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Rightly Dividing
the Word of Truth (2 Timothy 2:15)
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November 2008 Published weekly on Friday
This is good and
acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men (and women) to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1Timothy 2:3-4)
2 Corinthians (5:1-9) (Lesson 12)
Welcome to HBS.
Introduction to
Chapter 5
I trust you’re
aware our Apostle Paul did not divide his letters into chapters and
verses. The person credited with
dividing the Bible into chapters is Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of
Canterbury (1207-1228). This was a
useful organizational tool, but eventually most inventions can and will be improved
it just takes time. In the mid-16th century Robert
Stephanus (a.k.a. Robert Estienne) created a verse numbering system, giving us
the ability to refer to specific Bible phrases within Bible chapters making
Stephen Langton’s system even more useful.
The chapter and verse numbers we know and have grown accustomed to using
today are direct descendants of these systems.
I added this data
to our Bible lesson today because 1) I believe church history is relevant to
Bible study. They’re like two peas in a
pod. 2)
Because 2 Corinthians 5 is
closely related to chapter 4. How
close? According to theologians, they
believe it has been improperly separated from it. They think chapter 5 should have been added
to chapter 4. Here I am thinking, in the original manuscripts there were no
chapters or verses, no breaks or interruptions, so of course it did belong.
In chapter 4, Paul
began with the subject of the ministry, the honesty and faithfulness with which
Paul and his fellow-laborers worked (2 Corinthians 4:1-3); the suffering, the
trials and dangers encountered in the course of working in their ministry of righteousness and of life
(2 Corinthians 4:7-12); and the consolations and support which they had in the
various trials (2 Corinthians 4:13-18), and continues his discourse on into
chapter 5, verse 1, with the words, “For
we know…”
********
Please
open your Bible at 2 Corinthians 5:1.
The Temporal and Eternal
2 Corinthians 5
1: For we know that
if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building
from God, a house not made with human hands, eternal in the heavens.
Paul
was a tent-maker by trade (Acts 18:1-3).
This is how he supported himself while preaching the gospel of the grace of
God. He also worked as a common laborer so as
not to be a financial burden to the churches.
If you remember, one of the reasons Paul wasn’t respected by the
Corinthians was because he didn’t ask for money, as the other so called apostles were doing. Paul
would have been well within his rights as an apostle of the Lord to receive
financial support, however, he didn’t want anything to cause hindrance to the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:11-12).
I
suppose because Paul was a tentmaker this is why he chose to use it as a
metaphor here. You see, a tent is a temporary shelter. The Arabs and Bedouins of the nomadic dessert
tribes lived in tents, wandering from
place to place, while those who are permanently rooted live in a house.
The
present dwelling place of the Believer’s soul and spirit is here called a tent, and by nature it is a temporary
dwelling, by this Paul means to say we may pull up and move at any time. The house
Paul refers to is said to be eternal.
He’s referring to our resurrected body, as compared to our present body,
which is temporary. The body in which
the “inner man and woman” now resides
is fragile, easily crushed, and perishing, it is often a burden and yields to
temptation, for since the fall it has not been favorable to spiritual
living. But the new and glorified body
will be forever free from sin, sorrow, and death (Revelation 21:4).
Verses
2-3:
For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be
clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will
not be found naked.
The
word house
carries the same meaning as tent
or dwelling place in verse 1.
We groan – Paul’s saying Believers
sigh deeply for what is not yet seen or realized, i.e. God’s
kingdom, our new, glorified bodies, our lives as adopted children of God the
Father, and so much more (Romans 8:18-22).
Longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven - I don’t
personally think this is true with all Believers. Based on my own conversations and
observations I don’t see youthful people focused on end of life planning or dying
at all. They are intently focused on the
here and now, or as Paul put it: the things that are seen. I think Paul’s statement is true for those
Believers who have matured in the faith and especially for those senior
Believers, like Paul, who have entered the autumn of their years; people who
realize the Rapture event is nearer than before. Based on what I see in Paul’s letters, he
believed he’d live to see the Lord coming in the clouds for His Church (1
Thessalonians 4:13-18). I have the same
kind of expectant faith! I look for the
Lord’s coming every day because I prayed for it the night before.
However,
we are well aware that this present tent is breaking down, if not you soon
will be, because the Second Law of Thermodynamics is at work all around
us. It basically reveals that material
things are not eternal. Nothing stays as
fresh as the day you purchased it, everything ultimately returns to dust. What was it
the LORD God said to the man before he was evicted from Eden, “for you are dust and to dust you shall
return - Genesis 3:19). Since this is true, why wouldn’t you and I
look expectantly to something better?
