This devotional was written by Dr. Robert A. Cook. You can subscribe to his free daily email articles at Walk With The King Today and listen to his Spirit-filled 15-minute messages. Used with written permission.
2 Corinthians 5:1 We have a building of God… eternal in the heavens.
Read also verses 2-21.
A friend of mine recently asked me, ‘Bob, have you ever thought about dying?’ Jokingly, I replied, ‘Yeah, I think about it all the time. But I’m planning to postpone it for another thirty years!’ Seriously now, can you talk about dying without flinching? Paul could, and I think anybody who understands the truths of 2 Corinthians 5 can too. That’s because our perspective is not merely on the here and now, but on eternity: ‘We have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’
This whole chapter holds together for one reason: Paul starts with ‘we know,’ and ends with ‘He hath made Him to be sin for us.’ How do we know anything about eternity? Because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for you and me. What else do we know? We know there’s a job to do: ‘we persuade men’ (v. 11). We know there’s a driving force behind our mission that derives from the very heart of God: ‘the love of Christ constraineth us’ (v.14). We know Christ’s love is rooted not simply in emotion but in the solid fact of Calvary: ‘He died for all’ (v. 14). We know there is a new relationship between anyone who trusts the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and everything else in the universe (v. 17). And we know that we’ve got a new job: we are ambassadors for Christ (v. 20).
Small thought here. What a blessed outlook for our future! No longer the morbid fear of dying. If Jesus tarries, we will, of course, experience physical death. But oh, the solid awareness that we are living, not just for the here and now, but for eternity because Jesus Christ died and rose again.
