Our inner man is being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16) by the Spirit’s operation in us. This is our present experience of resurrection which is also our present, inward experience of New Jerusalem, the city of resurrection.
Today we have resurrection within but our environment is not always mild or pleasant. This matches what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:17, “For our momentary lightness of affliction works out for us, more and more surpassingly, an eternal weight of glory.”
Our environmental troubles, afflictions, remind us to open to the Lord, to call on His name, to praise Him, to declare facts from His word, and to sing. This strengthens the renewing of our inner man and imparts more of the eternal glory into us. These actions cause us to “not regard the things which are seen but the things which are not seen” (4:18).
We cannot “measure” the weight of glory and we might not sense it, but we have a spirit of faith to say “amen” to 2 Corinthians 4:17. It is our spirit and the hope which God has given us that substantiate “the things which are not seen.” These are the eternal things, which pertain to the new creation and especially to the glory of New Jerusalem.
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New Jerusalem - the Consummation 