Original Meaning

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN 4:16–18 and 5:1–5 is a matter of dispute, primarily because of the several meanings that the Greek conjunction gar, which introduces 5:1, can signify (the NIV renders it “now”).¹ Paul often refers to something known in support of other affirmations he makes.² Thus, “we know” in 5:1 suggests that gar introduces the ground or reason for what he has just affirmed in 4:16–18. The ambiguous rendering of gar in 5:1 as “now” is therefore better translated “for” or “because”: “For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal [4:18], because [gar] we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands [5:1].” The eternal nature of the unseen world is based on the fact that it is built by God as our eternal dwelling place in his presence. When we understand 5:1 in this way, it becomes evident that the theme from chapter 4 of Paul’s confidence in the present, based on his convictions concerning the future, continues on in 5:1–10.

As important as the conjunction in 5:1 is for tracing Paul’s argument in 5:1–10, the key to understanding his thought here is determining the subject matter of the paragraph itself. The apparent simplicity of this text dissipates as soon as one realizes that the meaning of the contrast in 5:1 between what is “earthly” and what is “eternal” is by no means immediately clear. To what do the figures of an “earthly tent” (lit., “an earthly house, i.e., a tent”) that is destroyed, in contrast to a “building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands” refer? How can this eternal house or building “clothe us,” so that we will not be “found naked,” in order that “what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (5:2–4)? What is the “nakedness” that Paul wants to avoid? What is Paul longing for that causes him to “groan” as he waits for it, and when will his longing be fulfilled (5:2, 4)? Of the many answers that have been given to these questions, two interpretations have won the most support.³

(1) The most common interpretation is that Paul is expressing his certainty concerning the resurrection (5:1) and his longing to be alive when Jesus returns, so that he may go directly from his present life (= the “earthly tent” or being “at home in the body”) into his resurrected state (= the “building from God,” the “eternal house,” the “heavenly dwelling”; 5:2, 4) without experiencing death. Nevertheless, if one should die, Paul acknowledges a disembodied, “intermediate state” (= “being found naked” or being “unclothed”), which occurs between the death of a believer (= losing his earthly tent/body or being “unclothed”) and the future resurrection of the body (5:3–4). Though dying before Christ returns is not Paul’s first desire, if it should happen, he will “be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (5:8) until that time when believers receive their new resurrected bodies at the final “judgment seat of Christ” (5:10). Thus, dying is still preferable to remaining on in this life, since it means being with Christ (5:8).

This reading views Paul’s argument as primarily indebted to Jewish eschatology with its belief in a bodily resurrection, though Paul is also seen as influenced by the body/soul dichotomy common to the Hellenism of the age. The basis of this interpretation is the parallel between this passage and 1 Corinthians 15:50–55, where the concept of “being clothed” also appears in relationship to the resurrection of believers at Christ’s second coming (cf. 2 Cor. 5:2–4 with 1 Cor. 15:53–54).

There are modifications within this first view. Some argue that 5:1–5 speaks only of the final resurrection at the return of Christ, while the intermediate state described in 5:6–10 is also one of resurrection. In this view, there are only two kinds of existence (the earthly body and the resurrected body), so that those who die before Christ returns are already experiencing the resurrection of the age to come. At death, believers enter directly into their resurrected state. In contrast to Hellenistic thought, Paul’s point is to deny that there will be an intermediate period of “nakedness” without a resurrected body, which he would not desire (5:3–4).

Still others within this basic perspective argue that 5:1–5 describes the intermediate state itself. In this view, the “building from God” or “heavenly dwelling” of 5:1–2 does not refer to the resurrection body, but is Paul’s attempt to describe a temporary dwelling or clothing in the intermediate state that will keep believers from being found “naked” (i.e., as a disembodied spirit), something that Paul could not imagine (5:3–4). In this view, Paul is still affirming the intermediate state as different from that of the final bodily resurrection, but rejecting the idea of being “naked” during it.

(2) In stark contrast to this first view and its variations, an influential group of scholars has followed the lead of Earle E. Ellis in arguing that the subject matter here is not the future of the individual at all, as it is in 1 Corinthians 15, but the Jewish temple as a symbol for the present incorporation of believers into the collective body of Christ.⁴ Instead of describing death and the afterlife, Paul is referring to becoming a Christian in this life. Taking the parallels in terminology between 5:1 and Mark 14:58 as its clue, this view argues that the eternal, heavenly building from God in 5:1–2 refers to God’s people as the new temple in which he now dwells (for this use of the building imagery for the people of God, cf. 1 Cor. 3:9; Eph. 2:21; 4:12, 16).

In 2 Corinthians 5:1–2, therefore, Paul is talking about those who have been incorporated into the church as the body of Christ, who alone is now present in heaven. The “destruction” in view in 5:1 is not the individual believer’s death, but the whole process of dying spoken of in 4:7–11 and 4:16–18. Paul’s point and confidence is that, even though the mortal bodies of believers are being destroyed, they are now members of Christ’s body. The image of “being clothed”/“putting on” in 5:2, 4 does not refer to gaining some kind of heavenly existence, but to taking on Christ in baptism.⁵ In 5:3, Paul is not thinking about being “naked” during an intermediate state, but about being found exposed “before the judgment seat of Christ” without the necessary good deeds spoken of in 5:10.⁶

Paul is not personally worried about being found wanting on the day of judgment, since he has been incorporated into “the heavenly body,” which is Christ, so he makes it his goal to please the Lord (5:9). According to this interpretation, Paul’s groaning and longing in 5:2, 4 refer to the tension that now exists between being in Christ in the midst of the suffering and sin of this world and the longing to be “found” in him rather than being “found” judged by God. Only in 5:6–10 does Paul turn to the future, and then to the return of Christ, not to some kind of intermediate state. In 5:8, Paul is therefore referring to being “at home” with Christ at his second coming.

This “corporate identity in Christ” perspective is insightful in many respects. It only succeeds completely, however, if one dissociates 2 Corinthians 5:1–5 from its close parallels in 1 Corinthians 15:53–55. Yet this is the backdrop that the Corinthians would have before them in reading Paul’s current letter. Although the idea of “putting on”/“clothing oneself” is closely related thematically to our present context (only as a “new self” [Eph. 4:24] “in Christ” [Gal. 3:27] does one inherit the “heavenly dwelling”), this view has difficulty dealing with the fact that Paul presently longs for this “dwelling” (2 Cor. 5:2), which is hard to reconcile with his insistence that we are now already “in Christ.”

Moreover, 5:1 is best read as an event (cf. the use of the aorist tense), not as a parallel to the ongoing process of 4:16–18, where the verbs “wasting away,” “being renewed,” and “achieving” were all in the present, continuous tense. The future orientation of 5:1–5, as well as 5:6–10, is difficult to deny as well. Thus, the idea that Paul is referring directly to the believer’s incorporation into the body of Christ as the temple in 5:1–4 cannot be sustained.

