The Spirit as a pledge and our ambition
2 Corinthians 5:5-9 · Roger Henderson · Mar 27, 2022
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 101
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261926284761

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

start here. So I chose a title here. Vani says, Roger, you got to choose more. Mike chooses really powy titles. Actually, I had Bill say, Roger, your titles are so long. Mike's are like two or three words. But you got these long titles. So I don't know.

I actually could have labeled this message Our Earthly Body versus Our Heavenly Body. That could have been an optional one. But anyway. We'll go with this one. So I have the spirit as a pledge, which you saw in the verse. I usually try to pick the title consistent with the verses, and our ambition. So we'll see how that makes sense as we go along here. Okay, so here's an outline. I'll just put it all up here. Oops, went too far. Okay, so last week Mike covered verses one through four. I'm gonna go back and pick out some parts of that to kind of emphasize what I think will flow into the next five through nine.

But then coming up in the following two weeks, we're gonna spend two weeks on the judgment seat of Christ, which is a critical thing for believers to understand. We're gonna contrast that with the other judgments in scripture. So that's coming up. And then the following weeks, we're gonna do the love of Christ, and motivates us, a new creation, and then a message of reconciliation. So that's what's on the agenda in the next weeks to go. And of course, in between there, on the 17th, we'll have a Resurrection Sunday message.

Okay, and actually, I'm gonna use, you know, as Mike pointed out last week, there's some differences of opinion among, you know, godly men about our heavenly bodies and exactly the procedure. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that and just look at what the verses say and what it says in comparison with our earthly bodies and our heavenly bodies. Okay, so let's get into it here.

For we know that if the earthly tent, you could say earthly body, which is ours, I'm sorry, let me read it right. For we know that if the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed, this house, for indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven. inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed, while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up in life."

So I'm just going to look at part of these verses here today. So let's just look at the first phrase here. So I'm gonna use a Weiss translation in honor of Karen. No, not really, but anyway, it's really, Karen is really excited about Weiss and I'm excited. When you're excited about God's word, I'm excited, so anyway.

So Weiss has this, for we know that if our house of this present tent life on earth be taken down. So what's he talking about here? He's talking, taken down is the idea of death of the body, and actually you could render it dissolved. So Paul's talking here about our present body suffering death. He says, and this is a tremendous statement, if you had to come away with any message out of the first four verses, this is what you want to remember.

We have a building implied as our heavenly body from God. That's something the believer has. And what's interesting is, the original tense of the verbs are pretty critical. And the tense of this verb is present. So you could render it, we are having. We are having a heavenly body from God.

And you say to me, well, Roger, this body doesn't look like a heavenly body to me. It's breaking down. We just have all these prayer requests about back and this and that. How can that, you know? But it says, we have it. And to try to put your arms around that, actually our brother Hal has labeled futuristic present tense, and what it kind of means is, there's a very familiar verse, I think, to most people.

If you look in 1 John 5.13, which we'll get to here maybe by the end of the year or so, It says, 1 John 5.13 says, These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. So that last part says that you may know that you have eternal life. Or you could render it, you are having eternal life.

So the upshot of this is that as believers, God presents to us truths that we are to believe about ourselves as believers that we haven't experienced yet. We know that we have eternal life, right? Are we experiencing eternal life? We started it, we don't, We don't see eternal life, and the same way here.

He says we have a building, a heavenly body from God, and it's a reality. This is a present reality. This is a present possession of a future reality. And what we call here at Holly Hills and other places, this is called a positional truth. It's something that's true about us that has been presented in scripture and we're to believe it. And our condition doesn't, our condition at a point in time will match that. We will have our heavenly body, but we don't have it now.

So one thing to point out here, and this is really good, it's not saying that there's a heavenly body floating around out there in heaven. And this is the hard part. You know what I find in Scripture many times? There'll be two different aspects presented, two truths that are side by side, and you have to accept both. There's a heavenly body, and it's the eternal heavenly body that will last for all eternity. But we're not told a lot of details about how we get from this body to the next body. We'll see that in a second, but there's some gaps in there, it seems.

