2 Corinthians 5:10

2 Corinthians 5 opens with two dwellings. One is “the earthly house of this tabernacle”, the body we live in now, which can be taken down. The other is “a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). In this body we groan, longing to be clothed with the house from heaven (2 Corinthians 5:2–4), and God, who made us for this very thing, has given us “the earnest of the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 5:5), a down payment that guarantees the rest. Verse 6 follows from that pledge. Its “therefore”, oûn, is a word of consequence: since God has given the earnest, we are confident.

These verses belong to a long stretch of the letter about Paul’s ministry and the hope that carries it through suffering (2 Corinthians 4–5). Paul has set the fading glory of the old covenant beside the lasting glory of the new (2 Corinthians 3:7–18), and he has described the gospel as treasure held in earthen vessels, fragile people upheld by God’s power (2 Corinthians 4:7–18). The eternal weight of glory that runs through 2 Corinthians 4 carries on into the earthly tent and the heavenly house (2 Corinthians 5:1–5), and from there into our verses.

The word for confident, tharrhéō, means to be of good courage, to be bold. Paul’s courage rests on the Spirit God has given and on the house God has promised, and so it holds in hardship. “Always”, pántote, means at all times, on every occasion, so whatever each day brings, it finds him confident. “Knowing” translates eídō, a verb whose proper sense is to see, used here of knowing something for certain. This knowledge is the ground on which the confidence stands.

The two verbs at the centre of the verse are a matched pair. endēméō, from en (“in”) and dēmos (“people” or “country”), means to be in one’s own country, to be at home. ekdēméō, with ek (“out of”) in place of en, means to leave one’s country, to emigrate, to be away from home. In the New Testament both verbs occur only here and in verses 8 and 9. While we are at home in the body, sōma, we are away from the Lord. People in Paul’s day knew well what it was to travel, to live as a foreigner and to long for home. The writer to the Hebrews says that the people of faith “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13), and that they desired “a better country, that is, an heavenly” (Hebrews 11:13–16). For us, that homeland is wherever the Lord is.

The body is a real home for now, and Paul treats it with respect. Some in Corinth were saying “that there is no resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:12), and Paul keeps both truths together: the body is a temporary dwelling, to be used well while we live in it, and its future is the resurrection.

Verse 7 stands in brackets in the KJV, a short aside that explains verse 6 before Paul finishes his sentence in verse 8. Its “For”, gár, gives the reason for what came before. We can be away from the Lord and still confident because we walk by faith, and our faith rests on the Lord whom we have yet to see.

To walk, peripatéō, means to walk about, and figuratively to live and behave. Scripture often speaks of a person’s conduct as a walk, and Paul means the way we live each day: our choices, our conduct and the road we take. Faith, pístis, is persuasion and conviction, a firm trust in God, in his truthfulness and in his promises, and where salvation is concerned it is reliance on Christ. Faith is the principle we live by, and it rests on what God has said about realities still hidden from view.

Sight, eîdos, comes from a root meaning to see and refers to the form or appearance of a thing, what can be looked at. Luke uses it of the “bodily shape” in which the Holy Ghost came down on Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:22). Here it stands for the visible world and the evidence of the eyes. Paul has just written, “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). Hebrews calls faith “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1), and Paul writes, “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17). Peter writes of Christ, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8–9). Hope works the same way: “if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it” (Romans 8:24–25).

This mattered in Corinth. Paul had told this church that “the Greeks seek after wisdom” (1 Corinthians 1:22), and some of them judged their teachers by outward appearance and polished speech (2 Corinthians 10:7–11). Paul pointed them to the unseen power of God and the work of the Spirit, and his own life of labours, beatings, danger and weakness was lived in the same hope (2 Corinthians 11:23–30). The kingdom we belong to is, in Jesus’ words, “not of this world” (John 18:36), and our understanding of what is real comes from what God has revealed.

After the aside of verse 7, Paul takes up his sentence again. The words “I say” were supplied by the KJV translators, who printed them in italics, to show that verse 8 resumes verse 6. The verb for confident is the same tharrhéō. “Willing” is eudokéō, to think well of something, to be well pleased with it, and “rather” is mâllon, the ordinary word for “more” or “rather”. So Paul is well pleased, and would prefer, to leave the body and be at home with the Lord. He looks forward to it gladly.

The home words of verse 6 now change places. There we are at home in the body and away from the Lord. Here Paul would rather be away, ekdēméō, from, ek, the body and at home, endēméō, with the Lord. The word “with” is prós, a preposition that often marks direction and also marks position, “at”, “by” or “with”, and here it places Paul in the Lord’s presence. The Lord, kýrios, is Christ, before whose judgment seat we will stand in verse 10. Paul says the same to the Philippians: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21–23), and he has “a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better” (Philippians 1:23).

