2 Corinthians 5:6-10

It is the clear vision of what will happen to us after we die that gives us the courage to face death.  

While our earthly lives continue we have the comfort of living in our earthly “homes,” our physical bodies.

But while we are at home in our bodies we experience an imperfect union with Christ.  He lives in us.  We sense His presence.  We experience His strength, His comfort, and His guidance.  But our experience of Christ, as wonderful as it is, falls short of the constant state of ecstasy that we will experience in His presence in heaven.

As our heart understanding of God's truth has ripened into the absolute conviction of unshakable faith, we have reached the point where the course of our lives is directed by what we believe in our hearts and not what we experience of the world through our physical senses.

Sometimes our physical senses record the facts that our lives are being threatened and our bodies are being beaten, but what we believe in our hearts gives us the courage to endure because, to us, the bottom line is very simple.  If they kill us we have to live as disembodied spirits for a time but we immediately enter into the perpetual ecstasy that can only be found in the uninterrupted presence of Christ.

Christ has become the focus of our lives and the desire to please Him influences everything we do.  We want everything we do whether in this life or in the life to come to bring a smile to His face.

We must never forget that when we leave this life we will, at some point, have an “exit interview.”  We will have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ where His sits in judgment and evaluates the way we lived our lives.  There will be rewards for everything we did that brought a smile to His face and regrets for all of the missed opportunities to serve Him as we should have.  

2 Corinthians 5:1-5

Our physical bodies are temporary housing; they’re like a tent handed out by the Red Cross to provide temporary shelter after a natural disaster.  If that tent gets torn down, which it will when the day finally comes when we are called to die for the sake of the gospel, we will find ourselves provided by God with permanent housing.  I mean really permanent, eternal housing.  God Himself will make a body for us to live in.

As you grow spiritually you’ll start to get a glimpse of some truths that will transform your whole way of looking at life. 

·         You’ll start to see yourself as an alien living in a foreign country even though you’re living in the nation you were born in.[1]

·         No matter how you feel about the country of your birth, you’ll begin to recognize that what you really are is a citizen of a heavenly kingdom.[2]

·         You’ll begin to feel like you are living in a temporary exile, waiting for a chance to return to your real home.[3]

Even the body you live in will begin to seem like a temporary shelter and you’ll find yourself longing for your permanent home, your resurrection body.

If we find ourselves living until the return of Christ we will move immediately into that resurrection body; and if we die before the return of Christ we will spend our time in heaven waiting for our resurrection bodies.

Heaven is an amazing place and everyone there is filled with joy, but even in heaven God’s people know that they are not “complete” yet.  We were made to live in bodies – that’s just our nature.  So even as they experience the wonders of heaven the human spirits there look forward with keen anticipation to their resurrection bodies.

The fulfillment of all of God’s amazing plans for us includes that resurrection body.  The work that the Spirit is doing in you right now is just a foretaste of the fullness of God’s life and power that we will all experience in our resurrection bodies.

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[1] “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.”  2 Peter 2:11

[2] “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Philippians 3:20

[3] “All these died in faith . . . having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.  For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own.”  Hebrews 11:13, 14

2 Corinthians 4:13-18

We have the same spirit of faith as the Psalmist, who in the face of a life threatening situation said, “My faith overwhelms my fear and enables me to speak the truth.”  And so again and again we look death and in the face and boldly speak the truth that has filled our hearts with the kind of faith that overcomes the world.

And if this ultimately costs us our lives we know that even then we will ultimately triumph through Christ.  If someone lays our bodies in the grave those same bodies will be raised in resurrection splendor to join the transformed bodies of living believers who gather together with Christ in the ultimate triumph of His second coming.

God has so transformed us by the renewing of our minds that we no longer think of our lives or our deaths from a personal perspective.  It’s not about whether we live or die; it’s about whether or not we are a blessing to others.  We risk our lives daily so that people just like you can enter into an experience of God’s-passionate-love-giving-everything-God-can-possibly-give-to-undeserving-sinners.  And as more and more people enter into this new life the result is an ever increasing chorus of thanksgiving that brings great glory to God.

This is why we refuse to be discouraged.  Our bodies are aging and dying and battered by the incredible physical abuse we have been subjected to as we have suffered for the gospel – but while our bodies decay that that manifestation of God’s glory within us brings continuous renewal and fresh vitality to our inner man.

Most people would look at the way we have suffered and be appalled.  They’d look at the scars on our bodies and all they would be able to think about is the high price we have paid; but that’s not the way we look at our lives!  

If someone offered you a brand new fifty thousand dollar luxury car for fifty dollars, would you moan and whine about the great “sacrifice” you were called on to make in paying that fifty dollars?  No!  The price you would be paying would be insignificant compared to the value you would be receiving!

That is exactly our mindset when it comes to suffering!  The Lord Himself told us to rejoice and be exceedingly glad when we are persecuted for the sake of righteousness because of the great reward awaiting us in the life to come, and He meant exactly what He said!

