Paul begins the passage we are going to read today with two wonderful words: we know. But how did Paul know the future? How did he know the destiny of Christ-followers after death? He knew it by revelation. And we have that revelation now in Scripture. As Warren Wiersbe says,
No Christian has to consult a fortune-teller, a Ouija board, a spiritist, or a deck of cards to find out what the future holds or what lies on the other side of death. God has told us all that we need to know in the pages of His Word.
With that in mind, listen for God’s word to you from 2 Corinthians 5:1-10…
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
Our Present Tent
Basically, Paul talks about three things in this passage: Our Present Tent, Our Future House, and How We Should Live Now. Let’s look first at Our Present Tent.
Notice, we are talking about our present “tent” in which we live in the present “tense”! The word used here for “tent” only appears in this place in the New Testament. However, Acts 18:3 tells us that Paul was a tent maker. So that makes his choice of this word quite interesting.
Paul tells us several things about the tent we live in now. First, he says that it is earthly.
Greek writers referred to the human body as a tent in which the soul lives. This word also appears in a Jewish work sometimes called The Wisdom of Solomon or the Book of Wisdom. This was a book written in Greek and most likely composed in Alexandria, Egypt in the mid-first century BC. Wisdom 9:15 says, “for a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind.”
This Book of Wisdom, while Jewish, was very much influenced by Greek thought. Many Greeks thought of the body as something to be escaped. They looked forward to escaping the body at death and simply living in the realm of the spirit.
This was not exactly Paul’s viewpoint. As a Jew he viewed the body as part of God’s good creation. Yes, our bodies are imperfect in this life, but at the same time, they are something to be thankful for. God has fashioned both our present tent and our future house. Both are good.
Second, Paul treats this earthly tent of our bodies as something temporary. This is a fascinating Jewish image, not only because Paul was a tentmaker, but because the Israelites lived in tents during their wilderness wanderings. Furthermore, the Israelites worshipped God in a tent, sometimes called the tabernacle, for many years before building a more permanent temple.
I remember before I left California to go to Princeton Seminary in the mid 1980s a friend gave me a framed photograph of the California desert. She wrote something on the back about the fact that my time at seminary might be a time “in the wilderness” but that God would be with me. I didn’t really like that thought at the time, but in some ways, my friend was right.
However, all this life is like a wilderness wandering in tents. This world as it is now and our bodies as they are now do not provide our permanent home.
That leads to the third thing Paul tells us about this tent, namely that it will be destroyed.The word can refer to the dismantling of a tent before one moves on. Paul refers to his own death as a “departure” in 2 Timothy 4:6. Death is the time when our current tent is taken down and we depart this life for another.
Jesus is reported to have said, “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.” (Mark 14:58; see also John 2:19) He was referring to his death on the cross for our sins and his resurrection from the dead. Just so, when Paul talks about the destruction of this earthly tent and a future building not made with hands, he is using the same language as Jesus to talk about death and resurrection.
A fourth thing that Paul tells us about these earthly tents, our bodies, is that we groan in them, we feel burdened. Mark 7:34 tells us that even Jesus groaned. And Paul talks further about this groaning in Romans 8:23 where he says that “we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”
This leads to the fifth thing Paul tells us about this earthly tent of our bodies. He says that while we are in this earthly tent we long to be clothed.
At this point Paul begins to mix his metaphors. He uses the metaphor of this earthly tent to refer to our earthly bodies and he uses the metaphor of clothing to also refer to the human body, both our present and our future body.
I love this whole idea of longing. The fact that we have a longing for eternity indicates that there is something more than this life, this world, and this present body of ours. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has set eternity in the human heart.
Paul tells us one more thing about this earthly tent. He says, “To be at home in the body is to be away from the Lord.”
Most of us feel at home in our bodies. Though there may be some things we don’t like about our bodies, we get accustomed to them over time, and it is hard to imagine life without them. But, at the same time, Paul suggests that while we are in this earthly body, we have a sense of incompleteness, because we are away from the Lord.
This image of our bodies being like tents makes me think of camping. When I was growing up, I never did any camping with my family. My first camping experience was with our church youth group. There are a few things I can tell you about camping in California. One is that it is very dusty and dirty because the climate is so dry out west. Another thing I can tell you is that because it is so dry, I never encountered any grass in any of the places we camped on the west coast. So, no grass meant setting up a tent directly on the cold, hard, dirt, with plenty of rocks to navigate.
Are you getting the picture that I didn’t really develop a strong interest in camping when I was young?
Years later, after graduation from seminary and some experience in ministry, I interviewed once with a church in New Jersey that was looking for a senior pastor. But would you believe it? The lay leaders of the church were all keen campers. As part of my interview process, they had me go camping with them. Well, as you might guess, I never went to that church as their pastor!
