2 Corinthians 5:5

Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(5) He that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing.—Better, he that wrought us for this very thing. The “very thing” is the consummation, by whatever stages it may be reached, in which mortality is swallowed up of life. The whole work of God in the past—redemption, the new birth, the gifts and graces of the Spirit—was looking to this as its result. He had given the “earnest of the Spirit” (see Note on 2Corinthians 1:22) as a pledge of the future victory of the higher life over the lower. Every gift of spiritual energy not dependent upon the material organism was an assurance that that organism was an impediment to the free action of the Spirit, which would one day be overcome. Our eyes, to take a striking instance, are limits, as well as instruments, to the spirit’s powers of perception.

MacLaren's Expositions

2 Corinthians

THE PATIENT WORKMAN

2 Corinthians 5:5.

These words penetrate deep into the secrets of God. They assume to have read the riddle of life. To Paul everything which we experience, outwardly or inwardly, is from the divine working. Life is to him no mere blind whirl, or unintelligent play of accidental forces, nor is it the unguided result of our own or of others’ wills, but is the slow operation of the great Workman. Paul assumes to know the meaning of this protracted process, that it all has one design which we may know and grasp and further. And he believes that the clear perception of the divine purpose, and the habit of looking at everything as contributing thereto, will be a magic charm against all sorrow, doubt, despondency, or fear, for he adds, ‘Therefore we are always confident.’ So let us try to follow the course of thought which issues in such a blessed gift as that of a continual, courageous outlook, and buoyant though grave lightheartedness, because we discern what He means ‘Who worketh all things according to the counsel of His own will.’

I. The first thought here is, God’s purpose in all His working; ‘He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.’

What is that ‘self-same thing’ ? To understand it we must look back for a moment to the previous context. The Apostle has been speaking about the instinctive reluctance which even good men feel at prospect of dying and ‘putting off the earthly house of this tabernacle.’ He distinguishes between three different conditions in which the human spirit may be-dwelling in the earthly body, stripped of that, and ‘clothed with the house which is from Heaven,’ and to this last and highest state he sees that for him and for his brethren there were two possible roads. They might reach it either through losing the present body, in the act of death, and passing through a period of what he calls nakedness; or they might attain it by being ‘superinvested,’ as it were, with the glorious body which was to come to saints with Christ when He came; and so slip on, as it were, the wedding garment over their old clothes, without having to denude themselves of these. And he says that deep in the Christian heart there lay reluctance to take the former road and the preference for the latter. His longing was that that which is mortal might be ‘swallowed up of life,’ as some sand-bank in the tide-way may be gradually covered and absorbed by the rejoicing waters. And then he says, ‘Now He that hath wrought us for this very thing, is God.’

Of course it is impossible that he can mean by this ‘very thing’ the second of the roads by which it was possible to reach the ultimate issue, because he did not know whether his brethren and he were to die or to be changed. He speaks in the context about death as a possible contingency for himself and for them,-’If our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved,’ and so on. Therefore we must suppose that ‘the self-same thing’ of which he is thinking as the divine purpose in all His dealings with us, is not the manner in which we may attain that ultimate condition, but the condition itself which, by one road or another, God’s children shall attain. Or, in other words, the highest aim of the divine love in all its dealings with us Christian men, is not merely a blessed spiritual life, but the completion of our humanity in a perfect spirit dwelling in a glorified body. Corporeity-the dwelling in a body by which the pure spirit moves amidst pure universes-is the highest end of God’s will concerning us.

That glorified body is described in our context in wonderful words, which it would take me far too long to do more than just touch upon. Here we dwell in a tent, there we shall dwell in a building. Here in a house made with hands, a corporeal frame derived from parents by material transmission and intervention; there we shall dwell in a building of which God is the maker. Here we dwell in a crumbling clay tenement, which rains dissolve, which lightning strikes, and winds overthrow, and which finally lies on the ground a heap of tumbled ruin. There we dwell in a building, God’s direct work, eternal, and knowing no corruption nor change. Here we dwell in a body congruous with, and part of, the perishable earthly world in which it abides, and with which it stands in relation; there we dwell in a house partaking of the nature of the heavens in which it moves, a body that is the fit organ of a perfect spirit.

