Renewed (part 1)

Therefore we do not despair, but even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. – 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NET)

Paul’s words point us toward the great hope of the Christian. The great hope of those that are in union with Christ, confessing and submitting to Him as Lord, is our final renewal. Here, Paul expresses it in terms of the day by day renewal of our inner person. Here, we can imagine Paul drawing on Jeremiah’s Lamentations, where we read that “The Lord’s loyal kindness never ceases; His compassions never end. They are fresh every morning; Your faithfulness is abundant!” (3:22-23) Yes, those in union with Christ share in His Resurrection life, renewed day by day, and sharing in eternal life here and now, even though our daily experience is that our physical body is wearing away. That wearing away will eventually result in death. However, this expectation of renewal and restoration is based upon the fact of the Resurrection of Christ and its implication for humanity and for God’s good creation.

Because it is a hope and an expectation, Paul writes that “we are not looking at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen” (4:18a). There is faith here. It is a gift that is given by God’s Spirit, in the accompaniment of the preaching of the power of God for salvation, which is the Gospel. It cannot be seen, “For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (4:18b). Yes, our physical body is wearing away each and every day, but what we cannot see---and instead trust by faith because Christ was raised from the dead and because we are in union with Him and share His life through belief in Him as Lord by the movement of the Holy Spirit---is that we have been made to share in His eternal life. That gift of eternal life is unseen, though we catch glimpses of it when God works through us to be “a sweet aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved…a fragrance from life to life…speaking in Christ before God as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God” (2:15a, 16b, 17b).

Paul continues with this theme of the contrast being the physical body that wears away, and the inner, unseen person being renewed day by day through the power of the Spirit and the Gospel, carrying it forward into the fifth chapter. Paul writes, “For we know that if our earthly house, the tent we live in, is dismantled, we have a building from God, a house not built by human hands, that is eternal in the heavens” (5:1). The tent we live in, this tent of human flesh, is being dismantled. This seems to be another way of indicating that it will be worn away. As was said, we will all die. In this though, we do not despair. We do not lose heart. Why should we? “We have a building from God,” as Paul says, “a house not built by human hands.” Is this the “many dwelling places in My Father’s house” (John 14:2a) that we hear Jesus mentioning in the Gospel of John? Of course not. There is no need to shift our thoughts away from what it is that Paul is presenting. He is talking about the body.

What we will receive from God will be enduring, rather than temporary, like a building or a house, as opposed to a tent. It is a house not built by human hands, in that it is not something that is or can be produced through the course of nature. It requires God’s action. It requires a great transformation. It requires the application of God’s power in the same way that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was transformed from a tent that could be dismantled, to a building that would endure. His body was transformed into a form that would be eternal, and more than that, would be suited for the kingdom of heaven, which has been inaugurated here in this world, and which will ultimately be consummated here in this world when Christ finally ushers in the completion of God’s kingdom.

This is what we are to be expecting because of our union with Christ, and we have a taste of it day by day when God’s power flows through us to deal with the effects of sin that we find all around us. As the body of our Lord was transformed by the delivery of Resurrection power, so too are we transformed into the image that God would have us to bear day by day, and so too will we be transformed by that same Resurrection power, so as to provide us with a body, a building from God, that will be suited for His glorious and eternal new creation.