Oh, brethren! do we think of our future thus?  If we do, then let us lay to heart the final words of our teacher in this part of his letter:  ’Wherefore we make it our aim, whether at home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto Him.’

THE PATIENT WORKMAN

   ’Now He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing
   is God.’—­2 COR. v. 5.

These words penetrate deep into the secrets of God.  They assume to have read the riddle of life.  To Paul everything which we experience, outwardly or inwardly, is from the divine working.  Life is to him no mere blind whirl, or unintelligent play of accidental forces, nor is it the unguided result of our own or of others’ wills, but is the slow operation of the great Workman.  Paul assumes to know the meaning of this protracted process, that it all has one design which we may know and grasp and further.  And he believes that the clear perception of the divine purpose, and the habit of looking at everything as contributing thereto, will be a magic charm against all sorrow, doubt, despondency, or fear, for he adds, ’Therefore we are always confident.’  So let us try to follow the course of thought which issues in such a blessed gift as that of a continual, courageous outlook, and buoyant though grave lightheartedness, because we discern what He means ’Who worketh all things according to the counsel of His own will.’

I. The first thought here is, God’s purpose in all His working; ’He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.’

What is that ‘self-same thing’?  To understand it we must look back for a moment to the previous context.  The Apostle has been speaking about the instinctive reluctance which even good men feel at prospect of dying and ‘putting off the earthly house of this tabernacle.’  He distinguishes between three different conditions in which the human spirit may be—­dwelling in the earthly body, stripped of that, and ‘clothed with the house which is from Heaven,’ and to this last and highest state he sees that for him and for his brethren there were two possible roads.  They might reach it either through losing the present body, in the act of death, and passing through a period of what he calls nakedness; or they might attain it by being ‘superinvested,’ as it were, with the glorious body which was to come to saints with Christ when He came; and so slip on, as it were, the wedding garment over their old clothes, without having to denude themselves of these.  And he says that deep in the Christian heart there lay reluctance to take the former road and the preference for the latter.  His longing was that that which is mortal might be ‘swallowed up of life,’ as some sand-bank in the tide-way may be gradually covered and absorbed by the rejoicing waters.  And then he says, ‘Now He that hath wrought us for this very thing, is God.’