And so, says Paul, the end of what God means with us is not stated in all its wonderfulness, when we speak of spirits imbued with His wisdom and surcharged with His light and perfectness, but when we add to that the thought of a fitting organ in which these spirits dwell, whereby they can come into contact with an external universe, incorruptible, and so reach the summit of their destined completeness. ‘The house not made with hands,’ eternal, the building of God in the Heavens, is the end that God has in view for all His children.

II. So, then, secondly, note the slow process of the Divine Workman.

The Apostle employs here a very emphatic compound term for ‘hath wrought.’ It conveys not only the idea of operation, but the idea of continuous and somewhat toilsome and effortful work, as if against the resistance of something that did not yield itself naturally to the impulse that He would bestow. Like some sculptor with a hard bit of marble, or some metallurgist who has to work the rough ore till it becomes tractable, so the loving, patient, Divine Artificer is here represented as labouring long and earnestly with a somewhat obstinate material which can and does resist His loving touch, and yet going on with imperturbable and patient hope, by manifold touches, here a little and there a little, all through life preparing a man for His purpose. The great Artificer toils at His task, ‘rising early’ and working long, and not discouraged when He comes upon a black vein in the white marble, nor when the hard stone turns the edge of His chisels.

Now I would have you notice that there lies in this conception a very important thought, viz. God cannot make you fit for heaven all at a jump, or by a simple act of will. That is not His way of working. He can make a world so, He cannot make a saint so. He can speak and it is done when it is only a universe that has to be brought into being; or He can say, ‘Let there be light,’ and light springs at His word. But He cannot say, and He does not say, Let there be holiness, and it comes. Not so can God make man meet for the ‘inheritance of the saints in light.’ And it takes Him all His energies, for all a lifetime, to prepare His child for what He wants to make of him.

There is another thought here, which I can only touch, and that is that God cannot give a man that glorified body of which I have been speaking, unless the man’s spirit is Christlike. He cannot raise a bad man at the resurrection with the body of His glory. By the necessities of the case it is confined to the purified, because it corresponds to their inward spiritual being. It is only a perfect spirit that can dwell in a perfect body. You could not put a bad man, Godless and Christless, into the body which will be fit for them whom Christ has changed first of all in heart and spirit into His own likeness. He would be like those hermit crabs that you see on the beach who run into any kind of a shell, whether it fits them or not, in order to get a house.

There are two principles at work in the resurrection of the dead. The glorified body is not the physical outcome of the material body here, but is the issue and manifestation, in visible form, of the perfect and Christlike spirit. Some shall rise to glory and immortality, some to shame and everlasting contempt. If we are to stand at the last with the body of our humiliation changed into a body of glory, we must begin by being changed in the spirit of our mind. As the mind is, so will the body be one day. But, passing from such thoughts as these, and remembering that the Apostle here is speaking only about Christian people, and the divine operations upon them, we may still extend the meaning of this significant word ‘wrought’ somewhat further, and ask you just to consider, and that very briefly, the three-fold processes which, in the divine working, terminate in, and contemplate, this great issue.

God has wrought us for it in the very act of making us what we are. Human nature is an insoluble enigma, if this world is its only field. Amidst all the waste, the mysterious waste, of creation, there is no more profligate expenditure of powers than that which is involved in giving a man such faculties and capacities, if this be the only field on which they are to be exercised. If you think of what most of us do in this world, and of what it is in us to be, and to do, it is almost ludicrous to consider the disproportion. All other creatures fit their circumstances; nothing in them is bigger than their environment. They find in life a field for every power. You and I do not. ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have roosting-places.’ They all correspond to their circumstances, but we have an infinitude of faculty lying half dormant in each of us, which finds no work at all in this present world. And so, looking at men as they are with eternity in their hearts, with natures that go reaching out towards infinity, the question comes up: ‘Wherefore hast Thou made all men in vain? What is the use of us, and why should we be what we are, if there is nothing for us except this poor present?’ God, or whoever made us, has made a mistake; and strangely enough, if we were not made, but evolved, evolution has worked out faculties which have no correspondence with the things around them.

