corinthians 3:18, transformed from one degree of glory to the next. That’s the good news. But we fall short. What is meant by falling short of the glory of God?

Let’s look at what Paul means by doxa, by glory. So, turn back to chapter 1:21, “For although they knew God” – talking about what can be known by the things that are made – “although they knew God, they did not” – and here’s the doxa word – “they did not honor him.” Same word. Could translate it, “They did not glorify him.” Honor is a fine translation, too, but that’s the same Greek word. So, this is the first one. “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks.” They did not glorify him as God. So, the proper response to God’s self-revelation – because that’s what the previous verses are about, you’ll recall – that the things of God’s eternal power and his divine nature can be clearly perceived in the things that have been made, that God has revealed himself through his created world, and as God reveals himself, what is the proper response when God reveals his glory? Here we have the two most fundamental responses that we ought to have as human beings. Honor and thanksgiving. Or you can say gratitude and glory. When God reveals to us his glory, we ought to respond by giving him glory and giving thanks.

I was trying to think about where we experience the unveiling – the revealing – of glory. I think one place that we do is when you’re at a wedding, when the doors – which are barred shut for the bride, her dad to walk her down the aisle – suddenly are opened. Sometimes they take pictures beforehand, but often traditionally the bride and groom have not seen each other yet. He’s not seen her in her full revelation of her bridal glory: white dress and the beaming smile and the hair that has been worked on for three weeks. All of those things. And as the groom sees his radiant bride for the first time, what’s a proper response, fellas? Not to roll your eyes. Never seen that happen. Not to look the other way. Certainly not to check out other girls. That would be called idolatry. The proper response to the revelation of your bride’s glory is to honor her and give thanks. You look amazing! You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. That’s glory. That’s honoring her. And then thanksgiving: what an amazing thing. I get to be with you. Let’s quick do this before you change your mind. And you want to be with me. I am the luckiest guy – Calvinistically lucky – luckiest guy in the world. That’s a proper response to the revelation of glory. Honor. Thanksgiving. So, though they knew through creation of God’s eternal power and divine nature – he showed this to them; he shows this to every one of us; he makes it plain to them; it was clearly perceived – the proper response was glory, in view of God’s glory. And they didn’t do it. It was meant to entail the totality of a person’s life. Some year later, we’ll get to Romans 12:1, “In view of God’s mercies, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, which is your spiritual act of worship.” Your whole self is now, as a redeemed Christian, to give honor to God and thank him. We were made to live a life that testifies to the reality that God is eternal. Your life is supposed to reflect that to everyone around you, that people look at your life and know there’s a God, he’s eternal, he’s powerful, he’s mighty, he’s lovely, and his transcendent glory rests heavy upon us. So, this is the first instance of this word glory translated here honor.

And look just a few verses later, verse 23. What did human beings do? What do they do with the sight of this glory? Well, they don’t honor him. They don’t give thanks. They exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. This is a further explanation of man’s failure. They exchanged the glory – that is, the radiance, the beauty, the power, the transcendent excellence of the immortal God, all of that that should have rested heavy upon them – they exchanged that for images resembling man, birds, animals, creeping things. Now, what is meant by this exchange? Clearly, at one level, this has to do with an exchange in the object of our worship. That’s the most obvious meaning – an exchange in the object of our worship – that the foolish exchange is they should have made God the truly glorious one, the object of their worship, and instead they made animals and beasts and creeping things. They exchanged the object. But I want to argue it’s not only that. Verse 23 also has to do with the loss of our glory – that is, the glory we were meant to reflect from God as the only creatures made in his image. So, the exchange, I’m arguing, is twofold. The foolish exchange is that you swapped out the right object for the wrong object, but also a foolish exchange that you and I have lost the glory we were meant to reflect. Once they lost sight of the glory they were meant to reflect – look what happens in verse 24 – God gave them up for the dishonoring of their bodies. That that word dishonor is really the opposite of glory. You and I were meant to glorify God with our bodies. We were meant to be a reflection of the glory of God, but we made a foolish exchange so that now God gives sinners over to the dishonoring of their bodies. We become what we worship. Psalm 115:8, “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”

