Day 3: Friday, 16 February, 2 Corinthians 5.1-6.10

Today we move from considering the words of Joel and Isaiah, two of the great prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, to Paul, one of history's foremost theologians, church planters, letter writers, pastors, and much, much more.

The text is part of a classic passage in world literature. Though it's artificial to do so I'll set my context marker at the beginning of chapter 5. Verses 1-5 liken our earthly bodies to tents that will be destroyed, and our future bodies of the new creation as being like great houses. Having recently listened to the atheist scientist Richard  Dawkins in debate with both Rohan Williams and George Pell I admit that I do not understand how this will be so. But this passage is one of many in the New Testament which describe 'heaven' NOT as 'the place we go when we die' but as 'the place where God has our future bodies already in store for us.' Our current bodies are like tents or clothes, wrote Paul. At some stage after our deaths we'll receive heavenly bodies. That should be enough to keep us all pondering for a while!

But wait! There is more! In the next section Paul writes "For all of us must appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil." (v.10) In the ancient forum of Corinth (which was a Roman colony) there is a Judgement seat called a "bema". Paul uses this feature to describe how sometime in the future everyone will appear before the bema of the Messiah. This concept is too unpopular in today's society, and the theology around combining God's judgement with God's love is too complicated to discuss to discuss properly here. But it is so.

Speaking of love, the next section includes another famous Pauline saying: "For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. "The logic of love outweighs all other love known to the human race." We will do almost anything for love.

The next section (5.16-6.2) includes one of Paul's most famous statements: "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! That phrase 'new creation' is enormously important. In Christ we have crossed over from the old creation to God's new!

But in today's final section (6.3-13) Paul describes the great difficulties characteristic of the Old Creation that Paul struggled with, all because God's love compelled him.

  

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