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 the believers towards his great and final hope.  The great hope of those that are in union with Christ, confessing and submitting to Him as Lord, is not heaven, but the final renewal of creation and a participation therein.  Here, Paul expresses it in terms of the day by day renewal of the inner person.  Here, one can imagine Paul drawing on Jeremiah’s Lamentations, where it can be 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 as the renewing, restoring kingdom of heaven (the Creator God’s realm of existence breaking into earth when and where deeds of love and sacrifice in the name of the Christ are performed) advances, even though the believer’s daily experience is that of a physical body that is wearing away and a creation that is often filled with chaos.  That wearing away, of course, will eventually result in a physical death.  However, this expectation of renewal and restoration, and the ongoing experience of it, 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 supposed that faith 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 (Jesus is Lord).  It cannot be seen, “For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (4:18b).  Yes, the physical body is wearing away each and every day, but what the believer cannot see---and instead must trust because Christ was raised from the dead and because the believers is in union with Him and shares His life through belief in Him as Lord by the movement of the Holy Spirit---is that he has been made to share in His eternal life.  That gift of eternal life is unseen, though glimpses of it can be caught when God works through those that share in that union 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.  There 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 in which the believer lives, that tent of human flesh, is being dismantled.  This seems to be another way of indicating that it will be worn away.  As was said, all will die. 

As an aside, an interesting corollary to this is that only some will truly ever live, doing so in union with the Christ.  In that thought of the inevitably of death however, there is no need to ultimately despair.  The believer does not lose heart.  Why  not?  Beecause “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 Jesus mentions in the Gospel of John?   Of course not.  There is no need to here shift one’s thoughts away from what it is that Paul is presenting.  He is speaking of the renewed body that will be inhabited by those that claim allegiance to Jesus, His reign, and His way being human and bringing about the kingdom of God.