And look at this language of image. You see verse 23: images, eikon in the Greek. Whenever Paul uses eikon, he relates it somehow to being made in the image of God, which makes me think that verse 23 is not just about replacing the object of our worship. That’s true, but it’s about losing the glory that we were to have as those made in his image. And this makes sense of the continuing exchange in the verses ahead. Think about Genesis. God made them. He made man in his image, male and female. There, man is given as the head of the human race and then clarified, he made man in his image, male and female. It was God’s design. It was God’s idea, in order to show the full extent of his image in some ways that maybe we’re still trying to figure out. He said, I can show my image. I can only totally show this in the human race with a male and a female. No, it’s not that a man is half the image, and a woman is half the image. Otherwise, Jesus Christ would not fully have been in the image of God. But there was something in his creation. He wanted male and female together to image his glory, which is why this foolish exchange – what happens as we go through Romans 1? You know that men exchange natural relations with women for relations with other men. Women exchange natural relations that they ought to have with men to have relationships with other women. It’s a confusing and a retreating and a loss of the glory that they ought to have as God’s image bearers, because he made them male and female. That sexual binary was God’s idea, and when that binary is obliterated or confused or jumbled or, we think, open to our own self-interpretation, we further exchange the glory of God that he meant for us to reflect. And – do you remember the argument? You become like what you worship – and they become like those who are driven by their passions. They end up not more free, not more human, not more alive. That’s the lie of our age and the lie of the devil. They become more like animals, following just their sensual appetites and instincts.

And then look back up at verse 20. I didn’t make this point, I don’t believe, when I preached through this several months ago, but I think there’s something here. Notice, “His invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.” Whenever we think about that verse – “God has shown his glory in the things that have been made” – what do you think about? You think about mountains, oceans, rivers, sun, moon, stars, his glory in the created world. And that’s certainly some of what he’s talking about. However, might he also be talking about you and me? The only other time Paul uses this noun – translated here “things that have been made” or “creation,” you could translate it, poiema – the only other time he uses it is in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his poiema, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” There, we are his workmanship. So Ephesians 2:10 is clearly about us. Might it be that, in addition to the beauty of the rivers and the mountains and the streams and the eagles in flight and all the other beauties of creation, that Paul means to say how was God’s character meant to be clearly perceived in the things that have been made? Chiefly in the ones he made in his image. God made human beings to be the visible manifestation of his invisible nature. Can you see the connection then? And I promise we won’t spend as much time on the other occurrences. Can you see the connection between 1:23 and 3:23? It’s nice that they’re both 23’s. 1:23 and 3:23. God made you, human being, to be glorious because you reflect God. You’re supposed to. Sin results in the loss of glory – not only glory to God, exchanging the object of worship, but also the glory that is meant to be reflected in us. You’re meant to see in the people around you – and don’t you, with all the evil in the world, still you marvel at stories of creativity and genius and power and artistry and beauty and might and nobility and self-sacrifice? Still some vestiges of God’s image in us, but this glory lost. Adam and Eve sinned. Glory has been lost, and then Israel, which comes as another son of God, and we see the same thing with the sin of the golden calf. In other words, when we fail to give God glory, you are not only suppressing what can be seen about God in the beauty of creation, you are suppressing the truth about yourself, about who you are, about the sort of person that God made you to be. That’s why sin is so foolish, so dumb, so idiotic. You are transferring the glory that ought to be yours, as reflecting God’s glory, and giving it to worthless things.