In view of such objections, C. Marvin Pate has developed this “corporate identity” view further in an attempt to overcome its weaknesses. Following the basic insight of Ellis that Paul is speaking of the believer’s corporate identity in Christ, Pate argues that the “nakedness” in view in this passage is an allusion to Adam’s experience in Genesis 3:1–7, thus reestablishing a link between this text and Paul’s “Adam-Christology” in 1 Corinthians 15:21–55 (cf. Rom. 5:11–21). Against this backdrop, Christ as the “second Adam” forms the theological foundation for 2 Corinthians 5:1–10, supported by the larger context of 4:7–5:21 (cf. the allusion to Gen. 1:26–27 in 2 Cor. 4:4, 6, 16). Paul’s fundamental point is that “the primeval glory that the first Adam lost has been restored through the righteous suffering of Christ, the last Adam.”⁷ The “nakedness” of 5:3 therefore refers to our participation in Adam’s nakedness after the Fall.⁸ In Adam, we too are “naked” of our bodily glory, a condition that continues in the “bodiless” intermediate state. Paul fears the continuation of this “glory-less” state after death and longs for the full manifestation of divine glory in his mortal body, which has already begun in his heart.

Thus, Pate’s reading corrects the corporate view by bringing it more into line with 1 Corinthians 15, as well as maintaining a body/soul dualism within a Jewish, eschatological framework. However, Pate’s view is weakened by his attempt to relate this passage almost exclusively to Paul’s “Adam Christology,” which is merely a secondary allusion in this context. Moreover, this background cannot explain 5:6–10. In the end, Pate too falls back on the traditional view of “nakedness” as a description of the intermediate state, where being naked is still taken to refer to being “bodiless,” now viewed in terms of lacking the glory of God.

Against the backdrop of the strengths and weaknesses of these interpretations, the view proposed here takes its starting point from (1) the contrast in 4:18 between the temporary and the eternal that 5:1–10 is designed to support, (2) the corresponding reference to only two periods of time in this passage—an earthly time in which we are “at home in the body” and an eternal, heavenly time in which we are “at home with the Lord,” (3) the explicit reference to the judgment seat of Christ in 5:10 as the decisive factor separating these two epochs, and (4) the direct parallels between 1 Corinthians 15:50–54 and 2 Corinthians 5:1–10. As these points indicate, the framework of 5:1–10 is Paul’s two-age conception in which life in this age (i.e., the “mortal” of 5:4) will one day be “swallowed up” by the life of the age to come, when all people will stand before Christ as judge (5:1, 4, 10).

In contemplating this future, Paul’s longing is not for death per se, but to be transformed into his resurrection body (5:2, 4). There is therefore no explicit reference in this passage to an intermediate state. Ellis has convincingly argued that the “nakedness” in view is an ethical term, referring to the shame of exposure before the judgment of God, not an anthropological term that refers to a state of human existence (the common view), or a material term that refers to the absence of God’s glory (Pate’s view). Paul’s focus is exclusively on the future resurrection at the judgment seat of Christ. Finally, Pate’s emphasis on the restoration of God’s glory to those who are now “in Christ” as the “second Adam” provides an important though secondary conceptual background to Paul’s thought.

Paul’s Confident “Groaning” for the Future (5:1–5)

THE MAIN POINT of 4:13–18 was that, in the midst of his adversities, Paul focuses on those things that are not presently seen (4:18b), because these unseen things are what count, for they are eternal (4:18d). Paul supports this conviction in 5:1: “because [gar] we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed [= life in the perishable, mortal body of this age of suffering, the temporary things now being seen from 4:18], we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands [= life in the glory of the imperishable resurrection body, the eternal, unseen things from 4:18].” These equations are confirmed by the direct parallels between 5:1–3 and 1 Corinthians 15:50–54, as well as the reference to the resurrection in 2 Corinthians 4:14 (see also Phil. 3:21).

The wasting away and affliction that Paul now sees at work in his life may even lead to his destruction in death, but his confidence in the coming “eternal weight of glory” (4:17) cannot be shaken, since it is based on what God himself will provide; that is, it is “not built by human hands.” Paul’s switch in metaphors in 5:1 from an “earthly tent” to a “building” is intended to communicate this difference between impermanence and permanence.⁹ Paul knows that whatever this life may bring in terms of suffering and destruction, the life of the age to come will just as surely be filled with the glory of God. This confidence, expressed in 5:1, is the main point of 5:1–5, with verses 2–5 serving to support Paul’s confident knowledge of the future.

In 5:2, Paul’s confidence in God’s future provision (4:13–5:1) causes him, like all believers, to “groan” in the midst of his present suffering as he longs to inherit the glory God has in store for him in Christ—that is, “to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling” (see Rom. 8:22–25).¹⁰ Hence, the “building from heaven” that is the object of Paul’s longing in 5:2 is the same “building from God” referred to in 5:1, namely, resurrection life in the eternal age to come.

Paul’s point is that the groaning of anticipation that comes from this longing is itself evidence that God has promised believers more to come than the moaning of suffering and death. For this reason, the NIV rendering of the gar in 5:2 as “meanwhile” is to be rejected in favor of “because” or “for,” indicating another ground clause. Just as 5:1 supported 4:18 by pointing to what God will do, 5:2 supports the confidence expressed in 5:1 by pointing to the response of the believer. In spite of the suffering Paul currently experiences and the prospect of destruction on the horizon, he is confident that he will inherit the glory of the resurrected life because of his God-given longing for it. If God had not planted this seed of hope in his heart, his current suffering would be all that could be expected (cf. 1:22; 4:13–16; 5:5).

Paul longs to “be clothed with” his heavenly dwelling because he can assume that he “will not be found naked” (like Adam after the Fall); that is, that he will not be condemned by God in the final judgment (5:3). Inasmuch as the image of “being clothed” in 5:2–3 refers primarily to the resurrection body, it is important to see that believers receive this body “in Christ.” Being raised to new life by faith in Christ as the second Adam, symbolized in baptism (cf. Rom. 5:15–6:23), anticipates being raised to new life in Christ at the resurrection (cf. 1 Cor. 15:20–28, 45–49). Indeed, being clothed with Christ is the theological foundation to being clothed with our eternal dwelling from God. The believer’s union with the resurrected Christ inaugurated in baptism is consummated in the resurrection from the dead. Or, in the terms of 2 Corinthians 3:18, the believer’s encounter with the transforming glory of God in Christ as the “image of God” (cf. 4:4, 6) culminates in the final glorification of the believer into that same image (i.e., the believer is being transformed “with ever-increasing glory”).

