The future heavenly condition of believers
5
📚For we know 📖 that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 📚For in this one we groan 📖, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our dwelling which is from heaven, 3 📚since, then being clothed, we will not be found naked.5:3 Here “naked” seems to indicate a spirit without a body.⚜
4 📚For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened; not that we want to be unclothed, but clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life.
5:4 This seems to mean that believers do not groan to be rid of the present body, but to have a new body. The words “clothed” and “mortality may be swallowed up by life” are very similar to Paul’s language when speaking of the resurrection of our bodies in 1 Cor 15:54.⚜
5 📚Now he who has made us for this very thing is God, who has also given us the Spirit as a pledge 📖.
5:5 Believers are God’s workmanship, a new creation (v 17; Eph 2:10). And He made us for the very purpose of clothing us with a heavenly “dwelling” (v 2) – a dwelling place suited to heaven. See John 6:39-40.⚜
6 📚Therefore we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. 7 📚For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 📚We are confident, I say, and prefer to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.
5:6-8 Paul’s confidence and knowledge resulted from God’s revelation, and all believers may have them. Compare 1 Cor 2:9-16. In these verses he does not mean that the Lord is not with us now while we are in the body on earth. We know He is with all believers – 2 Cor 13:5; Matt 28:20; John 17:20-23. But believers are not yet with the Lord – in His immediate presence in heaven. Paul says that when they die they go into His presence. See also Phil 1:23-24. Compare Luke 23:43; John 17:24.⚜
Paul’s goal: To please Christ
9 📚Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be pleasing to him.
5:9 Since believers are going to enter the presence of Christ, and be with Christ forever, it should have a profound effect on the way they live. Paul says it did have this effect on his own way of life. Whether alive or dead he wanted above everything else to please Christ. Those who please Christ will not have the goal of pleasing themselves, but will live for Christ’s glory and the good of others. Compare v 15; 1 Cor 9:19-23; 10:31. Those who do not wish to please Christ are not true servants of God.⚜
Believers before Christ’s judgment seat
10 📚For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that everyone may receive according to the things he has done in the body, whether good or bad.
5:1-10 Paul now speaks of some of those eternal unseen things he mentions in 2 Cor 4:18 – an eternal house (vs 1-4), being home with the Lord (v 8), and final judgment and rewards (v 10). On these he “fixed his eyes”.⚜
5:10 Rom 14:10-12; 2:6; 1 Cor 3:13-15. Believers will receive rewards for deeds worthy of rewards, and denied rewards because of deeds unworthy of Christ.⚜
Reconciliation: God’s part and man’s part
11 📚Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord 📖, we persuade men. But we are clearly known to God, and, I trust, are also clearly known to your consciences. 12 📚For we are not commending ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to be proud of us, so that you may have some answer for those who take pride in appearances, and not in things of the heart.
5:12 2 Cor 1:12-14; 3:1-3. In this verse he refers again to his opponents at Corinth (2 Cor 11:13-15). He wanted believers there to take pride in him – that is, to be assured that he was a true apostle and teacher of God’s truth. Then they could answer the false teachers who took pride in mere outward things.⚜
13 📚For if we are out of our mind, it is for God. If we are of sound mind, it is for you.
5:13 Did his opponents say he was mad? Did believers there think he acted sometimes in an abnormal manner? (Compare Mark 3:21; Acts 26:24; 1 Cor 4:10.) He wants them to know that whatever he was, however his behavior seemed to them, it was for God and for them, not for himself. Compare John 2:17.⚜
14 📚For the love of Christ constrains 📖 us, because we judge that if one died for all 📖, then all died,
5:14 Here is a motive for his ministry greater than the one in v 11. How is it he could do everything for God’s sake and for the good of others? The knowledge of Christ’s love, the experience of it in his heart (Rom 5:5) was a compelling force which drove him on in God’s work. (Compare Luke 12:50 where, in Greek, the same word is used.) Christ was in him, as in all believers, and so Christ’s love was in him. Because he was fully yielded to Christ he was fully yielded to Christ’s love. Christ’s love here does not mean his own love for Christ, but Christ’s love for all men. Compare 1 John 4:10, 19. See Gal 2:20.⚜
15 📚and he died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them, and rose again.
