A Building Of God

2 Corinthians 5

Vs. 1-8.........Longing to be in the presence of the Lord, in our resurrected body!

Paul’s 1st statement here is coming from the heart of the one that is exposed in the outward to death daily, as he spoke of in ch. 4.

Paul knew that death could take him any day. And he wants the Corinthians to know how he deals with this.

The key is down in verse 6: “being always of good courage,” and then in verse 8, “we are of good courage.” That verb means to be cheerful. It means to have joy, to have happiness, to be confident, to be content. And that is how he faced death: confidently, contentedly, joyfully, cheerfully, patiently, peaceably. In fact, as we have been learning, he preferred it to life. That is an amazing way to live. Here was a man who actually preferred to die.

The first verse states that he would that he would rather be raptured and go from this body of death to God’s body, the resurrected body.

John spoke of this in his epistle.....1 John 3:2 “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

This will happen when Jesus comes!

At the rapture we will have our body that is not made with earthly things but by the Word of God!

He longed for that natural body to go into the ground, as it were, and to be raised a spiritual body. He longed to have the body of his humble state made like the body of the glory of Christ. He longed to be like Jesus Christ. He, along with all other believers, was groaning for the redemption of his body, and he knew the next body is the best one. He was weary of the limitations, debilitations, temptations, iniquities of his flesh, and so he faced death with confidence and anticipation, because he wanted that body that was the body of glory.

When he moves onto verse 2-8, Paul not only knew that the next body is the best, but he knew that the next life is perfect; the next life is perfect.

What he wanted was life - real life, eternal life - that’s what life there means. He wanted what is mortal - the end of verse 4 - to be swallowed up in the fullness of the perfections of eternal life.

“For indeed in this house we groan” - or sigh. What he’s saying is we’re uncomfortable in this body. There’s a certain kind of misery in this body. We are unfulfilled. We are incomplete. We are imperfect.

He wanted it, and he wanted it passionately. In Romans 7:24, he says, “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” He didn’t fear death. He feared life in this world - so debilitating, so corrupting - and he would choose to be delivered from it. And in the place of this body, he wanted his glorified body.

“Not to be found naked” what does Paul mean by that.....There a lot of interpretations of this.....it is pretty interesting......

Naked could mean not in the presence of the Lord.

Some say that he is speaking of that we just be in a spirit, he longed to be in the resurrected body in the presence of the Lord!\

This is a confidence that we not just be a floating around spirit.....hear this thought out.......I read after someone who had studied the pagan thought process about the duality of human existence.....

In the Greek culture, there was a reigning philosophy of dualism, and dualistic philosophy basically said matter is evil, and spirit is good. And I don’t want to go into all the reasons why that was a convenient philosophy; one of them would be you could do anything in the physical, and it had no consequences; so you can understand that it was popular. The spiritual was the highest, and the noblest, and the best. In fact, they even taught that some wayward, wicked deity created matter, and that the good God only creates spirit, because spirit is good, and matter is evil.

And the ultimate goal for the religionists in the pagan system that was being espoused at that point was that they would be disembodied spirits. In other words, they - they had as their hope to be freed from the confines and limitations of their bodies, and they would deny violently that there would be any resurrection body, since anything material was viewed as wicked. And the Corinthians, sad to say, had been influenced by this prevailing philosophy.

So, with that understanding it seems Paul is stating that we will have a body, which will be given at the rapture, but it will be a perfect body!

We will not be without a body forever.......seems to be the idea of naked.....not having, in the presence of the Lord, a bodily existence.

One last thought on this........ a Roman thinker said the body is a tomb; we need to escape from it. Plotinus could say that he was ashamed that he had a body. Another writer, Epictetus, said of himself, “Thou art a poor soul, burdened with a corpse.”

No less than Seneca wrote, “I am a higher being, and born for higher things than to be the slave of my body, which I look upon as only a shackle put upon my freedom; in so detestable a habitation dwells the free soul.” Paul wasn’t looking for the release from his body, he was looking for the next body; one that was perfect in the perfections of immortality

So, those that have died before the rapture have to wait for a body.......well, waiting in the presence of the Lord is not waiting at all.........There is no time in Heaven and this time without the body is not time to them, because it is not time to the Lord!

Verse 5....“God, fulfilling His very purpose for us, prepared us for a resurrection.” That’s God’s purpose - for no other purpose, for no greater purpose, and for no lesser purpose, did God prepare us.

Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

And that’s why everything in your life and mine as Christians works out for good, because God is moving us toward the fulfillment of His purpose, which is to make us like His Son.

