TUESDAY March 18th
2 Corinthians 5:1-5
‘For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.’
In our previous devotion I made this statement: ‘God has something much better prepared for us.’ Yes, these old creaky and cracked vessels we live in will one day no longer creak nor crack again. In these verses Paul puts it this way ‘For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life’, and he reminds us that He who has prepared us for this is God.
One day we will clothed again, that which will have perished, the outer man will be clothed in that which is eternal, for just as our spirit has been made alive again as we have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, so one day in the future, the body will be raised and transformed into that which God has prepared for each one of us, a spiritual glorified body, which will never again be tainted by sin and will never again perish, will never again decay nor waste away and will never know sickness or be racked with pain and the best way to understand how and what it will be like is to read what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 and 52-53
‘So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour; 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 is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body . . . For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.’
See God has taken care of everything! He had it all prepared and worked out even before the foundations of the world were laid, now, that tells me that I can trust God, for he knows the end from the beginning, he knows all about each one of us, he had already written in his book, even before we were formed in the womb, the number of days which were allotted to us, (Psalm 139) he has prepared every detail, and he is never caught out unaware. So, we trust him, knowing that even in those things that we do not understand, God knows and he in ‘this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal’, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.