Christian Hope Beyond Physical Decay

Embracing the eternal while living with chronic pain and disability.

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.

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

-2 Corinthians 5:1-10

I have always been a fairly active person. From playing sports to my short-lived career as a dance instructor, health and physical activity has always been something that was intertwined into my everyday life. So much so, that I would feel uncomfortable if I had skipped the gym for more than a day or two.

However, about 2 years ago, my relationship with my health drastically changed. Something that had been naturally such a large part of my life was suddenly brought into question when I was diagnosed with a condition called cervical myelopathy.

Cervical myelopathy is in short, a disease that’s caused by a compression of the spinal cord because of a herniated disc. Herniated discs are common, and normally nothing to write home about. However, the difference in outcome is always determined by where the disc herniates into. It can go to the side, it can go to the front, or it can go to the absolute worst case scenario which is the spinal cord, the major pathway between your brain and the rest of your body. If it is severe enough, you then get myelomalacia, which is the irreversible atrophy and death of the cells in damaged section of the spinal cord. This was my situation.

And so after two to three years of physical therapy, medicine, and even two extensive surgeries, I have still had to live with a progressive loss of feeling, coordination, and strength in my hands and feet, along with the occasional zap of nerve pain to this day. Most of this will probably be permanent, no matter how much physical therapy I do.

The curious part of this is, if you ask me how this all happened, there’s not much information I can give you. Every time I go to a physical therapist they ask me if I was in some sort of car crash or injury, and every time I tell them, I do not know. I have theories, but if you ask me if there was an incident, there’s nothing definitive I could tell you.

All I know is that between my disc and my spinal cord, 3mm was the difference between a life of sports, going to the gym, running and jumping and a life of relearning how to hold a pencil. Saying goodbye to some of my favorite activities. A 3mm disc herniation was all it took for my body to completely change my life.

But if I were to take a step back and look at the grand scheme of things, perhaps my situation is not as special as I initially thought. After all, all it takes is one accident for someone else’s life to change. Just 4 minutes of oxygen deprivation is all it takes for brain damage and a blood clot smaller than the size of a penny can be the difference between a healthy heart and cardiac arrest.

And even if you are so fortunate to never get injured, there is still the inevitable issue of age. Your bones shrink in size and density, making them more likely to fracture, and even the lens of your eyes become thicker, making it harder to see.

But that is exactly the type of topic that Apostle Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 5:1-10. Because apart from Christ Himself, if there was anyone who truly understood the fragility of the human body in the Bible, it was probably Apostle Paul.

In 2 Corinthians 11 he describes that he withstood, “imprisonments, with countless beatings, and [even near death situations]” He said, “Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea”

Apostle Paul sustained more injuries and ailments than the average man by a landslide. So many to the point that we have an account of a chronic pain, or issue that he speaks about in chapter 12, the “thorn in the flesh”.

HEAVENLY HOPE, PRESENT ANTICIPATION

But it is in chapter 5, that he speaks about the heavenly hope that he has in spite of that body wasting away.

V1 says, “For we know (which means that this is not new information!) 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.”

It is here that he begins a contrast between the temporary and the permanent, the seen and the unseen. Apostle Paul uses the imagery of the tent, which is a natural illustration for him, given his profession as a tentmaker. For Paul, the body is akin to a tent, in that it is meant to be a temporary dwelling. It's a place that falls apart, over even just light use.

But he moves then from the imagery of a tent to a building, from earthly to something not made with hands and also from being destroyed, to lasting forever in the heavens.

V2-3 says, “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”

And here he uses this term “groan” which we also see in Romans 8:23 when he says,

We “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies”

A pastor once received a letter from a nine-year-old girl that said, “Dear Pastor, I hope to go to heaven someday, but later than sooner.” While this is the attitude of many of us here, the Apostle Paul probably would have had it the other way around. The word groan in the Greek is used to denote anticipation, and it can either be a negative or positive one. It can be a groaning of complaint, or a groaning of excitement, looking to what’s ahead.

I believe that here, it is a mixture of the two. Paul groans because of the limitations of this physical life, the weakness and corruption that comes with it, while at the same time he groans in anticipation, longing to put off the earthly and put on the heavenly.

