Given a choice to live in a tent or to live in a house, most people would probably choose to live in the house. A tent might be alright for a week or so, but not much longer. When I was much, much younger, I went camping a few times. Though I enjoyed being outdoors, cooking over a campfire, and seeing all the stars, I would have preferred a bed over a sleeping bag on the hard, bumpy ground, being indoors when it started to rain or get cold, and not having to deal with all sorts of bugs. I would much rather have a house than a tent! A tent is faulty and temporary. A house is solid and permanent. In our Scripture, the Apostle Paul brings a comparison of tents and houses with our spiritual life. Let’s see what we can learn.
In the middle of his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul spoke of tents and buildings (vs. 1-5). He was speaking in metaphors. A tent or an earthly house was a metaphor for our physical body. Just like a temporary tent, our earthly existence is fragile, insecure, and lowly. Just like I did when camping, we want to exchange that tent for something better. While here on earth, our life is filled with problems, with illness, and we are prone to injury. We want something better, we long for the glorified body that the Lord Jesus has promised us. Paul compares that to a building from God, our resurrected, glorified body, solid, secure, and permanent.
Paul had a deep desire to be with God in heaven. This was nothing suicidal or morbid, but just a desire to be with God, and to have his new, perfect body. Paul had physically suffered much throughout his life, having been beaten, stoned, and imprisoned because of his faith, so we can only imagine the aches and pains he went through each day. It was only natural for him to want to leave this body behind and receive his glorified body. Many of us also deal with physical and health issues. Like Paul said, we groan and feel burdened with this old body. Our old tent is barely hanging on! While we are alive on earth we are away from the fullness of God (vs. 6-8). Paul had a heavenly homesickness, a strong desire to be with God.
The Apostle knew that when this was to happen would be according to God’s sovereign purpose (vs. 5). However, he was completely confident that it would one day. God gave us the Holy Spirit as His guarantee. The Holy Spirit is a token of His promise. We can trust His promise that one day, all those who believe and put their faith and trust in Jesus will have both a new body and new home in heaven.
We don’t see our new glorified body, though, so how can we be sure? We also have no solid proof that when we die we go straight to heaven. After all, no one has come back to tell us about it. Paul gives a key statement here that believers should follow in this, and in so many other areas, and that is that we walk by faith, and not by sight (vs. 7). Life is a journey, and the Christian is traveling to another country. It is faith that should be controlling us, not sight. If we are going to walk in God’s plan for our life and live in victory, we are going to do it by faith. Faith leans into God, and trusts Him. Worry and trust cannot reside together. A pilot sometimes cannot see where he’s going if thick clouds come. It is then that they must trust their instruments. So too, we must trust Jesus when we cannot see what lies ahead.
Paul continues on by reminding us that while we remain here on earth, our highest goal should be to be pleasing to God (vs. 9). If we love the Lord, as we all claim to, we will make it our aim and our delight to please God by the way we live.
As our passage closes Paul reveals a Scriptural truth, one that should encourage believers to live that life pleasing to Jesus, and that is the Judgment Seat of Christ (vs. 10). This is where the Lord will evaluate believers' lives for the purpose of giving them eternal rewards. Every believer will be accountable to God. Unbelievers, the lost and unsaved, will not be here. They are judged at the Great White Throne (Revelation 20:11-15). Believers will each stand before Jesus at His Judgment Seat and be judged according to what they have done, whether good or bad. This is not referring to the sins we have committed, either before we were saved or afterwards. The judgment of Christian’s sins took place at Calvary when Jesus died on the Cross. Instead, this refers to activities which we do that have eternal value, versus all of our useless activities.
Do you look forward to the day when you will trade your earthly tent, your old, frail body for your new and glorified one? Do you look forward to that new home the Lord is preparing for you? Do your best to live a life well pleasing to the Lord, for at that time we will also stand before the Lord to give an account of what we did or didn’t do for Him.
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