Now look quickly – third and fourth instance – in chapter 2, verse 7 and 10. Now this was an intricate argument in this paragraph, and I argued that Paul is not talking about the life that a redeemed Christian might live to seek after God, though many commentators make that point, and that’s true in a theological sense. I argued with other commentators that Paul is talking about the sort of life seeking God that none of us can do. If we could, we would be rewarded with glory and honor, but none of us do. Now, that controversy notwithstanding, the point here is still the same. Look at verse 7 and 10, these other two instances of glory: “to those who by patience in welldoing seek for glory and honor and immortality.” So, there’s a glory that has been lost, and this is the hope of glory regained. So, what ought we to do? We ought to seek for glory, for honor, for immortality. Now you’re hardwired to want glory. You want it on the playing field. You want it in the classroom. You want it with your house. You want it with your appearance. We’re hardwired that way, for something bigger than ourselves. We want to be transcendent. We don’t want to be forgotten. We want to grasp immortality, but here it says what we should do is we should seek from God that glory, that honor, that immortality. And what do you receive? Eternal life, glory, honor, and peace. Again, the exchange is that instead of seeking the glory of the immortal God, we have transferred it to mortal things. And so, we lost our likeness to God, and when we lose our likeness to God, or at least it becomes marred and effaced, we do not share in the immortality that God alone has. Again, we have become like the things that we worship. If you want to be eternal and transcendent and glorious and honorable, make the object of your worship eternal and glorious and incorruptible and honorable. But when we worship created things, what do you become? You become like those things. Things that die, things that decay, things that don’t last, things that are dumb, things that are spiritually insensitive, things that are destined to corruption. That’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “The believer will be raised incorruptible.” Why incorruptible? Well, he’s got a new resurrection body. But it’s a way of saying he will be like God again. Who’s the only one who’s incorruptible, the only one who doesn’t die, the only one who doesn’t decay? It’s God. You’ll be raised incorruptible.

There’s a fifth instance of this word glory. You see in chapter 3, verse 7 – less related to the argument that I’m tracing out. Paul says, “When God’s truth is demonstrated, even through our lie, it still manifests his own glory.”

And then the sixth occasion brings us back here to Romans 3:23. So think again, the first half of 3:23, “all sinned,” or translated in ESV, “all have sinned.” The exact same two Greek words, pantes, meaning all; emarton, sinned. The same two Greek words appear again in Romans 5:12. Romans 5:12, Paul says, “Sin came into the world through one man, death through sin. Death spread to all men because all sinned.” Now, clearly in 5:12, he’s talking about how all of us sinned in Adam. We’ll come back to that in the months ahead. All of us sinned in Adam. Now, it’s possible that this occasion in 3:23, “all have sinned,” is just a collective summary of the human race, what all of us have done – we’ve all sinned, committed sins. But I think it’s more than that. I think it’s a way of leading us to Romans 5:12, that this is speaking about the sin that each one of us committed in Adam. In Adam’s fall, we sinned all. So, the predicament that we’re in is not just that we’re sinners or we sin, but that we have this sin nature and that in Adam – he’s our corporate head; we need a second Adam, who will be our corporate head and will succeed where that Adam failed – in that first Adam, when he sinned, he was our representative. He sinned just like your father might be out in the world, and the good that he does redounds to your benefit, and the bad things that he does puts a bad name upon you and your family. So, in the same way, Paul is saying, in Adam all sinned, the consequence of which (second half of verse 23) is that glory has been lost, the glory that we as creatures were made to have in the image of the immortal God. The glory is God’s essence, his character. We were meant to know that glory, to give thanks for that glory, and to reflect that glory. One commentator says this about the second half of verse 23: “People fail to exhibit that being like God for which they were created.” That’s in a nutshell why Paul doesn’t say you have fallen short of the righteousness of God. That’s true. You miss the law. You don’t live up to the standard. But he’s saying something related, but slightly different. He’s saying that being like God that you were made for, we’re falling short of that. We can’t reach it. We’ve lost the glory that we were supposed to have, no matter how much you may feel like you can shine on your own.