The positive groaning of 5:2–3 is matched by a negative one, expressed in 5:4, the presence of which supports Paul’s anticipation in 5:3 (note again gar, “for,”¹¹ in 5:4). Paul’s confident longing to inherit the eternal life of the age to come is supported by his desire to escape God’s judgment. In terms of his metaphor, the apostle is “burdened” because he does “not wish to be unclothed” (i.e., found naked or condemned at the judgment of God), but “clothed” (i.e., vindicated at the judgment of God by his resurrection). If “nakedness” is seen as a metaphor for being under God’s judgment, then there is no reference to an intermediate state in this verse. Moreover, Paul focuses on his longing in the present, not his whereabouts between his death and the final resurrection. The desire not to be “unclothed” when judgment takes place is supporting evidence that the believer will indeed be “clothed” when it occurs (5:5, 9–11).

To fear God’s judgment is a sign that God is at work to save a person from it. Unbelievers do not fear that judgment in a way that causes them to repent (cf. 6:14–7:1; 7:9–11). The purpose of Paul’s desire to avoid being naked on the Judgment Day is cited at the end of 5:4: “so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (an allusion to the consummation of redemption as pictured in Isa. 25:8; see 1 Cor. 15:54). The “life” in view here is the resurrection life of the age to come (cf. 2 Cor. 4:14).

To end the first section of his argument, Paul makes explicit in 5:5 that the basis of his groaning, both positively and negatively, is God himself, since he is the one who has “made us for this very purpose.” God is the one who brought about Paul’s longing for the resurrection, since he is the one who “has given the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” Furthermore, this Spirit-wrought longing takes place in the midst of the very adversities that fuel this same desire (cf. 1:22; Rom. 8:23).

The NIV obscures the fact that the same verb used in 5:5 to refer to God’s having prepared Paul for the future by granting him the Spirit (katergazomai) is used in 4:17 to describe his “achieving … an eternal glory” through his present afflictions. Here too, as in 2:14–3:3, suffering and the Spirit come together. Without the Spirit, the adversities of 4:17 would not seem temporary and slight. But without the adversities, the hope generated by the reception of the Spirit would lose its force. So God prepares his people by giving them a foretaste of the glory to come, in order that the suffering of this present age might be put into its proper perspective. And he gives them suffering so that the glory to come might be put into its proper perspective as well.

In 5:1–5, therefore, Paul is developing what he stated earlier. Both his confident longing for the future (his “positive” groaning) and his burden to put off the sin and suffering of the present (his “negative” groaning) are derived from the presence and power of the Spirit (for the role of the Spirit as the “deposit” on God’s future promises, see 1:22; for the role of the Spirit as the power of new life en route to the fulfillment of these promises, see 3:3, 6, 8–9, 18). This “groaning” is not a natural response to suffering and sin, but the supernatural gift of God. God prepares his people for the future by giving them a longing for it. And he does this by granting them his Spirit as a down payment of his presence. Only those who have begun to experience the glory of God long for its consummation in the midst of their adversities.

The Consequence of Paul’s Confidence (5:6–10)

PAUL NOW DRAWS the first conclusion that flows from his knowledge concerning the future: the ethics inherent in 5:6–10. Because Paul knows that his future with God is secure no matter what takes place in the present, including his complete destruction, “therefore” (oun) Paul remains “confident” (better, “courageous”; cf. 3:12; 4:1; 4:16). Paul knows “that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.” His point here is not intended to be a tautology, nor is it a denial of the possibility of being in communion with Christ while still on earth. It is a caution against absolutizing the significance of our present “location”—that is, of our lives on earth. Paul is reminding his readers that the source of a Christian’s confidence is the recognition that to be “at home in the body” (parallel to being in “the earthly tent,” 5:1, 4) is not the end-all of life. Life in this world is not the believer’s final reality. It must be seen for what it is, namely, being “away from the Lord” (as a parallel to the “heavenly dwelling” or “house from God” in 5:1, 4). It is the penultimate, relative significance of the present, no matter how adverse its circumstances, that gives Paul courage (cf. comments on 4:13–18).

Therefore¹² Paul, like all believers, lives “by faith, not by sight” (5:7). This is the first consequence of Paul’s confidence. Paul’s lack of “sight” refers to what is now being experienced in this “earthly tent” (cf. 4:18–5:1). In the present, it is impossible to see the fullness of the resurrection glory still to come. Nevertheless, he trusts in God’s promises as the ultimate reality and lives accordingly; he does not live as if his present suffering were the sum of life. It is Paul’s confidence in God’s future (i.e., faith focused on God’s promises) that determines how he lives in the present. In other words, the apostle

fixes his gaze on what cannot be seen (4:18), his inner glory, not his outer affliction (4:17), his inward renewal, not his external decay (4:16), the new age, not the old (4:18), resurrection life, not present dying (4:10, 11), the weighty, not the trifling (4:17), the eternal, not the temporal (4:18), the heavenly, not the earthly (5:1–2). In short, he adopts a perspective of faith … of trusting that, for the present eschatological moment, glory really does come to expression through affliction.¹³

Verses 6–7 thus provide a healthy corrective to the misunderstanding concerning what it meant to be “in Christ” that was so much a part of the Corinthian church. Unfortunately, their spiritual experiences led them to believe that they were already experiencing the fullness of the age to come (cf. 1 Cor. 4:8; 15:12¹⁴). In turn, the Corinthians’ self-important, super-spirituality made the triumphalistic message of Paul’s opponents so attractive, especially when it excused and even legitimized their materialism and moral laxity. Once again, however, the impossibility of such a winking at sin because of one’s supposed spirituality (cf. 1 Cor. 5:1–6:20; 2 Cor. 12:21) becomes clear as Paul’s argument continues. Rather than downplaying God’s judgment, the Spirit actually discloses it and then prepares us for it by transforming our desires, which in turn alters our actions.

Verses 8–9 restate verses 6–7, unpacking the implications of what it means to know that one is still “away from the Lord” and of what living by faith looks like. In regard to the former, viewing the present from the perspective of the future means that our values and desires are radically altered. Instead of desiring a prolonged life on earth, we prefer to be “at home with the Lord” (cf. Phil. 1:23). Concerning the latter, living by faith is being confident that the eternal glory of “what is unseen” is certain and secure for believers and that it “far outweighs” any suffering of this world (4:17–18), so that the believer would trade this world for the world to come in a moment (5:8). Hence, to live by faith also means that, “whether we are at home in the body or away from it”—that is, whether we live or die—we aim to please the Lord, not ourselves (5:9; cf. 5:15; Phil. 3:1–13; cf. Rom. 12:1–2; 14:17–18; Eph. 5:10; Phil. 4:18; Col. 3:20).

