'Now He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing
is God.'--2 COR. v. 5.
These words penetrate deep into the secrets of God. They assume to
have read the riddle of life. To Paul everything which we experience,
outwardly or inwardly, is from the divine working. Life is to him no
mere blind whirl, or unintelligent play of accidental forces, nor is
it the unguided result of our own or of others' wills, but is the
slow operation of the great Workman. Paul assumes to know the meaning
of this protracted process, that it all has one design which we may
know and grasp and further. And he believes that the clear perception
of the divine purpose, and the habit of looking at everything as
contributing thereto, will be a magic charm against all sorrow,
doubt, despondency, or fear, for he adds, 'Therefore we are always
confident.' So let us try to follow the course of thought which
issues in such a blessed gift as that of a continual, courageous
outlook, and buoyant though grave lightheartedness, because we
discern what He means 'Who worketh all things according to the
counsel of His own will.'
I. The first thought here is, God's purpose in all His working; 'He
that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.'
What is that 'self-same thing'? To understand it we must look back
for a moment to the previous context. The Apostle has been speaking
about the instinctive reluctance which even good men feel at prospect
of dying and 'putting off the earthly house of this tabernacle.' He
distinguishes between three different conditions in which the human
spirit may be--dwelling in the earthly body, stripped of that, and
'clothed with the house which is from Heaven,' and to this last and
highest state he sees that for him and for his brethren there were
two possible roads. They might reach it either through losing the
present body, in the act of death, and passing through a period of
what he calls nakedness; or they might attain it by being
'superinvested,' as it were, with the glorious body which was to come
to saints with Christ when He came; and so slip on, as it were, the
wedding garment over their old clothes, without having to denude
themselves of these. And he says that deep in the Christian heart
there lay reluctance to take the former road and the preference for
the latter. His longing was that that which is mortal might be
'swallowed up of life,' as some sand-bank in the tide-way may be
gradually covered and absorbed by the rejoicing waters. And then he
says, 'Now He that hath wrought us for this very thing, is God.'
Of course it is impossible that he can mean by this 'very thing' the
second of the roads by which it was possible to reach the ultimate
issue, because he did not know whether his brethren and he were to
die or to be changed. He speaks in the context about death as a
possible contingency for himself and for them,--'_If_ our earthly
house of this tabernacle were dissolved,' and so on. Therefore we
must suppose that 'the self-same thing' of which he is thinking as
the divine purpose in all His dealings with us, is not the manner in
which we may attain that ultimate condition, but the condition itself
which, by one road or another, God's children shall attain. Or, in
other words, the highest aim of the divine love in all its dealings
with us Christian men, is not merely a blessed spiritual life, but
the completion of our humanity in a perfect spirit dwelling in a
glorified body. Corporeity--the dwelling in a body by which the pure
spirit moves amidst pure universes--is the highest end of God's will
concerning us.
That glorified body is described in our context in wonderful words,
which it would take me far too long to do more than just touch upon.
Here we dwell in a tent, there we shall dwell in a building. Here in
a house made with hands, a corporeal frame derived from parents by
material transmission and intervention; there we shall dwell in a
building of which God is the maker. Here we dwell in a crumbling clay
tenement, which rains dissolve, which lightning strikes, and winds
overthrow, and which finally lies on the ground a heap of tumbled
ruin. There we dwell in a building, God's direct work, eternal, and
knowing no corruption nor change. Here we dwell in a body congruous
with, and part of, the perishable earthly world in which it abides,
and with which it stands in relation; there we dwell in a house
partaking of the nature of the heavens in which it moves, a body that
is the fit organ of a perfect spirit.
And so, says Paul, the end of what God means with us is not stated in
all its wonderfulness, when we speak of spirits imbued with His
wisdom and surcharged with His light and perfectness, but when we add
to that the thought of a fitting organ in which these spirits dwell,
whereby they can come into contact with an external universe,
incorruptible, and so reach the summit of their destined
completeness. 'The house not made with hands,' eternal, the building
of God in the Heavens, is the end that God has in view for all His
children.