2 Corinthians 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul explains why he keeps working despite hardship: he expects the body he now lives in, like a tent, to be replaced by a lasting dwelling from God, and God has given the Spirit as the down payment on that. He says everyone must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and that Christ's love drives him, since One died for all so that those who live now live for Christ rather than for themselves. Anyone in Christ is a new creation, and God, who reconciled people to himself through Christ and did not count their sins against them, has handed Paul and his coworkers the message of reconciliation. He closes by calling himself an ambassador for Christ, urging the Corinthians to be reconciled to God.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • We know something about our future dwelling.
   • Our earthly house, which is a tent, may be taken down.
   • If that earthly tent is dismantled, we have a building from God.
   • That building is a house not made by human hands.
   • That house is eternal.
   • That house is in the heavens.
2. 5:2
   • In this present state we groan.
   • We long to be clothed over with our dwelling that comes from heaven.
3. 5:3
   • The expectation is stated as a condition: if indeed, having been clothed, we will not be found naked.
4. 5:4
   • We who are in this tent groan.
   • We groan while being weighed down.
   • We do not wish to be unclothed.
   • We wish instead to be clothed over.
   • The purpose is that what is mortal be swallowed up by life.
5. 5:5
   • The one who prepared us for this very thing is God.
   • God has given us the Spirit as a down payment.
6. 5:6
   • We are always confident.
   • We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.
7. 5:7
   • We walk by faith.
   • We do not walk by what is seen.
8. 5:8
   • We are confident.
   • We would prefer to be away from the body.
   • We would prefer to be at home with the Lord.
9. 5:9
   • We make it our ambition to be pleasing to him.
   • This ambition holds whether we are at home in the body or away from it.
10. 5:10
    • All of us must be made to appear before the judgment seat of Christ.
    • The purpose is that each one receive what was done through the body.
    • What each receives corresponds to what he did.
    • What was done is either good or worthless.
11. 5:11
    • We know the fear of the Lord.
    • We persuade men.
    • We have been made plain to God.
    • Paul hopes that we have also been made plain in the consciences of the hearers.
12. 5:12
    • We are not commending ourselves to you again.
    • We are giving you occasion to boast on our behalf.
    • The purpose is that you have something to say to those who boast in outward appearance.
    • Those people do not boast in the heart.
13. 5:13
    • If we are out of our senses, it is for God.
    • If we are of sound mind, it is for you.
14. 5:14
    • The love of Christ holds us together and presses us on.
    • We have reached this judgment.
    • One died on behalf of all.
    • Therefore all died.
15. 5:15
    • He died on behalf of all.
    • The purpose is that those who live should no longer live for themselves.
    • They should live for the one who died on their behalf.
    • That one was raised.
16. 5:16
    • From now on we know no one according to the flesh.
    • We have known Christ according to the flesh.
    • Now we no longer know him that way.
17. 5:17
    • If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
    • The old things have passed away.
    • New things have come into being.
18. 5:18
    • All these things are from God.
    • God reconciled us to himself.
    • God did this through Jesus Christ.
    • God gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
19. 5:19
    • God was in Christ.
    • God was reconciling the world to himself.
    • God was not counting their trespasses against them.
    • God has placed in us the word of reconciliation.
20. 5:20
    • We are ambassadors on behalf of Christ.
    • God makes his appeal through us.
    • We beg, in Christ's place, that you be reconciled to God.
21. 5:21
    • He made him to be sin on our behalf.
    • The one made to be sin knew no sin.
    • The purpose is that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

KJV "tabernacle" here does not mean the Israelite sanctuary of Exodus. It is simply a tent, the ordinary portable shelter a traveler pitches and strikes, and "dissolved" is the word for taking such a tent down. The contrast Paul draws is between a temporary shelter and a permanent building. Paul worked as a tentmaker by trade.

5:2

"Clothed upon" translates a Greek compound meaning to put a garment on over what you are already wearing, the way a coat goes over clothes, rather than changing into a different outfit. The metaphor shifts from housing to clothing in mid-sentence, and the two images run together through verse 4.