What it is saying is that at the time that the Lord so determines, at the rapture, when we're taken to be with Him, when a believer dies, he will have a body, he will have a heavenly body. I think that's what it's saying. Okay, so let's go on. With that one truth in mind, let's proceed here.

It says, for indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven. So this idea of groaning, we're gonna see that in scripture, groaning is okay. The Bible says that groaning is a good thing. You can groan. And so one of the things we're to groan about from this verse, from verse two, is the fact that we long to be clothed with our heavenly body. And I'm sure people in this congregation, along with me, would love to have a body that's free from the pain that we suffer. Also, the wonderful aspects of having a body like our Savior's body. So here's a comparable verse which talks about groaning but with a little bit different focus.

In Romans 8.23 it says, So there's another aspect of groaning, if you will. And so it's groaning and longing, it's a desire, this desire for this to happen. Okay, so let's continue on here.

And it's to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven. To be clothed is the idea to, and this is an interesting word. I had not thought about this. You kind of think in your mind, if you're not thinking too scriptural, you kind of think, well, I'm gonna get this brand new body. It's gonna be brand new. Well, scripture doesn't exactly say that. It says we're to be clothed with.

It's the idea to be caused, to be put over, to be clothed upon, and Macaulay renders this, the original word is this word, I'm not going to pronounce it, but the idea is to be clothed over, and the picture he uses, imagine you have a nice suit coat on, and you put an overcoat on, So that overcoat is what's described as our heavenly body. And I was kind of thinking about that. It made me start thinking down this path. And Weiss actually picks up on that translation of that word. He says, to be clothed in addition with our house, which is from heaven.

So when a believer goes to be with the Lord, he will receive, his body will consist of this additional aspect. And if you think about it, Christ's heavenly body was recognizable, right? Sometimes the Lord, for His purposes, kind of concealed that, but it was revealed. Most of the accounts we'll see that the disciples recognize the Lord in His new heavenly body.

So our body apparently will be recognizable. So that's what is kind of neat about this fact that we're clothed over with, we retain some of what we are, but it's a new heavenly body. Don't ask me how that happens. Scripture doesn't. And that's part of the problem with this message. There's so many things in here that the details have not been filled out for us, but it's still pretty wonderful that this new heavenly body will retain.

People will recognize us for who we are, and that's for all eternity. Christ will have the marks in his human body, right, of the crucifixion. Actually, I hadn't thought about that. That's actually pretty cool. That kind of supports this picture. He has the marks in eternity of his crucifixion, right? So he retained that in his eternal body. Pretty cool stuff. Okay, inasmuch as we are putting it on, putting on the heavenly body, it will not be found naked.

So here's another situation, this is the second kind of occurrence where he talks about something as if it's happened. It's this present reality that is yet future. So Constable has this comment, he says, I believe that one of the strongest arguments that we will ever, I'm sorry, I believe that one of the strongest arguments that we will never be disembodied spirits is that the Bible consistently views humans as unified beings. So there's a verse that kind of talks about how we're unified beings. We're unified beings because we're body, soul, and spirit.

So here's a verse that kind of supports that in 1 Thessalonians 5.23. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely. May your spirit, soul, and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then lastly, here's another verse that presents an interesting point.

1 John 3.2b, it says, So I was thinking about that, and Mike often talks about this, we can't, unless we're like God, we cannot see God, we cannot be in his presence. The scriptures tell it over and over again, people that saw the Lord, they couldn't stand the mount of transfiguration, they couldn't stand the brilliance of who he was. You look back on the nation of Israel, they couldn't come near the mountain where God was on, they could not see God. We have to be like God, we have to have his very nature to see God.

Okay. All right, so now, a couple things from last week. I'm gonna borrow a couple things that Mike presented and do them again. I thought it was really worthwhile. So a lot of this message is about thinking about what scripture says about our earthly body and contrasting it with our heavenly body. So here's an example of a chart that Hal put together back a few years ago.

