For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

What a wonderful expression: ”swallowed up by life”. If one creature is ‘swallowed’ by a greater, more powerful animal, that first creature is no more. Mortality is going to be swallowed by immortality (see 1 Corinthians 15:50-58: a complementary passage to this one).

It takes me back to the C.S. Lewis quote from last time: there is something inside of us that hungers for a reality that is so much more than our ”mortal” life. Life in the world can be wonderful, but it is a fallen world, and we often have reasons to ”groan”. Again, perhaps more so as the years go by. Furthermore, so many Christians across the globe, like Paul and his team, are groaning because of persecution.

The Christian hope is the resurrection of the body, not the immortality of the soul. Paul likens the human body, at the present, to a ”tent”: in other words, temporary accommodation. But the resurrection body he calls ”a building from God”. This speaks of permanence. Our hope is not to be disembodied spirits, floating around eternity. There will be a new universe inhabited by new people to whom God has given new bodies. This is why Archbishop William Temple called Christianity ‘the most materialistic of all the religions.’