5:15 Here was one great purpose of Christ’s death – to break people loose from their self-centered and selfish way of living and make them Christ-centered. See also Rom 14:9. We see this was the result in Paul’s case (v 9). Has it had the same effect in us? If not, do we know Him? Is our faith genuine? Being baptized into His death means to be baptized into His resurrection also. It means an altogether new way of life (v 17; Rom 6:4-7). Living for self is the ultimate disaster. Living for Christ is the ultimate blessing. See Matt 10:37-39; Luke 9:23; 14:26.⚜
16 📚Therefore, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Indeed, though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer so regard him.
5:16 Before he became one of Christ’s believers Paul, being without spiritual understanding, regarded others, including Christ, by outward things. Compare John 8:15. But knowing the meaning of Christ’s death changed his superficial way of judging. It caused him to view everyone in their relationship to Christ.⚜
17 📚Therefore, if anyone is in Christ 📖, that person is a new creation. Old things have passed away. See, all things have become new!
5:17 The word “therefore” links this with the previous verses. A person in Christ is a new creation. So naturally his view of Christ and of others and of himself will not be the same as it was before.⚜
18 📚And all these things are of God 📖, who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation 📖; 19 📚namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
5:19 Here is the message of reconciliation God gives His servants to declare. In v 18 Paul says God reconciled “us”. Now he speaks of God’s reconciling “the world”. This is in the past tense. Through the death of Christ God laid the foundation of eternal friendship between Himself and any human being on earth who wants it. He did not count men’s sins against them. He took their sins and laid them on Christ (v 21; John 1:29; Isa 53:5-6). This does not mean that everyone is saved. It means that all who will come to Him will be saved. To receive salvation people must receive what God has done for them and put their trust in Christ. If they will not they will perish (John 3:16, 36).⚜
20 📚Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. We beg people on Christ’s behalf to be reconciled to God.
5:20 God’s part in the work of reconciliation is twofold – He sent His Son to die for our sins, and He sends His servants everywhere to preach this truth. But people also have their part – “be reconciled to God”. This means to receive the reconciliation God has already made in Christ. It means the same as repenting and believing the gospel of Christ. Paul (and anyone else whom God sends to preach the gospel) was Christ’s “ambassador”.
An ambassador is one who goes to a place to represent another or others. He does not speak or act on his own authority. He speaks what he is told to say by the one who sent him. Christ is in heaven, but His ambassadors are on earth speaking in His name and giving His message. Through them Christ is appealing to people, begging them (the word for “people” is not in the Greek of this verse. Believers in Corinth to whom Paul was writing had already been reconciled). See how God begs people to be saved. Compare Ezek 18:30-32.⚜
21 📚For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
5:21 Here are four great truths.
Two, God made Him to be sin – that is, God laid the sin of the world on Him and Christ bore the guilt and penalty of it. God counted Him as if He were sin. Every sin of man, all that is brutal and perverted and vile and corrupt and every other kind of sin was put to the account of the Holy Son of God (think of it!).
Third, this was “for us” (v 14; 1 Pet 3:18; 1 John 4:10). God put our sins to Christ’s account so that He might not have to leave them in our account.
Fourth, God’s purpose in this was that believers might become the righteousness of God in Christ. This speaks of justification (note at Rom 3:21-26), and of union with Christ (John 17:20-23; Rom 6:3-8; Eph 1:1, 4). Christ Himself is the righteousness of God (1 Cor 1:30; Rom 3:21-24; Acts 3:14). Believers are united to Him and so become righteous in Him, and, in God’s reckoning, what Christ is before God believers also are.⚜