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2 Corinthians

2 Corinthianschapter 5

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Speaks with:Romans 8×22 Corinthians 5×2Isaiah 43×2Romans 5×2Romans 14×2Job 19×1

Summary

Chapter summary

We know that if our earthly house were dissolved, we have a building of God. We are confident, willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. The love of Christ constraineth us. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself; now we are ambassadors for Christ. He made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Calvin reads this as the apostolic charter of reconciliation.

Context

Epistle · Paul — 2 Corinthians overview

  • A. 1–10 The Tent, the Building, and the Judgment Seat
  • B. 11–15 The Love of Christ Leaves Us No Choice
  • C. 16–21 New Creation: Ambassadors Pleading Be Reconciled

The outline

  1. A.The Tent, the Building, and the Judgment Seatvv. 1 to 10

    Read vv. 1 to 10 →

  2. B.The Love of Christ Leaves Us No Choicevv. 11 to 15

    Read vv. 11 to 15 →

  3. C.New Creation: Ambassadors Pleading Be Reconciledvv. 16 to 21

    Read vv. 16 to 21 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

The earnest of the Spirit

Pattern

Three times Paul calls the indwelling Spirit the earnest, a down payment that binds the payer to complete the purchase: twice in 2 Corinthians, and in Ephesians 1, where the seal and the earnest stand together.

A down payment pledges the full sum. The figure grounds assurance in God's own commitment: the Spirit given now is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.

  1. 2 Corinthians 1:22

    Sealed, and given the earnest

    The word is arrabon, a buyer's down payment; God hath sealed us and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.

  2. 2 Corinthians 5:5 you are here

    Wrought for the selfsame thing

    The earnest is given with the resurrection body in view, mortality swallowed up of life.

  3. Ephesians 1:13-14

    The earnest of our inheritance

    Sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.

The world behind this chapter

2 Corinthians 5
When
Written from Macedonia · c. AD 55–56
Where
A tent, a judgment seat, and an embassy — three pictures from ordinary Corinthian life.
Who first heard it
Believers weighing what happens after death and what Paul's ministry was actually for.

The history

The tent image came naturally to a man who worked in leather and cloth. A tent is temporary shelter, struck and packed; a building from God is permanent. Paul's hope is not to be unclothed but further clothed — he wants a body, not release from one, which keeps him distinct from the Greek longing to escape the flesh.

The judgment seat, the bema, was a real object in Corinth. A raised platform in the marketplace where the Roman governor heard cases has been excavated there, and it is almost certainly where Gallio dismissed the charges against Paul. When he says we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, his readers could picture the actual stone.

Ambassadors were the recognized channel between a ruler and a city or people. An imperial legate spoke with the authority of the one who sent him, and a city ignored him at its peril. Calling believers ambassadors for Christ, with God making his appeal through them, is a claim about authority as well as about mission.

"Reconciliation" belonged to diplomacy and to broken relationships alike — the ending of hostility between parties who had been at war.

What it meant to them

For the first hearers, the chapter answered both fear and complacency. There is a home waiting, and there is an accounting; the two sit side by side without contradiction.

The centre of it was a sentence that reorganized everything: if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. And the mission followed directly — God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ and has committed the message of reconciliation to them.

Sources cited

  • Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth
  • F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on 2 Corinthians 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

This page draws on Charles Hodge, An Exposition of 2 Corinthians; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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