>> Jen: Good morning, faithful listeners, and welcome to the Bible Explained podcast. Grab your cup of coffee, because today we're going to be reading 2 Corinthians 5, 1 - 10. I'm very happy to announce that my fever is gone and I feel great. So thank you, guys. For
those of you who prayed for me, I do appreciate that. And, you know, as much as I complain about getting sick, the one thing I have to say that I'm very thankful for is just how amazing the defense mechanisms that God put in place in our bodies to actually, like, take care of sickness, um, that comes our way. You know, sometimes we forget how effective the body is at healing itself. Speaking of being sick, this passage actually kind of relates to
that. So let's go ahead and read this. I'll be reading, as I usually do, from the Web. Grab your cup of coffee or your cup of tea this morning for you crazy, uh, tea drinkers out there. Let's go ahead and read 2 Corinthians 5, 1 - 10. For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For most certainly in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, being
clothed, we will not be found naked. For indeed, we who are in this tent do groan being burdened, not that we desire to be unclothed, but that we desire to be clothed. That which is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now, He who made us for this very thing is God, who also gave to us the down payment of the Spirit. Therefore, we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the LORD.
For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the LORD. Therefore, also we make it our aim, whether at home or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
You'll remember in the last chapter, 2 Corinthians 4, all of these afflictions Paul was talking about that he and the other apostles were dealing with. And towards the end of the chapter, he actually said that they were light afflictions. Even though he was dealing with some. Some really terrible things, he called them light afflictions. And now in this chapter, he sort of plays off that idea as to why he calls his trials light
afflictions. Even though, like I said, we, we know based on Paul's life and based on the apostles lives that they did not have light afflictions. Like they were pretty deeply persecuted for their faith and betrayed and rejected and thrown into and killed left and right. So how could Paul possibly call all of those afflictions light? Well, he explains right here. For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God.
What's Paul talking about there? He's talking about his own body, our bodies. If the earth, earthly house of our tent is dissolved. In other words, Paul believes his own body to be nothing more than a tent. So think about it this way. Some of you guys might like camping. I'm not a camping fan, but I am a glamping fan. So whenever my husband and I, you know, go quote unquote camping, we always like rent a cabin or something. So it's not really true camping,
but some people love camping. And I see the appeal of it, honestly, I think it's a really cool thing that families do is go out and camp and, you know, get the tent and they're out in nature and they're cooking outdoors. And I, uh, see the appeal of it, quite honestly. I've never done it before though. But I can imagine for those of you who do camp in tents like real camping, I can imagine that once you get home, there is just nothing like your nice soft
bed and a shower. I, uh, just imagine that even as fun as camping can be with your family, once you get home, you probably sleep so well on your cozy bed, nice and clean and just feeling refreshed in your own home. There's nothing like your own home. Right? And so Paul is giving this analogy that our earthly bodies are like tents. We live in them, we move around with them, but they are not a permanent fixture. And they're not super comfortable
either. They are a temporary structure that we use until we get to our actual home. But it's really interesting here that Paul says if this earthly house, our tent is dissolved, meaning we die. We don't have to worry because we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, but it's eternal in the heavens. And that is why Paul can call his afflictions light, because he understands that this earth is not his permanent home. Instead, he's just passing through. And that's true for
everybody who calls themselves a Christian. We are waiting for our permanent home. And so that's why Christians don't have to fear death, because we have A hope of where we are going. Even though death, the act of it itself, seems kind of scary. Paul calls it nothing other than a tent being dissolved. Like literally taking down a tent. That is how he thinks of death. Because when he dies, he no longer has to live in that tent, that uncomfortable tent. He gets to go to a permanent home that is
just so much more comfortable. A home that God actually made for him and made for all of us. Then in verse two, for most certainly in this tent, we groan, longing to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven. If indeed being clothed, we will not be found naked. All of us here on Earth are kind of groaning. Even if you're a Christian, even if you have the joy from the LORD. There's just something that we know is not quite right about Earth because Earth is uncomfortable.
You know, I just talked about how I have been getting sick a lot. Not just me, but so many people I know have been getting really sick this year. It's been a bad year for, um, illnesses. But not just that. There's always something kind of uncomfortable happening here on Earth. Either we're in pain one day or something breaks in our house, or we have this huge bill we have to pay, or, you know, there's always something just deeply uncomfortable happening. So, uh, the earth is broken. And we all
know that it's broken. Whether you're a Christian or not, you know that there's something not quite right. And of course, non Christians try to fill that void, that feeling of brokenness, with all sorts of things like money or possessions or entertainment or sex or whatever. But the Christian understands that the only way we can really be freed from that emptiness is through God. God gives us joy.