The basis (“for,” once again, gar) for this ambition to please the Lord is given in 5:10: Believers are aware that all people must appear before Christ as judge (cf. 1:14). Since in Romans 14:10–12 Paul signifies God as the judge, this identity of function between Christ and God highlights the divine sovereignty of Christ in a dramatic way. The purpose of Christ’s divine judgment is to grant to each person his or her due, based on what was done while living “in the body,” that is, while in the “earthly tent” of this life. The image of the “judgment seat” (bema) in 5:10 comes from the practice of the Roman governors, who sat on such tribunal benches to render judgment in legal cases. Just as the Corinthians were aware that Paul had stood before the “judgment seat” of the Roman governor Gallio in Corinth (cf. Acts 18:12, 16–17), so too Paul reminds them that they will stand before the “judgment seat” of Christ.

The main point of 5:1–10, therefore, is Paul’s ambition to please the Lord in walking by faith (5:7a, 9). This ambition is rooted in his courage during this life (5:6a, 8a) because of his confidence in the resurrection of the righteous (5:1–5) and his awareness of the universal judgment to come (5:10). He is thus motivated both by the positive appeal of God’s promises and by the negative prospect of Christ’s judgment against all that is “bad.” The explicit use of “we … all” in 5:10 indicates a widening focus to include all believers (cf. 3:18). Paul’s own way of life is based on his conviction that all believers will stand before Christ as judge. That unbelievers are also in view in 5:10 goes without saying.

The conviction that the judgment for all people is according to one’s deeds is a common theme in Paul’s letters.¹⁵ The affirmation of this principle in the midst of his discussion of his hope of sharing in the eternal, resurrection life of Christ makes it clear that salvation itself is in view in Christ’s judgment, not merely giving believers “rewards” for their faithfulness. Paul’s confidence in the face of such judgment consequently reflects the reality of the new covenant in bringing about salvation, with its promise of righteousness and forgiveness in Christ, power for obedience through the Spirit, and deliverance from God’s condemnation and wrath to come (cf. 3:3, 6, 8–9).

What renders one “naked” on the Judgment Day is a lack of good deeds done while still “in the body.” What “clothes one” in Christ before the judgment seat of Christ is a life filled with acts pleasing to God (cf. Rom. 2:5–11; 14:17–18; cf. 1 Cor. 6:9–11; Gal. 5:16–26; Phil. 1:6, 11). The good deeds of 5:10 reveal what was stated in 3:3, namely, that one is “a letter from Christ … written … with the Spirit of the living God.” Thus, Paul’s statements in 5:9–10 should not be reduced to refer merely to rewards given to believers for righteous living after conversion.

Bridging Contexts

MUCH OF THE “bridge work” in this text revolves around determining controversial issues of interpretation. However, once Paul’s unfamiliar metaphors are decoded, bringing his thought here to our own day presents no real problems at the conceptual level. Given our exposition of the text, we may simply point out the obvious. Death is the perennial problem of human existence. Thus, our greatest deception remains the thought that this life is all there is or that there is no judgment at the gateway to eternity. The profound and all-encompassing impact of knowing that there is a future reality beyond “being at home in the body” (5:9) and that there is a judgment yet to come in the presence of Christ (4:14; 5:10) remains as radical in the twenty-first century as it was in the first. It is this knowledge that fuels a life lived not for the present, but for the Lord (cf. 5:1, 10).

In view of the central role Paul’s hope for the future plays in his life as a believer and in his ministry as an apostle, it is important to note that this text does not present a timetable for Christ’s coming or a treatise on the precise contours of heaven. For Paul, “eschatology” is not primarily a series of doctrines or predictions about what will happen, but a longing for the resurrection and a certainty of heaven’s eternal glory. The promises for which he longs are made real not by trying to figure out when Christ will return, but by an encounter with the risen Christ and by an experience of the Spirit’s power and presence. It is Paul’s knowledge of God in the present, not a calendar of end-times events, that makes him long to be with God for all eternity.

Moreover, a focus on the future that is fueled by a foretaste of God’s presence leads to a life of faith aimed at pleasing the God in whose presence we already find ourselves. The goal and consequence of eschatology is ethics! Thus, this passage is another expression of the “already/not yet” tension that runs throughout the New Testament: Our experience of God in the present creates in us a craving for the full revelation of his glory in the future, which in turn creates a deep desire to live now in light of realities yet to come.

The personal obstacle. Having interpreted our text and seen its immediate relevance, our work at bridging contexts is still far from finished. Though there may be no difficulty in bringing this passage to our day at the conceptual level (the significance of the text is all too clear!), there are several serious impediments to appropriating Paul’s message at the volitional level. Sometimes we may have to destroy old foundations at the personal, cultural, and/or theological level before we can build a biblical edifice. This is the case here.

The first difficulty is a personal one. Though we understand what Paul is saying, our now-centered culture makes it difficult for us to relativize the importance of the present by measuring it against the significance of the future. Since our churches seldom confront our saturation with the present, Paul’s vision of the surpassing value of being “at home with the Lord” (5:8) strikes us as foreign and uncomfortable. Much of the contemporary Western church has lost sight of Paul’s perspective that the glorious fulfillment to be gained from pleasing the Lord cannot be compared to the puny pleasures to be strained out of this life if lived for itself. Glutted on the second-rate happiness of this world, we are too full to hunger after God.

Moreover, we lack the spiritual “exercise” needed to make us hungry again. Filled with the sights and sounds around us, we think little about—indeed, we are embarrassed to spend time—cultivating a confident vision of the glories to come. As David Van Biema questions in Time magazine’s 1997 Easter essay, “Does Heaven Exist?”: “It used to be that the hereafter was virtually palpable, but American religion now seems almost allergic to imagining it. Is paradise lost?”¹⁶ The answer, in a word, is “yes.” Van Biema reports that for most people “the current generic heaven still delivers when people need it most … at the death of a loved one. Why bother with it any other time?”¹⁷ He observes, “Modernist attacks on God’s place in this world made people allergic to bold predictions about his kingdom in the next … ‘scientific, philosophical and theological skepticism has nullified the modern heaven and replaced it with teachings that are minimalist, meager and dry.’ ”¹⁸

David Wells points out that this intellectual skepticism has a corollary at the person level: “It’s difficult for some people to conceive of anything that is really much better than this life. Sure, they go to bed appalled by the 11 o’clock news. But those buddies on the beer commercial saying, ‘It doesn’t get much better than this’ are speaking more deeply than we realize.”¹⁹ No wonder there is so little moral courage or self-giving left in our culture of expediency and self-love. In stark contrast, Paul’s bold certainty concerning the resurrection and his corresponding comparison between the values of the present and those of the future give him courage in this world (5:6, 8), precisely because they cause him to long for his life “from God … in heaven” (5:1).

