Hope Sees the Unseen Realm of Who We Are

Transcript

GR 1802
03/29/2015
Hope Sees the Unseen Realm of Who We Are
2 Corinthians 5:1-5
Gil Rugh

We're going to go to 2 Corinthians 5. In our regular studies on Sunday morning we are studying the book of 2 Corinthians and we are in a section where Paul is talking about the resurrection of believers. Paul reminds us that as we have been entrusted with the message of Jesus Christ, the proclamation of the truth that He came to be the Savior, that salvation is only found by recognizing your sin and guilt and believing that His death on the cross paid the penalty for your sin, placing your faith in Him, realizing He was raised from the dead, He is alive. That's how salvation comes. But when you give out that message, it stirs opposition. We live in a day when the world and our country has become more vocal in its opposition to the truth of God's Word, more closed to anybody presenting that truth. But that's not new. Paul was experiencing that in his day as well. It was a time of suffering, affliction, and trial.

He began this letter in 2 Corinthians 1:3 saying, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction.” Then he proceeds to talk about God bringing comfort. You need comfort when you are being afflicted, when things are not going as you would like, when there is persecution, when there is suffering, when there is trial. Paul says that characterizes ministry. Why? Because he is giving forth the message of Jesus Christ. So he says that a message of victory, we share in the victory that Christ has accomplished. In 2 Corinthians 2:14 he says, “Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ.” And what is He doing? He is using us as instruments to tell other people about Jesus Christ, about the salvation that He provided in His death and resurrection. And you can have that as a free gift by believing in Him.

There is victory in that but there is trial and difficulty associated with that. So he said down in 2 Corinthians 4:8, “We are afflicted in every way, we are perplexed, we are persecuted, we are struck down. We are always carrying about in our body the dying of Christ.” Verse 11, “We who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake.” Paul confronted the reality every day as he went and told people about Jesus Christ, that he may die for his testimony. There was an occasion when he was stoned and left for dead in the city of Philippi. He was beaten a number of times. He had the other afflictions that come with our humanity, the burdens that come, deteriorating physical conditions. In verse 16 he said, “We do not lose heart though our outer man is decaying.” A process going on.

Again he said we do not lose heart, he said that as he began chapter 4. In verse 1, “Therefore since we have this ministry as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart.” Then verse 16, “Therefore we do not lose heart.” In the physical realm things don't seem to be going well, our physical body is breaking down, decaying. There is affliction, there is suffering, there is persecution. There are the burdens that come, he'll refer to later in the letter. All part of our humanity.

What kept him going? He said we do not lose heart in 2 Corinthians 4:16 because he said what we are going through is temporal, temporary; it is for the moment—2 Corinthians 4:17, “momentary, light affliction.” The affliction is momentary and light? I mean, getting stoned. Do you know what it is to get stoned? They just pick up stones and keep throwing them at you until you are dead. He would experience that. He was beaten numerous times, the kind of beating that leaves your back lacerated. I'd say it is an affliction, I don't know if I would call it light; it sure lasts for more than a moment. Then he says it is momentary, light affliction “compared to the eternal weight of glory that can't be measured.”

So he said in verse 18, “While we look not at the things which are seen but the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal,” those momentary, light afflictions, “the things which are not seen are eternal.” Why don't we lose heart? Why do we keep going as believers? We have all the burdens that come with our humanity. We get sick like other people get sick, we have problems at work and family and so on like other people do. And on top of that there is the opposition that comes from the enemy of our soul, the devil. Jesus said the world would hate us because He chose us out of the world. It's not what you do, it's who you are. John 15 Jesus said, “the world hates Me, the world hates you because I chose you out of the world.” It's just who you are. You are a child of God. You have placed your faith in Him. You've experienced the power of His salvation because God chose you. And for that reason the devil hates you.

So you add that to the burdens that come. What kept Paul going? Why didn't he get weary? Sometimes we find people who say, I'm just tired. Do you know when we get weary and tired and want to quit, give up? When we get focused on the things which are seen. Paul says we must keep our attention on the things which are not seen.

