2 Corinthians

At the beginning of the two major sections of this portion of 2 Corinthians, 5:1-10 and 5:11-6:2, you notice that they each begin with the words “we know.” 2 Corinthians 5:1 says, “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” And then in the first half of verse 11 we read, “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.” That introduces us to a theme that ties these two sections together, which is the theme of Christian knowledge. It causes us to raise the question: How is it that Christians know or claim to know anything—that is, anything spiritual?

What we teach is not that which comes out of the experience or heart of man. It is that which God has revealed to us in our own language in propositions that we can understand. At this point we are criticized. Some people say, “Well, that really is something you can’t support because why should you regard the Bible in particular as God’s revelation?” We answer at that point, “We believe that the Bible is the Word of God because the Lord Jesus Christ taught this. And if He is God and, therefore, speaks truthfully as God must speak, then we can trust what He says about the Bible.”

In the opening section of chapter 5, Paul continues this discussion on his ministry from a heavenly perspective. He knows that death is going to come sooner or later for everybody, and in Paul’s case it is perhaps coming sooner because of the kind of hardships he was enduring. This body is at best a ragged tent. It is going to be folded up and put away one day. But Paul says that the glory of the Christian hope is to know that when that tent is put away, we have an eternal dwelling made by God in heaven (v. 1).

In addition to the image of a tent, Paul uses a second image, this time of clothing. These bodies of ours are great things but they are mortal. They are weakened by sin, subject to disease, and will eventually die. In a sense they are like clothing that has fallen into rags. What we look forward to is not the death of our body, which is like the taking off of our clothing and being found naked. Rather, what we await is when after death we will be clothed with a new heavenly body. It is with that knowledge that we press on.

The third reason we go to others with the Gospel is that the love of Christ constrains us. If you do not know Jesus Christ, then you do not have the kind of love for other people that would compel you to go in difficulty and endure all the sufferings Paul describes in order to present the Gospel to them. You might have a genuine but limited benevolence for other people, where you want to help them if you can as long as it does not demand too much. But that is not what missions is about. It is the love of Christ, who loves those who are lost in their sins and who suffer the consequences of living in a sinful world. Because Christ loves them, and because Paul has been joined to Christ, Paul finds that the love of Christ works within him and constrains him to go and tell people about Jesus.