Our Heavenly Condition
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. (2 Corinthians 5:1–3 ESV)
The last verse of chapter 4 laid down a principle that might have caused some concern among the believers: “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:18 ESV). Someone may have asked, “Then what are we going to be in eternity? Seen or unseen?”
In explaining our eternal state, the apostle makes clear that we will not be spirits without bodies, rather our identity and the integrity of our individualism will be maintained. We will be given new bodies — a “heavenly dwelling” — or, as Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, an “imperishable,” “glorious,” and “spiritual” body (1 Cor. 15:42–44).
In this chapter of second Corinthians he compares it to a building and our current physical bodies as a tent. Tents are temporary and are easily worn out, but buildings are more permanent, so he uses a more permanent earthly situation to illustrate the eternal reality of our new body.
We “groan” here in our earthly bodies. This groaning refers not only to the physical problems we have, to the aches and pain of sickness and age, but also to the spiritual failures we live with in this day. It is not just that we are sick and ill often, but that we are saddened when we are sick, doubtful of our future, and these doubts and failures are part and parcel of this current physical world. We struggle in the flesh with temptations and weak attitudes.
But the future life will be one that is possessed entirely of God. These hopes and expectations lift our hearts today. We can now through faith also live in light of this promise. Though we still groan in some fashion, though we still deal with sickness and doubt and weaknesses, though we still live in a fallen world where there are problems and heartbreak, we can through faith live in the constant infilling of God’s Spirit as we look forward to the blessed new life of eternity. We need not be chained to this world, nor to our old sinful natures. By faith we may live in the new hope of eternity each day.
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Professor Albert Barnes wrote on Romans 8:22:
erse 22. For we know.The sentiment of this verse is designed as an illustration of what had just been said.
That the whole creation. Margin, “every creature.” This expression has been commonly understood as meaning the same as “the creature” in Ro 8:20,21. But I understand it as having a different signification; and as being used in the natural and usual signification of the word creature, or creation. It refers, as I suppose, to the whole animate creation; to all living beings; to the state of all created things here, as in a condition of pain and disorder, and groaning and death. Everything which we see; every creature which lives, is thus subjected to a state of servitude, pain, vanity, and death. The reasons for supposing that this is the true interpretation are,
(1.) That the apostle expressly speaks of “the whole creation,” of every creature, qualifying the phrase by the expression “we know,” as if he was drawing an illustration from a well-understood, universal fact.
(2.) This interpretation makes consistent sense, and makes the verse have a direct bearing on the argument. It is just an argument from analogy, he had (Ro 8:20,21) said that the condition of a Christian was one of bondage and servitude. It was an imperfect, humiliating state; one attended with pain, sorrow, and death. This might be regarded as a melancholy description; and the question might arise, why was not the Christian at once delivered from this? The answer is in this verse. It is just the condition of everything. It is the manifest principle on which God governs the world. The whole creation is in just this condition; and we are not to be surprised, therefore, if it is the condition of the believer. It is a part of the universal system of things; it accords with everything we see; and we are not to be surprised that the church exists on the same principle of administration — in a state of bondage, imperfection, sorrow, and sighing for deliverance.
Groaneth. Greek, Groans together. All is united in a condition of sorrow. The expression denotes mutual and universal grief. It is one wide and loud lamentation, in which a dying world unites; and in which it has united “until now.”
