2 Corinthians 5:4
“Earthly Tent, Heavenly Home”2 Corinthians 5:1–5
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Bible text: King James Version with Strong's numbers · Public domain
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible · Public domain
Bible text: American Standard Version (1901) · Public domain
Bible text: World English Bible, Messianic edition · Public domain
Bible text: Geneva Bible (1599) · Public domain
Bible text: Young's Literal Translation · Public domain
- καὶkaiAndG2532CONJConjunction
- γὰρgarforG1063CONJConjunction
- οἱhoithoseG3588T-NPMDefinite article Nominative Plural Masculine
- ὄντεςontesbeingG1510V-PAP-NPMVerb Present Active Participle Nominative Plural Masculine
- ἐνeninG1722PREPPreposition
- τῷtōtheG3588T-DSNDefinite article Dative Singular Neuter
- σκήνειskēneitentG4636N-DSNNoun Dative Singular Neuter
- στενάζομενstenazomenwe groanG4727V-PAI-1PVerb Present Active Indicative 1st Plural
- βαρούμενοιbaroumenoibeing burdenedG916V-PPP-NPMVerb Present Passive Participle Nominative Plural Masculine
- ἐφ᾽eph᾽becauseG1909PREPPreposition
- ᾧhōthatG3739R-DSNRelative pronoun Dative Singular Neuter
- οὐounotG3756PRT-NNegative Particle Negative
- θέλομενthelomenwe do wishG2309V-PAI-1PVerb Present Active Indicative 1st Plural
- ἐκδύσασθαιekdusasthaito be unclothedG1562V-AMNVerb Aorist Middle Infinitive
- ἀλλ᾽all᾽butG235CONJConjunction
- ἐπενδύσασθαιependusasthaito be clothedG1902V-AMNVerb Aorist Middle Infinitive
- ἵναinathatG2443CONJConjunction
- καταποθῇkatapothēamay be swallowed upG2666V-APS-3SVerb Aorist Passive Subjunctive 3rd Singular
- τὸtotheG3588T-NSNDefinite article Nominative Singular Neuter
- θνητὸνthnētonmortalG2349A-NSNAdjective Nominative Singular Neuter
- ὑπὸhupobyG5259PREPPreposition
- τῆςtēs[the]G3588T-GSFDefinite article Genitive Singular Feminine
- ζωῆςzōēslifeG2222N-GSFNoun Genitive Singular Feminine
English is a literal word-by-word gloss of the Greek, not the KJV's wording. Why?
This is the original text the KJV's translators worked from — each Greek word with its own literal English meaning in this verse, prepared by scholars at Tyndale House, Cambridge. The KJV translates whole sentences, not word by word, so its wording differs: one Greek word can become several English words, and the KJV may choose “charity” where the gloss reads “love”. Both are faithful — they answer different questions. For the KJV's own rendering, switch to the KJV text.
Words in [ ] are added by the English.
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Public-domain commentary
Matthew Henry
From his Commentary on the Whole Bible. Henry wrote on whole passages, and this entry covers 2 Corinthians 5:1–11. He set out his notes in a four-level outline, kept here as he numbered it.
The apostle in these verses pursues the argument of the former chapter, concerning the grounds of their courage and patience under afflictions. And,
I.He mentions their expectation, and desire, and assurance, of eternal happiness after death, 2 Corinthians 5:1-5. Observe particularly,
1.The believer's expectation of eternal happiness after death, 2 Corinthians 5:1. He does not only know, or is well assured by faith of the truth and reality of the thing itself - that there is another and a happy life after this present life is ended, but he has good hope through grace of his interest in that everlasting blessedness of the unseen world: "We know that we have a building of God, we have a firm and well-grounded expectation of the future felicity." Let us take notice,
(1.)What heaven is in the eye and hope of a believer. He looks upon it as a house, or habitation, a dwelling-place, a resting-place, a hiding-place, our Father's house, where there are many mansions, and our everlasting home. It is a house in the heavens, in that high and holy place which as far excels all the palaces of this earth as the heavens are high above the earth. It is a building of God, whose builder and maker is God, and therefore is worthy of its author; the happiness of the future state is what God hath prepared for those that love him. It is eternal in the heavens, everlasting habitations, not like the earthly tabernacles, the poor cottages of clay in which our souls now dwell, which are mouldering and decaying, and whose foundations are in the dust.
