'For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle
be dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens.'--2 COR. v. 1.
Knowledge and ignorance, doubt and certitude, are remarkably blended
in these words. The Apostle knows what many men are not certain of;
the Apostle doubts as to what all men now are certain of. '_If_ our
earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved'--there is surely no if
about that. But we must remember that the first Christians, and the
Apostles with them, did not know whether they might not survive till
the coming of Christ; and so not die, but 'be changed.' And this
possibility, as appears from the context, is clearly before the
Apostle's mind. Such a limitation of his knowledge is in entire
accordance with our Lord's own words, 'It is not for you to know the
times and the seasons,' and does not in the smallest degree derogate
from his authority as an inspired teacher. But his certitude is as
remarkable as his hesitation. He knows--and he modestly and calmly
affirms the confidence, as possessed by all believers--that, in the
event of death coming to him or them, he and they have a mansion
waiting for their entrance; a body of glory like to that which Jesus
already wears.
I. So my text mainly sets before us very strikingly the Christian
certitude as to the final future.
I need not dwell, I suppose, upon that familiar metaphor by which the
relation of man to his bodily environment is described as that of a
man to his dwelling-place. Only I would desire, in a word, to
emphasise this as being the first of the elements of the blessed
certitude in which Christian people may expatiate--the clear, broad
distinction between me and my physical frame. There is no more
connection, says Paul, between us and the organisation in which we at
present dwell than there is between a man and the house that he
inhabits. 'The foolish senses crown' Death and call him lord; but the
Christian's certitude firmly draws the line, and declares that the
man, the whole personality, is undisturbed by anything that befalls
his residence; and that he may pass unimpaired from one house to
another, being in both the self-same person. And that is something to
keep firm hold of in these days when we are being told that life and
consciousness are but a function of organisation, and that if the one
be annihilated the other cannot persist. No; though all illustrations
and metaphors must necessarily fail, the two which lie side by side
here in my text and its context are far truer than that
pseudo-science--which is not science at all, but only inference from
science--which denies that the man is one thing and his house
altogether another.
Then again, note, as part of the elements of this Christian
certitude, the blessed thought that a body is part of the perfection
of manhood. No mere dim, ghostly future, where consciousness somehow
persists, without environment or tools to act upon an outer world,
completes the idea of God in reference to man. But the old trinity is
the eternal trinity for humanity, body, soul, and spirit. Corporeity,
with all that it means of definiteness, with all that it means of
relation to an external universe, is the perfection of manhood. To
dwell naked, as the Apostle says in the context, is a thing from
which man shudderingly recoils; and it is not to be his final fate.
Let us take this as no small gain in reference to our conceptions of
a future--the emphatic drawing into light of that thought that for
his perfection man requires body, soul, and spirit. And now, if we
turn for a moment to the characteristics of the two conditions with
which my text deals, we get some familiar enough but yet great and
strengthening thoughts. The 'earthly house of this tabernacle is
dissolved,' or, more correctly, retaining the metaphor of the house,
is to be pulled down--and in its place there comes a building of God,
a 'house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'
Now the contrast that is drawn here, whilst it would run out into a
great many other particulars, about which we know nothing, and
therefore had better say nothing, revolves in the Apostle's mind
mainly round these two 'earthly' as contrasted with 'in the heavens';
and 'tabernacle,' or tent, as contrasted, first of all with a
'building,' and then with the predicate 'eternal.'
That is to say, the first outstanding difference which arises before
the Apostle as blessed and glorious, is the contrast between the
fragile dwelling-place, with its thin canvas, its bending poles, its
certain removal some day, and the permanence of that which is not a
'tent,' but a 'building' which is 'eternal.' Involved in that is
the thought that all the limitations and weaknesses which are
necessarily associated with the perishableness of the present
abode are at an end for ever. No more fatigue, no more working beyond
the measure of power, no more need for recuperation and repose; no
more dread of sickness and weakness; no more possibility of decay,
'It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption'--neither
'_can_ they die any more.' Whether that be by reason of any inherent
immortality, or by reason of the uninterrupted flow into the creature
of the immortal life of Christ, to whom he is joined, is a question
that need not trouble us now. Enough for us that the contrast between
the Bedouin tent--which is folded up and carried away, and nothing
left but the black circle where the cheerful hearth once glinted
amidst the sands of the desert--and the stately mansion reared for
eternity, is the contrast between the organ of the spirit in which we
now dwell and that which shall be ours.
And the other contrast is no less glorious and wonderful. 'The
_earthly_ house of this tent' does not merely define the composition,
but also the whole relations and capacities of that to which it
refers. The 'tent' is 'earthly', not merely because, to use a kindred
metaphor, it is a 'building of clay,' but because, by all its
capacities, it belongs to, corresponds with, and is fitted only for,
this lower order of things, the seen and the perishable. And, on the
other hand, the 'mansion' is in 'the heavens,' even whilst the future
tenant is a nomad in his tent. That is so, because the power which
can create that future abode is 'in the heavens.' It is so called in
order to express the security in which it is kept for those who shall
one day enter upon it. And it is so, further, to express the order of
things with which it brings its dwellers into contact. 'Flesh and
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption
inherit incorruption.' That future home of the spirit will be
congruous with the region in which it dwells; fitted for the heavens
in which it is now preserved. And thus the two contrasts--adapted to
the perishable, and itself perishable, belonging to the eternal and
itself incorruptible--are the two which loom largest before the
Apostle's mind.
Let no man say that such ideas of a possible future bodily frame are
altogether inconsistent with all that we know of the limitations and
characteristics of what we call matter. 'There is one flesh of beasts
and another of birds,' says Paul; 'there is one glory of the sun and
another of the moon.' And his old-fashioned argument is perfectly
sound to-day.
Do you know so fully all the possibilities of creation as that you
are warranted in asserting that such a thing as a body which is the
fit organ of the spirit, and is incorruptible like the heavens in
which it dwells, is an impossibility? Surely the forms of matter are
sufficiently varied to make us chary in asserting that other forms
are impossible, to which there may belong, as characteristics, even
these glorious ones of my text. The old story of the king in the
tropics, who laughed to scorn some one who told him that water could
be turned into a solid, may well be quoted in this connection. Let us
be less confident that we know all that is to be known in regard to
the sweep of God's creative power; and let us thankfully accept the
teaching by which we, too, in all our ignorance, may be able to say,
'We know that ... we have a building of God ... eternal in the
heavens.'
Now there is only one more remark that I wish to make about this part
of my subject; and it is this, that the teaching of my text and its
context casts great light--and I think by many people much-needed
light--on what the resurrection of the dead means. That doctrine has
been weighted with a great many incredibilities and I venture to say
absurdities, by well-meaning misconceptions and exaggerations. We
have heard grand platitudes about 'the scattered dust being gathered
from the four winds of heaven,' and so on, but the teaching of my
text is that the contrast between the present physical frame and the
future bodily environment is utter and complete; and that
resurrection does not mean the assuming again of the body that is
left behind and done with, but the reinvestiture of the man with
another body. And so the Scriptural phrase is, not 'the resurrection
of the body,' but 'the resurrection of the dead.' It is a house 'in
the heavens.' It comes 'from heaven.'