Life and man are an insoluble enigma except on one hypothesis, and that is that this is a nursery-ground, and that the plants will be pricked out some day, and planted where they are meant to grow. The hearts that feel after absolute and perfect love, the spirits that can conceive the idea of an infinite goodness, the dumb desires, the blank misgivings that wander homeless amidst the narrowness of this poor earth, all these things proclaim that there is a region where they will find their nutriment and expatiate, and when we look at a man we can only say, He that hath wrought him for an infinite world, and an endless communion with a perfect good, is God.

Still further, another field of the divine operation to this end is in what we roughly call ‘providences.’ What is the meaning of all this discipline through which we are passed, if there is nothing to be disciplined for? What is the good of an apprenticeship if there is no journeyman’s life to come after it, where the powers that have been slowly acquired shall be nobly exercised upon broader fields? Why should men be taken, as it were, and, like the rough iron from the ground,

‘Be heated hot with hopes and fears,

And plunged in baths of hissing tears,

And battered with the shocks of doom,’

if, after all the process, the polished shaft is to be broken in two, and tossed away as rubbish? If death ends faculty, it is a pity that the faculty was so patiently developed. If God is educating us all in His school, and then means that, like some wastrel boys, we should lose all our education as soon as we leave its benches, there is little use in the rod, and little meaning in the training. Brethren! life is an insoluble riddle unless the purpose of it lie yonder, and unless all this patient training of our sorrows and our gladnesses, the warmth that expands and the cold that contracts the heart, the light that gladdens and the darkness that saddens the eye and the spirit, are equally meant for training us for the perfect life of a perfect soul moving a perfect body in a perfect universe. Here is a pillar in some ancient hall that has fallen into poor hands, and has had a low roof thrown across the centre of the chamber at half its height. In the lower half there is part of a pillar that means nothing; ugly, bare, evidently climbing, and passing through the aperture, and away above yonder is the carved capital and the great entablature that it carries. Who could understand the shaft unless he could look up through the aperture, and see the summit? And who can think of life as anything but a wretched fragment unless he knows that all which begins here runs upwards into the room above, and there finds its explanation and its completion?

But there is the third sphere of the divine operation. As in creation and in providence, so in all the work and mystery of our redemption, this is the goal that God has in view. It was not worth Christ’s while to come and die, if nothing more was to come of it than the imperfect reception of His blessings and gifts which the noblest Christian life in this world presents. The meaning and purpose of the Cross, the meaning and purpose of all the patient dealings of His whispering Spirit, are that we shall be like our Divine Lord in spirit first, and in body afterwards.

And everything about the experiences of a true Christian spirit is charged with a prophecy of immortality. I have not time to dwell upon one point gathered from the context, that I intended to have insisted upon, viz. that the very desires which God’s good Spirit works in a believing soul are themselves confirmations of their own fulfilment. But if you notice at your leisure the verses that precede my text, you will find that the Apostle adduces the groanings of ‘earnest desire to be clothed with our house which is from Heaven,’ as a proof that we have ‘a building of God, a house not made with hands.’ That is to say, every longing in a Christian heart when it is most filled with that Spirit, and most in contact with God, and which is the answer of that heart to a promise of Christ-every such longing carries with it the assurance of its own fulfilment. He that hath wrought it has wrought it in order that the desire may fit us for its answer, and that the open mouth may be ready for the abundant filling which His grace designs. He works upon us, therefore, by making us desire a gift, and then He gives that which He desires. So let us cherish these longings, not for the accident of escaping death, nor as choosing the path by which we shall reach the blessed issue, but longing for that great issue itself; and try to keep more distinct and clear before all our minds this thought, ‘God means for me the participation in Christ’s glorified Manhood, and my attaining of that Manhood is the end that He has in view in all that He does with me.’