(2.)When it is expected this happiness shall be enjoyed - immediately after death, so soon as our house of this earthly tabernacle is dissolved. Note,
[1.]That the body, this earthly house, is but a tabernacle, that must be dissolved shortly; the nails or pins will be drawn, and the cords be loosed, and then the body will return to dust as it was.
[2.]When this comes to pass, then comes the house not made with hands. The spirit returns to God who gave it; and such as have walked with God here shall dwell with God for ever.
2.The believer's earnest desire after this future blessedness, which is expressed by this word, stenazomen - we groan, which denotes,
(1.)A groaning of sorrow under a heavy load; so believers groan under the burden of life: In this we groan earnestly, 2 Corinthians 5:2. We that are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened, 2 Corinthians 5:4. The body of flesh is a heavy burden, the calamities of life are a heavy load. But believers groan because burdened with a body of sin, and the many corruptions that are still remaining and raging in them. This makes them complain, O wretched man that I am! Romans 7:24.
(2.)There is a groaning of desire after the happiness of another life; and thus believers groan: Earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven (2 Corinthians 5:2), to obtain a blessed immortality, that mortality might be swallowed up of life (2 Corinthians 5:4), that being found clothed, we may not be naked (2 Corinthians 5:3), that, if it were the will of God, we might not sleep, but be changed; for it is not desirable in itself to be unclothed. Death considered merely as a separation of soul and body is not to be desired, but rather dreaded; but, considered as a passage to glory, the believer is willing rather to die than live, to be absent from the body, that he may be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:1), to leave this body that he may go to Christ, and to put off these rags of mortality that he may put on the robes of glory. Note,
[1.]Death will strip us of the clothing of flesh, and all the comforts of life, as well as put an end to all our troubles here below. Naked we came into this world, and naked shall we go out of it. But,
[2.]Gracious souls are not found naked in the other world; no, they are clothed with garments of praise, with robes of righteousness and glory. They shall be delivered out of all their troubles, and shall have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, Revelation 7:14.
3.The believer's assurance of his interest in this future blessedness, on a double account: - (1.) From the experience of the grace of God, in preparing and making him meet for this blessedness. He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, 2 Corinthians 5:5. Note, All who are designed for heaven hereafter are wrought or prepared for heaven while they are here; the stones of that spiritual building and temple above are squared and fashioned here below. And he that hath wrought us for this is God, because nothing less than a divine power can make a soul partaker of a divine nature; no hand less than the hand of God can work us for this thing. A great deal is to be done to prepare our souls for heaven, and that preparation of the heart is from the Lord. (2.) The earnest of the Spirit gave them this assurance: for an earnest is part of payment, and secures the full payment. The present graces and comforts of the Spirit are earnests of everlasting grace and comfort.
II.The apostle deduces an inference for the comfort of believers in their present state and condition in this world, 2 Corinthians 5:6-8. Here observe,
1.What their present state or condition is: they are absent from the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6); they are pilgrims and strangers in this world; they do but sojourn here in their earthly home, or in this tabernacle; and though God is with us here, by his Spirit, and in his ordinances, yet we are not with him as we hope to be: we cannot see his face while we live: For we walk by faith, not by sight, 2 Corinthians 5:7. We have not the vision and fruition of God, as of an object that is present with us, and as we hope for hereafter, when we shall see as we are seen. Note, Faith is for this world, and sight is reserved for the other world: and it is our duty, and will be our interest, to walk by faith, till we come to live by sight.
