The Building from God

Anonymous

‘A building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’ (2 Cor. 5:1) could not mean a temporary habitation for the Spirit in our present mortal bodies while waiting for the resurrection body, for ‘eternal’ is the exact opposite to ‘temporary’. This building of God is undoubtedly the resurrection body, with the life and power suited to it. This body the apostle ardently desired. He had had glimpses of the glory, and in consequence he was straightened in his earthly tabernacle. ‘Here in the body pent’[1] would describe his feelings. The earthly body was unsuited to the glory that he had seen; it limited his enjoyment of it, and so he longed for the perfect, incorruptible resurrection condition — the body that God would give, heavenly in its character and entirely suited to the heavenly glory to which he was destined, along with all the saints.

His hope and wish was not the unclothed or disembodied condition,[2] but that his mortal body might be swallowed up of life (v. 4). This is the true Christian hope and has reference not to death but to the coming of the Lord, who shall change the body of humiliation and fashion it like unto His own body of glory (Phil. 3:21). Yet though this was his great hope and would be the complete satisfaction of his desire, yet as he thought of the Lord, his Saviour, he was willing and would be pleased to die, to be absent from the body and present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8).

We must distinguish between ‘unclothed’ and ‘naked’. Those who have died without Christ will be raised again but they will be just as naked before the great white throne (Rev. 20) as were Adam and Eve before the searching eye of God in Eden — the entire person unfit for the presence of God. But the Christian is confident that, even if his portion in the interim is to be unclothed (to die), he will be ‘clothed upon with our house which is from heaven’ at the coming of the Lord (2 Cor. 5:2).

[1] James Montgomery, ‘For ever with the Lord’, Spiritual Songs hymn 161.

[2] That is, the present condition of those who have fallen asleep in Jesus and are with Christ at the present time, which is described as being ‘absent from the body and present with the Lord’ in 2 Corinthians 5:8 (eds.).

From: Truth and Testimony, 2023