immortal mortals

2 Corinthians 5:1-5: “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”

This is one of those hard passages from Paul, full of imagery and deep theology, strung together in long, complicated sentences. But it opened up for me with one phrase: “. . . . so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”

That’s not natural. It’s the normal way for life to be followed by death; mortal things die. It’s a law of nature.

But Christians aren’t natural. As soon as we put our hope in Jesus, as soon as we recognize our helplessness and hopelessness and then the great good news that we don’t have to handle our guilt ourselves, we become supernatural. We’re those unusual beings, mortals who move from life not to death but to immortal life.

I’ve said it before: death is a punctuation mark, but it’s not a period. It’s not the end. Death is a comma, a brief separation between what came before and what comes next. But what comes next, our eternal life in heaven, in God’s presence, will last longer even than one of Paul’s sentences.