2.How comfortable and courageous we ought to be in all the troubles of life, and in the hour of death: Therefore we are, or ought to be, always confident (2 Corinthians 5:6), and again (2 Corinthians 5:8), We are confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body. True Christians, if they duly considered the prospect faith gives them of another world, and the good reasons of their hope of blessedness after death, would be comforted under the troubles of life, and supported in the hour of death: they should take courage, when they are encountering the last enemy, and be willing rather to die than live, when it is the will of God that they should put off this tabernacle. Note, As those who are born from above long to be there, so it is but being absent from the body, and we shall very soon be present with the Lord - but to die, and be with Christ - but to close our eyes to all things in this world, and we shall open them in a world of glory. Faith will be turned into sight.
III.He proceeds to deduce an inference to excite and quicken himself and others to duty, 2 Corinthians 5:9-11.
So it is that well-grounded hopes of heaven will be far from giving the least encouragement to sloth and sinful security; on the contrary, they should stir us up to use the greatest care and diligence in religion: Wherefore, or because we hope to be present with the Lord, we labour and take pains, 2 Corinthians 5:9. Philotimoumetha - We are ambitious, and labour as industriously as the most ambitious men do to obtain what they aim at. Here observe,
1.What it was that the apostle was thus ambitious of - acceptance with God. We labour that, living and dying, whether present in the body or absent from the body, we may be accepted of him, the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:9), that we may please him who hath chosen us, that our great Lord may say to us, Well done. This they coveted as the greatest favour and the highest honour: it was the summit of their ambition.
2.What further quickening motives they had to excite their diligence, from the consideration of the judgment to come, 2 Corinthians 5:10, 2 Corinthians 5:11. There are many things relating to this great matter that should awe the best of men into the utmost care and diligence in religion; for example, the certainty of this judgment, for we must appear; the universality of it, for we must all appear; the great Judge before whose judgment-seat we must appear, the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself will appear in flaming fire; the recompence to be then received, for things done in the body, which will be very particular (unto every one), and very just, according to what we have done, whether good or bad. The apostle calls this awful judgment the terror of the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:11), and, by the consideration thereof, was excited to persuade men to repent, and live a holy life, that, when Christ shall appear terribly, they may appear before him comfortably. And, concerning his fidelity and diligence, he comfortably appeals unto God, and the consciences of those he wrote to: We are made manifest unto God, and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.
Historical interpretation
Four Centuries of Reception
10 surviving comments on this verse. Each one is dated, so this reads as a timeline rather than a list.
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How is it possible, therefore, that that seed should be after images of the angels, seeing it has obtained a form after the likeness of men? Why, again, since it was of a spiritual nature, had it any need of descending into flesh? For what is carnal stands in need of that which is spiritual, if indeed it is to be saved, that in it it may be sanctified and cleared from all impurity, and that what is mortal may be swallowed up by immortality;.
Still further did He also make it manifest, that we ought, after our calling, to be also adorned with works of righteousness, so that the Spirit of God may rest upon us; for this is the wedding garment, of which also the apostle speaks, "Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up by immortality.".
This earnest, therefore, thus dwelling in us, renders us spiritual even now, and the mortal is swallowed up by immortality.
He who has perfected us for this very thing is God, who also has given unto us the earnest of the Spirit."
Then, again, questions very often are suggested by occasional and isolated terms, just as much as they are by connected sentences. Thus, because of the apostle's expression, "that mortality may be swallowed up of life " -in reference to the flesh-they wrest the word swallowed up into the sense of the actual destruction of the flesh; as if we might not speak of ourselves as swallowing bile, or swallowing grief, meaning that we conceal and hide it, and keep it within ourselves.
And again he says: "We that are in this tabernacle do groan, not as if we were oppressed with an unwillingness to be unclothed, but (we wish)to be clothed upon." He here says expressly, what he touched but lightly in his first epistle, where he wrote: ) "The dead shall be raised Incorruptible (meaning those who had undergone mortality), "and we shall be changed" (whom God shall find to be yet in the flesh).
To us continence has been pointed out by the Lord of salvation as an instrument for attaining eternity, and as a testimony of (our) faith; as a commendation of this flesh of ours, which is to be sustained for the "garment of immortality," which is one day to supervene; for enduring, in fine, the will of God.
