One of the most searching challenges in the Bible is undoubtedly Solomon’s charge to young people in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. He first says, “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’ ” (Eccl. 12:1). He then goes on to describe in relentless detail the progressive loss of faculties in old age—until the day comes when “man goes to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets” (vv. 2-5). It is a simple and unanswerable argument from a wise man:

• Our body (“dust”) is clearly wearing out (v. 7).

• Our “spirit” will soon return to God who gave it (v. 7).

• Therefore, we urgently need to turn to God (vv. 13-14).

How you respond to this will determine where you spend eternity and how you spend the rest of your life.

Responding to Realities

A common reaction to our aging is anger. Anger at being ill. Anger at doctors who can’t heal us. Anger at God who made us. Rarely is there anger at our sinfulness, though Scripture makes it plain that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Few humbly accept that it is on account of the fallenness of the world that “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

Sometimes the reaction is simply to deny the obvious and keep death at bay by pills and potions, exercise and rest, therapies and surgeries, all the while trying hard not to think of death and eternity.

What a liberation it is, however, to accept both God’s diagnosis and cure: to accept that our “outward man” is perishing and, through personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, to see the “inward man” is renewed day by day, even in the face of physical decline (2 Cor. 4:16). Paul carries this through death and into eternity: “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). He unfolds a three-part exposition of God’s answer to our short lives in this world.

A Promise: A Building from God (2 Cor. 5:1-4)

Given the shortness of this life, the first question has to be, What prospects do we have when this body wears out? Paul sums them up in verse 1 with a straightforward illustration employing a double contrast:

“earthly house…this tent” vs. “building from God”
“destroyed” vs. “eternal in the heavens”

The “tent” is our present body. The building “not made with hands” is our resurrection body. The message is this: Our present bodies are temporary, but God will give us eternal bodies in the world to come. First Corinthians 15:53 assures us that “this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,” and thus, “death is swallowed up in victory” (v. 55). This is the prospect for believers in the risen Savior, Jesus Christ.

The follow-up question is, then, What is the proper response of faith? (vv. 2-4).

First, we are earnestly to desire our new body from heaven (vv. 2-3). We want to be “clothed,” not “naked”—to be whole people made over for heaven, body and soul. Paul knows we are not so clothed until resurrection day, when Christ returns, but that makes him anticipate this all the more enthusiastically. We should notice, also, that this is not just his consolation but his aim, goal, and hope! It is something better than the best we have in our present bodies in this present age. Heaven is not “Plan B”—mere backup for the preferred continuation of this life, as if that were “Plan A.” If you are not longing for heaven, you are still too attached to the earth.

The reason for earnest desire for a new body is that we “groan, being burdened” (v. 4). We groan because our present existence has inherent problems that profoundly trouble us. It is not just a matter of aches and pains, blemishes and imperfections, and the onset of old age. It is rather, as Edward Donnelly observes, that “At present, our bodies hinder us in our Christian living.” He explains this startling but all-too-true statement by reminding us that our bodies “hunger, lust, and grow tired. Their demands can distract and divert us from God” (Heaven and Hell, Banner of Truth, p. 108). This will not be the case in heaven for “the Lord Jesus Christ…will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). Our present body will be changed, not exchanged, and “further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life” (v. 4).

In a passage of striking brilliance, A. A Hodge, the Princeton theologian, likens this transformation to the instantaneous restoration of sight and hearing to one born blind and deaf. “Some such experience will be yours and mine when we are clothed upon with our glorified bodies on the morning of the resurrection. Coming up from rural and urban graveyards, rising before the awful whiteness of the throne and the intolerable glory of Him that sits thereon, and passing through the interminable ranks of flaming seraphs and diademed archangels, the perfect senses of our new bodies will bring us at once into the presence of the whole universe, of the music of all its spheres, and of the effulgence of all its suns—of the most secret working of all its forces, and of the recorded history of all its past” (Evangelical Theology, Banner of Truth, p. 380 ). Our perceptions, our wills, and our expressions will all bear a new and transparent perfection because of the glorification of our redeemed and risen bodies “not made with hands.”

Paul is not a Greek philosopher. He doesn’t long to get rid of this tattered tent which is his present body, as if matter itself were a dirty and unworthy thing. He didn’t concur with Plato’s idea of the body as the tomb of soul, from which the soul awaits liberation. Rather, he longs for the building from God in all its bodily glory, redeemed in Christ.

Paul also is not a modern materialist, who clings to this body and tries to keep it forever young with vitamins and medications, and hopes for the day when all that ails us will be cured and our life expectancy will lengthen into all our tomorrows on planet Earth. The life of heaven is Paul’s goal and the focus of his deepest desire.

