IN a twofold figure of speech the apostle portrays what in dying happens with us in our body.
In 1 Cor. 15 the metaphor of the grain of wheat, that falls into the open furrow; by the working of the ground, of penetrating moisture and of inshining warmth, swells, bursts and goes to nought, but in that going to nought causes a germ, and presently from that germ a blade to unfold. So, says the apostle, it happens with us. Our mortal remains descend into the earth, under the ground it is decomposed, presently its place is no more found. But there is also something here that remains, and which presently unfolds itself in richness of forms. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
This is the first figure of speech. But when he wrote again to the church at Corinth, he added a second one, not of a grain of wheat but of the earthly tabernacle.
We know, so he wrote, that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (2 Cor. 5, 1).
The first image is taken from the sphere of common grace, the second from special Revelation.
When God commanded Moses to build for Israel a “tent for the congregation,” He showed him “an house not made with hands, that is eternal in the heavens.” “See to it,” so reads the word of the Lord in Ex. 25, 40, “see to it, that thou make them after the pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount.” A fact so important, that in the New Testament, we are twice reminded of it, first in Acts 7, 44 and afterward in Hebr. 8, 5.
Thus there was here a mystical connection between the “tabernacle” in the wilderness and “the habitation of God” in heaven. And when presently the tabernacle unfolds itself into the glorious temple of Solomon, the imperfect is gone to nought, and the perfect has developed itself from it. But in such a way, that both times in tabernacle and in temple the original thought of God, which had been shown to Moses, reflects itself.
This now the apostle, by the choice of his second image, transfers to our body.
The glory of the work of Redemption is, that God Himself makes habitation in the heart of those that are sanctified, and that in us as in His temple the Holy Ghost prays and ministers comfort. So God’s child himself is become an habitation of God, his body a temple of the Lord.
And in connection with this applying to himself the glorious image of tabernacle and temple, he declares that the mortal body, in which we walk about, is the tabernacle in the wilderness, and that that tabernacle must go under, to make place for the glorious temple, for the house not made with hands, our perfected, our consummated, our glorified body in heaven.
Thus in two figures of speech, one from the general and the other from the special Revelation, the same rich thought: The body, in which we now walk about goes to nought, but will once be replaced by a far more glorious body, and between these two, after Divine ordinance, there is an hidden, a mystical coherence.
The ear proceeds from the grain of wheat, the temple from the tabernacle.
YET with this there is not enough said.
For the question can not be suppressed, whether this transition, this change of thought, this unfolding of the corruptible into the incorruptible, takes place at once, in one moment of time. Or whether between the going down and the rising again there is a lapse of time.
In the two chosen images this was so.
When the grain of wheat is confided to the earth, the blade and ear are not matured at once, but months go by. And when Solomon built the temple the tabernacle had already for years been robbed of its first glory.
So there lapses a time appointed of God between the moment that in death we loosen our mortal body and shake it off from us, and that other moment in which Christ, having appeared with His holy angels, shall make our mortal body like unto His own glorified body, by that wondrous, Divine power, whereby He subjects all things unto Himself.
Yet this lapse of time is not equally long for all.
The longest for the patriarchs of before the Flood, the shortest for those who will last be born on earth.
And just before Jesus’ return there will be redeemed of Christ on earth, whose dying will coincide with their resurrection. Or, more correctly, they will not die, but their mortal body shall at once be changed into their glorified body.
Twice the apostle extols the happiness of these last. First in 1 Cor. 15. Then in 1 Thess. 4.
And this is what in 2 Cor. 5, 2, he calls: Not to be unclothed, but clothed upon.
At the same moment letting the earthly garment slip from us, and putting on our glorified body.
THIS “clothing,” “unclothing” and “to be clothed upon” is a new image introduced by the apostle in the image of the tabernacle. This was the more easily done, as the tabernacle consisted of coverings and curtains. The tent of the Bedouin is still his second garment, which, wherever he goes, he carries with him.
In clearness, therefore, it falls short of nothing. On earth we are clothed with our mortal body. When we lay this earthly body aside we become unclothed. And we become clothed upon, when we belong to those few, who in one moment of time exchange the mortal for the glorious body.
The many, on the other hand, with whom between their dying and their resurrection a shorter or longer time elapses, are during that time “unclothed,” or as the apostle also calls it “naked.”
By far the lot of most.
And the thought of this has to the apostle something grievous. He makes no secret of it, that “in this tabernacle we groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon.” The same thought, which in verse 2 he expressed like this: “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.”
Not, that therefore any doubt rises in the heart.
Even though we shall not at once be “clothed upon,” yet we know, that we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Only, though this is so, we can not therefore immediately after dying take possession of the same.
This bides till Jesus’ return, and until then the child of God that dies lacks his connection with the visible.
SPIRITUALLY this brings no less enjoyment with it. Liberated from this body of sin and of death, the redeemed soul has spiritual organs, by which she immediately discovers and observes the spiritual world.
There is an outside and an inside of life. And though, so long as the resurrection tarries, all those who died in Jesus are excluded from that outside of life, as regards what is visible and perceptible, the redeemed and liberated ones have fellowship with the deep inside of life. Holy, solemnly and stately the eye of the soul opens to that spiritual world, and therein can do no otherwise than rejoice. For she has no more sin and no more temptation. She perceives nothing around her save what is pure and holy and heavenly. And in the center of that pure, holy world the Lamb, that was slain, and in Him the Eternal Being, blessed forever. He who has died in Jesus, immediately after waking in the world of invisible things, delights himself in the Image of God.
Here we have need of sensual organs for this. There no longer. Free from the body of sin, by her own instrumentation the redeemed soul lives the life in that holy world.
Yet this does not bring our creation-ordinance to nought.
According to that creation-ordinance we as human beings are destined, to inlive not merely in the invisible, but also in the visible world. He also who died in Jesus, remains man.
And for all that are called man it is a lack, when we can not reveal ourselves in the visible.
Hence the apostle does not say: “If I may but enjoy Jesus spiritually, why should I be concerned about the visible.”
No, he also remains calling for the glorious body.
Perfect shall the glory be, only when the naked soul shall be clothed upon.
AND this is the glory of our hope, that we know, that this last grace also is assured to God’s saints. And the church of Christ in all ages has confessed this hope in her significant article: “I believe in the resurrection of the flesh.”
How this shall be, no one of us can say. Only we know, that the beginning of this our earthly tabernacle consisted of one small, unobservable germ. This, as embryologists teach, was hidden in one, very small cell. And that, by the taking up of dust of this earth, from this invisible germ our whole body was constructed.
This dust so taken at our dying falls away again. But this germ remains. This is indestructible. And therein wondrously hide all the data for what makes our body a personal body to us.
When once Christ brings this provisionally latent germ in touch with the dust of the new world, then from this of itself the new body is built up, that is suited to glory.
It shall then be with us, as with brushwood, which, cut down at the ground, withers. But cherished by the sun in spring, sends out new roots. Holy Scripture calls it “the seed in which after the withering the substance still remains” (Is. 6, 13). Or also “the new root out of the dry ground’ (Is. 53, 2).
And then we shall be “clothed upon,” no longer to serve merely spiritually, but after soul and body both, eternally in glory to serve, and to praise Him, Who, Himself Love, alone is worthy of all our love.
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