Lastly, even if everything that is mortal in all the dead shall then be found decayed-at any rate consumed by death, by time, and through age,-is there nothing which will be "swallowed up of life," nor by being covered over and arrayed in the vesture of immortality? Now, he who says that mortality is going to be swallowed up of life has already admitted that what is dead is not destroyed by those other before-mentioned devourers.
It was accordingly not without good reason that he described them as "not wishing indeed to be unclothed," but (rather as wanting) "to be clothed upon; " in other words, as wishing not to undergo death, but to be surprised into life, "that this moral (body) might be swallowed up of life," by being rescued from death in the supervesture of its changed state.
Will receive our souls; so when this perishable life shall be dissolved, we shall have the habitation which is before the resurrection-that is, our souls shall he with God, until we shall receive the new house which is prepared for us, and which shall never fall. Whence also "we groan ""not for that we would be unclothed "as to the body, "but clothed upon"
Paul is saying here that we are oppressed by bodily sufferings and death.
"For indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan, not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon." Here again he hath utterly and manifestly stopped the mouths of the heretics, showing that he is not speaking absolutely of a body differing in identity, but of corruption and incorruption: 'For we do not therefore groan,' saith he, 'that we may be delivered from the body: for of this we do not wish to be unclothed; but we hasten to be delivered from the corruption that is in it'. Wherefore he saith, 'we wish not to be unclothed of the body, but that it should be clothed upon with incorruption.' Then he also interprets it [thus,] "That what is mortal may be swallowed up of life." For since putting off the body appeared to many a grievous thing; and he was contradicting the judgments of all, when he said, "we groan," not wishing to be set free from it; ('for if,' says one, 'the soul in being separated from it so suffers and laments, how sayest thou that we groan because we are not separated from it?') lest then this should be urged against him, he says, 'Neither do I assert that we therefore groan, that we may put it off; (for no one putteth it off without pain, seeing that Christ says even of Peter, 'They shall "carry thee," and lead thee "whither thou wouldest not;"') but that we may have it clothed upon with incorruption.' For it is in this respect that we are burdened by the body; not because it is a body, but because we are encompassed with a corruptible body and liable to suffering, for it is this that also causes us pain. But the life when it arriveth destroyeth and useth up the corruption; the corruption, I say, not the body. 'And how cometh this to pass?' saith one. Inquire not; God doeth it; be not too curious.
Now He that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit."
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This verse
We groan under the burden of this tent, longing to be clothed upon with our heavenly body so that everything mortal in us is swallowed up by life.
“For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened:”
The tent word and the groaning word of verses 1 and 2 return. “Being burdened” names the weight of weakness, suffering and decay in this body.
“not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon,”
Ekdýō is to take off clothes, to be without a body. Paul longs to put on, and death in itself is nothing he desires.
“that mortality might be swallowed up of life.”
Katapínō, to drink down entirely. Life takes in all that is mortal, as in 1 Corinthians 15:54.
Passage study2 Corinthians 5:1–5
Earthly Tent, Heavenly Home
Summary
Paul knows that the body we live in now is a tent, and that one day it will be taken down. He knows just as surely that God has a building waiting for us, “an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” While we live in this tent we groan under its weight and long to be clothed with our house from heaven, so that all that is mortal in us is swallowed up by life. This hope is certain because God himself has made us for it, and he has already given us his Spirit as the earnest, the first payment that pledges the whole.
The tent we live in and the building God gives
These verses come in the middle of a long stretch of the letter, 2 Corinthians 4–5, where Paul writes about suffering, endurance and hope. Just before, he has said that our outward man perishes while the inward man is renewed day by day, and that “the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16–18). Chapter 5 opens with the clearest example of those unseen and eternal things, the home God has for his people. Paul’s argument then runs on to the judgment seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10).
