Changing Clothes for the Last Time

September 24, 2021 at 3:10 pm | Posted in II Corinthians | 2 Comments
Tags: 2 Corinthians 5, assurance of salvation, commentary on 2 Corinthians, death for Christians, ghosts, glorified bodies, purgatory, Sunday School lessons on 2 Corinthians, the Holy Spirit

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

II Corinthians 5:1

Paul’s focus on the eternal gave him great assurance, and helped him to see everything in the temporal through the lens of the eternal. Just as the Old Testament Tabernacle ministry was not permanent, the tabernacle in which we live our lives is dissolving. Our bodies are breaking down, losing stength, and starting to malfunction. This will discourage us and drive us to fear unless we remember that our earthly bodies will one day be replaced by glorified bodies. Those bodies will be indestuctible and incorruptible.

For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:

II Corinthians 5:2

These groans might be audible or they might be inward. They might be groans of suffering or they might be groans of longing. The leaving of our earthly bodies and the leaving of our earthly home is something to look forward to rather than to dread.

If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.

II Corinthians 5:3

This seems like an obvious idea. The only way not to be naked is to be clothed, but when a person dies, his earthly “clothing” (his body) is still lying there in the form of a corpse and his soul is no longer present. His soul has not escaped into an ephemeral mystery realm. No, the person’s soul has changed houses and changed “clothes.”

For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

II Corinthians 5:4-5

The Holy Spirit is like a deposit or a down payment on the Christian’s eternal life. He is not meant to reside in this world permanently in its present condition. He reminds us that we belong to another world, another Kingdom, another home.

Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:

II Corinthians 5:6

There is no intermediate state for believers: no probationary holding pen; no earth-wandering spirits; no purgatory; no reincarnation, no soul-sleep.