June 9, 2014 Corinthians II Chapter 5

2nd Corinthians Chapter 5

Originally posted Friday August 1, 2008

2nd Corinthians Chapter 5:1-10 Living by Faith

Paul has characterized the human body as a clay jar. The metaphor points to two of his understandings about God and the missionary work in which Paul and his fellow evangelists are involved and for which they are suffering. The first relates to Jeremiah's image of the potter's "authority" over the clay jar he has made (Jer. 18:6; see Rom. 9:21). In Paul's thinking, God has called him to this work, has fitted him for it with spiritual gifts and guided his every step on the way through the Holy Spirit. This is God's work and Paul is but the instrument, the clay vessel that carries the message. The second is Paul's dualism in which he believes, without pause, that the clay is temporary and the God who gave him this perishable body will one day give him an imperishable body. Thus his weakness and his sense of fading away are seen in the greater perspective of eternity. 

Here Paul shifts the body metaphor from the clay jar to the earthly tent. Both are temporary. Both are at the disposal of God. The tent carries a meaning beyond the jar. On one level, as with the tent, it also means the human body and will remain so throughout the passage. However, the word for "tent" is used in John's Prologue relating to the Word made flesh who "pitched his tent among us." The word for tent also means Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, in which God's presence was said to reside with Israel throughout its desert wanderings. In 1 Cor. 3:16 Paul writes, "Do you not know that you are God's temple (Tabernacle) and that the Holy Spirit dwells in you?" Paul makes the connection: body-tent-Temple-Tabernacle, in which God's spiritual presence abides.

He extends the theme of being brought into God's presence (4:13-14). The earthly tent is destroyed in death and burial, but that which contained the presence of the Spirit is replaced with a "house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." In this life we are clothed with the temporary tent in which God resides. In death we lay aside that tent to be clothed "with our heavenly dwelling" in the presence of God. For Paul this is not a swap of one kind of body for a better, spiritual version. In 1 Cor. 15:54b, as part of Paul's wonderful metaphor of the body, he writes that "Death has been swallowed up in victory." He rephrases this in 5:2-4 as the "mortal [being] swallowed up by [eternal] life." These both mean the same thing, In his language the body of death is swallowed up into the body of life in God's presence.

While Paul would rather be "away from the body and at home with the Lord," his faith gives him full confidence in the future God has planned. Whether in this life or the next, his desire is to please God until that day when he and the Corinthians will appear at "the judgment seat of Christ." Although Paul never uses the title "Son of Man" for Jesus, all four Gospels do. The Son of Man is taken from Dan. 7:14 referring to "one like a human being" who is lifted up on the clouds to heaven and appears before God. In some forms of Judaism this figure took on the function of the judge on the last day. It was easily adapted to Jesus in reflection upon the meaning of his crucifixion, usually termed as "being lifted up" on the cross. Paul has incorporated Jesus into the judgment scene. It is not clear in Paul how he distinguishes the believer from the non-believer in the judgment, for both appear to "receive recompense... for good or evil." Here, as with Paul who has suffered, recompense is a reward, a compensation for injury. It also can mean paying a penalty for wrongdoing. Paul sees both meanings at play in judgment.

2nd Corinthians Chapter 5:11-21 Ministry of Reconciliation

Paul returns to his relationship with the Corinthian community. He hopes that by now he is well known enough by them and accepted as a valid apostle of the Gospel which he has presented in all frankness and truthfulness. Hedging in his ego, he doesn't want to sound as if he is commending himself again (which he is) but he does want them, in good conscience, to have the chance to boast about him and on his behalf. Especially, he writes, they can boast about his success among them to those "peddlers of God's word," who boast of the outer, visible trappings of preaching and not what is from the heart. Whether he appears to be beside himself (outwardly crazy) or in his right mind (outwardly sane), he is urged on by Christ's love, a love exhibited in Christ's death on his and their behalf.

In vs. 16 Paul makes the point about no longer regarding the Corinthians "according to the flesh," from a human perspective. He extends this perception to Christ who Paul no longer knows according to the flesh. This idea may seem difficult to understand since the cross which is the principle truth of Paul's notion of atonement is certainly part of Jesus' human existence. What we are meant to understand is that this change of perception is not a rejection of humanness in Christ or the Corinthians. It is a change of view from the physical to the spiritual. He now sees the Corinthians who are "in Christ" as part of a new, dawning spiritual creation, brought into being by the resurrected Christ, a spiritual and not a physical being. Paul now knows Christ as the one who died for all and was raised for all.

Paul's spiritual world was separated into two ages, the old age in control of Satan and the coming new age under the reign of God. In this passage we are reading of the overlapping of these two ages. When he writes "if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation,; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new," time is not a concrete category. The movement from the old to the new is not complete. It is in process. It is as if the Corinthians were part of the new creation and have one foot in the old and one in the new. In this way Paul knows them as a new spiritual creation which will soon make the transition from one age to the other. It is telling that the Greek verb Paul uses for being saved is literally translated as being "in the process of being saved."

Paul writes of this process and his role in offering the opportunity to all who wish to share in its future. In eloquent simplicity he frames the entire missionary enterprise in the brief creedal phrase "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." It is as succinct as it gets. Paul and his fellow evangelists have been given the ministry of reconciliation; they are ambassadors for Christ; God makes the appeal through them. So it is that Paul will continue to entreat, urge and persuade all on behalf of Christ "to be reconciled to God."