A Word in Season: Groaning for life (2 Corinthians 5:4)

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This present body is like a tent. It is an earthly house subject to destruction.

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That's how the Apostle Paul described it in 2 Corinthians in chapter 5 and verse 1, at the same time holding out hope for every believer that we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

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We have something to look forward to. Now what's the proper response to that?

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How does a Christian react to that reality? Paul goes on to say in 2

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Corinthians 5 and verse 2 and following, that in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven.

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If indeed having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.

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Now he who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the spirit as a guarantee.

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A Christian can fall into two dangerous extremes with regard to our bodies.

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We can treat them in some respects like many in the world treat them, either indulging them or training them, treating them as if they are the be -all and the end -all and all pleasure and preservation of the body is the be -all and end -all of our existence here.

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It's almost typical of those who think that this is all there is. But there's an opposite extreme and it's one that crept into the ancient world of dismissing the body, demeaning the body, treating it as if it is of no value.

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And too many Christians today fall into that trap, even this sort of casual thinking that heaven is at last when we're free of this body or when our spirit is safe with Jesus Christ, as if that is all that we're looking forward to.

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And so they miss the fact that Paul, when he groans in this way, does not dismiss or demean the body.

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And he's not looking forward only to what we might call a disembodied state.

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He says, we who are in this tent groan being burdened.

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Now he recognises the burden of this body in this world, how susceptible it is to pain and to suffering, to the wear and tear of passing time.

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And yet the groan is not a groan of frustration in a sinful sense or resentment.

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It's more a groan of longing. It's a groan of appetite and desire to be further clothed.

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Paul doesn't want to be without a body. He wants to have the body that is like the resurrection body of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And if all our hope consists in losing a body, then it's a hope of being naked, our spirit unclothed.

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It's a failure to recognise that God has made us as body, soul entities, creatures, whose humanity consists in being body and soul.

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When those two things are apart, there's something unnatural happening. And Paul has already described to the

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Corinthians in the first letter and what we call chapter 15, the prospect of the glorious body like Christ that we will have when our mortality is swallowed up by immortality.

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And that's the same language now that he uses here. A Christian doesn't want to be unclothed.

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We don't want to be bodyless. We want to have that body that is suited for the world which

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God will make when Jesus Christ comes again. Not an unclothing, but a further clothing that our mortality may be swallowed up by life.

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That is the believer's glorious prospect, the looking forward to the time when we will no longer be trapped and troubled by the limitations of this body which is subject to sin, but we will have a body like Jesus Christ.

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When I say trapped, I don't mean trapped in the body, but trapped by what this body can and cannot do and is obliged to do.

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It's a very sphere of destruction. No, we're looking forward to the liberty of the sons of God and part of that liberty will be a glorious body in which we can truly serve our

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Lord and our God in keeping with a sinless soul. That's what we're looking forward to and that, if you're a

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Christian, is why you should be groaning. Groaning as one now burdened, not who wants to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.