5:3

"Naked" here means without a body at all, not undressed. In Greek thought a soul stripped of its body was a thing to be dreaded, and Paul is saying that is not what awaits. Some ancient manuscripts read "having taken it off" rather than "being clothed," which reverses the sense of the first half of the verse; translators have to choose.

5:4

"Swallowed up" picks up the wording of Isaiah 25:8, where death itself is swallowed up. The Greek behind "mortality" means the part of us that is liable to die, not death as an event.

5:5

"Earnest" is a business word of 1611, translating a Greek commercial term for a deposit: a first installment that is genuinely part of the full payment and legally guarantees the rest will follow. Not a sample or a token, but the opening portion of the same thing.

5:6

The Greek uses a matched pair of verbs: being at home among your own people, and being abroad away from them. English cannot keep the pairing, so translations stretch the phrases out. The same pair returns in verses 8 and 9.

5:7

"Walk" is the standard biblical idiom for the whole conduct of a life, not a journey or a single stretch of road. "Sight" here means the outward appearance of things, what is visibly there to be seen.

5:9

"Accepted of him" in 1611 English means pleasing to him, not accepted in our sense of being admitted or let in. The Greek word means well-pleasing.

5:10

The "judgment seat" is the bema, a raised platform in a Greek or Roman city where a magistrate sat in public view to hear cases and pass sentence, and where prizes were also awarded at games. Corinth had one in its marketplace, and Paul had been hauled before it there.

5:11

"Terror of the Lord" means the fear of the Lord, a standard Old Testament phrase; in 1611 "terror" covered awed reverence as well as dread, and the Greek word covers both. The grammar allows either "knowing what it is to fear the Lord" or "knowing how fearsome the Lord is." "Made manifest" means laid open to view, with nothing hidden.

5:12

"Commend" means to present or recommend someone, as a letter of introduction does; Paul has already mentioned such letters earlier in this letter. "Glory" as a verb means to boast, not to shine, and it carries that sense throughout this letter. "Somewhat" is simply "something." "In appearance" is literally "in the face," meaning outward presentation and credentials.

5:13

"Beside ourselves" is the old idiom for being out of one's mind, and "sober" is its opposite, being of sound and steady mind. Paul is picking up terms others have apparently used about him; the pair could refer to ecstatic religious experience set against restrained ordinary speech, or simply to the charge of madness.

5:14

"Constraineth" is misleading now. The Greek means to press in from both sides, to hem in and so drive forward; modern "constrain" suggests holding back, which is nearly the reverse. "The love of Christ" is grammatically ambiguous in Greek and can mean Christ's love for us or our love for Christ, and the rendering keeps the ambiguity.

5:16

"After the flesh" means by merely human standards, sizing a person up by outward appearance and status; it is not about the physical body as such. The Greek word order lets the phrase attach either to the knowing ("we once judged Christ by such standards") or to the Christ known ("we once knew a merely human Christ"), and the sentence has been read both ways.

5:17

"Creature" in 1611 means anything created, a creation, not an animal. The Greek clause has no verb and is compressed: it can be read as "he is a new creation" or as "there is a new creation," that is, a whole new order of things has arrived. "Behold" is simply "look."

5:18

"Reconciled" is the everyday word for ending a quarrel and restoring friendly terms between two estranged parties; it was used of separated spouses and of warring states. "Ministry" translates a word meaning service or a commission entrusted to a servant, not an office in a church.

5:19

"To wit" is archaic for "that is to say." "Imputing" is a bookkeeping term: entering an amount in the ledger against someone's account. "The word of reconciliation" means the message about it, "word" here standing for a spoken message rather than a single term.

5:20

An ambassador was an official envoy sent by a ruler or a city, whose words carried the authority of the one who sent him and were treated as that ruler's own. "In Christ's stead" means in Christ's place, speaking on his behalf. "We pray you" and "beseech" in 1611 mean we beg you, an urgent request made to a person; neither has anything to do with prayer addressed to God.

5:21

The Greek word here translated "sin" is also the regular word the Greek Old Testament uses for a sin offering, so the phrase can be heard as "made him to be sin" or "made him a sin offering," and readers have argued over which since antiquity. "Knew no sin" means had no personal experience of sinning. "The righteousness of God" is likewise open: it can mean a right standing that comes from God, or God's own rightness displayed in them.