Many in the Greek and Roman world thought of the body as a prison and of death as a release, and they lacked any hope of resurrection or of fellowship with a personal Lord. Paul’s hope is to be with Christ himself, and it ends in a resurrection body.

Because of this hope, Paul says, “we labour”. The verb, philotiméomai, is built from words for loving honour, and it means to be ambitious, to aspire earnestly, to make something one’s aim. It was ordinary Greek, used by Plato and Plutarch. Paul uses it of his aim to preach the gospel “not where Christ was named” (Romans 15:20), and again when he tells the Thessalonians to “study to be quiet” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). The Greeks and Romans prized honour, timē, with public praise and a good name. Paul sets his ambition on the approval of God.

“Whether present or absent” means whether he is at home in the body, alive on earth, or away from the body and with the Lord. His aim stays the same in life and in death, as he writes elsewhere: “whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8).

“Accepted” translates euárestos, well-pleasing, fully agreeable. To be “accepted of him” is to be well-pleasing to the Lord, living in line with his will so that he is pleased with our lives. Faith is where this begins: “But without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:6). The same aim lies behind Paul’s call to “seek those things which are above” (Colossians 3:1–2) and to do whatever we do “heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23). The next verse gives the reason this aim matters so much: we will all appear before him.

Verse 10 opens with another “For” and gives the reason for verse 9. “Must” is deî, it is necessary, one must, ought. The word covers what will certainly take place as well as what is right and fitting, and here it speaks of an appearing that will surely come. “We must all” includes Paul himself. “Appear” is phaneróō, to be made manifest, to be shown openly, the same verb translated “made manifest” in the next verse (2 Corinthians 5:11). Before Christ, every part of a life is laid open.

The judgment seat is the bēma, from the base of básis, a step, and so a raised platform or tribunal. In the Greek and Roman world officials sat on a bēma to give judgment and make public announcements, and those who judged contests awarded prizes from one. The Corinthians knew it well, for Paul himself had been brought to “the judgment seat” in Corinth before Gallio (Acts 18:12). The picture is of a public, official hearing, with Christ on the seat as judge.

Every one will “receive”, komízō, a word whose sense runs from taking care of something to carrying it off and obtaining it, here receiving what is due. What each receives is “the things done in his body”, the whole life lived in the body of verse 6, and it is given “according to that he hath done”. “Good” is agathós, what is good and beneficial. “Bad” is kakós, bad or evil, a word that takes in moral evil and also what is harmful or worthless. Strong’s sets it beside ponērós, saying that kakós describes what is bad in itself and ponērós what is bad in its effects. Solomon closes Ecclesiastes on the same note: “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14).

Paul says the same to the Romans: “we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ … So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:10–12). In his first letter to Corinth he pictures each believer’s work as a building on the one foundation, Christ, made of “gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble”, which fire will test (1 Corinthians 3:12–15). Faithful service will be rewarded: “of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23–24).

Each verse of this passage rests on Christ. The home Paul longs for is with him, and the way to it was opened when the Word “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God raised him from the dead, “now no more to return to corruption” (Acts 13:34), and so the bodies we live in now carry the promise of resurrection. While we are away from him, he is at the right hand of God making intercession for us (Romans 8:34) and preparing a place for us. The earnest of the Spirit in verse 5 is the Spirit of Christ living in his people.

Our faith rests on Christ, for “all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20). He himself trusted his Father to the end, and “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). His resurrection stands at the heart of saving faith (Romans 10:9), and as “the firstfruits of them that slept” he guarantees that “in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20–22). To walk by faith is to follow him.

Paul labours to be well-pleasing to God, and Christ is the one who pleased the Father perfectly. Jesus said, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:28–29), and the Father said at his baptism, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). We are accepted in him.

The judge on the judgment seat is the Lamb of God, “which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection (Romans 1:4). All things lie open before him, down to the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12–13), and he has given us newness of life to walk in (Romans 6:4). He will weigh what we have done with that life. In Revelation the elders cast their crowns before the throne in worship (Revelation 4:10–11), and the rewards Christ gives will end, like those crowns, in praise to him.

Knowing that the body is a temporary dwelling loosens our grip on the passing things of this world and sets our hearts on what lasts. In suffering, in loss, or in the slow decline of the body, we can be confident, because our future is held by God and he has given us his Spirit as its pledge. When a believer we love dies, we grieve as people who know where they are: at home with the Lord.

The judgment seat ahead gives weight to ordinary days. Our words, choices, attitudes and service all count. So we can look honestly at why we serve, and spend our time, gifts and money on what will last, building with “gold, silver, precious stones” (1 Corinthians 3:12). We live for one audience, and the word we hope to hear from our Lord is “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). Until then we walk by faith, confident, on our way home.