So as we come into 2 Corinthians 5 he's going to focus more on those things which are not seen, particularly the body God has promised to His children in contrast to the present physical body that we now have. You'll note 2 Corinthians 5 begins with the preposition for; verse 2 begins with for; verse 4 begins with for. These things are all tied together. “We do not lose heart,” back in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “though our outer man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day.” Two things going on at the same time. What you can see about me is decaying day by day. The older I get the faster the decline is. We notice that, we know that. Other things can add to it, additional physical problems, trials and so on that come. But at the same time something that cannot be seen with physical eyes is taking place. On the inside I am being renewed day by day. It's a ministry of the Spirit. We'll say more of that in a moment.

This is taking place and Paul says, I keep my eye on those things which are not seen. So the last statement of verse 18, “The things which are seen are temporal, the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” There is only one group of people who know the truths of what Paul is writing—believers. When he says, we know, we believers, we who have experienced the power of God's salvation in our lives, we who know something of the reality of the glory that God has promised to those who love Him. We know. Unbelievers don't know.

Back up to 1 Corinthians 2. In an earlier letter Paul wrote to this same church in Corinth and we have the same kind of context as we are studying in this second letter. Look at verse 6, “Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away.” A reminder the things which you see are temporary. The important, powerful, wise people, they are in the process of dying. We have a wisdom that does not come from them, it comes from outside this realm. We speak God's wisdom in a mystery. It is hidden. A mystery is something you cannot know apart from God's revelation. This is why the world does not understand. There is much talk about Jesus Christ going on today, much being written and most of it that you see on the news and read in the newspaper is by people who don't know. They talk about certain facts but they don't know.

This is God's wisdom that is hidden. It's the wisdom “which God predestined before the ages to our glory.” This is God's work, it goes on outside the realm, basically, of what is seen. What is found out by the wisest of human beings is they exercise their intellect. “The wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood, if they had understood it they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory.” How foolish, how stupid can you be? You crucified the author of life, the Lord of glory, the One who will be your judge for your eternal destiny. If they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But here is the explanation, “Just as it is written, things which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, which have not entered the heart of man all that God has prepared for those who love Him. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit.” You see you don't find it out by just the physical eye and ear, not by man's reasoning, by logic, man's wisdom all that God has prepared for those who love Him. That's a matter of revelation. And the Spirit of God has to make that known. We have the Bible but it's the Spirit of God who takes the truth of the Bible, brings it to our hearts and minds and enables us to understand.

I've shared with you on occasion, it amazes me that a man who has been dead for several years now, died I believe in 1982, while he lived he was recognized as the foremost scholar of the Greek language of the New Testament. He wrote commentaries on just about all the books of the New Testament. In the classes I took I was required to read all those commentaries and write papers on them. But do you know what? The man was never saved. All his wisdom, all his knowledge, he was a declared universalist—everyone will be saved. He did not recognize the deity of Jesus Christ. How can you do that? Spend your life pouring over the text of the New Testament and go to the grave never understanding. Because it is not by human wisdom, it's a matter of revelation, recognizing what God has done and believing it. Having the Spirit of God open your eyes to understand and believe and respond to the truth.

To us God revealed them, that's what Paul is writing about. For we know because God has revealed them to us through the Spirit, “for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.” Verse 14, “But a natural man,” a soulish man, a man without the Spirit of God,” does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are “spiritually appraised,” or discerned. But he concludes at the end of verse 16, “We have the mind of Christ” with the Spirit of God to enable us to understand the truth. How wonderful it is, God's salvation, that He opened our eyes to understand that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, His death on the cross paid in full the penalty for sin. You cannot earn that salvation, you cannot do anything to gain it—be baptized, go to church, take communion, be a good person. You can only receive as a gift what God has done, placing your faith and trust in Him alone. It's amazing. How did you as a sinner come to understand and believe that? How did I come to understand and believe that? The Spirit of God in His grace moved to open our eyes to understand and believe that truth.

So you come over and Paul is talking about all that God has prepared for those who love Him. It's a matter of revelation. So I want to talk to you, Paul is saying, about all that God has prepared for those who love Him. And we move into the realm of what is not seen. We're stepping outside the realm of what is seen—your physical body with all of the problems associated with it.