Fast forward to 2004. As many of you know, Becky and the boys and I spent most of that year living in Ireland. We soon figured out that the only way we would be able to afford to visit most of Ireland was to buy a tent and camp in various locations. Would you believe that was my idea?
Camping in Ireland was better than camping anywhere else I have been, partly because we were able to set up our tents on nice, soft, luxurious grass. Now, my sons might have a different story to tell. They used an old tent in Ireland, whereas Becky and I used a new one. So, one morning when we woke up, we saw the boys all huddled in their tent with the roof caved in by the rain. I think they all got soaked, whereas Becky and I in our new tent were perfectly dry.
We all survived, but the point is this: camping out in a tent, however good it gets, is only temporary. Even the most enthusiastic camper looks forward to eventually going home and sleeping in their own comfortable bed with a secure roof over their head that doesn’t let any rain in!
So, it is interesting that Paul talks about our present bodies being like an earthly tent. These bodies of ours are only temporary.
Our Future House
The good news is that Paul tells us we have a future house to look forward to.
Is it not amazing that Paul says: “We have it.” That’s how sure Paul is of our future house.
Paul Barnett writes…
To our minds this present existence is solid and real, whereas our coming existence seems shadowy and insubstantial. Paul teaches us that the reverse is true. The life which is to come is strong, permanent and real; the present life is lived among the shadows.
How do we know that we will have a future house? God has given us his Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing our future inheritance, like an engagement ring guaranteeing the wedding day.
Paul tells us several important things about our future house. Our future house is…
1. A Building of God
2. Eternal
3. A house and not a tent!
4. Waiting for us with Christ in heaven
5. Not built by human hands
When we take possession of our future house, that is, our resurrection bodies that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15, he says that we will be swallowed up by Life! Isn’t that a great statement?
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “Death is swallowed up in victory!” And in 2 Corinthians 5 he says that we will be swallowed up by life.
When we took possession of our house here on the Cape two years ago, we felt swallowed up by boxes! By contrast, being swallowed up by Life will be the best experience ever.
Paul says, “To be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord.”
Is it not fascinating that Paul calls both our present earthly tent and our future house “our home”? The earthly bodies we have now are our temporary home, but our future house is our permanent, eternal home. As Paul says in Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.”
Paul talks about three possible states for the Christ-follower in these verses. We are either… (1) alive in our present earthly bodies—our tents—or (2) we are naked souls with the Lord. We often refer to this as “life after death”. But the heaven that is now, to which our souls go when they die, is only a temporary heaven. Our ultimate destination is the third state that Paul talks about here… (3) that is when we will be clothed in our resurrection bodies. You might call this state “life after life after death”! Or you might call it “the future heaven”. According to the end of the book of Revelation, heaven and earth will one day be joined, and that will be our permanent home.
How We Should Live Now
The key question is this: if all that Paul says here is true, then how should we be living now? Paul uses several words to describe how we should be living now.
First, Paul says we should live confidently. “Therefore, we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.”
The word for “confidence” here can be translated as “to be of good courage” or “good cheer”, “courageous”. Literally, it means “to be bold”. As we have seen already, the source of Paul’s confidence about the future, and our confidence about the future, comes from something in the past and something in the present. That “something” from the past that gives us confidence for the future is: the resurrection of Jesus that has already taken place. The “something” in the present that gives us confidence for the future is the indwelling Holy Spirit, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.
Second, Paul says that we live by faith, not by sight.
C. K. Barrett says, “We live by believing in the absent and invisible Christ, not by looking at visible forms.”
I am reminded of a favorite quote from A. W. Tozer…
A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passeth knowledge.
Third, Paul says we should live to please the Lord. We should live like young children who delight in pleasing their father or mother.
Fourth, we should live as ones who are ready for judgment at any moment.
The word for “judgment seat” that Paul uses here is “bema”. The “bema” was the platform in Greek towns where orations were made, and decisions handed down by rulers. (See Matthew 27:19; Acts 12:21; 18:12.) The bema was also the place where awards were given out to the winners in the annual Olympic Games. Paul knew what he was talking about for he faced judgment at the bema of Gallio in Corinth.
Nonetheless, Paul looked forward to standing at God’s bema, because, as he says, when we stand before God at his bema, we will receive what is due us. If we have put our faith in Jesus Christ, we do not need to fear punishment because Jesus has taken our punishment on himself (Isaiah 52-53). Paul tells us in Romans 8:1 there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. Rather, we can look forward to being rewarded for the good works that Christ has produced in us by his grace. Like the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, Paul looked forward to the heavenly city and governed his life by eternal values. Is that our perspective?
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