The key to victory is to keep your heart and mind on the spiritual and eternal as opposed to the physical and temporal.  Everything that you can see and touch with your physical senses is passing away.  But everything we do for Christ in this life is being recorded in heaven and will result in permanent, everlasting praise and recognition throughout all the endless ages to come.  We can walk without stumbling as long as the eyes of our faith are able to see that which is invisible to our natural senses.   

2 Corinthians 4:1-12

We have received a ministry that through the mercy of God can bring an everyday, ordinary believer into an experience of the glory of God that is greater than Moses’ experience of God’s glory on Mt. Sinai.  So don’t go thinking that anything, neither the searing emotional pain of having our motives questioned by some that we dearly love in Corinth, nor the cruel tortures our bodies have endured for the sake of Christ, can dim our enthusiasm or lessen our commitment to the proclamation of this glorious gospel.

This truth has gripped us so powerfully that it has caused us to abandon hidden, shameful practices in our private lives.  And it has made it inconceivable to us to engage in any kind of mental or emotional manipulation in our public ministry.  Not only that, it makes it impossible for us to water down the truth in an effort to escape from uncomfortable public disputes with the dupes that Satan is constantly using to attack the fundamental truths of the gospel.  What we do is to simply and clearly proclaim God’s revelation of the gospel – and we speak each and every word as men who are consciously standing in the presence of the God who is listening to every word we say.  We believe that what we are doing will bring a ringing endorsement of approval from the conscience of every person who has their heart and their mind right with God.

We conduct ourselves with such openness that the only way someone can fail to understand what we say is if they have that veil over the eyes of their hearts. This is what happens when those who reject the message hear it – their lives right now can best be described as a living death and in the life to come they will be cut off from God forever!

Satan is the god of this world.  He blinds the hearts and minds of unbelieving people so that they can’t receive the inward enlightenment that comes from this inner revelation of the glory of Christ – and we should expect Christ to be radiant with the glory of God because He “looks” exactly like God.

Christ is exactly like God.  When you are looking into the radiance of the glory of the Father what you are really seeing is the radiance of the glory of the Son.[1]

We are so overwhelmed with the glory of God that it would never even occur to us to somehow try and make the gospel be about us.  No, we preach Christ Jesus as the One-who-must-be-obeyed-in-all-things.[2]  And if you want to know where we fit into the equation, well, for the sake of obeying and serving Christ, we see ourselves as your servants and not as your masters. 

In the beginning God said, “Let there be light!”  And light came into existence!  This is the same Person who spoke into the darkness of your heart and said, “Let the light of the glory of God as it radiates from the very face of Christ Jesus shine in this dark place.”

Can you grasp what I am trying to tell you?  There was a physical manifestation of the glory of God on Mt. Sinai.  There is an even greater spiritual manifestation of the glory of God that has taken place in your inner man.  If you have the faith-vision to grasp this, that light shinning within you will gradually transform you more and more into the image of Jesus Christ.[3]

 

A Christian is a lot like a priceless jewel in a brown paper wrapper.  You could never tell, by looking at the wrapping, that there was something priceless inside.  Every Christian can and should be energized by God’s own infinite power being continuously released in his inner being.

This is the secret of our own endurance.  We are under tremendous pressure, but we are not crushed by that pressure.  We don’t always have a complete understanding of why God is allowing certain things to happen, nor are we always certain of what our next step should be, but this never leads us to despair.

We have endured horrible sufferings, but never once without a vivid awareness of Christ’s presence to comfort and sustain us through the whole ordeal.[4]  We’ve endured cruel, physical abuse, but God hasn’t allowed them to kill us yet.[5]  

Our lives have become an exhibit of the death and resurrection process.  We constantly face physical death in the form of persecution.  And by faith, on a daily basis, we embrace the power of Christ’s death and apply it to the power of sin as it operates in our bodies.[6]  But we don’t stop there.  In that same spirit of faith we also embrace the ultimate energy source[7] – the indestructible-life-ultimate-power that raised Jesus from the dead.  This indestructible-life-ultimate-power works within us, empowering us to live the Christian life, and flows through us, enabling us to minister to you with true spiritual power.  

Ultimately, our willingness to embrace death was a key part of the process that resulted in your spiritual life.

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[1] “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.”  Hebrews 1:3

[2] It is extremely difficult to find a way to convey the concept of “lordship” to people living in Western Civilization at the beginning of the 21^st Century.  It is almost as if many people, even many Christians, have a veil over their hearts that makes it impossible for them to grasp the absolute authority of the Lord.  So I have chosen to paraphrase Lord as “the One-who-must-be-obeyed-in-all-things.”

[3] See 2 Corinthians 3:18.

[4] “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.”  Philippians 3:10  I believe this is a promise of a special manifestation of Christ’s presence to sustain us in the midst of persecution.

[5] “But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having won over the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead.  But while the disciples stood around him, he got up and entered the city.”  Acts 14:19, 20

[6] “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”  Galatians 5:24

[7] If you follow the argument of Ephesians 1:19-23 the power that raised Christ from the dead and placed Him in the position of ultimate authority in the universe is the exact same power that is available to the Christian in living his daily life.