Our House from Above
“If our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens … in this [present house] we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven” (2 Corinthians 5:1, 2).
Paul discusses the “house” from above in the first eight verses of 2 Corinthians 5. It is an engaging metaphor, not often used. Perhaps Paul derived it from Jesus’ words recorded in John 14:2, “In my Father’s house are many mansions [places of abode] … I go to prepare place for you.” Here also our heavenly reward is likened to a home.
“I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).
For the present, “while we are at home, in the body [our present earthly home], we are absent from the Lord” (verse 6). The word “absent” here is really, in the Greek, “away from home” — that is, while we are here, we are away from our heavenly, prospective home, above.
With our heavenly hopes, we are “willing rather to be absent [Greek, away from home, that is, we are willing to leave our present earthly abode] from the body, and to be present [Greek, at home] with the Lord” (verse 8). (See Volume 6, pages 673-674, for a discussion.)
HEALING OF LEPROSY
There is an interesting connection between this metaphor used by Paul — a house as our abode, whether our earthly house now, or our heavenly house later — and the law of cleansing leprosy, from Leviticus chapters 13, 14. This passage considers leprosy in three areas: leprosy in one’s person, leprosy in one’s garment, and leprosy in one’s house. The first two cases applied to Israelites while in the wilderness, or later when they would come into Canaan. But the third case, leprosy in one’s home, applied only to the time after the Israelites would come into the land of promise (Leviticus 14:33 and forward).
The distinction is understandable in a natural way. For the Israelites did not have houses built in the wilderness. They lived in temporary dwellings, so they had no finished homes for leprosy to be an issue. But there is also a lesson for us in spiritual ways.
Israel in the wilderness represented spiritual Israel during the Gospel Age. We may have sin, leprosy, in ourselves, and we should be cleansed from it. Or the garment of our covering, the robe of righteousness, our covering of Christ’s merit, may be in peril. That would be if we for any reason lose faith in our redeemer and the value of faith in him. That would be “leprosy” in our garment. And Leviticus 13 gives a process to remedy that.
But at present, we do not have our lasting homes, in a spiritual sense. When we do receive them, in the resurrection, they will be heavenly bodies and sin will no longer be an issue. However, for the world of mankind, resurrected on earth in the Kingdom, there will still be some jeopardy. If they permit sin to corrupt them, they will be in jeopardy of losing their homes, their earthly bodies. Those human bodies are to be their everlasting home, perfected during the Kingdom. If they do not check the spread of sin, and remedy the problem, they are in danger of losing that home.
Thus this particular kind of leprosy is at issue only in the next age, “when ye be come into the land of Canaan” (Leviticus 14:34).
— San Diego Class Studies