Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Yesterday Paul compared our bodies to jars of clay and today he continues his third

letter to the Corinthians by comparing them to tents which are not very sturdy

what they need is for someone to build an eternal mansion around them,

our resurrection bodies, because right now our tent bodies still suffer from the elements and from attackers.

God says that will happen someday. In fact, inside these tents

lives the mansionmaker, the spirit, and he is preparing us for the mansion.

Remember how Jesus said he is going to prepare a place for us?

God also says he's working to prepare us for it.

God is the one who does all the prep work, and part of that preparation is giving us his spirit,

his guarantee.

In the midst of all Paul's trials, it's not death he's

wishing for, it's eternal life. He says he'll either be alive here or be alive with Christ,

because for anyone with the spirit, death is this thing we kind of step

through or pass over. It's not really clear in Scripture. But here's one thing Paul says is true of those who

died before Christ's return, which might also apply to us someday.

In 5-4, he says they live in this unclothed state, where their spirits are disembodied and

they're with God, but they haven't yet been given their resurrection bodies, which is what will happen when Christ returns to Earth someday.

They are away from the body and at home with the Lord, like Paul says in 5-8.

That's where he is right now. His body is no longer a tent, but he won't have his mansion body until after Christ returns to Earth.

In the meantime, his spirit is with God in heaven. It's worth noting that there are a few other viewpoints about all this

that still fall within the realm of Orthodoxy, but this is what the prominent view

...