For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling…
2 Corinthians 5:1-10
The following anecdote is from the life of John Quincy Adams one day in his 80th year. He was approached by a friend who said, “And how is John Quincy Adams today?” The former President of the United States replied graciously, “Thank you, John Quincy Adams is well, sir, quite well, I thank you. But the house in which he lives at present is becoming dilapidated. It is tottering upon its foundations. Time and the seasons have nearly destroyed it. Its roof is pretty well worn out, its walls are much shattered, and it trembles with every wind. The old tenement is becoming almost uninhabitable, and I think John Quincy Adams will have to move out of it soon; but he himself is quite well, sir, quite well.” And with this the former President, leaning heavily upon his cane, moved slowly down the street. We inhabit a fallen form that is frail and failing. And yet so much of our time and energy is invested in protecting and preserving our bodies. While we need to be good stewards of the health the Lord has given us, we must remember that the “tents” we currently occupy were not built to last forever. Have you ever considered and looked forward to the physical realities of heaven? Paul says that when this earthly tabernacle of our body is gone, we will receive a new “tent” from God, eternal in the heavens as our verses today tell us. In Philippians 3:21, Christ Himself “will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” Our groaning will be ended when we are finally clothed with a heavenly body, with all the same amazing properties of Christ’s resurrection body. A glorified body alone would be good reason to focus all our hopes and affections on heaven, wouldn’t it? In this body, we groan because we are burdened by sin, sickness, sorrow, aging, and death. Yet we don’t want to be “unclothed,” without a body. We have no ambition, nor do we yearn for, a disembodied spirit. We want both our spirits and our bodies to enter the presence of God. That is God’s plan, but, we will receive our new body, made like Christ’s resurrected body, when Jesus returns in Glory and Power at the end of the age. In heaven we will have real bodies, changed and glorified, more solid than our current state, because they will not be subject to the effects of aging, injury, illness, or death. Paul says in verse 5, “He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the (Holy) Spirit as a pledge.” (2 Corinthians 5:5). So, the Holy Spirit is a token of God’s pledge to us that even our bodies will be made new and imperishable in the glory of heaven. This world held no fascination for Paul. He longed for the world to come. Do you find it difficult to say honestly that those verses express the deepest desires of your heart? There is a tendency for most of us to hold tightly to this world because it is all that we know. All our dearest relationships are built here. We too easily think of it as home. So we become captive to this life. But notice that Paul says he would rather be “at home” with the Lord. We are most truly “at home” only when we are finally with the Lord. We too should long to be clothed with our heavenly form. We should look forward to being absent from the body and present with the Lord. We should become more preoccupied with the glories of eternity than we are with either the attractions or afflictions of today.
Source: S C Ball November 29, 2023
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