Paul wrote this out of hardship. The letter opens with his affliction and God’s comfort in it (2 Corinthians 1), and later he lists the beatings, shipwrecks, hunger and dangers he endured for the gospel (2 Corinthians 11:23–27). The church in Corinth was troubled too, by divisions among its members, by pressure from outside and by challenges to Paul’s authority. People who knew that much about weakness would hear the picture of a tent at once.
“For we know”
Paul begins with certainty. The verb is eídō, at root a verb of seeing, used here for what we know. He writes “we”, because this is a conviction he shares with his readers, and it rests on what God has promised. The hope of these verses is stated as something settled.
The earthly house of this tabernacle
The word for tabernacle, skēnos, means a tent, a booth or a hut, a dwelling for a time. In Paul’s day tents housed travellers, soldiers and nomads. They could be put up quickly and struck just as quickly, and they gave little protection. Paul uses the word for the human body, the dwelling in which we live now, and the picture tells us that this body is fragile, mortal and meant for the journey. Readers who knew Israel’s story may also have thought of the tabernacle in the wilderness, the tent of a people on the move.
“Dissolved” translates katalýō, to break down, demolish or unfasten, exactly what happens when a tent is taken apart. Paul is speaking of death, and of the wearing out of the body that leads to it. His “if” is calm. He speaks of death as something that may come, and he has already settled what lies beyond it.
A building of God, eternal in the heavens
Against the tent Paul sets a building, oikodomḗ, a word for solid, lasting structures such as a home or a temple. It is “of God”, made by him and given by him. It is “an house not made with hands”, and the single Greek word acheiropoíētos says that no human craftsman had any part in it. God alone made it.
It is “eternal”, aiṓnios, from aiṓn, an age, and the word means lasting without limit of time. The tent will be dissolved, and this house will stand for ever. It is “in the heavens”, where God is, and so it is as secure as he is.
Paul writes “we have”, in the present tense. The building is still to come for us, yet it is already ours, because God has prepared it and his promise holds it for us.
Is the building of God a new body?
The building of God is the resurrection body that God gives to his people, glorified and imperishable. Paul sets the earthly house, our present body, beside the building from God, and both are dwellings for the same person, so the one who lives in the tent now is the one who will live in the house. His fullest teaching on this is in 1 Corinthians 15, where he says that the body “is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). That body will be incorruptible, full of power and fit for life in God’s presence. Elsewhere he says that our conversation is in heaven, from where we look for the Lord Jesus Christ, “who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20–21).
This is why death, for a believer, is the taking down of a tent and the way into a better home. Paul goes on in this chapter to say that he would rather be “absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).
Why we groan in this tent
“For in this we groan”, Paul writes in verse 2, and in verse 4 he says it again: “we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened”. In both verses the verb is stenázō, to be in straits, and so to sigh, to murmur or to pray without words. It is a deep, inward sigh. Verse 4 names the reason: we are burdened. The present body carries weakness, suffering and decay, the marks of a fallen world, and we feel their weight.
The groaning is full of longing. Paul joins it to “earnestly desiring”, epipothéō, a strong word for craving something and longing to have it. So the groan of a believer is the sigh of someone who knows what is coming and wants it with all his heart. It is a holy longing that the Spirit stirs in us, and it lifts our eyes to heaven.
Paul uses the same picture in Romans. The whole creation groans, he says, “and not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:22–23). The groaning of believers belongs with the groaning of creation, and both wait for the day when God sets them free.
The body is part of the hope
God made the body good, and what we long for is its redemption. Some of the Greek schools of thought, Plato’s among them, taught that the body is a prison and that the soul longs to escape from it. Some in Corinth had questions and doubts about the resurrection of the body, which is why Paul gave so much of his first letter to it. The hope Paul holds out is a body perfected and made immortal. That hope stands in line with Israel’s expectation that the dead will rise (Daniel 12:2), and Christ has fulfilled it. Salvation reaches the whole person, body and soul, and God’s plan for his people ends in a transformed bodily life with him.
