Sunday, February 19, 2023

Earthly Tent (Body) vs. Heavenly House (Body)

"Q: What about the Bible verse that says “absent from the body, present with the Lord (II Cor. 5:8)?”  
A: A careful reading of this passage, beginning with II Cor. 4:7, reveals that Paul is speaking about the trials and pains of this life, experienced in our mortal bodies.  
 
Referring to our earthly bodies, He speaks of the treasure of the gospel in “earthen vessels” (II Cor 4:7--a metaphor of our mortal bodies).  
 
We do not “lose heart” though (II Cor 4:16), because God has planned something so great that our present affliction will seem like nothing compared with what God has planned for us.  
 
Paul, the tentmaker, compares our present mortal body to a tent, portable and temporary (II Cor. 5:1) which will fail one day and we will die.  
But we look forward to the “house” (that is, our heavenly body) which God will give to us then.  
 
*Notice the contrast between earthly tent which can be destroyed and heavenly house which is eternal. 
 
Paul makes it very clear that our heavenly existence will be in a body, (the “heavenly house) like the one Jesus had following His resurrection (Phil. 3:21), which will be given us at His second coming (I Cor. 15:51-55).   
We look forward with eager anticipation to receive that new body, free from the ailments and frailties of our present condition -- “to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven” (II Cor 5:2). 
 
Notice very clearly that it is the changed, immortalized body and the life that goes with it, that Paul is focusing on.  
Between this present life, with its sorrows and tribulations, and the second coming of Jesus when the glorious new body will be received, for most of the saints is the period of death, when the body returns to dust as God promised Adam (Genesis 3:19).  
 
This intermediate condition Paul describes as “naked” (II Cor 5:3), that is, without a body. 
 
Because death is an unconscious state, when one dies the next
thing he will be conscious of will be the resurrection.  For the believer who closes his eyes in death, the next thing he will know will be coming to life when Jesus returns, so as far as their own conscious reality is concerned, it is as if the future life, in the heavenly body, follows right after this present life in the mortal body.
  
 
With this in mind, of course Paul could proclaim he would rather be absent from this body (the word “the” in verse 6 is the same Greek article as in verse 1 and verse 4  where the translators rendered it “this tent”) and to be with Jesus (in that heavenly body), but this statement in no way nullifies the clear Bible teaching that one rests in the grave between the two conditions of this mortal existence and that future immortal life."
John Anderson/F7