Faith: Our Assurance Beyond Mortal Existence

Posted on by korgrocker

“So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.”
2 Corinthians 5:6-8 NLT

We human beings are mortal. This means that there will come a time when we will die. It is a thought that horrifies many people, but it is one of the few things about our lives that we cannot control. We don’t know when the final day will come, but even if we did, there is nothing we can do about it. There are scientists who claim that there are some things that we can do, though, to delay the inevitable, like being careful about how we live, avoiding smoking, drugs, and alcohol. By eating the right foods and avoiding the wrong ones. And some claim to be on the edge of creating chemicals that would significantly prolong our lives. The Victorian writer H Rider Haggard wrote a novel called “She”, and it was about a woman who was immortal because she had discovered a “Pillar of Fire” that granted immortality to anyone who was fortunate enough to be able to stand in its flame. It’s a great story but a long way from the truth. Interestingly, it explores some of the perils of immortality from a purely secular perspective, particularly when bestowed upon an evil person. Mankind has always been fascinated with the concept of life, death and immortality, and there are some who make a living by pandering to people’s desires. Job wrote the truth, however, as we read in Job 14:5. Speaking to God, he said, “You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live, and we are not given a minute longer”. 

From the perspective of eternity, therefore, we are living in a temporary home. Our spirits will one day be set free from the physical entity that we call our bodies. Paul wrote that he would rather be away from his, because then he “will be at home with the Lord”. Our earthly existence is real, meaningful, and purposeful—but it is not ultimate. There is a quiet homesickness woven into the heart of every believer. We experience moments when we feel lost, or experience thoughts like “what am I doing here”? We pursue pleasurable activities but find them unfulfilling. We suffer through illness or pain, and wonder what is going on. But in it all, we sometimes sense that we were made for something more. An unbeliever will not be immune to the feeling that they don’t belong here, and they try their best to fill the gap by material means, or try to suppress the feelings with alcohol or drugs. A visit to a psychiatrist might provide temporary relief, but in the morning, the mind-numbing processes of the previous day will have all worn off, and the sense of loss will still be there. Unbelievers learn to suppress such feelings, although they sometimes emerge when not expected. But a believer like us doesn’t have such feelings because they have been replaced with the knowledge that we are indeed just living in a temporary home.

Paul didn’t despair about his physical challenges and feelings of homesickness because he had confidence in his future and the God who would one day make it all possible. How could he say that while acknowledging suffering, persecution, and uncertainty? Paul wasn’t playing some kind of mind game, convincing himself about his future, a self-assurance that had no basis in truth. Paul had a God-assurance, the settled conviction that whether he remained in his body or left it, he belonged to the Lord. That kind of confidence cannot be shaken by changing circumstances. With Paul, we pilgrims understand that our true home is with God, and earthly instability loses its power to terrify us.

Paul wrote, “For we live by believing and not by seeing”. We call that “faith”. Faith is not blind optimism. It is a steady trust in what God has promised. It is choosing confidence when circumstances are unclear. It is walking forward even when the road ahead disappears into fog. Hebrews 11:1, “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see”. The problem is that in this life, we are trained and conditioned to trust what we can see with our eyes. But faith doesn’t work like that, and instead, we put our trust in the One who has promised us life in our new home, one that He is preparing for us right now. The Christian hope is not merely about survival after death—it is about reunion. It is about fullness. It is about finally being where our hearts have always belonged. To be “at home with the Lord” suggests intimacy, rest, and completion. Home is where we are fully known and fully loved. Paul’s longing reveals a heart that has tasted God’s presence so deeply that eternity feels like the most natural destination.

Do we pilgrims feel the same as Paul? I’m sure many of us are weary of the limitations of our current bodies, but one day, perhaps soon for some, we will be at home with the Lord. There will be no better place possible. At last, we will lose that sense of not belonging. At last, we will be home.

Dear Father God. There is a song, “What a day that will be / When my Jesus I shall see / And I look upon his face / The one who saved me by his grace.” We worship You today, Lord. Amen.

Understanding Our Earthly Tents and Heavenly Bodies

Posted on by korgrocker

“For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee, he has given us his Holy Spirit.”
2 Corinthians 5:1-5 NLT

Paul described his human body as being an “earthly tent”. Is that not a strange description? But Paul, being a tentmaker by profession, would have used the analogy from his experience. Here in Scotland, we’re so grateful that the great majority of the population doesn’t have to live in tents. Even modern tents, lightweight and easy to set up, lack the comforts we expect. I can remember camping trips in the wilder parts of Scotland in a tent; great times in the summer, but even then it is possible to be caught out, as I once found out on an overnight stay in May in the Highlands when the temperature dropped below zero. Tents are temporary structures and unsuitable for long-term living. But that thought must have dropped into Paul’s mind, as he mused about growing “weary in our present bodies”. Our human bodies might be good enough to carry us through the few decades of our natural lives, but they would be totally unsuitable for eternal life. Both human bodies and tents have limits.

A tent serves a purpose for a season. It shelters us on a journey, but is not the destination—it is accommodation along the way. Our earthly bodies are like that. They allow us to love, serve, work, create, and worship. Yet they groan, age and weaken. Paul does not deny this groaning. He acknowledges it. As believers, we are not called to pretend that suffering is pleasant. We feel the ache of living in this sad and bad world.