Back to 2 Corinthians 5:1, “For we know that if our earthly tent which is our house is torn down.” That's a way of talking about this physical body. He pictures it as an earthly tent. A tent was a temporary structure, it could be folded up, could be destroyed in the wind and the storm. The picture is this physical body is just like an earthly tent, and it can be destroyed. Death comes. Almost everyone in this auditorium has experienced the sadness, the agony of having someone you love die. Sometimes believers have loved the Lord, but they experience the same thing—they die of a cancer. Why? This physical body we live in, this physical realm, we experience what others experience. If this physical body is torn down, it suffers death. That's what he talked about in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “though our outer man is decaying,” physical body decaying. Another picture is as a tent in which you are living and the tent get torn down. What happens? “We have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Now we've moved to the realm not seen. I've seen this physical body, I peeked in the mirror this morning. Yes, I was right, decaying, getting a little worse every day. It's just the process, isn't it? We recognize it. And if you have certain physical problems that come in, it makes you even more mindful of it. We can't escape it. When we talk about this physical realm, it's not just the physical body but all that goes on—the burdens that come and everything else Paul referred to earlier in 2 Corinthians 4.

We have a building from God. Now this earthly physical body is what we've been living in but we have a building from God to replace this one, this body, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. It's what we have in the contrast. This physical body is temporal, he said in verse 16, the things you can see. The things that happen here are momentary and light. The older we get, we look back and say, where did life go? I came here as a young man of 26, I'm 72. How did that happen? Went to bed one night, woke up the next morning, looked in the mirror and here I am. That's the way it goes. We're in the process, but we have a body that is unique, a body eternal in the heavens, not made with hands. When he says not made with hands he's not implying this physical body was made with hands. That's an expression used in the New Testament to refer to something that is of the material creation, this physical world.

We're going to look at two passages, come back to Mark 14, Jesus speaks here, as He prophesied His own death and resurrection. Mark 14:58, people were saying as they made accusations against Him, “We heard Him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands and in three days I will build another made without hands.” That's what they are saying He said. He didn't say exactly that, but come over to John 2. Jesus did say, destroy this temple and in three days I will build it up. And in John 2:19, “Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” He was speaking of the temple of His body. And Mark 14:58, “Destroy this temple made with hands,” this physical body, “and in three days I will raise it up.” They are accusing Him of saying He could destroy the physical temple where worship took place. You see made with hands was a reference to the physical body.

One other passage on this, come over to Hebrews 9:11. “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more tabernacle not made with hands.” And you're familiar in Hebrews, He's talking about when He entered into heaven, the heavenly tabernacle. You'll note what he says, “Not made with hands, that is to say not of this creation.” So when you're talking about not made with hands, it means it's not of this physical realm, not of this creation. What Paul is talking about when he says that we have a house in the heavens not made with hands, it's not of this material realm, not of this physical creation. He's talking about the body that God promises to us as the culmination of our salvation, our glorified body.

Stop at Philippians 3. Paul wrote this to the church at Philippi where he experienced being stoned and left for dead. But in Philippians 3:20, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Note, we're waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven and it tells you when we will get this glorified body, “who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory.” That's the body he had following His resurrection from the dead, it's a glorified body. How does that happen? “It's by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” God's power that brings us salvation that cleanses us from sin, that makes us new includes as part of, if I can say it this way, that package of salvation, the ultimate replacement of this physical body with a glorified body. A body that is heavenly made and suited for heaven. A body that can only be made by the power of God bringing it about.

Come back to 1 Corinthians 15. We'll be looking more into this chapter in our study next time. Look at verse 42, Paul talking about the resurrection body. “So also is the resurrection of the dead, it is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body.” It is this body but it has been totally transformed and changed by the power of God from a body of this realm, this creation, physical with all of its limitations and problems to a body that is heavenly and suited for heaven. So “it is sown a perishable body, raised an imperishable body; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is a spiritual body.” That's what Paul is talking about.

Come back to 2 Corinthians 5. If this physical body pictured as a tent is folded up, taken down, I die, it will be sowed into the ground. We as believers have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. That's the glorified body that He has promised. Now look at verse 2, “For indeed in this house we grown.” This physical earthly tent, this body beset by afflictions, persecutions and perplexity and so on as he talked about in 2 Corinthians 4, this body that is decaying, “in this house we groan.” The weight of all that takes place, we do. We go through periods of time, especially as a young person, you are healthy, you are enjoying life. What happens? Sometimes you talk to young people and they say, I hope the Lord comes, I'm looking forward to that, but I hope He doesn't come until I get married and have kids. At my age I hope He comes this afternoon. Isn't that the way it goes? Or if something happens even when you are young that comes into your life, it seems overwhelming and so unpleasant and so tragic, then you say, I wish the Lord would come. That's what we are talking about. In this body we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.

