Study in2 Corinthians

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The Life To Come

Chap 4v7-5v8Presentation 07

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IntroductionFor Paul the great feature of the New Covenant is glory. This glory is nothing less than the life of Christ within the soul of a man conforming him to Christ’s image by the indwelling Spirit. This gospel message does not need to be sugar coated for men and women to respond to it.

What is necessary is an open declaration of the truth and confidence in the enlightening work of God in one’s heart. At the same time the attractiveness of the gospel becomes apparent as the fragile eggshells of believers’ lives are cracked open allowing the glory to shine out. This manifestation of glory not only has an evangelistic purpose but heightens the assurance of the believer and excites his heart with regard to the future.

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Present Experience Of Coming PowerChristianity is not a gamble, it is not a lottery or, the throw of a dice. The Christian is not investing his life in something which he desperately hopes will pay rich dividends.

I understand that one of the areas of intense activity in the stock exchange is the 'futures market'. It would appear that speculators attempt to predict future demand for products and then buy up shares in those commodities which they hope will at a future date give them a rewarding return for their investment. Such predictions are often great gambles as many have learned to their cost.

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Present Experience Of Coming PowerThe Christian does not face the future or, death like an uncertain speculator. Paul makes it quite clear that for the Christian, what happens after death is not the subject of speculation. Something tremendous has happened to take the idea of life after death out of the realm of conjecture and superstition. Jesus had been raised form the dead! This was a historical event that had been verified by hundreds of eyewitness including Paul. His resurrection was not understood by Paul to be a one-off isolated incident. It was not a strange anomaly of nature. Rather it was the forerunner of a resurrection on a grander scale; the general resurrection of the people of God. cf 4v14...

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Present Experience Of Coming PowerBut before that great day, the resurrection has a present dimension to it. You might think, Surely a person has to die physically in order to experience resurrection life? No! For Paul, the life and power of the world to come is at work in the believer now. A discovery he had made through his own sufferings cf v8....’struck down but not destroyed’. J. B. Phillips translates it, 'They can knock me down but they cannot knock me out'. Why? Because the resurrection is not confined to a future event beyond the grave but to our present experience. Not only do we share in Christ’s death here and now, when we suffer for Jesus’ sake but we also share in his resurrection. There is a kind of spiritual symbiosis between Jesus and the believer. Paul was conscious of the power of the world to come already at work in his life!

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Present Experience Of Coming PowerPaul is not suggesting the resurrection power of Jesus had an outwardly transforming effect nor, that he was a kind of Greek mythical hero like Achilles whose physical life was rendered virtually impregnable by magic. A kind of bubble wrap Christianity. The cross did not give him immunity from suffering. One look at Paul would reveal the scars of wounds inflicted on his missionary journeys. His body was 'outwardly wasting away'. cf v16-17... According to the N.T. a Christian lives in two worlds simultaneously. Outwardly, he lives in this world where he is vulnerable to pain and suffering. But inwardly, and spiritually, he participates in the world to come, a world of glory. That world does not begin for the Christian when he dies but the instant he is born again as Jesus made clear to Nicodemus.

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Present Experience Of Coming PowerThat is why life beyond death does not belong to the future experience of the Christian it is part of his present experience.

This is the source of Paul's encouragement in v16... In the light of that resurrection life which was his, afflictions were no more than flea-bites. In comparison with the tons of glory that awaited him they were as insignificant as a grain of dust on the scales.

In comparison with the countless millennia of eternity which lay ahead his sufferings lasted but a millisecond on his stop watch.

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Present Experience Of Coming PowerIt is one thing to have ones eyes opened to understand spiritual truth it is quite another to fix our gaze upon that truth and to refuse to allow the world to turn our heads. Apply a simple test. How do you feel about growing old? We live in a society that has become paranoid about the ageing process. A comedian said that the most frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you will outgrow it. Have you discovered that everybody wants to live a long time but nobody wants to grow old? Old age brings infirmity, your eyes dim, your limbs stiffen. The hundred metres dash seems like a marathon. Your hair thins and falls out, wrinkles appear, your memory fails you begin to repeat yourself, you begin to repeat yourself ...

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Present Experience Of Coming PowerDespite many peoples best attempts to deny it, the process of ageing stamps itself on every creaking joint. How do we react to this ageing process? Do we share the world’s terror or the apostle’s conviction of v16...? There is no evidence of geriatric self-pity here. Physical infirmity was a nuisance but not the cause of despair. Why?

Because old age is not the end of the Christian's world. His mind is, or should be, fixed on another world and he tells himself he has hardly yet begun to live, for the best is yet to come. Outwardly, we may be getting nearer death but inwardly we are getting nearer glory.

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Present Experience Of Coming PowerIf we are Christians baldness, bedpans and zimmers are not worth worrying about. In fact, to fret about getting old is really to act like an unbeliever. We are allowing ourselves to be blinded by the things of this world when we should, be fixing our gaze on the glory of the next. Samuel Rutherford does precisely this,“The sands of time are sinking;The dawn of heaven breaksThe summer morn I've sighed for,The fair sweet morn awakes.Dark, dark hath been the midnight,But dayspring is at hand. And glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's land.”

