For many years I have heard about what takes place when we die. I have heard these things from the pulpit, from medical reports of people who understand something clearly at last, from friends and from TV. Some believe that purgatory (paradise) is your destination after death, or you go to the spirit world to be judged. Others contend that you are asleep in the grave until the Lord returns, some even believe you come back as a plant, bug, animal, bird, and even a blade of grass that get cut, walked on, and recycled. And there are some that believe we sit on the other side of the great divide waiting for Father Abraham to come show us the why across.
As a result of these beliefs, I decided to study what scripture had hidden in its pages, and the following is a short, but concise study from 2 Corinthians 5: 1-10. It is a wonderful study because it gives you a mental picture of the glorious ending of this natural life, and the new life we receive at that moment this life is surrendered. In the background, this study sheds much light on what happens after death and exposes our strange notions and rituals for what they really are.
2 Corinthians 5: 1-10: This passage tells us very clearly what happens to the believer when he/she dies. They go to be with the Lord. The chapter is intricately connected with v. 18 of the previous chapter in which we are told to look at the things that cannot be seen with the physical eye.
2 Cor. 5:1-10 (RSV)
“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body?”
Commentary
“5:1 “We know” in Greek is (oidamen), which means to know intuitively because of being the children of God. It is part and parcel of the knowledge that comes to us with our new birth in Christ Jesus. “If our earthly house of our tent” is what the Greek text says. Our real self is the spirit within us and not the body. The body is represented as (skenos) from (skene), tent, which stands for the mortal body. This mortal body has a house, (oikia). The moment will come when this earthly house will be taken down, and that is expressed with the verb (kataluthe), which is made up of the intensive (kata) “down, and (luo), to lose.” It is as if it was made of various parts, and it is going to be taken apart, loosened. The verb is in the aorist tense, which refers to a specific time in the future at which this is going to be done. It is in the passive voice, which means that we are not going to do it, but God Himself. At a certain time, God is going to loosen all the parts that are being held together by Him. That is what He calls death. It is the “loosing” time.
When that happens, we do not become extinct. We continue to live on. “We have a building from God.” There is a difference between the word that is translated earlier as “house,” (oikia), and what is translated as “building,” (oikodome), which means the building as a process, that which is being built, not that which is already built. In other words, while we are still alive, God is building a new house for our spirit which will be disembodied for a while when it leaves the body on earth. This indicates that God is not taking the old constituent parts of our body to build our new one, but He is building it completely new.
God is now in the process of building it; it is out, (ek), of God. The word “God” here is without the definite article, which means all three Persons of the triune God are engaged in building this new house for us. And then Paul reverts to the same word previously used, (oikiam), “dwelling,” which means the completed building even as our present building is now constituted. It will be similar, identifiable, but yet not the same because it is not going to be made by human hands, but it will be a product made directly by God. The word translated “not made with hands” is (acheiropoieton). The Lord used it in Mark 14:58 when he spoke of destroying, (katsluso), the temple which was made with hands and that in three days He was going to build another not made by hands. This is the same word, as we find in 2 Cor. 5:1. He was speaking of His resurrection body. Although His body was made of a woman (Gal. 4:4) the first time, no human being was involved with it the second time. So, it is with our bodies. The first time we are born into this world, our bodies are physically produced, but the second time they will be produced without human involvement. That is the first characteristic of our resurrection bodies.”
“The second quality is that they are going to be eternal, (aionion), which means that they are going to be characterized by what characterizes God Himself. The life that He gives us on earth, which makes us His children, is called “eternal life,” (aionios), (zoe). In speaking of eternal life, it does not only refer to the duration of the life, but primarily to the quality of it. The life of God becomes our life. We never lose this life that He gives us from the moment we become His children through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The word, (aionios), eternal, however, is always related to time (aion), “age, generation,” as contrasted to (kosmos), which refers to the material world. This word, (aionios), must be interpreted here as it is in 2 Cor. 4:8, 18 where it is contrasted to that which is temporal, comparing the temporal affliction to the more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Therefore, (aionios) must mean that which is not temporal, and which cannot be lost, broken up or destroyed. And where is this going to be? “In the heavens.” Paul uses the word “heaven” or “heavens” in his two long Epistles to the Corinthians only five times. In 1 Cor. 8:5 he contrasts it with the earth. In 1 Cor 15:47 he speaks of the Lord from heaven; therefore, when we go to heaven, we go to be with the Lord, or when we go to be with the Lord, we go to heaven. The third reference to heaven is 2 Cor. 5:2, speaking of our house which is from heaven. Thus, our resurrection body is not going to be made here on earth; it is already being made in heaven for us, and it is going to come from heaven or out (ex) of heaven and meet with our spirit. The only other place in the Corinthian Epistles where heaven is referred to is 2 Cor. 12:2, speaking of the third heaven.”
Study compiled on August 21, 2000,
from: The Hebrew-Greek New American Standard Key Study Bible
Compiled by Spiros Zodhiates, Th.D.
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