Nothing a Good Resurrection Can’t Fix
March 1, 2026
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Discussion Questions
Do you think the church generally and Christians specifically have trouble remembering good truths? Why is this? What examples can you from the Bible, church history, and your own experience with God?
How should Christians combat gospel amnesia, both individually and together?
If God is more happy than he is harsh, it prompts the question of whether you are more happy than harsh. Thoughts?
Which truth of the three spoke to you the most and why?
Scripture Reading
2 Corinthians 5:1-10
1 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.2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 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. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight.8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 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.
Last fall we dropped our oldest daughter off at college. Now that I’ve had six months to process that event, I’ll say that it as brutal as I expected.
When I think about meaningful moments like that, I don’t think they are best served by saying entirely new things. I think the most significant moments are best served when we remind each other of what we already know and should never forget. So, I didn’t tell our daughter, “Sweetie, here are ten things I want you to know that I’ve never told you before.” I didn’t do that. I told her—and we told her—that we loved her, we were proud of her, we’d be there for her, and that she’ll always be our daughter.
Significant moments in life are best served by remembering what we already know and what we should never forget. When a bride and a groom stand at an altar, as two of our new members did last night, they do say new things to each other, in the sense that they have not officially said them before, not so formally, anyway. But they ought not to be entirely new. And the whole thrust of a Christian wedding is about remembering old truths.
When Christian family members and church members gather around a casket and a hole in the ground and the body of a loved one, we remind ourselves of what we already know and what we should never forget. When a pastor takes his ordination vows and another minister preaches an ordination sermon, we remind ourselves of what we already know and what we should never forget. When a new Christian goes into the waters of baptism and comes out of the waters in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, we retell old stories with old words. When we come month after month and partake of the Lord’s Supper, it’s the same: We remind ourselves of what we already know and what we should never forget.
That’s how Paul starts this section of the letter. He writes, “For we know that…” For Paul and this church, perhaps it was the recent encounters with physical death that were part of what made him write what he did. He spoke in chapter 1 of trials so hard he despaired of life itself and how he felt like he had the sentence of death (1:8-9).
Maybe it was not physical death only, but also the experience of Christian ministry that felt like a kind of death, the experience of a Christian life shaped like a cross—Christian ministry and the Christian life having the aroma of Christ, which to some is the sweet scent of life to life and to others is the stench of death to death.
But whatever the reason, Paul starts this chapter, “For we know that…” Paul feels the need to remind us of what we already know and what we should never forget. That’s because tragedies happen when we forget what should not be forgotten.
And yet life has a way of grinding the good gospel stuff out of us. Or maybe I should say death has a way of grinding good gospel stuff out of us. Suffering pulls our gaze inward. We start our walking by the sight of our physical eyes rather than walking by the sight of our spiritual eyes of faith. And that’s dangerous.
So I want to lift our eyes this morning, not to what we’ve never seen, but to what we should never stop seeing. So, what does God want you to know? I’ll say them now and then again several times. God wants you to know that our future is more bright than scary, our body is more significant than trivial, and our God is more happy than harsh.
1. Our future is more bright than scary
Let’s start with the first point we know and must not forget. Our future as Christians is more bright than it is scary. When most of you think about the end of everything, what you think about most are the things you’ve heard the most about, which tend be the things that are the most scary. We think about the great tribulation, we think about Satan, the antichrist, about wars and rumors of wars, and about the final judgment. Indeed, in this passage we read about judgment in the last verse. Paul writes, “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 Cor. 5:10).
I will for sure not tell you that the judgment seat of Christ is a light thing. It’s not unscary. It is fearful. That’s why v. 11, which Jeff Clark will preach next week, says, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”
But it’s possible that for many of you, you’ve been so enmeshed in churches and teaching about the end times that the scary stuff is all you really know. If we did an exit poll this morning, and we handed each of you a blank half sheet of paper, saying, “Please write three biblically informed sentences about what happens when you die and use words such as death and soul or spirit and body and heaven and resurrection and new heavens and earth,” what would you write?
