2 Corinthians — Chapter 5

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Macedonia in about AD 55–56, still inside the long reflection on gospel ministry that began at 2:14 and runs to 7:4. Chapter 4 ended with "we do not lose heart": the outer self is wasting away, the inner self is being renewed day by day, and "light momentary affliction" is preparing "an eternal weight of glory" (4:16–18). The chapter break is not a real break. The opening "For" ties straight back: Paul now explains why he can look past what is seen. Behind it all is a hard year. In Asia he had "despaired of life itself" (1:8–9), and his critics in Corinth said his weakness and sufferings proved he was no true apostle. So the chapter moves from the body and death, to the judgment, to what drives Paul's ministry, and finally to one of the richest summaries of the gospel in the Bible.

Our Heavenly Dwelling (vv1–10)

• "For we know" (v1). Not "we hope" or "we guess." Paul writes as one sure of what God has revealed, the same certainty as 4:14: the one who raised Jesus "will raise us also."
• "The tent that is our earthly home" (v1). The word is skēnos, a tent, used in the New Testament only here and in v4. A tent is temporary, flimsy and portable. Paul was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3), so he knew exactly how easily one comes down. Israel lived in tents in the wilderness and worshiped at a tent, the tabernacle, until the permanent temple was built. The body is a camping place on the journey, not the final home.
• "Is destroyed" (v1). The verb (katalyō) means to take down, dismantle or break up. Death is the tent coming down.
• "A building from God, a house not made with hands" (v1). Over against the tent stands a solid, permanent building. "Not made with hands" is the phrase used of what God makes rather than people (Mark 14:58; Heb 9:11). Most readers take this as the resurrection body Paul described in 1 Corinthians 15:42–54: imperishable, glorious, raised in power. Some see it more broadly as the whole heavenly life with God (John 14:2). Either way, the point is the same: what replaces the tent is better and lasts forever.
• "In this tent we groan" (vv2, 4). The groan is the same one in Romans 8:23, where believers "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." It is the ache of weakness and pain, and also the ache of longing.
• Clothing language (vv2–4). Paul suddenly switches pictures, from houses to clothes. He wants to "put on" the heavenly dwelling like a garment over what he already wears.
• "Not be found naked" (v3). Greek thought often longed for the soul to be set free from the body, the body as a prison. Paul does not want to be a bodiless soul. He wants a better body. "Naked" probably means the state of the soul without a body between death and resurrection.
• "Not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed" (v4). Paul's real hope is that Christ returns while he is alive, so he never has to die and be "unclothed" at all, but simply be changed (1 Cor 15:51–52; 1 Thess 4:17). This is not a death wish. It is a longing for the resurrection.
• "So that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life" (v4). A deliberate echo of 1 Corinthians 15:54, "Death is swallowed up in victory," which quotes Isaiah 25:8. Life does not just outlast death. It swallows it whole.
• "God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee" (v5). The word is arrabōn, a down payment or first installment that secures the rest. Paul used the same word in 1:22, and again in Ephesians 1:14. The lexicon notes that in modern Greek the word means an engagement ring. The Spirit living in believers now is God's deposit on the full resurrection life to come. God has not only promised it. He has "prepared us for this very thing" and put part of it in our hands.
• "Always of good courage" (vv6, 8). Twice. The word means cheerful confidence, the opposite of losing heart (4:1, 16).
• "At home in the body… away from the Lord" (vv6, 8). The words are a pair: endēmeō ("be at home") and ekdēmeō ("be away from home"). Living here, believers are in one sense abroad, away from the Lord's visible presence. Dying, they leave one home for another, "at home with the Lord."
• "We walk by faith, not by sight" (v7). The famous line is an aside explaining v6. Christ is real and near, but not yet seen. Compare 4:18 and Hebrews 11:1. Faith is how believers live in the meantime.
• "We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord" (v8). Paul's preferred order is resurrection without death (v4). But if death comes first, it is still gain (Phil 1:21–23). This verse is one of the main texts for what Christians call the intermediate state: believers who die go at once into the Lord's presence, conscious and at home, while still awaiting the resurrection of the body. Christians have weighed it against "soul sleep" views, and most traditions read it as immediate presence with Christ. The text does not give details about that state, and it does not call it the final hope. The final hope is the resurrection.
• "We make it our aim to please him" (v9). The word for "aim" (philotimeomai) literally means to love honor, to be ambitious. Paul's one ambition, at home or away, is to please Christ (Rom 15:20; 1 Thess 4:11 use the same verb).
• "The judgment seat of Christ" (v10). The bēma was the raised platform where a Roman magistrate sat to give judgments. Pilate sat on one (John 19:13). Paul himself had stood before Gallio's bēma in Corinth (Acts 18:12), and its remains are still visible in the city's forum, so the Corinthians knew the picture well. In Romans 14:10 Paul calls it "the judgment seat of God." Here the judge is Christ.
• "We must all appear" (v10). The verb (phaneroō) means more than show up. It means "be made manifest," laid open as we really are (compare 1 Cor 4:5). Paul includes himself in the "all."
• "Each one may receive what is due… whether good or evil" (v10). How does this fit with "no condemnation" for those in Christ (Rom 8:1)? Most Protestant readers see this as an evaluation of believers' lives for reward or loss, not a verdict on salvation, as in 1 Corinthians 3:12–15, where a builder "suffers loss, though he himself will be saved." Others stress that Paul uses language of judgment by works for everyone (Rom 2:6–8) and that real faith is shown in a changed life. Both readings agree that what we do in the body matters to Christ, and that this is meant to sober believers, not terrify them.
• Commentators: Henry calls the body "the poor cottages of clay in which our souls now dwell." On v5 he explains that "an earnest is part of payment, and secures the full payment." On v7 he writes, "Faith is for this world, and sight is reserved for the other world." JFB connects the tent to Israel's wilderness journey ("It thus answers to the tabernacle in the wilderness") and reads v10 as "be made manifest, namely, in our true character," which the lexicon supports. Guzik takes the bēma as a judgment of believers' works and motives, not of their salvation, and he presses the warning that a saved soul can still have a wasted life. He says "destroyed" is the word for striking a tent. The lexicon gives "take down, dissolve, destroy," which fits the picture, though it doesn't list a technical tent-camp sense. Guzik also uses v8 to argue against soul sleep and purgatory.

