5:1 For {1} we know that if our earthly house of [this] tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
(1) Taking occasion by the former comparison, he compares this miserable body as it is in this life, to a frail and brittle tabernacle. And contrasts this with the heavenly tabernacle, which he calls that sure and everlasting condition of this same body glorified in heaven. And this is so, he says, in that we are addicted to this tabernacle, but also with sobs and sighs desire rather that tabernacle. And so this place concerning the glory to come is put within the treatise of the dignity of the ministry, just as it also was in the beginning of the second chapter.
5:1 The House Not Made with Hands
SUMMARY OF II CORINTHIANS 5:
The Groaning for Deliverance. The Divine Cloth for the Soul Which Has Laid Aside Its Mortal. Tenement. Absent from the Body, but Present with the Lord. Appearing Before the Judgment Seat. Dying with Christ. New Creatures. The Ministry of Reconciliation.
For we know that if our earthly house of [this] tabernacle were dissolved. Paul has spoken of looking for the things that are unseen and eternal (2Co 4:18). He now describes the body as only a tent dwelling, a temporary abode, in which we are camping during a journey. If death should come and the body be dissolved,
we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. There is another dwelling for the redeemed, the spiritual body described in 1Co 15:44, a heavenly and eternal body. To the saint, death is the exchange of the earthly tent dwelling for this eternal spiritual body.
5:1 Our earthly house - Which is only a tabernacle, or tent, not designed for a lasting habitation.
5:1-8 The believer not only is well assured by faith that there is another and a happy life after this is ended, but he has good hope, through grace, of heaven as a dwelling-place, a resting-place, a hiding-place. In our Father's house there are many mansions, whose Builder and Maker is God. The happiness of the future state is what God has prepared for those that love him: everlasting habitations, not like the earthly tabernacles, the poor cottages of clay, in which our souls now dwell; that are mouldering and decaying, whose foundations are in the dust. The body of flesh is a heavy burden, the calamities of life are a heavy load. But believers groan, being burdened with a body of sin, and because of the many corruptions remaining and raging within them. Death will strip us of the clothing of flesh, and all the comforts of life, as well as end all our troubles here below. But believing souls shall be clothed with garments of praise, with robes of righteousness and glory. The present graces and comforts of the Spirit are earnests of everlasting grace and comfort. And though God is with us here, by his Spirit, and in his ordinances, yet we are not with him as we hope to be. Faith is for this world, and sight is for the other world. It is our duty, and it will be our interest, to walk by faith, till we live by sight. This shows clearly the happiness to be enjoyed by the souls of believers when absent from the body, and where Jesus makes known his glorious presence. We are related to the body and to the Lord; each claims a part in us. But how much more powerfully the Lord pleads for having the soul of the believer closely united with himself! Thou art one of the souls I have loved and chosen; one of those given to me. What is death, as an object of fear, compared with being absent from the Lord!