Come back to Romans 8. Paul writes the same thing to the Romans. It's something we have to be constantly reminded of, otherwise we will lose heart. I bump into people from time to time, they used to come to this church. Sometimes I bump into people, they are going to another Bible-believing church. Fine. But sometimes I bump into people and say, where are you going to church? We're really not going anywhere. I wonder, were they really saved? Well, we just sort of got tired of the same thing, got a little weary and I guess we just sort of wore out and . . . How did that happen? Do you know what happens? We lose focus. We start looking on the physical.

So Paul writes to the Romans 8:18, after reminding them we are children of God, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. “If we suffer with Him, so we can be glorified with Him.” There is the goal, earthly sufferings, future glory. Verse 18, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.” He says the whole creation has suffered the impacts of sin. We experience it but the whole creation has experienced the impacts of sin, and it awaits because when we are revealed and unveiled before all creation as the sons of God, the curse will be lifted from the creation. And that will be when Christ comes and ultimately sets up His kingdom.

Verse 22, “We know that the whole creation groans,” that's what he just said about believers. In this earthly tent we groan. “The whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now.” You see there is a goal or an end like in childbirth. The pains are in anticipation of the birth of the child. “Not only this we ourselves having the first fruits of the Spirit,” that's key, that's where he is going in 2 Corinthians5:5, the ministry of the Spirit. We have the first fruits of the Spirit. That is we have the Spirit. When you placed your faith in Christ, the Spirit identified you with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, called the baptism of the Spirit. He also took up residence in your life. His presence there and His work in your life is the first fruits of the Spirit. The first fruits were the first ears of grain brought in which were evidence of a coming harvest. The presence of the Spirit and His work is an assurance of the culmination of what God has promised. “We have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” when the body is glorified. And this is something not seen.

So he says, “In hope we have been saved but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait for it.” No great secret, keep your eyes on what God has promised. Your body may decay, you may suffer pains and the trials and so on, don't lose heart. Keep your focus on where you are going. You see our hope is focused on what we haven't seen. What I see, not a lot different than what the unbeliever goes through. My father was a believer in Christ, he died of cancer; unbelievers die of cancer. My mother was the instrument that our family became believers, she was the first saved in our family. She suffered through Alzheimer's at the end of her life. Other people that aren't believers suffer Alzheimer's. What's the difference? The difference is what you don't see, that's where our eyes have to be fixed. That's what Paul is saying. We have a hope, the unbeliever lives a hopeless life. It is slipping away. We, not too long ago, had a multibillionaire who died. Didn't matter whether he was a billionaire or didn't have a penny to his name. He died like other people die.

We have a hope, a hope that is not seen. That's what we are looking at. We groan in these physical bodies, there is no denying that, but we don't grow weary. That doesn't mean we don't suffer pain, there aren't discouragements that come, hard times that come. Paul said that, Romans 8:18, “the sufferings of this present time.” He doesn't say they go away, he says they are put in perspective when they are compared to the glory that will someday be ours.

Come back to 2 Corinthians 5. Stop in 1 Corinthians 15:53, “This perishable must put on the imperishable; this mortal must put on immortality.” That's the ultimate goal, that's what we are looking for. Come back to 2 Corinthians 5. The sentence continues, we are longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, verse 3, “inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked.” Now there are some differences on this passage and I think misunderstandings. I don't think Paul is talking about an intermediary body for us, I don't think there is any indication of that in Scripture. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, we'll get to that in a future study in verse 8 of this chapter. Paul wrote to the Philippians in Philippians 1:22-23 and talked about the fact that he had a desire to depart from this body in this life and be with the Lord, which was more desirable. When we leave this body, it will be put in the ground. And as time passes it will return to dust. They dig up an old body and it is just bones. It is still there. But there is a time when the body will be raised from the dead. But in between we will have moved out of this body, gone into the presence of the Lord, but we will be naked in that we will not be clothed in this body that God has prepared for us, that is our body that will someday be glorified. That doesn't mean there is something wrong, but our salvation is not yet complete. Maybe we say we will be like the angels who are spirit beings, never created to have physical bodies. But God created us to have a body. Now we are going to be spirit. What does that mean? We're going to talk about angels tonight in Daniel 10. You can see angels, when it is God's will they are visible. You can describe how they look and what they are wearing. So we can be spirit beings in heaven, that doesn't mean we will be just like some smoke floating through the air. Angels are spirit beings, they are ministering spirits. They never did have a physical body. So we will be without our physical body. People say, I don't care about my physical body. That will be fine, I will be without a body. I'll be in heaven. I will be perfectly happy in that state. No, because that's not what God intends for us.