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future HopePaul was writing to a church made up of people who were a part of a society with radically different ideas about death and the afterlife from that of orthodox Christianity. The Greeks thought of the body as an encumbrance, a prison for their soul and found it hard to think that Paul was looking forward to another body when they were only too happy to be rid of their own. Indeed, some within the church had subtly reinterpreted the Christian message and argued for an exclusively spiritual resurrection cf 1Cor.15. They were attempting to replace the biblical doctrine of a resurrection body with Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future HopeThis helps us to understand Paul's argument in ch.5. He is saying something like this,

'let's suppose this body, or tent that I am presently living in has a compulsory purchase order slapped on it. Death is an unsympathetic official telling me I can no longer stay in the property. Would the eviction order make me homeless? Far from it. For I have better dwelling at my disposal and unlike my present property its a permanent house, not a temporary tent. Indeed, its situated in a much more desirable neighbourhood- in heaven not on earth. And to tell you the truth I cannot wait to move in.'

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future Hope

In John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, one of his characters, Standfast expresses the same sentiment, “The thoughts of what I am going to ... lie as a glowing coal at my hearth!”.

That is the idea in Paul's mind here. You see, Christians do not need to fear death. It is no more traumatic than moving house or, buying a new suit. It represents a change but a change for the better.

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future HopeContrary to platonic thought and popular myth men and women will not spend eternity as ethereal spirits floating around from cloud to cloud plucking a harp. Paul insists that we will have new bodies suited to the new world that God has prepared for us. These bodies will not be insubstantial, ghostlike apparitions. If anything, they will be more concrete than our present ones. Does the Christian find himself clothed in his new body immediately after death? This vexed question has troubled many causing some to advocate the doctrine of the intermediate state. Which argues for a state of bliss as disembodied spirits until the second coming. So that Christians who die before Christ’s return will not immediately be clothed with the spiritual body mentioned in 1Cor. 15.

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future HopeThe idea of an intermediate state has its weaknesses. In v1 for example Paul uses a present tense. He says 'we have' and not 'we will have' a building from God. Paul seems to be suggesting that his spiritual body, like a new suit is already waiting to be put on. In addition to which the two alternatives which he presents in v6 and v8 between being 'at home in the body' and 'away from the Lord' seems to imply that as soon as he departs this life he expects to enter into one of permanency in the life to come. There is no suggestion of some sort of base camp where Christians float about waiting for the time to make the ascent to heaven.

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future HopeThere is a very close link between the present and the future in the life of the believer cf v5... Notice the past tense. The life of the new age is something for which the Christian is already prepared. The Holy Spirit is nothing less than the life of that new world, present now in the believer's experience, a foretaste of what is to come. So that when Christ appears it is not a case of being given a new life but rather, the resurrection life which we already have, will come out of hiding and appear with Christ in glory. At present the glory is obscured by our sinful bodies, but the new body will not obscure the glory but radiate it. With this contrast in mind read 1Cor. 15v35-49...

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future HopeThe Christian need not fear death as unbelieving men and women do. For unbelievers there is a reluctance to face up to the reality of death because it causes them to face up to the ultimate insignificance of their lives. They recognise that their tenderest memories, their best actions, their greatest achievements, their diplomas and degrees the love of their life, from their perspective, all face extinction. Everything is pointless unless it lasts. Death says to the unbeliever nothing lasts. This is why some have fits of uncontrolled wailing in the funeral services of loved ones- they are ‘without hope and without God in the world’.

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future HopeIn contrast, Paul speaks in v6 -8 of his confidence. He cannot yet see the new world of resurrection glory with his physical eyes - we walk by faith not by sight. The Christian faces death with a steady eye. We have an empty tomb on our side. We have eyewitnesses of the resurrection on our side. We have the first instalment of glory, the indwelling Spirit on our side and he has implanted the resurrection life of Jesus deep within us. Already he is at work, renewing our hearts and minds. The image of God is being rehabilitated within us. We have a spiritual identity in a new world which is even now growing and developing even though our mortal flesh is disintegrating. One day that spiritual identity is going to swallow up the old nature altogether, so that we who have been born in the likeness of the man of earth, Adam, will bear the likeness of the man from heaven, Jesus.

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Life Beyond The Grave A Future HopeThe most convincing form of Christian testimony is that of the believer who faces death well, realising that in dying they are doing no more than moving house, from being at home in the body to being at home with the Lord. What is so intimidating about that? Some missionaries invested a great deal of time working with an African tribe- just one family became Christian. Then the eldest son fell seriously ill and much prayer was made for his recovery. They thought of the witness that a miraculous healing would be. But the boy died. The missionaries were sure this would mark the end of their work. Who would believe their gospel now? But to their amazement the chief of the tribe said, 'We want to become Christians too'. The startled missionaries asked, 'Why' 'We want to have a God who can make us strong to face death,' replied the chief, 'the way you and the boy faced it’.

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ConclusionChristians are special not because they are immune from death but because they know what happens when they die. Just as a linguist can translate a word from one language to another and yet retain its meaning; just as a musician can transpose a sequence of notes from one key to another and yet retain the melody, so we believe that God can translate our human existence out of this old world of sin and death into his new world of resurrection life and yet retain our human identity. We shall be different in that world marvellously different because we will be like Jesus but we will also be radically the same because we shall never be more truly ourselves. 'We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us.'