Inasmuch as we,
having put it on, will not be found naked - it’s clear our
Apostle Paul longed to be clothed with
our dwelling from heaven, meaning he was looking forward to the Rapture of
true Believers, when this mortal (body)
must put on immortality. Obviously, Paul is talking about our
resurrected bodies – the ones we’ll receive in which mortality will be “swallowed
up” in immorality, an event which
he deemed to be near at hand. This
conversation is similar to the one in 1 Corinthians 15:50-57.
Paul
wants us to understand these eternal promises are ours now; in fact eternity
resides in us at this very moment, for if we should die now our eternal soul
would go to be with the Lord in heaven (2 Corinthians 5:8). We have a house not made with human hands eternal in the heavens already
there waiting on us.
will not be found
naked – this
short phrase has caused a lot of confusion in the church. However if you remember the pagan culture
Paul encountered in Corinth upon his arrival (Acts 18) and the fact that these
new Believers were not that far removed from where they started when they first
believed, meaning they had one foot in the church and the only foot in the world, it’s not too difficult to
understand what Paul meant. The ancient Greek conception of the
afterlife was already well established by the 6th century. Homer described the underworld, deep beneath
the earth, where Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, and his wife,
Persephone, reigned over countless drifting crowds of shadowy figures – the shades of all those who had died. It was not a happy place. Indeed, the ghost of the great hero Achilles told Odysseus that he would rather
be a poor serf on earth than lord of all the dead in the underworld (Odyssey,
11.489-91).
KHARON
(Charon) was the Ferryman of the Dead, an underworld daimon (spirit) in the
service of King Hades. Hermes
Psykhopompos (Guide of the Dead) gathered the shades of the dead from the upper
world and led them down to the shores of the Akherousian (Acherusian) mere in
the underworld where Kharon transported them across the water to Hades in his
skiff. His fee was a single coin which
was placed in the mouth of a corpse upon burial. Those who had not received proper burial were
unable to pay the fee and were left to wander the earthly side of the Akheron
(Acheron), haunting the world as ghosts.
Therefore,
in light of this, Paul is saying, I don’t want any of you to misinterpret my
words. We’re not going to be ghosts,
hanging around after our death, haunting people and places. That’s
Greek, mythological mumbo-jumbo, however,
people were caught up in that religious-based web of fear even though there
were zero facts to back it up.
Verse
4:
2 Corinthians 5
4: For indeed while
we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be
unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by
life.
No
one will die and then float off to be with the Lord in a bodiless existence (be found naked) for in verse 3 Paul
said, Inasmuch as we, having put it
on. And in verse 4 he groaned and was burdened earnestly longing for his glorified body – thinking he’d
be alive to see the Lord on that great day, he wrote: so
that what is mortal will be swallowed
up by life. The subject of
the resurrection of the dead in Christ and the transformation of the living
saints is found at 1 Corinthians 15:54.
Concerning the dead in Christ Paul said:
this perishable will have put on
the imperishable. But, when
referring to the living saints he wrote this, this mortal will have put on immortality.
Please
note the difference. This mortal refers not to the dead, but
to those who are apt to die, as all living saints are. And when will these saints receive their
glorified bodies? Immediately! This book says they will go immediately from mortality to immortality.
For our citizenship
is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus
Christ; who will (do
what) transform the body of our
humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the
power that He has even to subject all things to Himself (Philippians
3:20-21).
Our
bodies must be transformed (made to
be like Christ’s) so they can function in heaven. This will take place immediately (1
Corinthians 15:51) in the blink of an eye.
Let’s
move on to verse 5.
2 Corinthians 5
5: Now He who prepared
us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.
The
Greek word for prepared is Katergazomai (pronounced: kat-er-gad’-zom-ahee), a Verb, Strong’s Greek
#2716, and it means: to work out; to accomplish – as in
Philippians 2:12 - …work out your (own)
salvation, (i.e. from strife and its results).
It has the idea of making something happen and certainly God has not prepared all those who love Him for
some temporal secondary
blessing. Paul uses this word often in
this letter (2 Corinthians 4:17, 5:5, 7:10, 11, 9:11; 12:12). Our lives are not controlled by fate or luck
despite what many may believe, but by God.
Even our trials can be the means by which our spiritual maturity is
achieved (Romans 8:28-30; Hebrews 5:8).