Throughout history, one of the biggest questions that thinkers and philosophers ask is simply, “What is the nature of the afterlife? What is the nature of our bodies after death? Is it something to dread? Something to be indifferent towards? Or is it something to look forward to, waiting with anticipation?”

These questions resonate throughout our lives, because our beliefs about the future have ramifications for the present. For example, atheism states that there is nothing after death, and that our material bodies will eventually decompose in the ground. What is matter will remain matter. Therefore what you do in the body now counts for forever because now is all you have. There are those who hold to this worldview who have spent millions on processes of de-aging and postponing cellular degradation as long as possible. Because for them, the present is all that you have. There is no other body than what exists now.

Others in history have followed the other side of the spectrum, which has typically been known as dualism or platonic dualism, where the body is seen as a sort of prison in which the spirit has to be freed from at the time of death. This is popular in Hinduism and Gnosticism, and it often calls many to despise their body, focusing only on the spirit. It doesn’t matter if your body is beaten and broken, as long as you can elevate the spirit, then you will reach enlightenment or your spirit can be reincarnated in a better status.

But the Christian hope is not one of either spectrum. Apostle Paul illustrates the theology of the afterlife in v3 and v4, using the terms naked, clothed and unclothed. He uses naked to illustrate our spirits without a body, something that will inevitably happen at the point of death, but he also anticipates the clothing of that spirit in glory in v4, where we will be at “home” with the Lord as it says in v8.

Now, we do need to distinguish certain things, because when we die as Christians, Christ tells us like the thief that we will be with him in paradise. Our spirits will be in glory with God. But this is not dualism, because as great as our time as spirits will be, there is a body that awaits us on the Last Day, the day of resurrection.

Christianity has a theology of the afterlife that states that both the spirit and the body are the essence of the image of God, and neither will be neglected on the day of Christ’s return.

We as Christians are not called to hate our bodies… as fragile as they are. At the same time we are not to worship our bodies either… for we do have a future beyond the grave.

This is why, historically in death Christians have always chosen burial as the preferred method of care. Christians do not, like the Egyptians, artificially preserve corpses; nor mechanically destroy them, but we entrust our bodies to the earth as a deposit for the day of resurrection, like how a seed gives way to a plant. Our theology of the afterlife even informs our application towards the end of our life.

WALKING BY FAITH

Now Apostle Paul then moves onto exhortations and encouragements to those who might be suffering similar difficulties as him now.

V6 says, “So we are always of good courage” or in other translations, “confidence”. “We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord”

And here he is not suggesting that you can’t have communion with the Lord during your time on earth, but rather what we have now is just a glimpse of the glory that awaits us.

V7-8 continues, “for we walk by faith, not by sight” “Yes, we are of good courage, (there it is again) and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord”

This is very similar to what he told the Philippians, when he said, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better”. Apostle Paul is not calling us to detest this life, or even to expedite our process in getting to the end. He did, after all, say in Philippians 1:21, “to live, is Christ” before saying to “die is gain”. He understands that you can enjoy life with God here on earth and that there is much to be done for the sake of His name.

But if remember the context and the condition he was in then the picture becomes clearer. Apostle Paul’s body was definitely not “healthy” by our standards. There was no Retro Fitness or F45 for him. No counting macros or protein supplements. Apostle Paul’s body was battered and broken, and he probably knew that it would never return to its former glory.

So what he is doing here is turning his eyes away from it, from the ugliness and corruption of his body, and towards the finish line.

The Christian author Joe Bayly, who was no stranger to death (having lost three children early in life), said that “in light of the promises that await us, it is a mystery that we Christians sometimes go to the medical extremes that we do to hang on to life.”

Because as Christians, even though many of us may not invest millions into our health, there are still temptations to obsess ourselves with present earthly things. Material needs that are good gifts that God gives us, but ultimately cause us to walk by sight rather than faith.

In Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, Thomas Brooks recalls a story in which King Henry IV of France asked the Duke of Alva if he had observed the great eclipse of the sun, which had lately happened.

No, said the duke, “I have so much to do on earth that I have no leisure to look up to heaven.” and Thomas Brooks says “It is very sad to think, how their hearts and time is so much taken up with earthly things, that they have scarce any leisure to look up to heaven, or to look after Christ, and the things that belong to their everlasting peace.”