III. So I must say one word about the last thought that is here, and that is the certainty and the confidence. ‘Therefore we are always confident,’ says the Apostle.

‘He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.’ Then we may be sure that as far as He is concerned, the work will not be suspended nor vain. This man does not begin to build and is unable to finish. This workman has infinite resources, an unchanging purpose, and infinite long-suffering. He will complete His task.

In the quarries of Egypt you will find gigantic stones, half-dressed, and intended to have been transported to some great temple. But there they lie, the work incomplete, and they never carried to their place. There are no half-polished stones in God’s quarries. They are all finished where they lie, and then borne across the sea, like Hiram’s from Lebanon, to the Temple on the hill. It is a certainty that God will finish His work; and since ‘He that hath wrought us is God,’ we may be sure that He will not stop till He has done.

But it is a certainty that you can thwart. It is an operation that you can counterwork. The potter in Jeremiah’s parable was making a vessel upon his wheel, and the vessel was marred in his hand, and did not turn out what he wanted it. The meaning of the metaphor, which has often been twisted to express the very opposite, is that the potter’s work may fail, that the artificer may be balked, that you can counterwork the divine dealing, and that all His purpose in your creation, in His providence and in His gift of His Son for your redemption, may come to nought as far as you are concerned. ‘I beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.’ ‘In vain have I smitten your children,’ wailed the Divine Love; ‘they have received no correction.’ In vain God lavishes upon some of us His mercies, in vain for some of us has Christ toiled and suffered and died. Oh, brother! do not let all God’s work on you come to nought, but yield yourselves to it. Rejoice in the confidence that He is moulding your character, cheerfully welcome and accept the providences, painful as they may be, by which He prepares you for heaven. The chisel is sharp that strikes off the superfluous pieces of marble, and when the chisel cuts, not into marble, but into a heart, there is a pang. Bear it, bear it! and understand the meaning of the blow of the sculptor’s mallet, and see in all life the divine hand working towards the accomplishment of His own loving purpose. Then if we turn to Him, amid the pains of His discipline and the joys of His gifts of grace, with recognition and acceptance of His meaning in them all, and cry to Him, ‘Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever, forsake not the work of Thine own hands,’ we may be always confident, as knowing that ‘the Lord will perfect that which concerneth us.’

Benson Commentary

2 Corinthians 5:5-8. Now he that hath wrought us for — Or to, this longing for immortality; is God — For none but God, none less than the Almighty, could have wrought this in us; who also hath given us his Spirit — In its various gifts and graces; as an earnest — Of our obtaining the heavenly habitation. We are confident, therefore — Or courageous in all dangers and sufferings, and dare venture even upon death itself; knowing that while we are at home — Or rather sojourn (as ενδημουντες here signifies) in the body, we are absent, εκδημουμεν, we are exiles; from the Lord —