I read this and was moved by what the writer said: “We look at our young people, and we say, ‘You got to make something out of your life. Well, you need to discipline yourself, you need to learn a good work ethic, you need to read, you need to stimulate your mind, you need to grow and develop as a person. You need to study hard as a student at school, you need to achieve something in the area of your giftedness, maximize your potential. Get to college, do your best. Shine in whatever area you are able, so that you can make something out of your life, so that you can achieve something.’ And that’s all good advice, and that’s all fine, but when it’s all said and done, it doesn’t tell one millionth of the tale of what God’s purpose is for you, because that can only be fulfilled in eternity future. So, in one sense, let’s not get overburdened by that process, since life appears for a little time and then vanishes away like a vapor. Let’s not overstate the case. Ultimately, only what you do for the glory of Christ and what impacts your eternity is going to matter, and if that does, then that’s marvelous.”

At the end of this life, during this life all that actually matters is what is eternity, what have you done with Jesus?

“Not only because the next body is the best, and the next life is perfect, but because the next existence fulfills God’s purpose for my life. This is why I was made.” One last point - Paul faced death confidently, because the next dwelling was with the Lord; the next dwelling is with the Lord. And here, as so often, we come to the pinnacle of heavenly anticipation: a new body, that’s one thing; perfection, that’s another thing; fulfillment, that’s another thing. But beyond all of those, here is the greatest reality........Verse 6.....to be present with the Lord........

There’s the final point: he wants to be with the Lord.

You say, “Well, doesn’t he love the people here?” Yeah, but he loves the Lord more, and really, it’s that simple. Who do you love the most? Always of good courage; he faces his funeral with complete confidence, cheerfully. Literally, it means to be of good cheer, to be happy. His attitude is not the result of an emotional high, as I said; it’s a settled confidence.

One writer wrote that to despair about death is unchristian......???!!!

Therefore, we walk by faith not by sight.....completing his point of 2 Corinthians 4:18 “While 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.” .....

He is telling us of what is not seen and the confidence that we can have in it!!

Vs. 9-10.......Noble Ambition (Labor).........Labor carries the meaning of ambition: “striving for something”......Not all ambition is good or contains great value.......Jeremiah 45:5 “And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not: for, behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord: but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey (spoils or reward for labor/fight) in all places whither thou goest.”

What was Paul’s labor for, what was his ambition? To be accepted by the Lord or to be pleasing unto the Lord. This was Paul’s highest goal.

I believe if we go back to 1 Corinthians 4......we can get an idea of what Paul is stating here......His highest goal was to please the Lord..........Therefore, in 1 Corinthians 4:3 “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.”

Man’s judgement is just not sufficient, in Paul’s conscience he was more concerned about God’s view of him than he was of man’s view and also his own view!

Why? because human’s views are skewed by their falleness! Paul was stating that he would never judge himself the way God would!

Therefore, he was more concerned about God and his life was lived in the view of our holy, pure, righteous, and gracious Creator God the Father!

What he is saying, is that we are just to low of court! My accountability is measured by God!

The ultimate verdict on anybody’s life and ministry is in the hands of the Lord. And if you understand that then you’re not seeking to get the verdict from men but to get it from God. It becomes the driving, compelling issue. It’s like 2 Timothy 2 where in verses 3 and 4 Paul says that the ministry, he says to Timothy, is like a soldier. And it says in verse 3 that the soldier has to suffer hardship. And then in verse 4 it says and the soldier has to disconnect himself from all the earthly entanglements in order that he might please the one who chose him to be a soldier. It’s the only one you want to please. This is the basic principle of all Christian living, you do whatever you do to please the Lord. That’s it.

You present your body a living sacrifice, you come to a renewed mind because that is well-pleasing, Romans 12:2 says. Some Bibles translate it “acceptable.” it means well-pleasing.

So really, he is saying if I have to stay here, I’ll stay. If I have to die, I’m willing to die. But in either case, it’s not going to change my ambition. Verse 9, “Whether at home or absent.” Now, he’s already used those words. Just to help you, kind of, with what’s in the text, go back to verse 6. He says, “At home in the body we are absent from the Lord.” Verse 8 he says, “We prefer to be absent from the body and to be home with the Lord.” So if you crisscross those, in verse 6 he says, “at home in the body,” in verse 8, “at home with the Lord.” In verse 6, “absent from the Lord,” in verse 8, “absent from the body.” So he’s got several absences and several at homes. So the question for the interpreter is, which of these does he have in mind in verse 9 when he says at home or absent.