He gives us happiness. But that doesn't mean that a Christian is going to be, you know, free from all pain and suffering and miseries and just gonna live in a paradise here on earth. That's not what that means. Because the earth is still corrupt. It's still broken. Bad things are still going to happen to us. We're still gonna get sick. Uh, we're gonna have to deal with issues and other problems that pop up all the time because the world is broken. And Paul
understands this. He says we are groaning here on Earth. In fact, not just we, but actually all of creation is groaning. So if you turn to Romans, chapter 8, 18 - 25, I'm going to read this out, uh, of the NLT version. This is talking about all of creation just waiting for God to return. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory that He will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for the future day when God will
reveal who His children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope. The creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, right up to this present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us
as a foretaste of the future glory. For we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We too wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies that He has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. If we already have something, we don't need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don't have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently. And that
couldn't be more straightforward, right? Paul is saying all of creation is groaning. The trees, the animals, everything that breathes basically is groaning, waiting for God to return. And us Christians are groaning, too. We're groaning because things are corrupted. We still have to deal with sin. We still have to deal with suffering. And of course we're going to groan through that. But Christians have a tendency to give bad advice to people who are depressed or who are suffering.
They'll just say, well, just have joy in the LORD. You're just supposed to have joy in the LORD. Well, yes, we do have joy in the LORD. And God certainly can help us get past depression and anxiety and fear and whatever else we might be struggling with. God can help us with those things, and He does. But we still also will have discouragement and suffering and depression in this life. We are all groaning,
every single one of us. And the earth groans right along with us because we are longing for this fellowship that we have with God. We only have a foretaste, Paul says, of the future glory. That foretaste is, of course, the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. And the Holy Spirit really does help us when we are at our weakest points. You know, there's been so many times that when I'm feeling just depressed or anxious, if I just sit down to pray or read my Bible, that depression
and that anxiety just kind of goes away. Not saying it won't come back, because it will. I mean, just look at the Psalms. And on Fridays, I've been going through the psalms with the members and it's amazing how David can write just a psalm of complete joy and happiness one day, and then you turn the page and the next, uh, psalm is, God, why have you forsaken me? Basically, and the same man wrote both of those psalms, the Psalm of joy and the Psalm of suffering. So it's
going to come back. But the Holy Spirit helps us during those times of weakness that we have. And he gives us this joy, this peace, this comfort when we need it the most. And going back to our passage for today, reading verse four. It says, for indeed, we who are in this tent do groan being burdened. Not that we desire to be unclothed, but that we desire to be clothed. That which is mortal may be swallowed up by life. All of us know that there's something just wrong with
death. We hate death. We don't like it, naturally, because death is truly unnatural to us. God did not create people to die. When He put Adam and Eve in the garden. He made them perfect and without sin, and He gave them life. And He told them, if you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die. And yet they went and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so the death came in because the sin nature came in. So
naturally. We all hate death because we know that it is unnatural to us. So we're burdened by that. Paul says, and we're also waiting for the day that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. So these mortal bodies will someday be changed to something immortal, to something absolutely glorious. Now, he who made us for this very thing is God, who also gave us the
down payment of the Spirit. That's verse five. And that's how we know about the glory to come, because we have the down payment of the Holy Spirit. We have been given something tremendous. We have been given God's own Spirit to help us. But the Holy Spirit is just a foretaste as to the glory that we are someday going to experience. And so this is why the Christian should not be overwhelmed by fear at the thought of death. Because death actually means
something good. It means that we no longer have to deal with the suffering, with the groaning, with the disasters and the traumas of this life. Because once we die, we get to actually be in a perfect place, the way God created us to be immortal in a resurrected body. And then Paul goes into that idea a little bit more. He says, therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in this body, we are absent from the LORD. So right now you and I are at home in our
tents, in our bodies. And that means we are absent from the LORD, which is why we groan ultimately, because God designed us to actually have fellowship and communion with Him. And that is part of our design not being fulfilled because of the sin nature. So we are not living with God. We don't have that fellowship and communion God designed us to have with Him. So while we are in our present bodies, we are absent from the LORD, but we walk by faith, not by sight. This might be one of the most
famous verses in the entire Bible. But really think about what that verse means. We are walking through life using faith instead of what we can see. Because as of right now, we don't see God in His glory. We do see evidence of God wherever we go. I mean, we can see creation, we can see evidence of God, but we don't physically see God in all of his glory. So we Christians have to walk by faith rather than sight. Because all of these promises in scripture, many of
them we haven't seen. We never saw Jesus come down to earth. We have to believe in what scripture tells us that a man named Jesus was God in human flesh and He came down to earth to save us from our sins. We have to believe that based upon scripture and based upon history, that there was some somebody named Jesus, because there's so much historical evidence for Jesus existing. But we have to believe that in our hearts we're walking by faith, believing that
Jesus did come down to earth and that he was God. And then also even what Paul is talking about in this portion today, we Christians have to have faith that because we believe in Jesus, that God is going to give us a brand new body once we die. We have to believe that and have faith in that, because we can't see that here on earth. When people die, we don't see where they go. We don't see what happens other
than, uh, what happens to their body. We have to have faith that their soul actually departed from their earthly body and that they either went to heaven or to hell. So we walk by faith and not by sight. Then in verse eight, we are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from our body and to be at home with the LORD. That verse is so powerful, we Christians can't hold onto this life. The natural human emotion is to want to hold onto our lives because we're scared of
death. We are scared of what is going to happen after we die. We don't want to experience death. We don't want the pain of death. We don't want the suffering of death. We don't want to experience any of that. But we have to be courageous and be willing to rather be with God than to be here in our earthly tents. And Paul calls that courage. And honestly, that is very
courageous. And I've actually known people like that who weren't, uh, scared of death, who were dying actually, and weren't scared of death because they had so much faith. They were walking by faith and not by sight. They had so much faith in God that they were not afraid of death and were willing to die. That is courage. Therefore, also, we make it our aim, whether at home or absent, to be well pleasing to him.