And this is why the Apostle Paul calls us to walk by faith, not by sight. The logic of his argument is that when we walk by faith (remembering what is heavenly and invisible) and not by sight (even if our visible bodies are wasting away), then we have every reason to be of “good courage”. It is the reason that in light of sickness and corruption, true believers of Christ do not despair.

One commentator said that “Despair is an experience to which Apostle Paul does not submit; for to despair is to disown the Spirit and to disown the Spirit is not to be a Christian at all.”

Then a question that many people might ask after reading a passage such as this is, “How much do we invest into our health then? Do I give up my gym membership? Do I cheat on my diet? Do I skip my next physical?” And the answer is no! Please maintain your health. Do your due diligence to be strong and healthy.

However, the exhortation of Paul is to watch your heart. Watch what your heart does when you come across trials. Because you will. Watch what it does when your body ages and you eventually have no semblance of your former glory. Which you will. Is it driven to despair? Do you scramble to piece together what you once had, sacrificing all your energy, focus and time? Or do you live by faith? Are you of good courage, anticipating the communion you will have with Christ?

Because there are men and women whom upon losing their strength, health and beauty never recover spiritually. The eyes of their hearts are permanently glued to the ground, mourning the loss of what they once had. While there are also men and women, upon losing everything, having no hope of ever recovering physically, do not lose sight of the heavenly glory that awaits them. And while looking ahead to that future reward, they, like Apostle Paul in v9 they “make it their aim to please him”

THE AIM

V9-10 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

It is here that Apostle Paul grounds us back to the present. That word “aim” in Greek can also be translated to “ambition”, and ambition is something that is not so easily overcome by difficulties or pain. But according to Apostle Paul, whether we are at home or away, the duty is still the same. Whether you have passed onto glory to be with Christ, or whether you are still in this present life, the aim of the Christian is to please God.

And this verse is important, because rather than purgatory or a works based salvation, the Reformed tradition does teach that there are degrees of reward in heaven. Even though “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus”, as it says in Romans 6:23, we will nonetheless receive different levels of reward for what we have done here on earth.

According to this verse, we will enter into the presence of God by faith alone, but at the same time we will receive rewards according to the living out of that faith. It will be in a way in which we are fully satisfied in seeing God face to face, but there’s more. How that works out is something that we’ll have to wait until heaven to experience, but I think that’s a glorious mystery that we ought to look forward to.

And as we look forward to it, it should leaves us with no excuse for how we are to live our life here on earth. Even in pain and trials we are not to lose our aim of pleasing God. For we must stand one day before the throne and give an account to what we have done in the body.

THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST IN HIS MISERY

Because when we look at the life of Jesus Christ, we can see a man, truly human with a body and soul that was subject to misery. He was physically beaten, mocked and tortured and yet every second of his life was aimed to please and obey God.

When He was tempted in the wilderness and starved to his limits, He stayed true to the Word of God and did not falter. When He was whipped, mocked and accused, He did not turn His eyes away from the suffering but embraced His death on the cross. And it would be this human, fragile body which would become a deposit in the grave for the resurrection of his glorified body three days later. The suffering of Christ would pave a way for us to also gain resurrected bodies, free from decay and corruption and covered in righteousness.

In His resurrection, He has also secured ours. And this is the heavenly hope that we as Christians have all of the present to look forward to.

HOPE FOR THE BROKEN

There’s a common joke that once you hit your 30s it’s all downhill from there. I don’t believe this is true generally, as many hit their athletic and physical peaks in their 30’s, but for me it may have to be true. With the deterioration of my spine, one thing is clear: My days of peak performance are behind me.

Some days I wake up in pain that doesn’t go away until the end of the night. There are some times where I drop and break dishes because I can’t get a good sense of what I’m holding. Sports are no longer an option, and the physical activities I once loved can only be done in moderation with close monitoring.

However, my hope is not in returning to my former days of glory. For those who struggle with medical issues or perhaps even the simple wear and tear of life, may your aim not be a desire to return to the past. Perhaps there were times when you could dunk a basketball, had the perfect golf swing or run the fastest marathon, but as Christians, our hope is in the future glory of Christ that He has purchased for us. We have prepared for us, a new body, a new heavens and earth and eternal communion with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.