2 Corinthians 5:1 - Exposition

For . A further explanation of the hope expressed in 2 Corinthians 4:17 . We know. This accent of certainty is found only in the Christian writers. Our earthly house. Not the "house of clay" ( Job 4:19 ), but the house which serves us as the home of our souls on earth; as in 1 Corinthians 15:40 . Of this tabernacle; literally, the house of the tent; i.e. the tent of our mortality, the mortal body. In 2 Peter 1:13 , 2 Peter 1:14 it is called skenoma, and the expression, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,"is literally, "he tabernacled among us"—he wore "a tent like ours and of the same material." The figure would be specially natural to one whose occupation was that of a tentmaker. Compare—

"Here in the body pent,

Afar from him I roam,

But nightly pitch my wandering tent

A day's march nearer home."

A very, similar expression occurs in Wis. 9:15, " The earthly tabernacle ( γεῶδες σκῆνος ) weigheth down the mind." Be dissolved; rather, be taken to pieces . A building. Something more substantial than that moving tenement. Of God; literally, from God; namely, not one of the "many mansions" spoken of in John 14:2 , but the resurrection body furnished to us by him. We have this building from God, for it exists now, and shall be ours at the same time that our tent home is done away with. Not made with hands. Not like those tent dwellings at which St. Paul was daily toiling with the hands which ministered to his own necessities. In the heavens . To be joined with "we have." Heaven is our general home and country ( Hebrews 11:16 ), but the present allusion is to the glorified bodies in which our souls shall live in heaven.