The believer's hope is a theme that runs through 2 Corinthians. In the prevailing Greek understanding, there was no immortality for the body. Only the soul entered an eternal state. Paul vigorously countered this view, assuring the believers that they would receive new bodies in heaven. Anticipating this triumph, he realized, would motivate them to weather the abuse they were taking for their faith.

1. While camping, did your tent provide adequate shelter? Would you settle for it as a permanent residence? Which does Paul compare your body to (v. 1)?



2. What is the basis (v. 5) for your confidence that you'll receive an eternal body?



3. Would this confidence eliminate the deep hurt of leaving loved ones?



4. Should it cancel out anxiety about the unknown?



5. Paul preferred to ditch his dying body (vv. 5, 8) to be "at home with the Lord." Can you identify with his desire for further down the road? How about sooner?



6. Might pleasing God (v. 9) involve a "change of residence" for you?



7. What makes living by believing rather than by seeing (v. 7) so difficult?

Ask God to expand your appetite for His invisible, eternal kingdom and diminish your preoccupation with this fleeting, visible world.

¹For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down—when we die and leave these bodies—we will have a home in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.

⁴Our dying bodies make us groan and sigh, but it's not that we want to die and have no bodies at all. We want to slip into our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by everlasting life. ⁵God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit. ⁶So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord.

⁷That is why we live by believing and not by seeing. ⁸Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. ⁹So our aim is to please him always, whether we are here in this body or away from this body.

Prayer for the Week

Lord, help me match my stance toward physical death with my confidence in the eternal life You gave me.

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