Imagine if you took three people somewhere out in western North Carolina where the mountains run through that part of the state. It’s beautiful. Imagine you had one person who is on some level ground, and you put someone else down into a valley, and then you put someone else on one of the high peaks in the Appalachians up there. Middle, low, high. Now that person who’s standing on the top of Grandfather Mountain or the highest point out there east of the Mississippi that’s out there in western North Carolina – you stand up there, and you could genuinely say I am a little bit higher than this person on the middle, certainly this person in the valley. That’s how we tend to evaluate ourselves spiritually. We tend to think that I am up at a mountain, and I see you silly people, sinners, down in the valley. Well, even if that is true that some people by their own life – it is objectively true, some people live worse lives than other people – somebody’s in the middle, someone’s in the valley, someone’s on the mountain. But then what if I were to say, I want everyone in those three places to raise your hands in the air, and I want you to touch the nearest star. You’re not any closer. You are not closer to touching any star. No one on the mountain, on the plain, in the valley – though our relative proportion may seem very important, when it comes to reaching and touching the glory, all of us are woefully, monumentally, falling short.

So, is there any hope for us? Well, I said there were seven occurrences of doxa in the first four chapters, and we haven’t gotten to chapter 4 yet, but turn over there. I give you permission to look at it real quickly. Won’t ruin your appetite. But Paul is going to turn his attention in chapter 4 to Abraham. And this whole chapter will be about Abraham, who’s the example, the quintessential example of faith, of being justified by faith. Look at verse 13. We see that Abraham, though he’s not the second Adam like Christ will be, he is reclaiming for God’s people the promises that Adam forfeited. Look at verse 13, “For the promise is to Abraham and his offspring, that he would be heir of the world.” Well, that’s a New Testament gloss on those promises that you’ll inherit the land, just like Jesus says the meek shall inherit the earth. Those promises, which were in the Old Testament about a little sliver of land we call Israel, now are interpreted to mean the whole earth. So, the promise here is that Abraham and his offspring – all of us who are children of Abraham – will be heirs not just of a little piece of land but of the world.

Now, that’s not the occasion for the glory text. Look at verse 20. “No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise” – the promise of a Son, also the promise to be heir of the world – “concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.” Notice this is a foil to what we saw earlier in chapter 1. What is the response when God manifests his glory? Well, the wrong response is you do not honor God; you do not give thanks. What does Abraham do? He trusts in God’s promises, and he gives him glory. This is a very tangible way. You say, “This is so big. I know we’re supposed to glorify God and enjoy him forever. What do I really do to glorify God?” Abraham gives you one very tangible step: you can trust God. You can believe in him. You glorify your parents, children, when you take them at their word. And our parents are all imperfect. Sometimes they don’t keep their word. But God always keeps his word, and you give him glory, like Abraham, when you rest confidently in his promises that he will do exactly as he said he would do. The first step to a life of glory, to being transformed from one degree of glory to the next, is this faith which gives God glory, because it testifies, “I trust you. I believe in you.”

So, let me pull this all together with three points of application. Number one, as we think about what it means to fall short of the glory of God, consider the people around you and the path they are on. Consider the people around you and the path they are on. We saw in Romans 2, we are all headed in one of two directions: for glory and honor and immortality and eternal life, or we are all headed for wrath, fury, tribulation, and distress. Look at the people around you. Could you help them get on the right path? We think too little of God. We think too little of our sin. But in another way – listen carefully – you could say we think too little of ourselves. Now if you say you can’t think too little of yourself – I need to, you know, achieve low esteem so that I can truly – that’s true in a way when we think about our sin before God. But as we think about what it means to be made in the image of God, it is possible to think too little of ourselves and too little of the people around us, who were made for glory. Glory. Sorry, I can’t help but sound like John Piper this morning. Glory! You may know this quotation from C.S. Lewis in his book The Weight of Glory: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses” – he’s talking about human beings; he’s using provocative language – “to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to” – don’t nudge anyone right now – “may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in your nightmare. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” He says there are people now who seem plain and dull and ordinary and uninspiring and uninteresting, but if they belong to Christ, one day they will possess such a glory that if you could see the full revelation of it now, you would be tempted to bow down and worship them. No ordinary people in this room.