The Ministry of Reconciliation (vv11–21)

• "Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others" (v11). The "fear of the Lord" here looks back to the judgment seat of v10. It is reverent awe of the one to whom Paul must answer. The KJV's "terror of the Lord" is stronger than most modern readers take it. Because Paul will give account, he works to persuade people, honestly and openly (4:2).
• "What we are is known to God" (v11). The same word as v10, phaneroō. Paul is already "made manifest" before God, and he hopes the Corinthians' consciences can see him clearly too.
• "Not commending ourselves to you again" (v12). He has heard the jibe before (3:1). His aim is to give the loyal Corinthians something to say to the rivals who "boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart." It echoes 1 Samuel 16:7: "man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart."
• "If we are beside ourselves, it is for God" (v13). The verb (existēmi) means to be out of one's mind. Paul's critics may have called him a fanatic, or mocked his visions and ecstatic experiences (12:1–7; 1 Cor 14:18). Festus later shouts, "Paul, you are out of your mind" (Acts 26:24), and Jesus' own family said the same of him (Mark 3:21). Paul's answer: if I seem carried away, that is between me and God; if I am calm and reasoned, that is for your good. Either way, nothing is for himself.
• "The love of Christ controls us" (v14). The verb is synechō, to hold together, hem in, press on every side. The same word describes the crowd pressing on Jesus (Luke 8:45) and Jesus' own sense of being "distressed" until his death was done (Luke 12:50). Paul is gripped, hemmed in, by love. "The love of Christ" most likely means Christ's love for us rather than our love for him, since the next clause explains it with Christ's death.
• "One has died for all, therefore all have died" (v14). Christ died as the representative of his people, so in God's reckoning they died with him (Rom 6:3–8; Gal 2:20). The old self-centered life has ended. How wide is "all"? Some readers take it as all humanity, for whom Christ's death is offered, and others as all who are in Christ, since those who "died" with him are the ones who now "live" for him (v15). The verse's main concern is not that debate but its result.
• "That those who live might no longer live for themselves" (v15). This is the point of the cross for daily life. Christ "for their sake died and was raised," so his people live for him. Paul is answering anyone who thinks his ministry is self-promotion. A man who has died to himself has nothing left to promote.
• "We regard no one according to the flesh" (v16). "According to the flesh" means by worldly standards: status, appearance, eloquence, ethnicity, the very measures the rivals used (v12).
• "Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh" (v16). Before Damascus, Paul judged Jesus by worldly measures: a crucified Galilean, cursed on a tree (Gal 3:13; Deut 21:23), could not be the Messiah. That view is gone. This verse does not mean Paul had no interest in the earthly Jesus. He cares about Jesus' death, resurrection and words (1 Cor 11:23–25; 15:3–8). He means he no longer evaluates Jesus by the world's yardstick.
• "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (v17). In Greek the phrase is abrupt, "if anyone in Christ, new creation!" with no verb. Kainē ktisis could mean a new creature (the person is made new) or new creation (the person has entered God's new world). Both are true, and the second is the larger frame. Isaiah promised: "Remember not the former things… Behold, I am doing a new thing" (Isa 43:18–19), and "I create new heavens and a new earth" (Isa 65:17). The new creation that will one day fill the world has already begun in everyone joined to the risen Christ (Gal 6:15).
• "The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (v17). "Behold" is a cry of wonder. The old age with its standards, divisions and condemnation is ending.
• "All this is from God" (v18). Everything in vv14–17 comes from God's initiative. He does not wait for people to make the first move.
• "Reconciled us to himself" (v18). The verb katallassō originally meant to exchange, as in money, and then to change enemies into friends. Paul uses the same word for a wife being "reconciled" to her husband (1 Cor 7:11). Notice who is reconciled to whom. In Paul's letters God is never said to be reconciled to us. We are reconciled to him (Rom 5:10). The hostility that had to be dealt with was real on both sides, since sin brings God's just wrath (Rom 1:18; 5:9), but God is the one who acts to remove it.
• "Not counting their trespasses against them" (v19). The language of accounting. God does not simply ignore sin. Verse 21 explains how sins could go uncounted against sinners: they were counted against Christ. Compare Psalm 32:1–2, quoted in Romans 4:7–8: "Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin."
• "Entrusting to us the message of reconciliation" (v19). God makes peace through Christ, then hands the announcement of it to people. The "ministry" (v18) and "message" (v19) of reconciliation are Paul's defense of his calling: this is what he has been doing in Corinth all along.
• "We are ambassadors for Christ" (v20). The verb presbeuō comes from the word for an elder and means to act as an envoy. It appears only here and in Ephesians 6:20, where Paul calls himself "an ambassador in chains." An ambassador speaks for his king, in a foreign land, with authority not his own. "God making his appeal through us" means the voice is human, but the appeal is God's.
• "We implore you… be reconciled to God" (v20). The startling thing is an ambassador begging. Kings' envoys usually delivered terms. This envoy pleads. It is the general appeal of the gospel, but in context it also lands on the Corinthians themselves, who were drifting from Paul and from the gospel he preached (6:1–2).
• "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin" (v21). Fifteen Greek words that sum up the gospel. "Knew no sin" means Christ had no personal acquaintance with sin by doing it (John 8:46; Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 2:22; 1 John 3:5). What does "made him to be sin" mean? There are three main readings, and they overlap.
• Reading 1: sin offering. In the Hebrew Old Testament the same word (ḥaṭṭāʾt) means both "sin" and "sin offering" (as in Lev 4), and the Greek Old Testament sometimes uses "sin" for the offering. On this view Christ became the sacrifice for sin, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53:10 whose soul is made "an offering for guilt."
• Reading 2: sin-bearer. God treated Christ as if he were sin itself, laying on him the guilt and punishment that belonged to sinners (Isa 53:6; Gal 3:13, where Christ became "a curse for us").
• Reading 3: shared condition. Christ entered fully into the human situation under sin, "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom 8:3), to deal with it from inside. All three agree on what Paul never says: that Christ became a sinner. The sin was laid on him, not found in him.
• "So that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (v21). The exchange is complete. He took what was ours, and we receive what is his. Protestant readers have emphasized imputation, God's righteousness credited to believers (Phil 3:9; Rom 4:5). Others stress that the phrase also includes being made a people who show God's faithfulness to the world, as Paul's own ministry did. The two need not compete. The ground is the same: "in him."
• Commentators: Henry reads v21 as a sin offering: "He was made Sin; not a sinner, but Sin, a Sin-offering." JFB disagrees and prefers "the representative Sin-bearer (vicariously) of the aggregate sin of all men," rather than a sin offering. Guzik also stresses that Jesus was made sin but never a sinner, and that God's justice was satisfied, not set aside. On v14 JFB says Christ's love "with irresistible power limits us to the one great object to the exclusion of other considerations," which matches the lexicon's "hem in, press on every side." On v17 JFB claims the word "new" implies "a new nature quite different from anything previously existing, not merely recent." The lexicon agrees that kainos means new in quality rather than time, while noting the distinction was weaker in later Greek. On v20 JFB observes that such pleading "is uncommon in the case of 'ambassadors,' who generally stand on their dignity." Henry, on the new birth, says regeneration is more than outward reform, since "a new heart is given." Guzik's application of the ambassador picture is that a faithful envoy delivers the king's message, not what the audience wants to hear.