A Pledge: Certainty from God (2 Cor. 5:5-8)

How can we be confident that we will indeed have this body to come, in heaven? Paul offers three main answers, which reflect the practical relationship of the triune God to His believing people.

1. God the Father is Himself our certainty. He has “prepared us for this very thing” (v. 5a). This is just an appeal to the truth of the Word of God to humankind—His self-revelation as the sovereign God who created us at the beginning and recreates us by the gospel of Christ. It is an appeal to the God of the Scriptures, the promise of the gospel, and the work of His Son, Jesus.

2. The Holy Spirit is given as a guarantee ( v. 5b). This is an appeal to the work of God in the Church from the Pentecost (Acts 2) in terms of the experience of believers, as the heavenly Comforter has ministered in their hearts and lives (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13).

3. The Lord Jesus Christ is the focus of our faith, hope, and love. Accordingly, the exercise of faith confirms the hope of a new body from God in heaven (vv. 6-8). We are “always confident,” says Paul, for several reasons:

For one thing, being “at home in this body” means we are “absent from the Lord” (v. 6). That is to say, we have a destination, a home to go to, with our dear Savior. The tatters appearing in our earthly tent, painful as they often can be, are just signs that we are drawing closer to our real home.

Furthermore, we see this and draw confidence from it, because “we walk by faith, not by sight” (v. 7). The Christian is more impressed by what he does not see (but believes firmly on good grounds) than by what he does see. He looks in the mirror and sees his days here are ebbing away. He looks to Christ and by faith sees everlasting glory in reconciled fellowship with God. He “walks”—lives his daily life by faith, and so his hope in God’s promises is enlarged and his experience of God’s grace deepened.

Lastly, we are “well pleased rather” to look forward to being present with the Lord (v. 8). In unadorned language, we are even ready to welcome our impending death because it will bring us to Christ’s presence and to heaven’s glory!

Does this touch your experience today and every day? I rather fear we are, many of us Christians, afraid to be with the Lord, or at least afraid to leave this body, this life, and this world. But loving Christ can only make us want to be with Him. We understand that impulse when we are separated from someone we love here and now. We miss that person and want to see them soon. How much more must this be true for those who love Jesus!

A Practical Program: Living for God (2 Cor. 5:9-11).

Earnest longing for heaven is the engine that powers effective living on earth. This is the exact opposite of the “too heavenly minded, no earthly use” propaganda that bombards us from every side in secular culture. Many Christians buy this attitude, with the result that they not only do not actively hope for heaven as they should, but they do not even think to live out of heaven as they live in the world. Paul therefore sets out the contours of the heaven-focused discipleship that make for practical Christian living.

First comes commitment to pleasing God every day (v. 9). The starting point of godly behavior is the consideration that one day we will be present with the Lord. It follows that whether “present or absent”—living or dying, on earth or in heaven—our first priority is to be ”well pleasing to Him.” On the road to our heavenly rendezvous with Jesus, we aim to live a heavenly life every step of the way.

Further motivation comes from the conviction that we are accountable to Christ for our actions (v. 10 ). Here it is the aspect of judgment to come that reaches from eternity—indeed from the future day of Christ’s coming again—into our time and calls us to faithfulness in the details of living. The Lord’s people are already saved, and will be acquitted in that day, but Christ’s Lordship from that future last judgment informs our motives and our actions even now, as we unite with Jesus from our hearts in a righteous revulsion against sin and its consequences.

This in turn calls us to conscientiousness in our service to the Lord in a world that will certainly perish under Christ’s righteous judgment, unless brought to salvation in Christ (v. 11). This means, for Paul, proclaiming faithfully the gospel of Jesus Christ (see Rom. 1:16). He knows “the terror of the Lord,” not just because he was brought to his knees on the Damascus road when He first met the Lord (Acts 9:1-9), but because he anticipates the significance of the coming judgment of heaven for the lost. Paul was not disobedient to “the heavenly vision from his conversion and throughout his ministry (26:19-20) and was constantly seeking to “persuade men.” And he can appeal to the witness of heaven (“we are well known to God”) and to the testimony of believers (“I also trust are well known in your consciences”) that he indeed has a good conscience before the Lord.

The watchword for the Christian’s life is beautifully stated in Paul’s letter to another church: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). He is happy to live in his tattered tent of a body, but will be even more happy to be clothed with the heavenly building from God. “But if l live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you” (Phil. 1:22-24). Here is what it means to live for heaven and to live out of heaven. It is Christ now and even more of Christ afterwards.

Let us embrace the promises of God and live the heavenward life in Christ each day.

Gordon Keddie is the pastor of the State College Pa., RPC. He is the author of several Bible commentaries and is a member of the RPCNA Board of Education and Publication.