¹For 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. ²For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, ³inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. ⁴For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.

Chapter divisions in our modern Bibles are not inspired, being supplied somewhere along the way by early medieval scribes, and the one between chapter 4 and 5 is one of the most misplaced divisions. Our passage today (2 Cor. 5:1–4) follows very closely without any break of thought from the previous chapter end (2 Cor. 4:16–18). The word “for” marks this continuation as adding detail to the comparison of the outer man decaying as “light affliction” with the renewal of the inner man, which “is producing for us an eternal weight of glory.”

Paul, the tentmaker by trade, now invokes familiar imagery to draw his work picture of the truth. Some commentators see here a subtle response to the proto-Gnostics who held that the eternal post-death existence comprised incorporeal spirits without bodies. Paul certainly builds on his teaching from 1 Corinthians 15 on the bodily resurrection of Christ and its implications for us. Here he gives it a very personal and illustrated understanding.

Paul, speaking generically of all believers, pictures the “outer” man as the “earthly tent.” As it decays and wears out, eventually it is torn down (ultimately in death). But since we look to the eternal, the things which are not “seen” (2 Cor. 4:18), we focus on the “building we have from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Theologians debate whether Paul is writing about the intermediate state of the believer’s existence between dying and being with the Lord immediately or about the return of Christ when we shall be raised from the dust of our graves. The first presupposes an intermediate “body” to subsequently be replaced by our physical resurrected body. The second idea is that a disembodied intermediate state exists for believers until the second coming of Christ. Yet it seems that Paul writes as one who is already beginning to experience the renewal of the inner man through daily dying (2 Cor. 4:16–18), and that which he writes about in our passage today is the consummation of the process rather than the beginning of it. He looks forward to the complete relocation into the eternal state where there will no longer be any groaning, pain, or burdens.

Lord, along with Paul I groan, looking for that day of complete transformation.