Pointing to Christ

The whole chapter rests on Christ. His resurrection is the pattern for the "building from God." He sits on the judgment seat, and yet he is the one who died for those who stand before it. His love grips Paul, his death ends the old life, and his rising begins the new creation. And at the center is the great exchange: the sinless one made sin, so that sinners might become the righteousness of God in him. The judge and the substitute are the same person, which is why Paul can speak of the judgment seat and still be "always of good courage."

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the resurrection body, walking by faith, the judgment seat, the new creation, reconciliation, and the great exchange.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

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• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 2 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Walking by Faith, Not Sight (v.7) — Paul describes the Christian life as trusting what God has promised rather than what can currently be seen. Where in your life right now are you leaning on what you can see instead of what God has said?
• Living With Eternity's Accounting in View (v.10) — Paul says everyone will appear before Christ's judgment seat to give an account of how they lived. Does that truth mostly produce fear in you, or does it motivate how you spend your days?
• Compelled by Christ's Love (v.14) — Paul says it is Christ's love, not obligation, that drives his entire ministry. What actually motivates your service and obedience to God — love, or something more like duty or guilt?
• A Genuinely New Creation (v.17) — Paul declares that anyone in Christ is not improved but made new, with the old having passed away. What old identity or pattern are you still clinging to instead of living out of who you now are?
• Ambassadors Carrying the Great Exchange (vv.20-21) — Paul calls believers Christ's ambassadors pleading with people to be reconciled to God, on the basis that the sinless Christ became sin so we could become His righteousness. Who in your life needs to hear that appeal from you?