Two, consider then who you were made to be. You were made for God. You were made for glory. In fact, you can argue that your normal state is a state of glory. That’s how humans were made. That’s how we’ll be regained in Christ. And the life we now live, falling short of that glory, is what’s abnormal about us as human beings. Now, because of sin, it’s something that we lack. You and I were meant to reflect this glory. You come back from the beach, and people say, “Oh, were you at the beach?” You get bronzed with tan. Or to be honest, you come back like a cherry-red tomato. They know where you’ve been. I know I hit on this so many times, but maybe I do so because I know that I need this in my own life and in my family’s life. You are what you pay attention to. And one of the most nefarious effects of our digital age – I know there’s lots of blessings that come from it, for sure, all the things that we can find, all the things that it can do for us – but the doomscrolling and the constant attention to screens and how it grabs you and grabs you. Even if you never watched a bad movie, never saw a questionable TikTok, it was all just fun and games, it is so hard to go from that, to fix your gaze on that, and then to be a person who feels the weight of God’s glory. It’s just impossible to do. You will reflect what you gaze upon. Think of Moses coming down from the mountain, when he came and people said, “What’s happened to you, Moses? Your face is dazzling.” He had to put a veil over it. It was so bright, because he had been with God. His face shining reflected the presence of God. Maybe that’s why the New Testament says you will shine like stars, or maybe why Jesus says you’re the light of the world. How do you chiefly show that light to the world? By basking in the eternal light that is God and then reflecting that. David Wells in God In the Wasteland writes, “The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church. His truth is too distant. His grace is too ordinary. His judgment is too benign. His gospel is too easy. And his Christ is too common.” And I might add to say that our sense of our own glory is too small – the glory that you are meant to have as you reflect the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Christ.

And then finally, consider what awaits you? What awaits you if you belong to Christ by faith? You think too little of God’s glory – we know that. You also think too little of your glory, the glory that will be yours together with Christ. The future glory of believers, we will see in this book, is a common hope. Romans 8:17, that we would be glorified with Christ, or Romans 8:18, that our present suffering is what? Not worth comparing with the glory, with how glorious you will be. No matter how much your body feels like it’s broken-down – you go by the mirror and you think, “Can I get a new mirror?” And your spiritual life doesn’t feel what it’s like, and your family life doesn’t seem – this is not the picture you had. These are momentary compared – you won’t even compare them – to the glory that awaits you. Or Romans 8:21, that creation is longing to obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Now, that’s going to be a good sermon, I hope, someday. Creation. Don’t think, “God’s going to renew all creation. I’m a part of creation. So, I’m going to follow in the train of creation. God’s going to give a new creation. I’m part of that.” Paul’s logic is just the opposite. It says all of creation is looking on, the mountains and the rivers and the oceans and the eagles and the bears and the lions and tigers and everything – oh my – all of that splendor and glory, they look at Christians and say, “If only I could have the glory that awaits them.” Creation wants to obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. You and I will have the glory that all of creation – it’s not us in the train of creation’s glory, it’s creation following up in the train of our glory – what God does as his children foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified. That’s where we are heading, and we get a small glimpse now, transformed just one degree after another. You very rarely can skip those degrees. You’d like to go from one degree to 115 degrees – doesn’t work like that. Be patient with each other. The full reality is coming at the end of the age. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but if we trust in Christ, there will be a day when our sinning will be no more, and our glory will be restored. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, give us grace to wait until that day, so to seek after glory and immortality and eternal life. Fix our gaze upon you and your Word, that we might become not as decaying things, not as trivial things, not as corruptible things, but immortal as you are. We ask for your help and your supernatural grace in Jesus’ name. Amen.