2 Corinthians 5:1 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Paul now shifts his thinking more to the future, which he introduced in the previous verses. He uses the illustration of a dwelling place and compares a tent to a building. Tents were common in that time. Paul was a tent maker. Many tents were made from tanned animal hides. Anyone who has worked with leather knows that it is a difficult job to do. Tents are temporary shelters that do not last long. They are especially used for travelers and nomads who have no permanent home. The tent in which we dwell now is our bodies which are prone to fatigue, disease, and eventually death. We dream of being Superman or Wonderwoman, but this is an impossible dream. There are no such things as super heroes with indestructible bodies. We will all die one day.
Our heavenly home, however, is built by God to last for ever. This new home will be an immortal body, risen and transformed to be like Jesus’ own resurrected body. He is the first-fruits, the guarantee of what is promised to all who trust in him. The Corinthians should already know all of this from Paul’s previous letter, 1 Corinthians 15, where he gives more ideas about this. Paul draws upon his previous ideas and connects them to the life of suffering and the struggles the Corinthians may have been facing. He offers himself as an example of endurance through suffering. We can endure suffering because we have our faith in Jesus Christ. This is all based on the promises in the Bible. We build our hope upon these promises. This hope of eternal, resurrected, and transformed life can sustain us while we live in our earthly bodies. There is a strong ethical aspect to this that Paul will highlight in the following chapters. He links his theology to his ethics, bridging the two with hope in Christ.
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