So those who have died in Christ. If I die of a heart attack this afternoon, they will put my body in the grave. I will have left my body and gone into the presence of God in glory, but I will not be clothed in a body. I will be a spirit. I take it I will see loved ones there, be able to converse with them like the angels do and so on. But my salvation will not yet be complete, my salvation will not be complete, understand complete, in that I have all that God has promised me. What I am hoping for that I have not yet seen is a glorified body. Remember we read Philippians 3 where our body will be transformed into conformity with the body of glory which Christ had after His resurrection from the dead. Now between His burial and His resurrection He did not have that body. The penalty for sin had been paid in full but the work God intended for our salvation was not yet complete,. It required the resurrection of Christ from the dead. That didn't mean that He could not function. Of course He could. So when it says, verse 3, “So we will not be found naked,” this is God's ultimate goal for us, that we have a glorified body. And so my salvation will not have reached the goal God appointed for me, what God has prepared for me until I get the glorified body.

Look at verse 4, “For indeed while we are in this tent we groan.” So take courage, saint, sometimes I find myself in the morning taking a shower or something and saying, oh my. Then I say, Gil, you have to stop saying that. It's like you are groaning, oh my. I'm not a morning person, I believe God created the mornings. I'm not convinced He created them to be lived in. So you groan, and when problems come you groan; when pressures come at work or in the family and physical, you groan. It's just like a burden. And it is. That's what Paul says. He doesn't deny it. We are believers, we don't groan. You hear the health and wealth preachers, you always have to be happy and perky and on top of it. That's not what Paul says is true.

While we are in this physical body, this tent, this earthly tent we groan, being burdened “because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.” You understand I am not looking forward to dying. I'm not looking forward to death. The goal I have as a believer is to be glorified in His presence. That will not happen until my body is raised from the dead. Death is an enemy. I realize once we get through that we have the joy of being in the presence of God, but my salvation still won't be complete. That's just like now. I have been completely saved but I have not entered into all that God has promised me in my salvation, which will bring my salvation to its completion. It's what He prepared for us, it's what we hope for. And yet none of this I see. I can look in the mirror and see this physical body decaying, I can't see the glorified body. I have never seen anyone else's glorified body. That's why we hope for it, because you don't hope for what you see, you have it. It's not like I hope that's true. It's a hope that is sure, this is where he is going, because God has done it. I can't wait until it happens. So our loved ones who have died in Christ, they are enjoying the presence of God in glory, but they have not yet realized the completeness of their salvation, either.

Come over to 1 Thessalonians 4, we'll be talking about different details of resurrection in coming studies. But look at 1 Thessalonians 4, the timing of this. Paul says in verse 13, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep,” Christians who have died, loved ones who have died who are believers in Christ, “so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.” If someone they love dies, they grieve; we grieve when someone dies. Characteristic of living in this physical realm. But we don't grieve with no hope. The sorrow is there, the sadness of missing them, of not seeing them today or tomorrow. But I don't grieve as one who has no hope because I will see them again. “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” You see they have been with Him. “For this we say to you by the word of the Lord,” doesn't get any more sure than that, “that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, the voice of the archangel, the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So shall we always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

Do you know what? We will all, as believers in Christ, arrive at the appointed goal and completion of our salvation at basically the same time. Those who have died in Christ will beat us by a few milliseconds, maybe, but we will be right there behind them. So it is in connection with the coming of Christ when our salvation is brought to its fullness, we receive glorified bodies. So until then for some part of the process is to live outside the body in a state of nakedness, if you will, as a spirit being. But that's not God's intention for us. He created humans to be embodied and that will ultimately be realized for us as believers, also for unbelievers but that's a different subject we'll talk about in the future.

