My Makeweight

“…Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.” – Daniel 5:27

         In my reading of great Christian authors of the past, I often come across words seldom used today that nonetheless, speak volumes to me. One of them is the word used in my title: “makeweight.” The dictionary defines it as “something put in a scale to complete a required weight; anything added to supply a lack.” My thoughts immediately ran to our Savior, of course. May I share with you where those thoughts took me?

         “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7). When our sins tipped the scale of our debt to God, Jesus Christ, through the sacrifice of His blood, supplied all the grace of God needed to counterbalance all our sins. In fact, “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20). When we were “weighed in the balances and found wanting, the Savior stepped in “to complete the required weight” to make us fit for God and heaven.

         Job was right when he said, “Yet man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward” (5:7). It’s true whether you’re saved or lost, man or woman. The environment, society, and our own bodies are all sources of trouble at one time or another, all through our lives. But just when it seemed the cares of this life would weigh us down beyond hope, Jesus stepped out of eternity into our world and announced, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). He offers not only eternal life, but abundant life that makes up for all that is lacking in this life of troubles and trials.

         But what about death? “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Cor. 15:19). What if this life of faith, abundant though it may be, leads only to nothingness or worse? Ah, our Lord has that covered as well! “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). In fact, here, Christ (I speak reverently) has topped Himself. The abundant life He gives us here is itself outweighed by the “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” that awaits us over there. Where? Why, with Him, of course! God will answer His prayer in John seventeen, and we will be with Him where He is (v. 24); where “we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). And I can tell you, as the old song says, “That will be glory for me!”

You see now why I say, Jesus is my “Makeweight.” His grace outweighs all my sin; the abundant life He supplies makes up for all that is lacking in this troubled world I live in; and the “weight of glory” awaiting me will make a lifetime seem but a moment. I guess what I’m saying is I am “complete in him” (Col. 2:10).

With Jesus Christ, I will never be “found wanting.”