2 Corinthians 4:16-17
“Therefore we don’t faint, but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory;”
Where this sits
Written by a man who lists, in the next chapter, beatings, imprisonments, shipwrecks and a night and a day adrift at sea.
Reflection
Two things are happening at once in this verse, in opposite directions, and Paul does not pretend either is untrue.
The outward man is decaying. He does not soften that. Bodies wear out; his had been beaten with rods three times and stoned once, and he was not writing from a position of vigour. The decay is stated as fact.
And simultaneously the inward man is renewed day by day. Not instead of the decay. Alongside it, at the same rate — day by day, which matches the pace at which the other is failing.
Then the accounting in the next verse, and it is deliberately provocative. Light affliction, which is for the moment. Paul is describing his own imprisonments and beatings as light and momentary, and he can only do that because of what he is weighing them against: an eternal weight of glory.
Weight is the point of the pun. The Hebrew word for glory literally means heaviness. Paul sets a light thing against a heavy one and the scale is not close.
What keeps this from being dismissive is that he is doing the arithmetic on his own life, not someone else's. Anyone may weigh their own affliction and call it light. Only Paul could say it about Paul's.
- Theme:
- Perseverance
- Book:
- 2 Corinthians