I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

9Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Corinthians 5-8.

    Ordinarily I do not speculate much on what we will experience after death, but what Paul writes here is important. Especially considering how it follows on his earlier writing about the place o the resurrection of the dead in our faith. Here Paul tells us that we will experience a true resurrection, but not of bodies subject to aging and decay like the ones we live in today. Instead, we will be resurrected into new, perfect bodies. We will spend eternity in a physical world, a world which is not subject to decay and destruction like the world we currently live in.

    One of the things which Paul talks about again and again in his letters is the transformation which we go through when we become believers. The Holy Spirit transforms us into new creatures when we accept God’s gift of salvation. One of the ways in which Paul describes this transformation is by describing us as God’s ambassadors. It is important to understand how an ambassador was viewed when the government was a monarch. The ambassador was the person of the king. Anything said or done to the ambassador was viewed as if it was said or done to the king he represented. If you honored the ambassador, you were honoring the king who had sent him. If you dishonored the ambassador, you dishonored the king who had sent him. As a result, the ambassador was expected to only say and do things which he knew had the approval of the king he represented. Further, an ambassador was expected to act in a way which brought honor, and not dishonor, to the king he represented. We should live, speak, and act so as to bring honor to God and to avoid bringing dishonor to Him.