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2 Corinthians 5:1-8 – Assurance of Eternal Life

Paul compares the body to a house in which the soul lives in verse 1. He’s focusing on that state of our souls right at the point of death. What happens when we die? And his point is that when our physical bodies die, that our souls aren’t just homeless. Paul says that upon our deaths, our souls are immediately received into the glorious presence of God, we immediately go to that home, that harbor that God gives to us. Just think of what Jesus said to the disciples in John chapter 14. “In my Father’s house there are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am you may be also.” He is confessing and promising that there is a home, there is a house for us upon our deaths. He promises that He would come and take us to that home. The emphasis is not on pearly gates or streets of gold, but the emphasis is upon who we will find in that heavenly house. The weight of glory and the house to which we are received is the house of God Himself.

Not only does God build us a house, but He clothes us. Verses 2-4 talk about the clothes that God gives to us. Paul mixes metaphors here when he says we’ll be clothed in a house. It’s a promise of everlasting life that Paul says evokes a longing and a desire. Paul talks about our groaning in this life. The first groaning that he mentions is the groaning of desire, the groaning of anticipation of something good that is about to arrive. For Paul and for all Christians, God has given us something real and substantial in which to place our hope. Paul says, even if the outward man is perishing, our hope isn’t in strength of man, body or mind. Our hope is that Jesus Christ saves. In verse 4, Paul talks about a different type of groaning. Does Paul long for death? No, he longs for something else. He longs for mortality to be swallowed up in life. He longs for the frailty, the effects of sin, and for death to be done away with. Paul doesn’t long for death, he longs for life. He longs for that eternal life that we have with Christ in eternity. It will happen when we pass out of this life, and it will happen in the final sense when Jesus comes again, and all men are resurrected, and there will be no more death.

Question

  1. What two comparisons does Paul make here?

Prayer Points

  1. Pray that we would long for eternal life with Christ.
  2. Use prayer points from your congregation.
  3. Pray for family matters.