He says our earthly house, our tent, God formed or sculpted it out of the dust of the ground, Genesis 2.7.

It is suited out for this earth and associated with soulish life. It is a natural body, a psuchikos body, soulish, sensual, energized by the natural instincts. And just a side point, that natural body was born with a sin nature, a fallen nature from Adam. So that's why, that's the problem with that body.

That's why we need a new heavenly body. Our heavenly house is a building of God made without hands, eternal in the heavenlies, It's suited out for heaven and associated spiritual life. It is raised a spiritual pneumaticus body energized by the Holy Spirit. Christ will change our lowly body to have like form with his glorious body.

So there's kind of the contrast between our earthly tent with its sin nature and our wonderful heavenly body. So all this, Paul is encouraging the people in Corinth about this contrast between our earthly body and heavenly body and also the fact that they're gonna have a heavenly body and it's a surety.

It's not something that may happen, it will happen. So just another set of contrast here. So here's the converses. This is just taking scripture and putting it kind of in bullet form. 1 Corinthians 15, 42 to 45, kind of contrasts of physical and spiritual, just wonderful words here.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body. It is sown in dishonor, you think about the fallen nature, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there's a natural body, there's also a spiritual body.

So also it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last, Adam, became a life-giving spirit. So that's kind of the first set from 1 Corinthians 15. Here's the next set, kind of contrasting the earthly and the heavenly lives. The first man, Adam, is from earth, earthy. The second man, Christ, is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also those are earthy. As is the heavenly, so also are those heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenlies. So consistently, over and over again, we see God contrast our earthly bodies with our heavenly bodies.

Okay, now, that's kind of a quick review of last week. Avoiding, you know, Mike went through and took the time, it was really good. He took the time to point out how people have tried to put in there things like a temporary body that we have, trying to, and I don't know, it's, I'm not sure I have enough knowledge to comment on that. It's confusing. I'd say it makes it very confusing. I think sticking to the scriptures and just looking at our earthly body and our heavenly body is a better way to go. Try to put in an interim body in there.

Like I was listening to Hal Molloy from 20 years ago almost now and he says, I got a problem with a temporary eternal body. That words don't seem to fit. Temporary eternal. I have a problem with that saying. And I said, yeah, temporary eternal. Wait a minute. There's a short circuit there, something's gone wrong. Okay, so Paul's gonna carry on here, starting in verse five.

He's gonna talk more about our bodies, our heavenly bodies, also our ambition, and about the Holy Spirit here. So the verses for today. Now he who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge, Therefore, being always of good courage, knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, we walk by faith and not by sight, we are of good courage, I say, preferring rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him. Okay.

So just as a beginning point here, I found that the, and I do this a lot, I'll use the Weiss translation sometimes, and sometimes I'll use the interlinear. And Karen is talking to me about both of those there. Karen's, she's keeping me on the straight and narrow here. So I'm gonna use the interlinear. The top verse up there is the American Standard. The interlinear brings out a little bit more of the original, I think in this case.

So the interlinear says for this verse now the one having made us for this very thing is God So having made here is the idea to bring about, to make. And here again, we have one of these just statements, just it says, it's already done, it's a done deal.

And that's what our brother Hal says, it's a done deal. Having made for us the very thing, and the very thing is this building, this heavenly body, it's already done. So in God's eyes, that's already done. In our eyes, we say, well, where is it? And God says, I'm not gonna tell you, but I've done it. He's not gonna tell us, but he's done that. He's made it for us, and it's there. It's a done deal. God has made it fit or suitable, suited out for our heavenly home. Who gave us, but he doesn't leave us hanging. He doesn't say, well, I made for you a body, just trust me. What he does is he points out that the Holy Spirit was given us a pledge for this assurity.