The absence of a longing for heaven in our churches therefore represents much more than merely a shift in doctrinal emphasis, as if the difference is merely one of personal preference. It is not as if Paul focuses on the future as central to life in the present, but we, given the needs of the day, prefer instead to focus on Christology or the doctrine of justification by faith. Rather, Paul’s reminder in 5:5 that his courage in the present and longing for the future both derive from the “deposit” of the Spirit in his life reveals the poverty of contemporary experience of the life-changing power of God’s holy presence (see comments on 3:16–18). If the granting of the Spirit prepares us for and guarantees our future in God’s unmediated presence, our dim view of the glory to come means that we have far too little genuine knowledge of God here and now. Not having tasted much of heaven, all we can imagine is earth.

Over against our weak desires, Paul’s ambition is to please Christ, not because he has convinced himself that he “ought” to do so, but because he is convinced that the Christ he has already come to know will one day also judge him (5:9–10). Inasmuch as his experience of God has already proved so valuable (5:5; cf. 1:22), he will not risk doing anything that may keep him from being “at home with the Lord.” By contrast, our jokes about heaven being filled with our greatest pleasure on earth (e.g., “heaven is the great golf course in the sky”; or, “when I get to heaven I am going to eat all the pizza I can without worrying about my cholesterol”) simply show how blind we are to the reality that it is the Lord himself who makes heaven our rightful home, and that it is this same Lord who will welcome us there. To make the central focus of heaven anything or anyone beside God himself is ludicrous; to add something to God as heaven’s pleasure is idolatrous.

The cultural obstacle. Our exposition of this passage makes clear that Paul’s emphasis on the “eternal” nature of the glory he anticipates seeing (4:17), on the “eternal” nature of the “unseen” things he therefore focuses on (4:18), and on the “eternal” quality of the dwelling he will inherit (5:1) ties this passage together with 4:13–18. In Paul’s thinking, “eternal” (aionios) does not refer to an ethereal region or an atemporal manner of existence, but to a span of time—in this case, to the unending age to come. “Eternal” is a temporal term for Paul, not a mystical one.²⁰ What makes something “eternal” is its unending nature over against the finite nature of the historical age in which we live.

Though we read in Paul’s letters about eternal realities, as members of the “now generation” the difficulty of escaping our love affair with the present is made all the more difficult by the dominant cultural ethos of “progress” in which we live. To quote van Biema again: “When heaven comes up in public debate these days, it is often just a metaphor for the concerns of a perfectible secular kingdom of man.”²¹ Therefore, if we are to resist such cultural pressure in order to live by faith so that Christ is pleased (5:7, 9), we must keep in mind the dramatic distinction between the biblical view of history and the modern notion of progress. In the latter, the world is somehow getting “better” as it marches into unending time. In the worldview of the Bible, history, under the providence of God, is moving toward its appointed end, which will culminate with a personal and world-transforming day of reckoning. The end of history is the judgment of God, meted out on the basis of a faith-induced obedience to God’s will. In the modern view of progress, the world is run by natural law alone; in the biblical view of providence, the world is under the grace and law of God.

In his important study, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, Christopher Lasch has portrayed in great detail this difference between the biblical and modern worldviews and its implications.²²

Once we recognize the profound differences between the Christian view of history, prophetic or millenarian, and the modern conception of progress, we can understand what was so original about the latter: not the promise of a secular utopia that would bring history to a happy ending but the promise of steady improvement with no foreseeable ending at all. The expectation of indefinite, open-ended improvement, even more than the insistence that improvement can come only through human effort, provides the solution to the puzzle that is otherwise so baffling—the resilience of progressive ideology in the face of discouraging events that have shattered the illusion of utopia…. The modern conception of history is utopian only in its assumption that modern history has no foreseeable conclusion. We take our clue from science, at once the source of our material achievements and the model of cumulative, self-perpetuating inquiry….²³

Hence, although the idea of a utopian future has been given up in modern thought, the populace and modern politics, not to mention our personal ambitions, are still driven by a conviction that things will somehow improve, at least for those in the privileged classes of power. Lasch traces this belief in unending progress, “in the face of massive evidence that might have been expected to refute the idea of progress once and for all,” to the eighteenth century, when it began to be argued that

human wants, being insatiable, required an indefinite expansion of the productive forces necessary to satisfy them. Insatiable desire … came to be seen as a powerful stimulus to economic development … a continual redefinition of … standards of comfort and convenience led to improvements in production and general increase of wealth. There was no foreseeable end to the transformation of luxuries into necessities. The more comforts people enjoyed, the more they would expect. The elasticity of demand appeared to give the Anglo-American idea of progress a solid foundation that could not be shaken by subsequent events, not even by the global wars that broke out in the twentieth century. Those wars, indeed, gave added energy to economic development.²⁴

The modern notion of progress is so enduring because it is so intimately tied up with our boundless appetite for more. In fact, progress itself is defined as that which helps satisfy our cravings. Our love of money, with its promise of ever-increasing comforts in this life, is the engine that drives our self-deluded optimism in a better tomorrow on earth. We assume that getting more money will mean getting a better life; our optimism that we can make more money brings with it a confidence in a better life to come. This is the American dream, best epitomized by our modern, materialistic conception of retirement, in which the hope is to live as long as we can, as healthy as we can, and as wealthy as we can.

Increased life span, along with increased health and wealth, deceive us into thinking that we are making progress toward what is good and right and pleasing. Even those who are the most realistic or pessimistic among us still cling to some notion of an eventual progress, in spite of the economic, health, and social crises that seem to be mounting all around us, especially if we view life on planet earth from a global vantage point.²⁵ After all, the very fact that more people than ever are enjoying middle class lifestyles is itself progress!

Yet Paul’s argument makes clear that true ethics are not derived from a materialistic understanding of progress but from a biblically informed view of the future. Such an eschatology is prophetic in nature, as an expression of God’s sovereignty over his creation, and not progressive, as an expression of humanity’s creative ingenuity and will to survive. The biblical view of the future ends with a judgment according to the character of one’s life as lived by faith and measured by Christ, not with the accumulation of goods or the development of some this-worldly civic virtue. The biblical view of history is personal, ending with the judgment of Christ, not impersonal, ending with the fatalism of progress or disaster.²⁶ History is not unending progress, but the goal-driven culmination of God’s purposes.

Accordingly, the most shocking thing about Paul’s perspective for modern and postmodern people in the West is that history is going someplace beyond itself and that at the end of history stands the judgment of God. Hence, the goal of life is not the progress of pleasure on earth, but striving to please God in heaven. We live under the coming judgment of Christ. This is the lens through which Paul views life, and we must work hard to help Christians regain this fundamental perspective. Our lives should be driven by the certainty of Christ’s future reign. Our hope is that in Christ we will endure the day of judgment, forgiven and clothed with the good works born of faith and done by the power of God.

