‘For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.'
Paul now declares his confidence in a bodily future after the resurrection. He tells us that if ‘the earthly house of our tabernacle (that is, our earthly tent house) is destroyed' we have something more substantial, a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. There is here a deliberate contrast between what is temporary, a tent on the one hand and what is permanent, a building on the other. As a tent maker he was well aware of the temporary nature of a tent, however strong they tried to make it, and that something ‘made by hands' would never be fully satisfactory or perfect. None knew better than he the problem of combating wind and weather. But the ‘building' in heaven is made ‘without hands'. In other words it is made by God and is therefore permanent, durable and perfect. It has nothing of earthly imperfections. Its builder and maker is God. There is the contrast between what is destructible and earthly, on the one hand, and what is ‘not made with hands' and therefore ‘eternal in the heavens' on the other. All the frailty of earth is replaced by the solidity and permanence of heaven.
In Paul's mind the use of ‘earthly' must be seen as reminding us that man was made of ‘the dust of the ground' (Genesis 2:7), of that which was earthy and corruptible, of that which lived, and struggled, and died. But once we rise again we leave all that is earthy behind, for our bodies are renewed as a spiritual body, permanent, indestructible, and heavenly, and wrought by God Himself.
The ‘that if' refers to the fact that many will not die but will be caught up in the Parousia (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). They escape ‘destruction' of the body. Although ‘destroyed' might signify his own recognition that he might have a violent death, of which he is unafraid. However, in the end all earthly bodies decay and are destroyed, so all are in the end subject to destruction. For ‘a house not made with hands' compare Mark 14:58. It indicates something made by God, something not earthly, but far superior in form and essence.
So the thought is of a better body, a spiritual body, which is permanent and incorruptible, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 15:20-58. ‘We have -.' It is promised to us and is the future that is in store for us. It is our certain hope.
Some have taken the permanent building as referring to something similar to the many abiding places of John 14:2, as though the thought is that when we leave these decaying bodies we will have a permanent resting place. Others have referred it to the heavenly Temple or to the heavenly ‘body of Christ' in which all who are in Christ will have their part, and both are gloriously true, but while they may be true that is probably not the idea here. The contrast with the earthly tent suggests emphatically that the heavenly, spiritual body of the believer is in mind, and this is confirmed by 2 Corinthians 5:4, where we are to be clothed upon and what is mortal is to be swallowed up in life.
So our heavenly building is to be heavenly, permanent, and God-built, which is the guarantee of its perfection.
‘We know.' ('oidamen). A particular knowledge given in the mind of believers, but the fullness of which is not yet experienced.
‘The earthly house of our tabernacle.' Our ‘earthly tent house'. That is, as we are, in frail flesh, as opposed to the reality of what shall be. But the tent is ourselves, not just something in which we dwell, although there is more to us than tent, for there is the spiritual seed which will be the foundation of the transformed body (1 Corinthians 15:42-45). The idea of the tent may include the thought that we are but travellers and pilgrims awaiting arrival at our destination (compare 1 Peter 2:11). Others see behind it the idea of the frailty of the Tabernacle compared with the solidity of God's permanent Temple. Either way the emphasis is on its temporary nature.