The pledge is the idea, you know, in a real estate transaction, I wish I'd had a transaction last year. We didn't have any transaction. I look for a house, and too expensive. I can't bid high enough to have enough money. So anyway, that's another story.

So a pledge is the earnest money you put down, and the original word is you put that money down, and if you don't complete it, you lose the money. So the Holy Spirit is in that sense. He has given us a down payment, a certainty of a truth about us. His down payment, or earnest, or pledge, is the indwelling Holy Spirit.

So that's one of the many wonderful things about the Holy Spirit. If you look in John there, when the Lord is leaving, he says, I'll give to you another, another the same kind as myself, and he will bring to your mind the things I've taught you. Well, here's another wonderful aspect about the Holy Spirit. He's gonna be our guarantee that God's gonna give us our heavenly body. It's not something that might happen, it will happen.

And the Holy Spirit is that earnest in respect to that. Now verse six, therefore, based on the fact that we have this earnest of the Holy Spirit, or this pledge of the Holy Spirit, we can have confidence. Being confident, present tense, we continue to have confidence. At all times, there's never a time not to be confident. And to know, to know, to have knowledge of, of divine knowledge from Scripture. So here we're going to see when we start in the last half of verse 6, let me just read verse 6 again. being always of good courage and knowing, that's what I kind of covered and went through the words there. So here's what he wants us to have confidence and know about. While we are at home in the body, we're absent from the Lord. So he wants us to have confidence about that.

So he's gonna use two different, I'll put it right here, two different Greek words. I'm gonna give my shot here at pronouncing them. And if you can pronounce them better, you're welcome to do it. I'll give you my, I think I have it right. I practiced it a few times. Anyway, being at home is en de mejo, and being away from home is ec de mento. And it's the idea of in is in, so where in is being, we're among one's home country or people, and eknemeho is being away from one's home country or people.

So we're gonna see that. filtering through 6b to 9, it's gonna be in there, and hopefully this will help you understand it better. Some will say, well, Roger, you put that Greek word in there and this makes it harder for me to read that, what you put up there, because I can't read that Greek word. Well, and maybe that's, you know. So hopefully it makes it better. So we'll see here.

So here's this first statement about our heavenly body versus our, our heavenly home versus our earthly home. He says, he makes this statement, being at home, in the body, it's an earthly body, we are away from home, when away from the Lord. So he says, here's the part that makes it a little bit challenging. We're at home in our bodies. We also know from Scripture that we're home with the Lord. Scripture declares that every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is at home with his Savior. So let's look at our true home for a believer is with the Lord.

We see that in one of many verses, Ephesians 2.19, So then, You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household. So we're both at home within ourselves and we're home with the Lord. So this verse says that being at home in our bodies, we are away from our true home with the Lord. That's what it's trying to convey. And this is where I never actually thought.

So here's the context. In scripture, good Bible students, remember in real estate it's location, location, location. In Bible study, it's context, context, context. What's the context of we walk by faith and not by sight? Well, the context is that we are to believe that We're away from the Lord, and that's where our true home is at. That's what we exercise. We can't see that home. We read about that home, but we're to exercise faith and believing that we have a home for us with the Lord.

And it's not by sight, it's by faith. So that's the context of a very familiar verse, verse seven. We walk by faith and not by sight. So here's Wiest, helps to put, he has a little bit more expanded, if you will, that we walk by faith and not by sight. For through faith, we're ordering our manner of life, not by seeing, not by something seen.

So we don't look at the, the world says, if I can't see it, I can't believe it, right? You talk to almost anyone. If they can't see it, they're not gonna believe it. Though sometimes you can't, and there's a lot of things that runs against, but God says He wants us to exercise faith in what He has promised us.

Okay, so verse eight. We are, present tense, continuous action. Once again, this is another confidence. We are confidence, but we have a preference. We are pleased, rather. This is what would please us. What would please a Christian from this context about his heaven versus earthly bodies? Well, what would please a Christian would be, and this is statement number two about earthly versus heavenly home, to leave home and to be at home with the Lord. That's basically it. You leave home, ek to out of, ek demento, out of the earthly body and be at home in demento with the Lord. And here's this wonderful preposition. I know this is one of Courtney's favorites, pros, face to face.