God has prepared each and
every true Believer to be glorified with
Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:20-21).
God, who gave to us
the Spirit as a pledge – this concept of a
pledge had an O.T. precedent (remember, N.T. writers are Hebrews writing in
Koine Greek).
A
promise to pay a debt (Genesis 38:17-20; Deuteronomy 24:10-13)
A
promise of providing sustenance (1 Samuel 17:18)
A
personal promise (2 Kings 18:23; Isaiah 36:8)
This
Greek term refers to a “down payment” or earnest
money. It is the firstfruits, a pledge that the purchaser truly means
to acquire the whole crop which ripened first. The
firstfruits in Israel were that part
of the whole crop which ripened first, thus a pledge that the rest of the crop would follow. This means in no case is an earnest payment
something like the thing purchased; in every case it is part of it: the down payment.
Now
to assure us that He has prepared us for this very thing, i.e.
the eternal glory that is to come in
Christ Jesus, God has given us the
Spirit as a down payment. The
Holy Spirit does not have “all of us” yet, but thank God we have all of Him to
enlighten us and to help us in our time of need. The Spirit is the fulfilled promise of the
New Covenant of righteousness: who is given as a pledge of our
inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory (Ephesians
1:14).
Verses
6-9:
Therefore, being
always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we
are absent from the Lord – For we walk by faith, not by sight – we are of good
courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home
with the Lord. Therefore we also have as
our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.
In
the section, 5:1 – 5:5, and in Paul’s other letters to be sure, it speaks, as a
whole, of two physical bodies for the Believer.
The one has to do with this life; the other with the life to come,
5:1. The one, Paul refers to as tent, the other a building from God 5:1. The
one is earthly; the other is from heaven
5:2. The one is temporary; the other
is eternal 5:1. In the one we groan, being burdened, in the other we are forever blessed 5:4. In view
of all this promised coming glory that
our Apostle Paul has declared, Therefore,
being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body
we are absent from the Lord – For we walk by faith, not by sight (v6-7).
Our
glorious position in Christ Jesus in
the heavenlies, as well as all of our spiritual blessings there, are enjoyed by faith, not by sight. Although our relationship with other
Believers may fall into the uncertain category at times, our relationship with
the Lord is never in question. But this
present situation is not the best due to the effects of lingering sin in our
lives; it is a future event, we enjoy it by
faith, which leads Paul to say in
verse 8:
We are of good
courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home
with the Lord.
Why
is Paul talking like this? If you’ll
recall, he had recently suffered an illness that had him on his deathbed up
there in Philippi, after leaving the
beast down in Ephesus. The attacks
from his adversaries were ongoing and relentless; these included the spiritual
attacks from Satan. Let us not forget
the Corinthian church issues that upset Paul so much. He was well aware of the unfinished work to
be done there and elsewhere.
This
is an immediate, one-way trip beautifully expressed in Philippians
1:23-24: But I am hard-pressed from both directions,
having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better, yet to remain on in the flesh is more
necessary for your sake. Paul felt pressured from two directions; his deep
longing to be with Christ and his
responsibility to minister to the Believers.
This sentiment takes right into verse 9.
Therefore we also (labour - KJV) have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing
to Him – I don’t know if you’re aware, but our Apostle Paul referred to
himself as the Lord’s bondslave in
Romans 1:1; Philippians 1:1, 2:7, and Titus 1:1. In plain English this means his life was not
his own. By this statement Paul means to
say he was purchased by Jesus Christ from the slave market of sin: But
thanks be to God that though you were (what) slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of
teaching to which you were committed (Romans 6:17).
But now having been
freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in
sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life (Romans 6:22). One of the things Paul is saying here is everything
we do and say has eternal consequences. Therefore, as we go about our business each
day our goal is to please the Lord
Jesus Christ (Romans 12:1; Ephesians 5:8-10; Philippians 4:8; Colossians 1:10,
3:1-2; Titus 2:9). Make sure you note that in your day-planner. It should be the first thing you read every
morning. The reason for this is given is
verses 10-12. Paul warned Believers once
before about this future event at Romans 14:10, and now he’s doing it again for
the Corinthians benefit (and ours, of course) because it’s not something we
should forget or consider too lightly.
Paul’s referring to the Judgment Seat of Christ.
We’ll
pick up the lesson from here when next we meet.
Have a great week!
(To
be continued)
©
Copyright 2011
GJ
Heitzman’s Ministry
All
Rights Reserved
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