Clothed upon, and not found naked
In verse 2 Paul moves from the picture of a house to the picture of clothing. We long “to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.” The verb ependýomai means to put on over, or as Strong’s puts it, “to invest upon oneself”. Paul pictures the heavenly dwelling put on over the mortal body, so that what is mortal is taken up into what is immortal.
The word for house in this verse is oikētḗrion, a residence or dwelling place, and like the other words for house in this passage it stands for the body. This house is “from heaven”, ek ouranós. The preposition ek means “from” or “out of”, and it tells us where the house comes from. It is the same preposition behind “a building of God” in verse 1, where the KJV renders it “of”. Both phrases say that our future body comes from God, as his gift.
“Being clothed we shall not be found naked”
Verse 3 carries the clothing picture further. “Clothed” here is endýō, to put on clothes or be clothed with, literally or figuratively. Strong’s explains the compound as sinking into a garment. “Naked” is gymnós, and here it means being without the resurrection body. In the ancient world, and in the Old Testament, nakedness spoke of exposure, shame and lack. Paul’s hope is to stand before God fully clothed with the body God gives.
“Found” is heurískō, to find, see or obtain. Being found speaks of a moment when our state is seen and known, whether at death, at Christ’s return or at the resurrection, and God is the one who sees. The opening words, “If so be that”, translate eíge, which can also carry the sense “seeing that” or “since indeed”, so the verse expresses confident expectation as well as desire.
In verse 4 Paul says plainly what the groaning is for: “not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon”. The word for unclothed is ekdýō, to take off clothes, and here it means to be without a body. Paul’s longing is to put on, and what he wants is life.
What does it mean to be “found naked”?
Believers differ on the details here, and each reading takes the hope seriously. Some believers hold that Paul longs to be alive when Christ returns, so that his mortal body is changed in a moment and clothed with immortality, and he never passes through death at all. Paul describes that change elsewhere: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51–54).
Other believers hold that Paul is also speaking of those who die before that day. At death the soul leaves the body, and the time between death and the resurrection is real. On this reading Paul counts that bodiless state as something less than what God has promised, and he longs to pass beyond it into the resurrection body, where spirit and a perfected body are joined together for ever. Even in that time believers are “present with the Lord”, as verse 8 says, and some believers hold that God clothes them with a body for that time as well. The whole section, 2 Corinthians 5:1–10, stands behind each of these readings.
On every reading the end is the same. All God’s people, whether raised from the dead or changed at Christ’s coming, will live in glorified bodies, clothed by God and fit to be with him for ever.
Mortality swallowed up of life
Verse 4 ends with the purpose of it all: “that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” The verb katapínō means to drink down or gulp entirely. It is a picture of something taken in whole and gone for good. “Mortality” is our state of being subject to death, decay and corruption. “Life” is the eternal life of God, and it takes all of that in and leaves nothing of death behind.
Paul uses the same picture in his first letter: “this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality ... Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:53–54). There too the mortal puts on immortality like a garment, and there too death is swallowed up.
The life that swallows death is Christ’s
The life Paul speaks of is found in Christ. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). In becoming a man, Christ honoured the body God made. Through his death he destroyed him that had the power of death and delivered those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:14–15). He “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).
His resurrection is the pattern and the pledge of ours. He is “the firstfruits of them that slept”, and those who are his will follow him at his coming (1 Corinthians 15:20–23). His risen body was glorified and kept its continuity with the body he had before, and our house from heaven will be our own selves made perfect and immortal. We are united with him, planted together in the likeness of his death and so also in the likeness of his resurrection (Romans 6:5). Those baptized into Christ “have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27), and being clothed with him now is joined to being clothed with the heavenly body then.
