Dual Panel1WE know, for instance, that if our earthly dwelling were taken down, like a tent, we have a permanent house in Heaven, made, not by man, but by God.
2In this present frame we sigh with deep longing for our heavenly house,
3for we do not want to face utter nakedness.
4So long as we are clothed in this temporary dwelling we have a painful longing, not because we want just to get rid of these "clothes" but because we want to know the full cover of the permanent. We want our transitory life to be absorbed into the life that is eternal.
5Now the power that has planned this experience for us is God, and he has given us the Spirit as a guarantee of its truth.
6This makes us confident, whatever happens. We realize that being "at home" in the body means that to some extent we are "away" from the Lord,
7for we have to live by trusting him without seeing him.
8We are so sure of this that we would really rather be "away" from the body and be "at home" with the Lord.
9It is our aim, therefore, to please him whether we are "at home" or "away".
10For every one of us will have to stand without pretence before Christ our judge, and we shall each receive our due for what we did when we lived in our bodies, whether it was good or bad.
11All our persuading of men, then, is with this solemn fear of God in our minds. What we are is utterly plain to Godand I hope to your consciences as well.
12No, we are not recommending ourselves to you again, but we can give you grounds for legitimate pride in usif that is what you need to meet those who are so proud of the outward rather than the inward qualification.
13If we are "mad" it is for God's glory; if we are perfectly sane it is for your benefit.
14The very spring of our actions is the love of Christ. We look at it like this: if one died for all men, then, in a sense, they all died,
15and his purpose in dying for them is that their lives should now be no longer lived for themselves but for him who died and was raised to life for them.
16This means that our knowledge of men can no longer be based on their outward lives (indeed, even though we knew Christ as a man we do not know him like that any longer).
17For if a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogetherthe past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new.
18All this is God's doing, for he has reconciled us to himself through Christ; and he has made us agents, of the reconciliation.
19God was in Christ personally reconciling the world to himselfnot counting their sins against themand has commissioned us with the massage of reconciliation.
20We are now Christ's ambassadors, as though God were appealing direct to you through us. For Christ's sake we beg you, "Make your peace with God."
21For God caused Christ, who himself knew nothing of sin, actually to be sin for our sakes, so that in Christ we might be made good with the goodness of God.