#DailyDevotion We Hope For Bodies Like Christ’s, Not To Become Angels.

2 Cor. 5:1 We know that if the tent, which 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. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

Now just what is this tent but our earthly bodies. Now the tent we live in God also knit for us in the womb. But the Lord was using sinful flesh to knit us together i.e. from our parents going all the way back to Adam and Eve who sinned. The building from God is our new resurrected body not made with human hands, not made from sinful flesh. But as Paul says in 1 Cor. 15 it is a spiritual body (not meaning not material), immortal, imperishable, glorious like Jesus Christ’s resurrected body. This body we shall receive from on high lives forever with Christ, in the New Heavens and New Earth.

With this hope, we do groan wanting our heavenly body, particularly as we age and the wages of sin and age wear upon the body we were given in our mother’s womb. All sorts of troubles and illnesses beset us and those we love in these bodies. It is a burden to have this body. But through these sufferings which have been sanctified by Christ Jesus’ suffering on the cross we know we are growing inwardly day by day.

We do not want to be unclothed but further clothes. St. Paul describes it as mortality being swallowed up by life here. For the life of Christ dwells in us and that life is growing in us. It is growing up to the maturity the Lord intends us to grow into to bear his weight of eternal glory. So even those who are still living when Christ returns, there earthly body is transformed into Christ’s glorious body and those sleeping in the earth receive their new homes from God, their resurrected bodies.

So God has prepared us for this very thing. So we may believe this and have eternal life, the Lord has given us the Holy Spirit in baptism. He is our life now and our life in the world to come. He renews us daily, convicting us of our sin, restraining the sin in our earthly body, making us bear his fruit. He is the guarantee of the spiritual but very physical body we’ll receive on the Last Day. For our destiny is not to become angels but rather to be like our Lord Jesus Christ whose body was assumed into heaven, assumed into God. We will see our Lord Jesus Christ and be like him.

Almighty God and Father, give us strength as we groan in these bodies of death to be patient while you prepare new glorious bodies for us above to be clothed with and while we wait to be clothed continually give us your Holy Spirit that we may live by faith patiently until you send your Son Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.