2 Corinthians 5:1–21

¹For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, should be dissolved, we are to have a building from God, a house not made with hands, everlasting in the heavens.²For in this dwelling house we do indeed groan, earnestly desiring to put on the one for us from heaven,³so that, having really put it on, we shall not be found naked.⁴In fact, we who are in this tent groan, being weighed down; because we want, not to put it off, but to put on the other, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.⁵Now he that produced us for this very thing is God, who gave us the token of what is to come, that is, the spirit.

⁶We are therefore always of good courage and know that, while we have our home in the body, we are absent from the Lord,⁷for we are walking by faith, not by sight.⁸But we are of good courage and are well pleased rather to become absent from the body and to make our home with the Lord.⁹Therefore we are also making it our aim that, whether having our home with him or being absent from him, we may be acceptable to him.¹⁰For we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of the Christ, that each one may get his award for the things done through the body, according to the things he has practiced, whether it is good or vile.

¹¹Knowing, therefore, the fear of the Lord, we keep persuading men, but we have been made manifest to God. However, I hope that we have been made manifest also to ​YOUR​ consciences.¹²We are not again recommending ourselves to ​YOU, but giving ​YOU​ an inducement for boasting in respect to us, that ​YOU​ may have [an answer] for those who boast over the outward appearance but not over the heart.¹³For if we were out of our mind, it was for God; if we are sound in mind, it is for ​YOU.¹⁴For the love the Christ has compels us, because this is what we have judged, that one man died for all; so, then, all had died;¹⁵and he died for all that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised up.

¹⁶Consequently from now on we know no man according to the flesh. Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, certainly we now know him so no more.¹⁷Consequently if anyone is in union with Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away, look! new things have come into existence.¹⁸But all things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of the reconciliation,¹⁹namely, that God was by means of Christ reconciling a world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses, and he committed the word of the reconciliation to us.

²⁰We are therefore ambassadors substituting for Christ, as though God were making entreaty through us. As substitutes for Christ we beg: “Become reconciled to God.”²¹The one who did not know sin he made to be sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness by means of him.