But something wonderful is coming for us pilgrims. We will receive “an eternal body made for us by God himself”. We don’t completely know what it will be like, although we do know that we will receive a body like Jesus’ resurrected body. 1 John 3:2, “Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is”. In Philippians 3;21, Paul wrote, “He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control“. Paul looked forward to the day when he could put on his new Heavenly body like “new clothing”. How often do we pilgrims feel like that, as we struggle out of bed in the morning, feeling the aches and pains? Even the younger generations amongst us long for a “duvet day” every so often.

Death has no power over us

How do we think we will be in Heaven? If our spirits leave our earthly bodies and end up in Heaven, will they just float around without substance? That, of course, won’t be the case. Paul wrote, “For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies“. We do not understand totally what Heaven will be like because we try to make sense of it with our earth-bound senses. But, through faith, we will find ourselves in a body that is Heavenly not earthly, a new body that God has created for us. Paul also wrote that our “dying bodies will be swallowed up by life“. That’s quite a challenge, getting our minds around that one. We think of that moment when we die as being the end, but in fact, it is just the beginning. In his previous letter, Paul wrote, “Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians 15:54). Death has no power over us, because we leave behind our “tents” and find ourselves in a new Heavenly home, in a body made by God.

So, in this earthly life, we must look forward to the life to come. We may be living in a “tent” just now, a temporary home comprised of flesh and blood, but I’m sure our Heavenly bodies will be absolutely amazing. No more weariness, pain, and ageing. And all that groaning that we do will be a distant memory, if we remember it all. The tent is temporary. The house is eternal. And the Builder is God Himself.

Dear Heavenly Father. We look forward to receiving our new Heavenly body. Please help us to make the most of what we have, though, in gratitude for all that You have done for us in the here and now. Amen.

The Heavenly Man

Posted on by korgrocker

“The Scriptures tell us, “The first man, Adam, became a living person.” But the last Adam—that is, Christ—is a life-giving Spirit. What comes first is the natural body, then the spiritual body comes later. Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth, while Christ, the second man, came from heaven. Earthly people are like the earthly man, and heavenly people are like the heavenly man. Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man.”
1 Corinthians 15:45-49 NLT

At first sight, these verses seem to be a bit confusing. But Paul was simply comparing two separate bodies, an earthly, physical body, of which we are all very acquainted, and the heavenly, spiritual body that we are yet to acquire. We know that the original body given to Adam was formed from “dust” – Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person”. I imagine a sculptor forming a statue of a man from a lump of clay (a big lump!). We don’t have to look far to see statues in our churches and city environments. But only God can bring them to life with the “breath of life”. In the Valley of the Dry Bones in Ezekiel’s vision, he saw the bones rattling together and forming skeletons. “Then as I watched, muscles and flesh formed over the bones. Then skin formed to cover their bodies, but they still had no breath in them” (Ezekiel 37:8). In the next verse, we read, “[God] said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to the winds, son of man. Speak a prophetic message and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, O breath, from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again’””. It is only God who can bring life to an inanimate object, life that is His to command. 

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made“

It is interesting to ponder the progress being made by engineers and scientists in creating humanoid robots. They can produce objects that are superficial copies of human bodies, but without the extraordinary complexity of God’s creation that includes His breath. The devil cannot create anything, but one wonders if this is him trying his best. The first Adam had a physical body containing products of the earth on which he lived, but he, and we, are more than a bag of different chemicals, regardless of what the evolutionists tell us. As the psalmist David wrote, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvellous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well” (Psalm 139:14). 

Paul wrote, “What comes first is the natural body, then the spiritual body comes later”. We will not receive our spiritual bodies until we have finished with our natural bodies. The old cartoonists sometimes depicted a person’s spirit leaving his body and floating off somewhere to do something in accordance with the storyline. But this doesn’t work because the two types of body, natural and spiritual, are formed in different places. The natural body is earthly, and the spiritual body is Heavenly. Consider two totally different universes, each made of totally incompatible materials. We only know about worldly matter, and we have senses that can detect it, analyse it and use it to continue our lives here on earth. An unbeliever will find the limits of his knowledge here because his natural mind will ignore any thoughts of there being a universe made of materials that don’t exist on earth. But God created human beings with an embryonic spiritual body inside, a body that will never be found with a surgeon’s knife. The inner spirit within all human beings manifests in vague stirrings that point to something or someone outside of themselves to whom they owe their gift of life. Our spirits empower our souls with emotions that form the essence of how human beings behave and respond to others. But there is no surprise about this to a believer in God, people like us, pilgrims who know that God created us and all that we are, body, soul and spirit.

One day, Paul wrote, our natural bodies will die, and then we will receive our spiritual bodies. It is then that we will become Heavenly bodies, just like Christ’s. Paul wrote, “heavenly people are like the heavenly man“. He also wrote in Philippians 3:21, “He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control”. Jesus is in Heaven just now, complete in His resurrected body. It is a spiritual body and we will be given a body just like His. We can’t ask for more!

Dear Heavenly Father. We don’t know exactly what we will be like in Heaven, but we do know that You desire the best for us. We worship You today. Amen.