2 Corinthians · chapter 5 of 13
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2 Corinthians 5 speaks of the believer's hope in the face of death: an eternal dwelling in heaven, the desire to please the Lord and the certainty of the judgment seat of Christ. Paul explains that Christ's love controls us, that anyone in Christ is a new creation and that God reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
Paul has spoken of the weakness of the body and the hope of eternal glory. This chapter continues that theme and reaches one of the centers of the New Testament: reconciliation with God through Christ. It is one of the most cited passages on the gospel and the mission of the church.
Paul knows that if the earthly tent they live in is destroyed, they have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Meanwhile they groan, longing to put on their heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. God himself prepared them for this and gave them the Spirit as a guarantee.
So they are always confident. While they are at home in the body, they are away from the Lord, for they walk by faith and not by sight. They would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord, but in any case their aim is to please him, for all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, to receive what is due for what they have done in the body, whether good or evil.
Knowing the fear of the Lord, they persuade people. Paul is not commending himself again but giving the Corinthians cause to boast on his behalf. The love of Christ controls them, because they are convinced that one has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died and was raised for them. So from now on they regard no one according to the flesh, even if they once regarded Christ that way. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, the new has come.
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us: be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
We walk by faith, not by sight. The Christian life is lived trusting what God has promised even though it is not yet seen.
All of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due for what we have done. Paul speaks of an evaluation of believers' lives, which motivates us to serve seriously and with a desire to please the Lord.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, the new has come. Conversion is not a surface improvement but a new beginning that God produces.
God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusted to us the message of reconciliation. He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: A building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. — 2 Corinthians 5:1
Answer: The Spirit. — 2 Corinthians 5:5
Answer: By faith, not by sight. — 2 Corinthians 5:7
Answer: The judgment seat of Christ. — 2 Corinthians 5:10
Answer: A new creation: the old has passed away and the new has come. — 2 Corinthians 5:17
Answer: Ambassadors for Christ. — 2 Corinthians 5:20
2 Corinthians 5 offers comfort in the face of death and illness. For a believer, death is not the end, and that conviction lets us speak of it with calm and hope. On a visit to a suffering brother or sister, these verses can be a concrete support.
It also gives us a mission. If God reconciled us to himself, we are ambassadors of that reconciliation. In a Sunday school class or small group, the practical question is whom God has placed around us to hear of his peace, and how we do it with love and clarity, without pressure or condemnation.
2 Corinthians 5 ends with the center of the gospel: Christ bore sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. In chapter 6 Paul appeals to the Corinthians, as God's fellow worker, not to receive the grace of God in vain, and describes how he lives his ministry amid trials.
Paul expresses the confidence that, at death, the believer will be with the Lord. Christians discuss details about the state between death and resurrection, but this text clearly affirms that whoever dies in Christ is with him, and that Paul's desire is to please him in any circumstance.
It is the moment when believers will give an account of their works before Christ. Paul does not speak of losing salvation, but of what was done in the body being evaluated. It is a reason to live seriously and to trust a judge who is also the Savior.
It is an expression of substitution: Christ, who had no sin, bore the sin of others and was treated as a sinner so that believers might be declared righteous before God. The phrase does not say Christ became a sinner, but that he took on our guilt.