If we did that, in a Bible-teaching church like ours where many have been Christians for a long time, I still think most of us would struggle with that assignment. We’ve forgotten what should not be forgotten.
And if you’re here and you’re not a Christian, how much more important for you to be listening in and hearing that the future for Christians is more bright than it is scary, because the future for you can become bright as well.
Look with me at several of the verses again. I’ll read vv. 1–6.
5 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. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 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. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight.
Paul uses so many metaphors. An English teacher might say he used too many metaphors in such a short section of verses. He speaks of tents, houses, dwellings, buildings. He speaks of being naked and being clothed. He speaks of death being swallowed up by life. He speaks of the Holy Spirit given as a guarantee or a down payment. Some of the metaphors can seem a little strange or mixed. He talks about not being naked because we put on a building. I’ve never gotten out of the shower and put on a building. That’s kind of weird. But it’s not weird or scary. He’s trying to develop the church’s understanding of what happens when they die.
We’ll say more about the tent in a moment. But the idea is that your body is like a tent. I don’t know the last time you were in a tent. Let’s just say that you camped in your backyard last summer. And then let’s just say that you didn’t take the tent down. You said, “We’ll camp again next year, so we’ll just leave it up.” So you leave the tent in the heat and cold and rain and wind and snow. That tent will be rough this summer. And let’s say you do that for ten years in a row. That gets to the meaning of Paul’s metaphor.
When your tent dies, Paul says, God has a building for you not made by human hands, meaning that it’s made by God. It’s a building that is eternal. It’s a building that won’t weather and can’t be destroyed. Christians receive that building when Christ comes again. That building is your resurrected body.
One day your tent will go into the ground. But then one day—one great glorious day—if you are a Christian, God will call your name, and you’ll come out of the ground get a new body that’s not a mere tent. This is the future that’s more bright than it is scary.
What happens if you die before Christ returns? That’s why the lines are there about being naked. On the basis of this passage and others, Christians believe that when you die, your soul will go immediately to be with Christ. Christians sometimes call this the intermediate state or the present heaven. In this intermediate state, Christian’s are unclothed of their body. Our spirits have to wait for our new bodies. We get those bodies—new resurrected bodies—when Jesus comes again. On that day, heaven comes to earth.
If we had an exit poll, that’s what you should write. You write, “One day, I will go into the ground. My soul will be with Christ, and then, when he comes again, my soul will return with Christ to earth. My new body will be raised, and I’ll be in a world of delight and joy and enter into the happiness of our Master forever.”
But more than being able to write that on a piece of paper, God wants these bright truths to be in your heart. He wants us to know these truths and never forget them.
2. Our body is more significant than trivial
I’ll keep going. God also wants you to know that your body is more significant than it is trivial. Often in Christian circles we downplay the importance of the body. And I understand why. If our bodies will be destroyed and wear out, then, well, let’s not care all that much about the body. While it makes logical sense, this would be an unchristian way of thinking.
Certainly we can care too much about the body. We can be too preoccupied with how our bodies look and how they feel and so on. So that’s wrong too. But some of us need to be reminded that the body is significant not trivial.
Think of the lines in Genesis about creation. What God makes on the first day, he calls good. And on the third day, he calls that good too. And the fourth day, good. And on to the fifth day, good. But on that last day of creation, the sixth day, he doesn’t call it good. When he makes Adam and Eve, he calls them very good. The body is more significant than it is trivial. We read of this famously in passages like Psalm 139.
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
The psalmist calls his tent a wonderful work of God. And if God calls it that, we shouldn’t disregard the body. It’s more significant than it is trivial.
And Paul knew something about making good tents. Sometimes you’ll hear Christians talk about pastors who are bivocational as tentmakers. That’s Christianese to say that pastors who work a job other than ministry to pay the bills so they can do more ministry, that they are “tent makers.” That comes from Paul and it comes from Corinth. In the book of Acts, we read that Paul stayed in the city of Corinth for eighteen months and during that time he made tents and sold tents so that he could pay his bills and do ministry (Acts 18:3). I bet he made good tents, maybe even great tents.