Christ, in the enjoyment of whom our chief happiness consists. For — While on earth; we walk by faith — Are influenced, guided, and governed in our whole course of life, by our faith in objects yet unseen; not by the sight — Of heavenly glories. In other words, we cannot now see heavenly and eternal things, as we expect to do after death. It is true our faith gives us an evidence of them, (Hebrews 11:1,) which implies a kind of seeing him who is invisible, and the invisible world; yet this is as far beneath what we shall have in eternity, as that evidence of faith is above the evidence of bare, unassisted reason. We are confident, I say — And bold, through the influence of these views which God hath given us; and willing — Ευδοκουμεν, take complacency and delight, in the expectation of being absent from the body — And from all intercourse with the persons and things of this world, however dear some of them may have been formerly to us; and present with the Lord — This demonstrates that the apostle had no idea of his soul sleeping after death, but expected it to pass immediately into a state of felicity with Christ in paradise; and consequently that the happiness of the saints is not deferred till the resurrection. See 2 Corinthians 12:4.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:1-8 The believer not only is well assured by faith that there is another and a happy life after this is ended, but he has good hope, through grace, of heaven as a dwelling-place, a resting-place, a hiding-place. In our Father's house there are many mansions, whose Builder and Maker is God. The happiness of the future state is what God has prepared for those that love him: everlasting habitations, not like the earthly tabernacles, the poor cottages of clay, in which our souls now dwell; that are mouldering and decaying, whose foundations are in the dust. The body of flesh is a heavy burden, the calamities of life are a heavy load. But believers groan, being burdened with a body of sin, and because of the many corruptions remaining and raging within them. Death will strip us of the clothing of flesh, and all the comforts of life, as well as end all our troubles here below. But believing souls shall be clothed with garments of praise, with robes of righteousness and glory. The present graces and comforts of the Spirit are earnests of everlasting grace and comfort. And though God is with us here, by his Spirit, and in his ordinances, yet we are not with him as we hope to be. Faith is for this world, and sight is for the other world. It is our duty, and it will be our interest, to walk by faith, till we live by sight. This shows clearly the happiness to be enjoyed by the souls of believers when absent from the body, and where Jesus makes known his glorious presence. We are related to the body and to the Lord; each claims a part in us. But how much more powerfully the Lord pleads for having the soul of the believer closely united with himself! Thou art one of the souls I have loved and chosen; one of those given to me. What is death, as an object of fear, compared with being absent from the Lord!

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing - The phrase "self-same thing" here means this very thing, that is, the thing to which he had referred - the preparation for heaven, or the heavenly dwelling. The word "wrought" here (κατεργασάμενος katergasamenos) means that God had formed or made them for this; that is, he had by the influences of the Spirit, and by his agency on the heart, created them, as it were, for this, and adapted them to it. God has destined us to this change from corruption to incorruption; he has adapted us to it; he has formed us for it. It does not refer to the original creation of the body and the soul for this end, but it means that God, by his own renewing, and sanctifying, and sustaining agency, had formed them for this, and adapted them to it. The object of Paul in stating that it was done by God, is to keep this truth prominently before the mind. It was not by any native inclination, or strength, or power which they had, but it was all to be traced to God; compare Ephesians 2:10.

Who also hath given - In addition to the fitting for eternal glory he has given us the earnest of the Spirit to sustain us here. We are not only prepared to enter into heaven, but we have here also the support produced by the earnest of the Spirit.

The earnest of the Spirit - On the meaning of this, see the note on 2 Corinthians 1:22. He has given to us the Holy Spirit as the pledge or assurance of the eternal inheritance.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

5. wrought us—framed us by redemption, justification, and sanctification.

for the selfsame thing—"unto" it; namely, unto what is mortal of us being swallowed up in life (2Co 5:4).

who also—The oldest manuscripts omit "also."

earnest of the Spirit—(See on [2312]2Co 1:22). It is the Spirit (as "the first-fruits") who creates in us the groaning desire for our coming deliverance and glory (Ro 8:23).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The selfsame thing is the life, the eternal life, mentioned in the former verse; the house in the heavens, not made with hands, 2 Corinthians 5:1. God

hath wrought us for it (as some interpret the text) in creation, and by his providence, forming our bodies in the womb: but it is much better interpreted by others concerning regeneration; for in the first birth (without respect to the decree of election) God hath no more wrought us for it, than the worst of men. The apostle therefore is, doubtless, to be understood, as speaking concerning the work of grace, which is here attributed to God; we have not wrought ourselves into or up to any fitness or any grounded expectation of the future blessed and glorious estate; but it is God who hath prepared us for it, and wrought such a lively hope of it in us.

