2 Corinthians 5:1

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.

Southern Gospel singer LaShun Pace wrote a song about his soul needing to move because of a leak in his old building. The old building, of course, is his body, and his soul needs a building that is not made by man. The first eight verses of Chapter 5 of Paul’s powerful second letter to the Corinthians help us understand that God’s divine gift of life is “a building from God,” which is “eternal, in the heavens” (v. 1). That is who we are and that is our final destination!

Even though we “walk by faith and not by sight” (v. 7), and especially since we “must appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (v. 8), it is critical that our personal destiny is secure in advance. Our brokenness is apparent. There is indeed a serious leak in the building – we are mortal. Our most secure destination, one we know from the day we arrive on earth, is death. We are dust and ashes (see Genesis 3:19 and Psalm 103:14).
That conclusion is turned inside out by God! As Paul states,
“we have concluded this: that one died for all, therefore all have died; and He (Christ) died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised.”

Wait, what? you might say. I am not waiting for death – I’m already dead and gone and back again, with and in Christ!

Paul continues: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Behold, the old has passed away, and the new has come. Philosophers call this an ontological change, a transformation of one’s very being. And it is God’s gift – death of self before earthly death, and life eternal in the here-and-now, as well as the there-and-then.

This is God’s process of bringing us back together with Him. And who is the “us” in this date with destiny? Is it the good guys, those who somehow make it past the judgment seat of Christ on their own merits? Well, that list is actually non-existent.

Instead, the sweep of God’s mission, God’s love in action, is wildly beyond our limits. It is cosmic. “In Christ,” we are told, “God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19) The cosmos, the world, and all who were, are, and will be in it as homo sapiens have been brought back to God in Christ already. For them, the price has been paid.

What remains is for everyone in our reach, the same as in every age, to be given opportunity to receive this blessed new being as a gift from God in His Son and our Savior Jesus. If your date with destiny has been secured, then you are called to God’s mission as an ambassador for Christ. Because there is no greater love, no better destiny, there is no higher calling for us than to bring others to their date with destiny!