Three good options. If he needed to stay here to do what God wanted him to do, he was more than happy to stay here and to fulfill the ministry that the Lord had given him to fulfill. But if he had his choice, he’d be transformed instantaneously at the coming of Christ. If that couldn’t happen, he’d rather die here because he was sick of battling sin in his flesh, and sick of the difficulty of life, and he just as soon be in a disembodied state with the Lord waiting for his resurrection body. And if he had to stay, he would stay, but that was his third choice.

So what he’s saying is whether I am living here in this life in my physical body, at home in my body, or whether I die and am absent from the body but present with the Lord, in either case my ambition is not altered.

And the idea that he would have to face the Lord someday elevated his sense of devotion to duty, didn’t diminish it. So he says the wideness, the breath of his devotion is demonstrated whether at home or absent, he’s going to be pleasing to the Lord.

What really moved Paul was this tremendous accountability that he had.......

Back in 1 Cor. 4 Paul stated that it was a small thing that they or himself judged him, because???? We all (believers) will stand before the judgement seat of Christ!

We will appear before Christ in His judgement seat.......

I have a somewhat new thought on this time of judgement before Christ......I must admit i have struggled with this throughout my Christian walk......

The motivation Paul had for what he did for Christ’s sake was Christ Himself! One of the most profound understandings that Paul had was that we would stand before Him and give an account of the deeds of the body, whether good or bad.....1 Corinthians 3:12–15 “Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”

Good......Valuable as far as eternity goes

Bad.....worthless as far as eternity goes

Hay, wood, and stubble have their uses but their value is not eternal, it does not stand the test of being tried by fire....

Gold, silver, and precious stones make it through the fire.......seems to be speaking of what we done in our earthly lives that has eternal value.

I heard it put this way: If I spent the day studying God’s Word.....that is a precious stone.

If I spent my day in the mall.......that is hay.....worthless in light of the eternal.

If I spent my day in the mall, skipping down the way singing about Jesus or sharing the Gospel as I shop, now that has eternal value!

1 Cor. 3 tells us that as believers stand before Christ, they will be saved but works that were valuable or worthless in light of eternity will be made manifest!

Christ will judge and we will see about us!

Jesus sits on the judgement seat, similar to: John 19:13 “When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.”

This is not judicial, it is more athletic, for rewards....

The Lord has filled our lives with all kinds of wonderful things to enjoy that may not have implicit eternal consequence. You can pick up a beautiful bouquet of flowers and look at those, and looking at those and admiring those and the beauty of those and enjoying the fragrance of those may not have eternal consequences. It doesn’t make them any less lovelier; it doesn’t say anything about the fact that we should reject such appreciation of beauty. No, of course not, that’s all part of life. It just doesn’t have a lasting eternal consequence. So the point would be that while we do want to enjoy the things that don’t have lasting eternal value, we want to make sure we fill our life mostly with the things that do, right? And take the things that don’t and somehow put into them glory to God.

The judgement of Christ will burn away all the worthless stuff in our life and only what we did that has eternal value will remain.........One writer said that he thinks believers may be pleasantly surprised!

Verses 11-15.......Integrity.........The integrity that Paul and those with him had was motivated by:

Reverence of the Lord......God in His rightful place, in your understanding/belief!

Psalm 111:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: A good understanding have all they that do his commandments: His praise endureth for ever.”

Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: And the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”

That is motivation for Paul and us to live in such a way to honor and glorify God!

Concern for the church.....an occasion to glory on our behalf.....giving them a reason to be proud of them....

The church, before the others that take pride in the external, can glory in the Lord through the apostles rather than themselves.

Devotion to the truth......”beside ourselves” seems to point to crazy, wacky stuff, but Paul seems to be using it here to mean “dogmatic” stubborn about the truth.......

You can see this in politics today, when the truth is presented, the truth tellers get labeled as madmen or women.

Paul was giving a defense to Festus; and Festus, while he was giving his defense, said in a loud voice, Acts 26:24 “And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.”

Paul said in the last chapter.....I believe therefore I speak! If we are beside ourselves it is for God

Here was Paul; he came preaching. He came preaching Christ, he came preaching the cross. They said it was foolishness. They said he was so zealous, he was so passionate, he was a man who was mentally deranged. He was out of his mind, he was insane, not in some technical or clinical sense, but because the zeal and passion which motivated this man was beyond sensibility. I mean he would let himself be stoned. He would end up being beaten, whipped – all kinds of things would come against him. He had to be a man who’d lost his mind. He just couldn’t seem to pull himself under control. He put himself in jeopardy. He put his life jeopardy on a daily basis. “Can’t you tone it down?”