Today, you can go on the North Face website and buy their best tent, which costs six thousand dollars. It’s not for backyard camping, or despite the cost, it’s not even backyard glamping, the kind of camping and kind of glamorous, at least for camping. It’s not for that. The North Face website boasts that their two-meter dome tent is “more than just a shelter, it’s designed to function as your expedition command center. A place to plan, prep and come together.” I think it’s a place to come together on the slopes of Mount Everest. It’s a good tent. But our tents of human bodies are better.
This is why Christians have historically favored burial as opposed to cremation. It’s not that if you are cremated, God can’t resurrect you. Of course he can. If enough time goes by before Christ’s return, we’ll all become something like cremation ash in the dirt. So if he can raise the one, he can raise the other. That’s not the point.
Christians have believed that burying a body is a way for a Christian to preach one last sermon. Burial preaches that what God did in creation in making a new body, he will do fully and finally in the new creation when he makes a better body. I’m not bringing this up to bring guilt on you if you chose other ways of burial for those you love. I’m just telling you something that you might not have been aware of historically, something the church is forgetting.
Indeed, Jesus himself took on a tent. We read in Gospel of John, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). That line about Jesus taking on flesh and dwelling among us is more literally translated that Jesus tented among us or “tabernacled” among us. The tabernacle was a special, glorified tent where God dwelt before the temple was built. In fact, Jesus, who is both fully God and fully man, still has a body. Now Jesus’s body is his glorified, resurrected body, but it’s still a body.
So the body is more significant than trivial. We know that in creation and preach it in burial. We know this in the incarnation of Jesus. And we know this in our groaning. You’ll notice twice Paul describes the present Christian life as groaning in vv. 2–4.
2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 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.
What does our groaning say about us? I think most of you would say that we are whinny, selfish people, and that’s why we groan. Surely that’s true some of the time. But that’s not Paul’s point. Paul’s point is that God made us to love our bodies so much that when our bodies break and weather, when the carbon fiber poles of our tent start to break and the seams of our fabric start to fray, we groan because it’s good and proper to feel this way about good bodies that God made.
But here is the promise. What we so long for now, what we so groan for now, we have the courage to believe we’ll have then. The body is so important that God doesn’t leave us naked souls. He gives us bodies fitted for everlasting life with him and all his people forever. In fact, as he mentions groaning twice, he mentions courage twice. “So we are always of good courage,” he says in v. 6. “Yes, we are of good courage,” he says in v. 8.
We must know this and never forget it, especially if you’re in a season where you’re groaning under infertility, groaning under hospital bills, groaning under aches and pains, groaning under cancer, groaning over the loss of those you love. What’s best about our bodies now, will be even better then. Paul wants you to have the courage that comes from knowing that and not forgetting it.
3. Our God is more happy than harsh
Now we come to the final truth we need to see. We’ve seen that our future is brighter than it is scary. We’ve seen that our bodies are more significant than trivial. Finally, we need to remember that our God is more happy than he is harsh. Look at vv. 9–10.
9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 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.
I believe the standard way to preach these verses is to say, “Look, we’re all selfish people. But God is the one who deserves all praise and glory and honor. It’s right that we spend our lives making it our ambition to not please ourselves but to please God.”
And that’s all true, of course. But it could miss something important we shouldn’t miss. I’ll ask it this way: Is Paul telling you to do something that can never be done? When Paul says, “Christian, make it your aim to please Jesus,” I believe we often view that as something that can never be done, that he can never be pleased. That would be a wrong view of God. And most of us have it.
Now, it is true that if we are not Christians, we can’t please God. God is not pleased when we try to do good deeds to impress him. Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life, suffered on the cross, taking the punishment for our sins. Rose again. Took on a new, glorified body, ascended to the throne of the universe, and from there says that he will give forgiveness to anyone who has faith in him.
If that’s true, then God is not pleased when we say, “God, I don’t need your Son’s death to forgive my sins. Look, instead here are all my good deeds.” That won’t please him. If you go to fancy wedding, a wedding you could never afford and it’s a wonderful night, it will not please the wedding hosts to say, “Well, this is all very nice, but I will not let you pay for me. Please take these two dollars.” That will not please the hosts. So, yes, it’s possible for people to not please God. When we reject his grace and when we sin, God is not pleased.
But Paul’s point here in our passage in saying that those who have joyfully received the free gift of grace, we should make it our aim to please God because he can be pleased. He’s more happy than he is harsh.
I’ll tell you where those lines about happy and harsh come from. They come from a parable Jesus told in Matthew 25. It’s about what he calls “talents,” which were units of money. Picture a talent like a hundred thousand dollars. Business people would talk about this in terms of venture capital. One servant gets five talents, or five hundred thousand. Another gets two hundred thousand, and another gets one hundred thousand. The first servant takes the money and does something useful with it, and makes five more, so ten in total. The next takes his two and makes two more. The last hides his money. Okay, this part is probably familiar to most of you. But pay more attention to the wording as I read how Jesus responds to them.
To the one who had five and made five more and the one who had two and made two more, Jesus says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (vv. 21, 23). This servant made it his aim to please his master. And what did he hear? “Well done, I’m a harsh tyrant, so now you have earned the right to enter into the forever manpower machine that is following God in eternity”? No. Does he hear, “Now you can slave your eternity away in endless, worthless work?” No. He says, “Well done. Enter into the joy of your master.” The master is joyful.
But hear what doesn’t please the master. Note the ending of the parable.
24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’
Note the word hard. Another translation has the word harsh (CSB). This view of the master reflected in the action of the servant makes the master respond in anger. The master is not pleased when people think he is harsh. You don’t have a high view of God if you think he is harsh. Harshness is beneath him.
Church, you need to know this. When you have loved him and served him, and at the end of your days when the awesome tent that he gave you is all weathered and cracked and beat up and full of holes, he will say to you, “Well done, good and faithful. Enter into the joy of your master. Enter into the forever happiness of the kingdom of God.”
He’s certainly more than happy, but he’s not less. He’s happy and holy. His holiness is a kind of holy happiness, and his happiness is happy holiness. What we often separate, God keeps together.
Think about this in light of what Paul wrote about being with the Lord. When Paul writes that we will always be with the Lord, Paul surely means that as a good thing. He’s not saying, “Church, you’ll forever be with a sovereign creator who only pretends to like you, who only tolerates you, who only is sorta okay with you, but constantly having twenty things that you could do better if you were better.”
That’s not the picture we’re given in the Bible. It might be the picture we craft of God, but Paul says we make it our aim to please God because he can be pleased. Indeed, he is pleased. If you’re a Christian, your life is hidden with God in Christ (Col. 3:3). When God sees you, he sees you with all the affection he sees his own Son.
I think about the gospel story of Jesus’s baptism. When Jesus was baptized, we read the Father shouts, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). And he says that over you.
Conclusion
Christians, when we have Christ and Christ has us, we have it better than we often realize. We have a future that’s brighter than it is scary. We have bodies now and will have new bodies then that are more significant than they are trivial. And we have a God who is more happy than harsh.
I’ll close with a quick story from a favorite author and speaker. He was telling a story about his friend named Frank. I guess Frank was going through a lot of difficult stuff in his life, especially a failing body. Some of you can relate. And almost all of us will be able to relate to that someday. Even the best tents get old.
And Frank’s tent was old. His tent had hardly any camping seasons left. The story went that, If you ask Frank, “Frank, how’s it going?” he would say, “I’m not suffering from anything a good resurrection can’t fix.” What a great line: I’m not suffering anything a good resurrection can’t fix (D. A. Carson, “How Can a Good God Allow Suffering?: A Biblical Perspective,” The Gospel Coalition, August 18, 2023, www.thegospelcoalition.org/sermon/how-can-a-good-god-allow-suffering/.)
Church, this is the hope God wants you to have today and not forget. Whatever you are suffering, you’re not suffering from anything that a good resurrection can’t fix.
Next week, we’ll see that not only do we have a future hope, but in the meantime, we have so much wonderful work to do with the talents God has given us. For now, let’s pray and then we’ll sing the truths we’ve just preached.
“Dear Heavenly Father…”
