2 Corinthians 5:1-10 Study Guide: The Hope of Heaven

Community Group Study Guide — The Hope of Heaven

2 Corinthians 5:1-10

Study Information:

Many of us enjoy camping, especially camping with friends and family. You get to be out in the woods, eat almost everything off the grill and often have unstructured downtime without emails to reply to. However, the joke about camping is that it is a lot of work to pretend that you don’t have a home for a few days. Camping can be fun but it is usually meant to be temporary. In the ancient world, they did not camp recreationally like we do, but often would spend time in temporary structures while traveling, in the military or in a work environment. Paul picked up the image of “tents” to talk about our earthly life compared to the heavenly life God has planned for us to teach us that suffering has an end and the future for followers of Christ is one of hope.

2 Corinthians 5:1-10 teaches us that Christians have hope for their eternity with Christ and that our aim is always to please God.

Our Earthly Life is Temporary

2 Corinthians 5:1-5

In the last study guide we explored that suffering has an end. Paul descried suffering as light and momentary, which is true when viewed in light of eternity, but during our seasons of affliction it can feel anything but temporary. To underscore his point, Paul directed his readers thoughts towards heaven. Our earthly lives are described as a tent, compared to a house. A tent is inherently meant to be a temporary dwelling place. Paul described the temporariness of our earthly lives with the words groan, burden and naked; all of which are descriptions or images to point to the hardship of life on earth under the curse of sin. Yet, notice the hope of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:1, “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.” Paul described resurrection life. Our eternity with God would be eternal, and something like the process of putting on clothing instead of remaining naked, and probably the most shocking description is that it would be like experiencing real life for the first time. 2 Corinthians 5:4 reads “so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” We do not know what the experience of death to resurrected life will be like, but Paul pointed to it being an experience of life as it was meant to be.

We often do not like to focus on our mortality or the temporariness of life on this side of eternity because it can be an uncomfortable thought to think about suffering, dying and leaving behind all we can see, smell and touch. That is why we can be thankful for passages like this one that speak so clearly to our concerns and fears. Even though the tent feels real and permanent, it is just a blip compared to eternity with God, like a weekend camping it is filled with enjoyment and pleasure and some sorrows, but God is at work to give us a permanent home. That is why Paul described our Christian life as “walking by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7).” Notice also 2 Corinthians 5:5, God has prepared us for this very thing and has given us the deposit of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a foretaste of our eternity with God in that he is God’s very presence with us and God is at work to prepare us for this future reality through our joys and our sorrows.

Followers of Jesus can take comfort that there is an end to suffering and that God has their joy in mind in what he prepares for us in heaven. This does not diminish the pain or anguish we can experience, but it can give us a very real and lasting hope. God is not dispassionate to our pain, he is actually at work to resolve it.

Home with the Lord

2 Corinthians 5:6-10

What happens when a follower of Jesus dies? Throughout the last chapter Paul has repeatedly wrote about not losing heart and here he used the term “we are of good courage” to describe the believers position in the face of suffering and death. What gave Paul so much courage? If we are away from our bodies, we are at home with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8). When a Christian dies they go to the presence of Christ. They are not in limbo, purgatory, nirvana or separated from God for even an instant. The worst thing that can happen to us is that we die and go to be with Jesus. Again, this is not to discount the pain or anguish we may feel in the process. Death and suffering is horrible and God calls both an enemy in the Bible. However, we can have courage in the face of suffering and death because of the knowledge that Christ awaits us on the other side. If you’re in Christ your sin has been paid for, your death has been undone in Jesus’s death and you do not have to pay the penalty of your sin or be separated from Christ because of what Christ did on the cross.

A second thing that happens after we all die is we all appear before the judgement seat of Christ (2 Cor 5:10). Paul tells us the action step before explaining the concept, the action is to make it your aim to please God (2 Cor 5:9). Whether we are alive or dead we make it our aim to seek God’s approval and not to please then critics or the crowds in our lives. This does not mean we don’t care what people close to us think, it means that our ultimate aim is for God’s approval and God’s pleasure. Why? Because every person, even Christians, will receive what is due for how they lived, whether good or evil. Jesus talked about how we give an account for every careless word we speak (Matt 12:36). The writer of Hebrews wrote that it was appointed for man to die once and then comes judgement (Heb 9:27). Followers of Jesus are saved by grace and not by works, and yet how we put our faith into practice matters greatly. Some Christians read a verse like 2 Corinthians 5:10 and believe that there will be varied rewards in heaven for the life we lived. We do not know what those rewards would be in detail. At minimum, we will receive praise and approval from God for how we lived. Jesus will say “well done my good and faithful servant” to those who followed Christ in faith, for the specific good we’ve done in his name. It could be that God will praise our faith in how we honored him at work, endured our cancer treatment, shared the gospel with our family, parented when we were exhausted and for how we loved others in the body of Christ. Each time, Christ saying “well done, I’m proud of how you lived in light of the gospel.” We do not know what this will look like for certain, we do know that there will not be any condemnation and everything that happens on the other side of eternity will be from God’s grace in our lives and the way we applied our faith.

Enduring the light momentary afflictions of this world is a challenge, but we are of good courage because to be away from the body is to be home with the Lord and God sees our faith and will give us what is due for how we lived out of our love for him.

At your community group:

Take 15-20 minutes to share about how God has been at work in your life, prayer concerns and pray for one another.

How did God speak to you through the scripture and the sermon this week?

Discussion Questions:

2 Corinthians 5:1-10

How does this passage describe our earthly lives compared to our eternity in Christ? Discuss all the images of temporary vs. permanent in this passage.

What are some things that happen after a follower of Jesus dies?

Paul told us to make it our aim to please God in 2 Cor 5:9, how does that influence the way we read 2 Cor 5:10? Should a follower of Jesus be afraid of going before the judgement seat of Christ?

What are some ways you can use a passage like this to prepare yourself for a future season of suffering?