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Swallowed up by Life ...

Friday, June 24, 2016. Humans are mortal. This is one of the basic facts of our life, though we tend to ignore it for most of our life. The bible describes the situation with an image: our body is described with a tent. Let us look into this image and what it means …

The Spirit as Guarantee …

The tent of our body is our earthly home. It will be destroyed. It will be gone soon. But we have a building from God, an eternal house. We have a heavenly dwelling. These images can sound abstract, difficult to grasp. But they can also be firm target and goal and hope and even secure home for us.

What is mortal will be swallowed up by life. That is the main picture the New Testament is giving us. We will live in him and with him, we will be given a new body, which is different from our current body, and which is eternal. This might sound strange to the worldly ear, and it is far reaching. But it is just a consequent step which follows all we can experience and learn here on earth.

And God gives us the Holy Spirit. This is a crucial and very important point. You can even see it as the main step. The spirit is a part of God, he is God himself, the third person of the one God. When the spirit comes to you, God has already saved you, he has taken you in. It is by faith, not by sight. The spirit is difficult to lay our hand on, he is the sovereign God, reaching deep into eternity, but being active and present in the middle of today!

Walk by Faith …

We walk by faith, that is important. We walk in the spirit. The author of this letter talks about the spirit as a clear sign, as something which confirms to us that God has forgiven us, that we are part of his people, that he loves us. The spirit gives insight and wisdom. The spirit accompanies our faith, our path, our decisions. He will influence our decisions by giving us free space, giving us insight, by showing us the deep love of God. In 2 Corinthians it is written:

1 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 on1 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. 6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight.

(2 Cor 5, 1-7)

There are so many things in these few lines. There is eternal hope. There is God's presence for our life, for each and every day. There is a deep realism in it, one which takes reality serious. There is the community with the spirit - fantastic steps for us for today and tomorrow! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts