What Does 2 Corinthians 5:1 Mean?

V. (1) **For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved.**—Better, *be broken up,* as more in harmony with the image of the tent. The words that follow give the secret of his calmness and courage in the midst of sufferings. He looks beyond them. A new train of imagery begins to rise in his mind: linked, perhaps, to that of the preceding chapter by the idea of the tabernacle; in part, perhaps, suggested by his own occupation as a tentmaker. His daily work was to him as a parable, and as his hands were making the temporary shelter for those who were travellers on earth, he thought of the house “not made with hands,” eternal in the heavens. The comparison of the body to the house or dwelling-place of the Spirit was, of course, natural, and common enough, and, it may be noted, was common among the Greek medical writers (as, *e.g.,* in Hippocrates, with whom St. Luke must have been familiar). The modification introduced by the idea of the “tent” emphasises the transitory character of the habitation. “What if the tent be broken up?” He, the true inward man, who dwells in the *tent* will find a more permanent, an eternal, home in heaven: a *house* which comes from God. What follows shows that he is thinking of that spiritual body of which he had said such glorious things in 1Corinthians 15:42-49.