While you're back here come over to 1 John 3. He talks about at the end of verse 1, “for this reason the world does not know us because it did not know Him.” The same thing that permeates the New Testament. The world can't know us, they don't know Christ. They may know about Him, but they don't know Him. “Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears we will be like Him.” When will that take place? When He appears we will be like Him “because we will see Him just as He is. Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself as He is pure.” That's what shapes and directs and controls our life. When will that happen? When He appears we will be like Him. That is not to minimize the joy that will be ours if we have to go through physical death when we leave this body and are brought into the presence of the Lord. But that's just not the ultimate goal, the ultimate goal is to be glorified in the presence of the Lord. That's yet future.

Come back, one more verse wraps it up. 2 Corinthians 5:5, “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God.” That's just a reminder. Philippians 1:6, “He who has begun a good work in you will continue to bring it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” That's what we've been talking about, when He comes God guarantees He will do it. So He who prepared us for this very purpose, to be glorified in the presence of His Son is God “who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge,” the Holy Spirit. We saw the Holy Spirit was given to us as the first fruits in Romans 8. Here He is given as a pledge. The word here means a down payment, a guarantee, we call it earnest money. If you buy a house you put down earnest money, a down payment, and it's a down payment in kind. I’m paying a certain amount, guaranteeing I will pay the rest that I owe you, whether you borrow from the bank or what you are responsible for that's the transaction. We not only have the promise of God, He is so gracious He has given us the down payment to guarantee. The Holy Spirit, when you placed your faith in Christ the Holy Spirit took up residence within you. He is God's guarantee to you He will complete the process. And it's always a down payment to be completed in kind. So what the Holy Spirit has begun, He will complete.

Back up to 2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit.” That's what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “our inner man is being renewed day by day.” So the Spirit of God is building us and maturing us in our spiritual life, in our new life in Christ. The culmination of that will be when this body is glorified and it all comes together, a body suited for the glory of the glorious God's presence. I am all that Christ died to make me to be.

Back up to 2 Corinthians 1:20, “Now as many as are the promises of God in Him they are yes. Therefore also through Him is our ‘amen’ to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God.” A play on the word anointed here because the word translated Christ is the anointed one. He establishes us with you by Christos, and Christos us in Christ, with us in the anointed one and anointed us because we have been identified with Christ. “Who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge” as a guaranty that the down payment has been made, it is secure. I have the promise of God, I have the presence of the Spirit. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God that we have in Christ Jesus. That's how Paul went on and finished Romans 8. It is settled, it is sure, it is secure.

Ephesians 1:14, “In Him also,” verse 13, “after listening to the message of truth the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise who is given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's possession, to the praise of His glory.” We have to keep focus. Why do I have the Spirit? To help me through my problems and sometimes I just don't know. Get your eyes off the problems. They are real, you groan, the Spirit is a comforter, He strengthens and enables, but keeps the eyes on where He is taking us—a glorified body.

One more passage and we're done, 1 Peter 1:3. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice even though now for a little while if necessary you've been distressed by various trials so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold which is perishable even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise, glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” This is where we are going. If I have to go through death, be disembodied, I'll enjoy the glory and joy of heaven but God won't be done, my salvation won't be complete. “And though you have not seen Him, you love Him; though you do not see Him now but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your soul.” And that salvation won't be finalized and complete until this frail earthly tent of a body in which I groan, which is decaying, is ultimately glorified in God. That's where we are going, that's our goal. Keep your eyes there, you won't grow weary. You will have troubles, you'll have trials, you'll groan but you won't quit.

Let's pray together. Thank You, Lord, for your grace. Thank You for the grace that has provided salvation through the death of Your Son. His resurrection is a declaration of victory and because of that through faith in Him we share in that victory. Someday our salvation will be brought to its fullness and completion when we receive glorified bodies that conform to the body of His glory. Thank You for Your grace, thank You for the privilege of living for You in these days. We praise You in Christ' name, amen.