The theological obstacle. This brings us to the third obstacle in this passage. Beyond the personal and cultural obstacles that make it hard to apply this text today, this passage also confronts two theological misunderstandings in the contemporary church, both of which have done much harm to the progress of the gospel in the lives of God’s people: The first concerns the nature of genuine faith (5:7), the second involves the relationship between faith and obedience (5:10).

(1) In regard to the former, Paul’s emphasis on his confident knowledge of the future makes clear that faith is not an irrational leap into the dark that calls for accepting the truth of something that makes no sense or has no foundation in reality. Just the opposite! Faith is trusting in God’s promises for the future, not in spite of what we know, but because of what we know. The lack of sight in this passage does not refer to the uncertain basis of faith, but to the fact that the consummation of God’s promises has not yet been realized. Paul’s point in 5:7 is not epistemological (i.e., we can only know things “by faith,” since we have no certain reasons for believing, i.e., no “sight”), but eschatological (i.e., we live in the present by trusting God’s promises for the future, the down payment of which we are already experiencing in the Spirit). Thus, faith is an active dependence on God’s promises for our future because of what God has already done for us in the past.

(2) Confronting Paul’s understanding of faith raises the question of what is usually referred to as the relationship between faith and works, as if the two can be separated. On the one hand, this passage underscores that faith is not a mere mental assent to the truth of data from the past. Rather, faith is an informed act of the will by which we entrust ourselves to God’s sovereign goodness in accord with what God has declared and demonstrated to be his intentions toward his people and the world. On the other hand, this text makes evident that Paul’s walk “by faith” in 5:7 is the very means by which the good deeds of 5:10 are produced.

Paul’s assumption is that whatever one trusts in for the future inevitably determines how one acts in the present. He thus sees faith as an active dependence on God’s promises that inevitably expresses itself and is seen in one’s actions. When one trusts God, one obeys him. We “walk by faith” (5:7) and are judged by what we do (5:10) because to trust in God’s promises is to live according to his Word—the latter being the objective, public expression of the former and, as such, the basis of God’s judgment. Of course, our faith-obedience is not the product of our attempt to earn God’s blessing, since our hope and present obedience are the product of God’s Spirit in our lives (5:5; cf. 3:7–18).

In this sense, it is impossible to separate trusting God from obeying God. Yet given our propensity to view faith as mental assent, we find ourselves satisfied with an anemic “belief” that is content with disobedience. We often hear people say or imply that they have no trouble believing God, just obeying him. For Paul, such a dichotomy is nonsense, a self-contradiction. Any attempt to separate faith from works runs aground on the fact that in one and the same passage Paul can speak of living by faith (5:7) and of being judged by deeds (5:10). Indeed, the goal of Paul’s entire life as the apostle to the Gentiles is to bring them to “the obedience that comes from faith” (Rom. 1:5; cf. 15:18; 16:26; 1 Thess. 1:3; 2 Thess. 1:11), since only this kind of faith in God’s promises glorifies God (cf. Rom. 4:18–25).

Every act of trust in God’s promises expresses itself in an act of obedience to his commands; every act of obedience is a manifestation of trust. Conversely, every time we disobey God it is because we are not trusting him. Hence, every command of God is, in essence, a promise of God in disguise. To declare, “You shall have no other gods before me,” is therefore essentially the same thing as saying, “God promises to be sufficient in all things as your sovereign Provider, Redeemer, Lord, and Judge—so trust him alone.” In the same way, “You shall not covet … anything that belongs to your neighbor” is essentially the same thing as saying, “God promises to provide what you need in the world and in himself in order to satisfy the deepest longings of your heart—therefore trust him.”

This is the framework of the Ten Commandments, which thus begins and ends with the same command (note Paul’s equation of idolatry with covetousness in Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:5). All the other commands follow this pattern. “You shall not murder” is a call to trust God’s promise to vindicate our cause. God’s command to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath” is an expression of God’s promise to give the land to Abraham’s descendants (Ex. 33:1). The command to love the alien as oneself is a call to depend on God’s promise that God will love us, even though we are aliens to him (Lev. 19:34). “Repent and be baptized” is built on God’s promise of forgiveness and the Spirit (Acts 2:38).

With some reflection, every command can be seen to be a call to trust its corresponding promise. God commands what he commands because he promises what he promises. As a result, there is only one thing we must do to be saved on the day of judgment (i.e., “live by faith,” which is to do good deeds “in the body,” 5:7, 10), not two (i.e., “trust and obey,” as if 5:7, 10 point to two different steps in the Christian’s life). Paul’s argument illustrates that for faith to be genuine, it must be marked by a future orientation that reveals our dependence on the promises of God (5:1), by an obedience in the present that shows our faith to be alive (5:10), and by a perseverance throughout the adversities of life in order to demonstrate that our faith is derived from the reality of the Spirit in our lives (5:5, 9; cf. 1 Cor. 15:2).²⁷

Finally, the link in this passage between faith, obedience, and the presence and power of the Spirit makes clear that Paul’s emphasis on judgment by works in 5:10 is not a denial of his emphasis elsewhere on justification by faith alone, nor is it a synergism in which we contribute our share to God’s work. At least three additional realities make this clear:

• Paul’s insistence on the inextricable link between justification and sanctification, the former of which is based on the predestining election of God and the atoning death of Christ, the latter on the power of the Spirit (cf. Rom. 8:28–30).• Paul’s understanding of God’s justification of the believer as a legal act that expresses both God’s imputing his own righteousness to believers because of Christ’s death on the cross for them and God’s consequent covenant commitment to purify his people as a result (5:5; cf. 3:7–11; 3:9; 5:21; Rom. 1:16–17; 5:17; Phil. 1:9–11).²⁸• Paul’s conviction that obedience is the inevitable outgrowth of new life in and through the Spirit (cf. Rom. 6:5–7; 7:4; 1 Cor. 5:11; 6:9–11; 7:19; Gal. 5:16–26; 1 Thess. 1:4–5).

Love, as the fulfillment of the law, is the manifestation of genuine faith and hope (cf. Rom. 13:8–10; Gal. 5:6, 13–14; 6:2; 1 Thess. 1:3). For this reason, judgment takes place according to works, in order to vindicate publicly God’s work in the hearts of those who have been changed by the power of the Spirit. Deeds are the means of evaluation in the courtroom of God’s judgment, since they establish the genuine nature of the claim to trust God. In short, rather than being added to faith, obedience to God’s will is the visible manifestation of faith.