And it comes up in Romans and much other places. That wonderful picture of our Savior that we have the privilege at a point in time to be face to face with him. And we can't be face-to-face with him unless we've been born again. We have to be of the same kind as him. So it says, to leave home, out from our body, and to be at home with the Lord, face-to-face with him.

So this is what would please, Paul's saying this is what pleases a believer, to be face-to-face with him. Okay, but then nine kind of brings our feet back to the ground, if you will. Therefore, based on 6 through 8, we are aspiring, present tense, continuous action, and the idea to be ambitious, to make it our aim, and the third statement here, whether at home or being away from the Lord, to be well-pleasing to Him. And the Amplified had striving earnestly to please Him. So our goal in the Christian life, whether it's here on this earth and our earthly bodies, or being away from our earthly bodies, were to please Him. All right, so final thoughts. So I thought Constable did a good job here. He just kind of summarized the three statements. He kind of summarized one through eight, one through nine.

All Christians who die will receive an immortal body. From verse one, remember I told you that's the one thing you had to remember? Remember that statement, right? We have, there's no debate about it, we have eternal home in heaven. All Christians who die will receive an immortal body.

This is by itself a substantial gift of glory. You know what, after reading this I said, Mr. Constable, get some joy into your life. I mean, it's like it's deadpan. We have substantial gift of glory. To me, that's not exciting enough. Anyway, that's my take on it.

Okay, second statement. All Christians, including those who die soon after becoming believers, presently possess the Holy Spirit who is a pledge of our future completed glorification. Third. Death begins a new phase of existence for all believers that will be far superior to what they have experienced up to now.

I thought that was understated too. I thought, man, death opens up. Wow, I get to see my Savior face to face. He just didn't have, I want him to have more punch. I like what he said, but I want him to have a little more punch. So I don't know, maybe that's me. Anyway, okay. So we finished the first nine verses. I usually don't do this. This is a little preview of the next two weeks here.

So I borrowed a Hal chart. And what's the characteristic of a Hal chart? Anybody wanna raise their hand? Lots of stuff on one chart, right? Let's see how much I can get in one chart. Well, he hasn't failed us here. This one chart, he has a lot, so here it is. Here's one chart. Okay, the next two weeks, I'll be explaining this chart. Okay, well, and in reality, we're gonna talk mainly, verse 10, it talks about the bema, the judgment seat of Christ, and what we found is, I talked to Mike a little bit about this. And Hal preached a message several years ago about the same thing.

There are nine judgments that you find in Scripture, and people will confuse these judgments. They want to take judgments that occur at the end of the millennial kingdom, or they want to take them here and there, a different place. They want to put those into some general one judgment, or there are nine distinct judgments. So we're gonna go through parts of those and just try to clarify. The focus will be on the judgment seat of Christ, the bema. And that's a critical one. And actually, you know, bema is the Greek word. Judgment seat is the English word for that Greek word. And it just means a raised platform. So I might worry that I'm gonna get judged. One thing to observe here, according to this timeline here, where does that judgment happen?

It happens during the tribulation. What happened before the tribulation? I was raptured out here with the Lord. So is he gonna really scold me and give me a hard time after I'm with him, face-to-face with him? Actually, it just hit me, actually not this morning, but when I was studying, I said, wait a minute, Roger. Why are people worried about the judgment seat of Christ? I'm already with the Lord face-to-face. Is he gonna really wrap my knuckles and give me a hard time and say, no? Is there a different focus there? And there is, and that's what I wanna talk about. So come next week.

All right, so let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your word. Thank you for the wonderful blessings we have in knowing our Savior. Thank you that we have a body. It's already, it's in your mind. That's probably the best way to think about it. It's in your mind and ready for us when we go to be with you, Lord. We thank you so much. In Christ's name, amen.