But he says, “If we are beside ourselves, if we go outside the normal boundaries of communication, it’s for God, it’s for God.” “Why am I enthusiastic? Why am I zealous? Why am I passionate? Because I want to give to God the whole heart and soul and body in the proclamation of divine truth.”

And a final thing – this is where we’ve been going and I want you to grasp this. The final thing was gratitude for the Savior, gratitude for the Savior, 14 and 15: “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.”

You just read two verses that you could write a thousand-page book on. The doctrine is so vast. And here, this massive doctrinal issue pops up in a simple set of words in which he is explaining his own personal integrity. What do you mean, the gratitude for the Savior? Look at what he says: “For the love of Christ controls us.”

The greatest motive, the highest motive, the noblest motive is the love of Christ; that’s what controls us. He’s not talking about his love for Christ; it’s Christ’s love for him, the love of Christ to him controls him, constrains him, motivates him, rules him, dominates him. The verb means “a pressure that creates an action.”

Charles Hodge wrote, “A Christian is one who recognizes Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, as God manifested in the flesh, loving us and dying for our redemption, and who is so affected by a sense of the love of this incarnate God as to be constrained to make the will of Christ, the rule of his obedience, and the glory of Christ, the great end for which he lives. The man who does this perfectly is a perfect Christian. The man who does it imperfectly, yet with a sincere desire to be entirely devoted to Christ is a sincere Christian. On the other hand, the man who lives for himself, his family, science, the world, mankind, or whatever, is not a Christian. The great question – ” says Hodge “ – is, ‘What constitutes a Christian?’ The answer: It is being so constrained by a sense of the love of our divine Lord that we concentrate our whole lives on Him.”

vs. 16-17....with all of what Paul had just written, we don’t look at men in the flesh no more, not even Christ.....it is in the Spirit and only the Spiritual......There was no more a human assessment of Christ.

In, through, with, and by Jesus Christ we are all new creations all the fleshly has passed away

As far as importance, what really matters is what is in Christ

Vs. 18-21......The word of reconciliation!!!!........Ambassadors of God’s reconciliation! Ambassadors of Christ!!!

5 times is reconciliation spoken of......reconciliation is the whole of life, the whole of reality!

Reconciled with God......God holy and pure reconciled with man that has fell willingly from God’s original design!

This is the whole of the Word of God!

Notice in verse 18, this is God’s doing! He did it through Jesus Christ His Son!

Understanding this truth and believing in Jesus Christ, no we/Paul was given the ministry of reconciliation!

This is the Gospel/ Good News of Jesus Christ!

Christ was the only sacrifice that could satisfy God’s wrath and atone for our sins!

Perfect sacrifice!

God was actually the reconciler, doing the reconciliation through the incarnate Son. It was a divine work. His plan, His power to accomplish it.

John 6:35–40 “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.”

Jesus came to do the Father’s will! God poured out His wrath upon Christ on our behalf!

Only one way, the only way that sinners could ever be reconciled to God would be if sin was no longer an issue, right? Because what is it that separates men from God? Sin. So for reconciliation to take place, sin has to be dealt with. Sin has to be not counted against them.

He looks at our unpayable debt and He says He’s not going to count their trespasses against them. In fact, how does He do that? By covering them with the righteousness of Christ.

It doesn’t mean that we’re not sinners in reality. We still are, but it means we are covered in the righteousness of Christ, blanketed, robed. And our sins then are made invisible.

“Be reconciled to God.” That’s right. That’s exactly right. And God is begging sinners through us to be reconciled to Him. And how does a sinner do that? Romans 3:26, “By believing in Jesus.” God is the just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. So we’re calling for faith. “To as many as believed in Him” – John 1:12 – “He gave the right to become the children of God.” It’s a matter of faith. What do we do then? We preach the message of reconciliation to sinners and we beg them to be reconciled to God through the means which God Himself has provided. We call them to faith. We call them to believe.

vs. 21.....God can justly not count our sins against us and impute His righteousness to us because of one immense reality. Verse 21, “He made Him” – Christ – “who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” There’s the key to everything. Christ had to be made sin. He had to die our death. He had to suffer our punishment.

As Peter says it in 1 Peter 2:24, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might live to righteousness. It was by His wounds we were healed.” This is the most powerful truth in Scripture, this one verse, and believe me, I’m not through with it.