For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Now, I actually have to say something. Even though we've talked about the judgment seat of Christ before, specifically in 1, uh, Corinthians 3, we talked about it, which I'm going to read that passage again in a
minute. I have to say I didn't exactly realize the meaning of the phrase judgment seat of Christ, because every time I've thought about it before, I always thought of us, you know, someday going before God the Father and, you know, Jesus kind of being at our side and helping us along. But it specifically says that it's the judgment seat of Christ. Christ is Jesus Christ equals Messiah.
So now I'm wondering, when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, is it Christ we are actually standing in front of and He's the one judging us? I never thought about that before until today, but I have to do more research on that. So I'm not 100% sure, but that's kind of what it sounds like. It sounds like the judgment seat of Christ is us standing before Jesus and having to give an account of everything that we
have done here on earth. But before I get to the judgment seat of Christ, notice what Paul says in verse nine. He says, whether at home or absent, we strive to be well pleasing to God. That's our aim. Whether we are here on earth or our souls have departed up into heaven, our goal is always going to be to please God. That is the Christian's goal. Whether we are on earth or in heaven, we are just going to be striving to please God non stop, because that's
another thing we are created to do. Not only were we created to have fellowship and communion with God, but we are also created to worship God. So whether we're here on Earth or we're in heaven. That should be one of the things that we are doing is, uh, worshiping. Because at least that one, even though we can't really live with God right now here on earth, we can worship Him. And I can honestly say worship is so fulfilling. And worship doesn't just mean listening to
worship music or singing or something like that. Worship can be through prayer. It can be through poems, through evangelizing, through art, dancing. It can be. It can take on so many different forms. Worship can. I mean, look at the Psalms once again, and how many different instruments and how many different ways David was worshiping God in the Psalms. So worship is one way that we can fill that empty void that we feel here on earth.
But now, this idea of the judgment seat of Christ, he says in verse 10, for we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Paul means that the things that we do right now are the things we are going to be judged for, not the things that we do after we die, but the things we do here on earth. That is what we are going to be judged
for. So we better make the most of our life here and now, because this is what God is going to look at. Let's read 1 Corinthians 3, 10 - 15. This talks more about the judgment seat of Christ. I'll be reading this out. Uh, of the NIV version. It says, by the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care, for no one can lay a foundation other than the one
already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss, but yet will be saved, even though only as escaping through the
flames. So some people actually think that, uh, those verses are talking about purgatory, but actually we know that they're not because of our passage for today. 2 Corinthians 5. Paul specifically says that when we are absent from the body, we are at home with the LORD. That is verse 8, 2nd Corinthians 5, 8. So scripturally, there is no purgatory we don't go through like a cleansing fire or anything before we can actually get to heaven.
Instead, this cleansing fire that Paul is discussing in 1 Corinthians 3 is the judgment seat of Christ. Apparently, once we're already out of our bodies and with Christ, we will experience the judgment seat of Christ and some sort of refining fire is going to take place. This wouldn't be the same as like hellfires, by the way. This is something else. And we're not exactly sure what this is. We'll have to just
experience it to know what it is. But it's some sort of fire that takes place that burns up our works, everything we have done here on Earth. And if those works survive the fire, like Paul says here, kind of like how gold survives a fire, if those works survive the fire, then that's good. But if those works get burned up because they're made from bad materials like wood, hay or straw, then the only thing being saved actually is our own selves. But we're not going to get any extra rewards from
God. It's kind of what it looks like. Now, I should mention that is my interpretation of it. But we do know from Scripture that when we stand before the throne of Christ and He is judging us, we will have wanted to have done and a good job while we were on earth, because that is what Christ is going to be judging. So the time to start preparing for that day M is right now.
Well, faithful listeners, I hope you enjoyed today's episode and enjoyed sharing a cup of coffee with me or a cup of tea while we discussed Second Corinthians 5. Now, if you haven't gotten a chance to look at my website recently, I really recommend that you do, because I've done a lot of work on it and I finally have my statement of faith up there. I don't know why I didn't. For these past five years, I never thought to put a statement of faith
on my website, but I now have it up there. So if you guys are curious as to what my core beliefs are like, if you're just tuning into this podcast or you've only been listening in for a couple weeks or something like that, and you want to know more about my core basic beliefs and the theology behind this podcast, then please go over to p40ministries.com and you will find my mission statement over there in the
about tab. But while you're on the P40 Ministries website, look around and appreciate it because I did a lot of hard work on it. Alright, faithful listeners, I will see you guys all. Tomorrow, we'll be discussing the last little bit of second kings in the morning, 6am or whenever you choose to wake up and listen. Happy listening and God bless.