Who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit; and hath also given us his Holy Spirit as the pledge and earnest of it; (concerning this, see 2 Corinthians 1:22) he hath given us his Spirit to dwell and to work in us, and to assure us of what we speak of, viz. the house in the heavens, the building of God, that is not made with hands. The Spirit of grace given to the people of God, working and dwelling in them, is a certain pledge of that glory and life eternal, which he hath prepared for them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing,.... By "the selfsame thing" is meant, either the cross, the burden of sorrows and afflictions, under which the saints groan whilst here, which God has appointed them unto, and therefore to be bore patiently by them; or that glory and immortality, which they, as vessels of mercy, were prepared by him for from everlasting; for which their bodies and souls are formed by him in creation, and for which they are made meet in regeneration, by the curious workmanship of his Spirit and grace upon them: and seeing he "is God", and not man, who hath wrought them for this, either by his secret purposes and preparations of grace in eternity, or by his open works of creation and regeneration in time; there is no doubt but they shall certainly enjoy it, since his counsels are immutable, and he is a rock, and his work is perfect; whatever he begins he finishes, nor is he ever frustrated of his end: one of Stephens's copies adds, "and hath anointed us", which seems to have been transcribed from 2 Corinthians 1:21.

Who also hath given us the earnest of the Spirit; and therefore may be assured of possessing the inheritance, of which he is the earnest; see 2 Corinthians 1:22.

Geneva Study Bible

Now he that hath {c} wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

(c) He means that first creation, to show us that our bodies were made to this end, that they should be clothed with heavenly immortality.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

2 Corinthians 5:5. Δέ] not antithetic (Hofmann), but continuative; this wish is no groundless longing, but we are placed by God in a position for the longed-for change which swallows up death. Now He who has made us ready for this very thing is God.

εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο] for this very behalf, for this very thing, Romans 9:17; Romans 13:6; Ephesians 6:18; Ephesians 6:22; Colossians 4:8. According to the context, it cannot apply to anything else than to the ἐπενδύσασθαι, whereby the mortal will be swallowed up of life. For this precisely Paul knew his individuality to be disposed by God, namely (see what follows) through the Holy Spirit, in the possession of which he had the divine guarantee that at the Parousia he should see his mortal part swallowed up of life, and consequently should not be amongst those liable to eternal destruction. In this way the usual reference of αὐτὸ τοῦτο to the eternal glory is to be limited more exactly in accordance with the context; comp. also Maier. Bengel wrongly refers it to the sighing, pointing to Romans 8:23.[217] But how inappropriate this is to the context! And how unsuitable in that case would be the description of the Holy Spirit as ἀῤῥαβών, since, according to Bengel, He is to be conceived as “suspiria operans”! Quite as unsuitable is the reference of κατεργ. to the creation (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, Beza, and others, also Schneckenburger), which has no place here even as the beginning of the preparation indicated (in opposition to Ewald); Rückert remains undecide.

ὁ δοὺς ἡμῖν κ.τ.λ.] predicative more precise definition of the previous ὁ δὲ κατεργ. ἡμᾶς … θεός; He who (quippe qui) has given to us the Spirit as earnest; see on 2 Corinthians 1:22. As earnest, namely, of the fact that we shall not fail to be clothed upon with the heavenly body at the Parousia (which Paul was convinced he would live to see). Comp. Romans 8:11, and the Remark thereon. The usual reference of τ. ἀῤῥαβ.: arrham futurae gloriae, is here too general for the context. The view of Hofmann regarding ὁ δοὺς ἡμῖν κ.τ.λ., that the possession of the Spirit, etc., cancels the distinction between being unclothed and being clothed over, and takes away the natural shrinking from death, falls with his explanation of κατεργασ. ἡμ. εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο; see the Remark.