In order to bring this passage into our context, we must consequently be careful never to call into question the most fundamental fact of all reality: God in Christ is the one who saves (cf. 5:16–21). Nothing we do has or ever will earn or purchase our salvation. Salvation, including our trusting God for it, is the gift of God made possible by Christ (Rom. 4:1–8; 5:8–9; 6:23; Eph. 2:8–9). We must reject all attempts to consider our works our contribution to God’s saving work on our behalf. This is true whether they are the “bad works” that we think make us special or deserving in God’s sight before we are saved (cf. Rom. 4:2–4), or the “good works” that God himself brings about in our lives through his Spirit (cf. Eph. 2:10). All we bring to God is our desperate need for forgiveness and deliverance from sin. All our acts in Christ are the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22) and of his own righteousness (Phil. 1:11), which therefore rebound to God’s glory, not ours (cf. Matt. 5:16).

Rightfully concerned by the danger of “works righteousness,” Protestantism has nevertheless been weakened by a failure to emphasize equally that the believer’s good works, as the fruits of our dependence on the all-sufficiency of our God, vindicate the genuine nature of our salvation. Obedience to God’s commands is what faith in God’s promises looks like in everyday life. Therefore, when we are judged by our works on the Judgment Day, our deeds or obedience of faith (Rom. 1:5; 1 Thess. 1:3) will be the instrument, though not ultimate ground of our final justification. The basis of our salvation is the life and death of Jesus on our behalf, both as that which forgives us for our sin and that which frees us from our sin. Our deeds are the public criteria of judgment, not because they contribute in some way to our salvation, but because they are, in themselves, what it means to “live by faith” (2 Cor. 5:7).

No claim to faith that is not so vindicated should be allowed to stand now, just as it will not stand before the judgment seat of Christ. This is why Paul grounds his desire to please God in his conviction that he too will one day be judged by Christ in view of his deeds (cf. 1 Cor. 4:1–5; 9:23–27). Hence, one important step toward the recovery of a full-blooded Christian life in our age of pale religious experience is to recognize afresh that emphasizing the central and essential role of obedience in judgment is not a denial of justification by faith alone, but its powerful affirmation.

Contemporary Significance

LIVING IN THE LIGHT of the future. Paul’s declarations of his confidence for the future, of his ambition in the present, and of Christ’s role as universal judge are as significant today as they were in the materialistic and pluralistic world of the first century. In view of our culture’s belief in some kind of universal spiritual future for all humankind, combined with a growing New Age emphasis on reincarnation, the challenge of pluralism, and the lack of consistent teaching in many churches, we must once again stake out four important boundary markers of a distinctively Christian worldview:

• There is a universal judgment to come, not just for some people, but for all, including Christians.• Christ alone is the One who judges.• Only those who have experienced the mercy and power of God in Christ can have confidence as they anticipate this coming day of reckoning.• The only basis of confidence on the Judgment Day is the good deeds that constitute living by faith.

These points need to be driven home in a culture in which 85 percent of Americans consider themselves to be Christian, even though half of all adults believe you can lead a full and satisfying life without spirituality of any kind.²⁹ This confusion is increased when the question of final judgment is raised. As Barna reports:

Few Americans doubt that God will judge every individual. Almost nine out of ten people (86 percent) contend that “eventually, all people will be judged by God” [a poll from January, 1993].Most Americans believe that spiritual salvation is an outcome to be earned through their good character or behavior. Six out of ten people (57 percent) believe that “if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during their lives, they will earn a place in heaven.” This perspective has remained constant throughout the nineties [a poll from January, 1995].Adults are evenly divided on the role played by religious beliefs in people’s life-after-death experience. Forty-five percent contend that one’s religious beliefs will impact their spiritual condition; another 45 percent argue that a person’s beliefs will not matter. The other 10 percent refuse to take a position [a poll from July, 1994].… Only four out of ten Americans (39 percent) believe that “people who do not consciously accept Jesus Christ as their savior will be condemned to hell” [the same poll from July, 1994].There is a growing tendency to believe that “all good people, whether or not they consider Jesus Christ to be their savior, will live in heaven after they die on earth.” The public is now evenly divided on this matter: 46 percent agree, 47 percent disagree [polls from July, 1994; January, 1992].³⁰

Though vast amounts of people profess a belief in some kind of divine judgment to come, few actually operate their daily lives on the basis of such a conviction. It is also striking that few of those who say they believe in a final judgment believe Jesus Christ has any decisive role to play in it. Finally, but not surprisingly, people are optimistic about their own chances of being judged positively, just as they are confident that there will be condemnation for others. Such responses show the way in which faith has been downsized into a mere mental assent that has no tie to life, the growing distrust in the claims of Christ, and the self-reliance and self-confidence of those who feel self-justified in God’s sight.

The above research also reveals the schizophrenia that exists between our culture’s moral self-confidence and its ability to condemn others. This was evident in Newsweek’s account of the impending death and final public words of the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot. In many ways the “Hitler” of the 1970s, Pol Pot was responsible for killing at least one million of his fellow Cambodians. In 1997, under house arrest, partially paralyzed from a stroke, and facing his own death with a congenital heart defect, Pol Pot granted his first interview in twenty years. During the interview he declared a number of times, “I am finished as a human being. I’m dying.” But he remained unrepentant and would not apologize for his actions. So Newsweek’s “conventional wisdom” responded with the quip, “Million-man murderer says ‘mistakes were made,’ but he’s not sorry. Roast in hell.”³¹

Who would argue with such a sentiment? But why do we think we will fare any better? Why are we so confident that Pol Pot should “roast in hell,” but we should not? The answer, as Barna reads the data, is that

the American penchant for self-reliance, achievement, and autonomy has invaded the realm of the afterlife. People are more likely to count on their own abilities and character as a means to pleasing God or otherwise earning eternal peace than they are to accept a gift … as taught by the Christian Church regarding the sacrificial death and subsequent atonement through Jesus Christ.³²

Second, we have seen that Paul’s argument in 5:6–8 reminds us that life in this world is not the end-all and be-all of our existence. As a Christian it sounds silly even to say such a thing, since it is so obvious. But the fact that such a conviction has risen to the level of a truism makes it all the more necessary to reaffirm it. Clichés, though so true they go without saying, are not taken seriously. But Paul’s perspective in this passage, if taken seriously, challenges in no uncertain terms the contemporary cultural preoccupation with the present that pervades and cripples our churches. For in 5:8–9 Paul makes it clear that the Christian’s courage derives from having the right desires for the future, which in turn leads to having the right ambitions in the present. Those who live for the present desire only what this world has to offer. Their ambition is to please themselves within the confines of the narrow pleasures of this world. But those who live for their future with God desire the life promised by God. Their ambition is to please God, since he is their true joy (cf. 4:18; 5:11–15).