Jesus himself said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions ... I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). The house not made with hands is part of what he has prepared. The end of it all is that “so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
God has made us for this, and given us his Spirit
Verse 5 turns from our longing to God’s work, and so it tells us why the hope is sure. “Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God.” The verb is katergázomai, to work fully, to accomplish, to fashion. God has shaped and prepared us, fully and on purpose, like a craftsman making something for its use. “The selfsame thing” is the very thing Paul has just described: the house from heaven, the clothing of the mortal with the immortal, life swallowing up mortality. Our future glory is the result of God’s own deliberate work in us, and what he has begun he will finish. Paul says the same to the Philippians: “he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
The earnest of the Spirit
God “hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit”. “Given” is dídōmi, to give, and the Spirit is God’s gift, already ours. The word “earnest” is arrhabṓn, a word that came into Greek from a Hebrew term. It means a pledge, a first instalment or a down payment, given as security that the full amount will follow. It was a familiar word in buying and selling, used for a deposit on a purchase, and also for part of a bride-price. Paul’s readers knew what it meant to receive a part now as the promise of the whole.
So the Holy Spirit living in believers is God’s own first payment on all that he has promised, and his presence now is the guarantee of the resurrection body and the life to come. Paul uses the same word in Ephesians, where believers are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, “which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Ephesians 1:13–14). By that same Spirit we “are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30).
The Spirit given as the earnest is the Spirit of Christ, poured out by him after he was exalted to the right hand of God (Acts 2:33). This is also the Spirit who will raise our bodies. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Romans 8:11). Even now he is changing us into the image of the Lord, from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), and his work will end with our being conformed to the image of God’s Son (Romans 8:29). The God who began our salvation is committed to its completion, and the Spirit within us is his pledge.
A home that outlasts the tent
These five verses give us a way to look at the body and at death. The body is a tent, and it will come down, yet God has already built a house for us that will never wear out. The groaning we feel in weakness, illness and age is the right response of a child of God who knows what is coming. Paul calls our afflictions light and brief beside what they are working for us: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Above all, the passage shows us God. He is the builder of the house, the giver of the clothing and the one who has made us for this hope. He has put his own Spirit within us as the first payment, so that the hope rests on his faithfulness. Death has its hour, and then it is swallowed up by the life of God.
2 Corinthians 5:1
“For we know”
The “For” joins this to the unseen and eternal things of 2 Corinthians 4:18. “We know” is the language of certainty shared by Paul and his readers.
“that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved,”
The body is a tent, skēnos, and its taking down, katalýō, is death. “Earthly” marks where this house belongs and how long it lasts.
“we have a building of God,”
A present “we have” for a future gift. The building, oikodomḗ, is solid and lasting, and God is its maker.
“an house not made with hands,”
One Greek word, acheiropoíētos. No human builder had a hand in it.
“eternal in the heavens.”
Aiṓnios, lasting without limit of time, and kept where God is.
2 Corinthians 5:2
“For in this we groan,”
“In this” means in this present tent. The groan, stenázō, is a deep inward sigh of longing.
“earnestly desiring to be clothed upon”
Epipothéō is an intense longing. Ependýomai pictures putting on one garment over another, the immortal over the mortal.
“with our house which is from heaven:”
The house is oikētḗrion, a dwelling. “From heaven”, ek ouranós, names where it comes from: God gives it.
2 Corinthians 5:3
“If so be that being clothed”
Eíge can carry the sense “seeing that”, so the clause leans toward confidence. “Clothed” is endýō, to put on clothes.
“we shall not be found naked.”
Heurískō is to be found, and gymnós is naked. Paul’s hope is to stand before God clothed with the resurrection body.
2 Corinthians 5:4 This verse
“For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened:”
The tent word and the groaning word of verses 1 and 2 return. “Being burdened” names the weight of weakness, suffering and decay in this body.
“not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon,”
Ekdýō is to take off clothes, to be without a body. Paul longs to put on, and death in itself is nothing he desires.
“that mortality might be swallowed up of life.”
Katapínō, to drink down entirely. Life takes in all that is mortal, as in 1 Corinthians 15:54.
2 Corinthians 5:5
“Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God,”
Katergázomai, to work fully and fashion. God has prepared us for the very hope of verses 1 to 4.
“who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.”
Dídōmi, to give. The arrhabṓn is the first payment that pledges the rest, and the Spirit within us is that pledge.
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