[217] This reference has been in substance repeated by Hofmann (comp. also his Schriftbew. II. 2, p. 475 f.). In place of his former misinterpretation, according to which he took κατεργάζεσθαι as to work down, break the spirit (see, in opposition to this, my third edition, p. 115, Remark), he has substituted the other erroneous explanation, that κατεργάζεσθαι is to be held as “to bring one to the point of doing something,” that εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο applies to the disinclination to being unclothed, and that the means by which God brings us to the point of not wishing to be unclothed is obviously the terribleness of death. The last point is purely imported, and the whole explanation is excluded by its very inconsistency with the language used in the passage. For κατεργάζεσθαι means, with Greek writers, to bring one to something, but always only in the sense to prevail on one for something for which we wish to get him, to win him for one’s ends, whether this be effected by persuasion or by other influence directed to the end. So also Jdg 16:16; Xen. Mem. ii. 3.11. Our expression to work on a person is similar. Comp. also Xen. Mem. ii. 3. 16; Herod. vii. 6 (κατεργάσατο καὶ ἀνέπεισε), ix. 108; Strabo, x. 5, p. 483 (πειθαῖ κατεργάζονται). In the N. T. the word never means anything else than to set at work, bring about, and in this sense it occurs frequently in Paul. Nor is it otherwise used here.

Expositor's Greek Testament

2 Corinthians 5:5. ὁ δὲ κατεργασάμενος κ.τ.λ.: now He that worked us up for this very thing, sc., the change from mortality to life, is God (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:6 and especially 2 Corinthians 1:21 for the form of the sentence), who gave to us the earnest of the Spirit; cf. Romans 8:11. The “Holy Spirit of promise” is “an earnest of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:14; see above on 2 Corinthians 1:22).

Some theologians, e.g., Martensen, take a somewhat different view of 2 Corinthians 5:1-5, and interpret them as implying St. Paul’s belief in a body of the intermediate state between death and judgment, distinct at once from the “earthly tabernacle” and the “heavenly house,” which latter will be “superindued” at the Second Advent. But (a) there is no hint elsewhere in the N.T. of such an ad interim body; (b) the “house” which “we have” at death is described in 2 Corinthians 5:1 not as temporary, but as “eternal”. This it is which enables him to face death with courage; he would shrink from any γυμνότης or disembodied condition, and—so far as the “body” is concerned—he does not contemplate any further change at the Day of Judgment. If it might be so, he is reverently anxious to live until the Parousia, and then to be “superindued”; but even if he is to pass through the gate of death he is content. See Salmond’s Christian Doctr. of Immortality, p. 565 ff.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

5. wrought us] Literally, wrought us out, i.e. fitted and prepared us by a course of training. See ch. 2 Corinthians 4:17.

for the selfsame thing] The swallowing up of mortality by life.

the earnest of the Spirit] For earnest, see ch. 2 Corinthians 1:22, a very similar passage. Cf. also Romans 8:1-11. It is because the Spirit dwells in us by faith while we are here that we are raised hereafter. The body thus possessing a principle of life is as a seed planted in the ground (1 Corinthians 15:36-38) to be raised again in God’s good time. See Introduction to First Epistle and notes on ch. 15.

Bengel's Gnomen

2 Corinthians 5:5. Κατεργασάμενος, He that hath wrought or prepared us) by faith.—εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο, for this selfsame thing) viz. that we should thus groan, Romans 8:23.—καὶ) also; new proof [token to assure us] of our coming blessedness.—τὸν αῤῥαβῶνα, the earnest) ch. 2 Corinthians 1:22, note.—τοῦ πνεύματος, of the Spirit) who works in us that groaning.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 5. - He who hath wrought us for the selfsame thing. God prepared and perfected us for this very result, namely, to put on the robe of immortality. The earnest (see 2 Corinthians 1:22) The quickening life imparted by the Spirit of life is a pledge and part payment of the incorruptible eternal life. The Spirit is "the Earnest of our inheritance" (Ephesians 1:14; Ephesians 4:30). 2 Corinthians 5:5

Vincent's Word Studies

Wrought (κατεργασάμενος)

The compound is significant, indicating an accomplished fact. Through the various operations of His Spirit and the processes of His discipline, God has worked us out (Stanley, worked up) for this change. The process includes the dissolution of what is mortal no less than the renewal. The one is a step to the other. See 1 Corinthians 15:36.

Earnest of the Spirit

See on 2 Corinthians 1:22, and compare Romans 8:11. Of the Spirit is appositional, the Spirit as the earnest.