Third, the resurrection-focused, Christ-centered nature of Paul’s ambition, fueled by his confidence in the judgment to come, reminds us that Christians must not be fooled by the apparent confidence and nonchalance that characterizes so much of the modern disregard for the reality and finality of death. In truth, this cultural bravado merely masks our worried preoccupation with our own mortality with a drive to act heroically in the face of our own certain destruction. As Ernest Becker has so poignantly argued in his Pulitzer Prize winning analysis of modern philosophy, religion, and psychology, The Denial of Death:

The first thing we have to do with heroism is to lay bare its underside, show what gives human heroics its specific nature and impetus. Here we introduce directly one of the great discoveries of modern thought: that of all things that move man, one of the principal ones is his terror of death … heroism is first and foremost a reflex of the terror of death.… All historical religions addressed themselves to this same problem of how to bear the end of life. Religions like Hinduism and Buddhism performed the ingenious trick of pretending not to want to be reborn, which is a sort of negative magic: claiming not to want what you really want most. When philosophy took over from religion it also took over religion’s central problem, and death became the real “muse of philosophy” from its beginnings in Greece right through Heidegger and modern existentialism.… The fear of death is natural and is present in everyone … it is the basic fear that influences all others, a fear from which no one is immune, no matter how disguised it may be. William James … called death “the worm at the core” of man’s pretensions to happiness.³³

Becker’s analysis of contemporary culture and thought led him to recognize finally that the fundamental problem of modern life is a religious one, to which he then offers his own, final answer:

How … can one be a saint and still organize scientific movements of world-historical importance? How does one lean on God and give over everything to Him and still stand on his own feet as a passionate human being? These are not rhetorical questions, they are real ones that go right to the heart of the problem of “how to be a man.” … If men lean too much on God they don’t accomplish what they have to in this world on their own powers. In order to do anything one must first be a man, apart from everything else. This throws the whole splendid ideal of sainthood into doubt because there are many ways of being a good man….The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion something—an object or ourselves—and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force.³⁴

In earth-shaking contrast to Becker’s attempt to find meaning in this life without a clear hope for the future, the answer of the gospel is a real resurrection in which what we have “fashioned” in our lives is judged by the One who has himself already overcome death. For the unbeliever, like Becker, the goal of life is to be “a passionate human being” apart from God by not “leaning too much on God.” For the believer, the goal of life becomes learning how to “live by faith” in every circumstance, knowing that everything will be judged by the God who gives us “an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (5:1).

Moreover, Paul’s own life shows, without a shadow of a doubt, that living by faith leads to the kind of deep passion that offers its own life up for the sake of others as well as for the sake of Christ. Rather than destroying the drive to live passionately, it is death and eternity, once known to be real, that give life its true meaning and ambition. Carl F. H. Henry, the senior statesman of evangelical theology, thus summarizes well the basic structure of biblical theology reflected in our passage:

The reader of Scripture will discover that the entire universe is the creation of a sovereign personal God, that God’s image lifts humanity above all other orders of finite life, that a providential divine purpose governs history and moves nations toward a final judgment, that God came personally in Jesus of Nazareth who conquered death, that the divergent options of eternal damnation or eternal salvation face sinful mankind, and that forgiveness of sins and new spiritual life are even now available to the penitent—these tenets thrust themselves insistently upon every reader who samples sacred Scripture.³⁵

Finally, Paul’s Christ-defined, future-orientated, judgment-driven passion for the resurrection is to be contrasted with the arm-chair fascination with the after-life that is increasingly becoming a part of modern popular culture. Henry’s observations again provide an insightful summary:

Despite all the secular twaddle about nonreligious modernity, an immense wave of religiosity continues, nonetheless, to sweep over contemporary life….Scientifically gifted longer life on earth through age-retarding hormones and organ transplants is now becoming too routine to be media-dramatic, so Hollywood aggressively probes immortality as the ultimate horizon. Afterlife films leap over AIDS and senior citizenship, death, funerals, and grief to concentrate on a world beyond—which often amounts to nothing more than postmortem out-of-body hankey-pankey. The movies increasingly banner that death is not final. They tell us that a spirit world is in store for us—without God, without judgment, without need of grace, without bodily resurrection, without fear of hell. Take it from Hollywood and the movie producers, our personal psyche survives the crematory or grave. Feel better about this worldly licentiousness and greed, for a pleasant Karma awaits us in the long future—on the authority of Hollywood script writers who become our generation’s Scripture rewriters. Death has lost its sting … for we are secretly eternal quite on our own, thus saith the local theater and video store.³⁶

Against this culturally defined future, made in our own image, stands Paul’s insistence that Christ alone determines the character and possession of the resurrection life to come, so that Christ alone is to be pleased in this life as well. Thus, in contrast to the modern denial of a personal future determined by a personal God, who himself took on flesh and blood, listen in conclusion to Fuller’s portrayal, in Pauline terms, of what it means to please God:

It has often been observed that what people hope in for a happy future, that they worship; and what they worship, that they inevitably serve. Thus Jesus, when tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, fought back saying, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only’ ” (Matt. 4:10). We worship God when we bank our hope for an eternally happy future both on the prospect of always being able to share with him his joy and on his integrity to keep his great and priceless promises. In this way we render the greatest possible honor to him, as did Abraham, who “gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised” (Rom. 4:20–21). So when our hearts are full of joy as we believe God, we will not engage in any thinking or conduct that is inconsistent with our hope being in him. And then the worship of God will inevitably lead to serving him in the sense of obeying his commandments as laws of faith.This obedience that stems from faith in God’s promises is the way we serve God….In the commands and wise sayings of the Bible, we who have seen the wisdom of serving God rather than money find sketched out the profile to which our lives are to conform.³⁷

Finally, then, when all is said and done, the bottom line is that, in order to please God and to find the happiness for which we were created, we must live by faith. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the only basis on which God can forgive and reconcile us to himself and still remain righteous. Jesus is the only way of salvation for the entire human race. We cannot save ourselves in any way. Like David, the only thing we bring with us when we confess our sins is our sin. We seek forgiveness for our lives, not a paycheck (Rom. 4:4–5).

Coming to God with nothing but our sin, our faith is a trusting in God to work for us, not an attempt to show God how sincere we are. Such faith overturns our sin and makes us righteous in his sight, since it honors him as the One whose word can be trusted and whose presence is to be valued more than the rewards of this world. This is why when we trust in God because of what he has already done for us, our faith is credited to us as righteousness (Rom. 4:5, 22–23). It is this last point that brings us to the next section of Paul’s argument, with its focus on our reconciliation and righteousness in Christ (cf. 5:16–6:2).