<p>5:5 <i>Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee- </i>God is now preparing or 'working' out our future eternal nature of being, which we shall receive in the form of an immortalized existence when the Lord returns. But we have the Spirit now in our hearts as a guarantee and foretaste of that great salvation. Paul has just used the same word for 'prepared us' in 4:17- our light affliction is working out for us an eternal weight of glory. But that 'working out' is God's working, by the Spirit. The only other usages of the word &quot;guarantee&quot; are also in the context of the Spirit being a guarantee <i>in our hearts </i>(1:22 &quot;the guarantee of the Spirit in our hearts&quot;), granted after we believe and are baptized (Eph. 1:13,14).</p><p>That God is working in our lives through His Spirit, and that He has granted us the gifts of forgiveness and prospective salvation by its working, should not engender any spirit of relaxation. If we truly believe this, it will motivate us to greater personal effort: &quot;God... hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident... wherefore we labour that... we may be accepted of Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat... knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men&quot; (2 Cor. 5:5-11 AV)- i.e. 'Despite having had God's gift of salvation in prospect, the utmost personal effort is still required in responding to it. Think of the day of judgment, the fear that you will have then because of God's holiness and your sinfulness. Although this is not our only motivation, indeed it is somewhat human (&quot;we persuade men&quot;), it is still powerfully true'.</p><p>But the 'preparation' or 'working' of God can also be understood in this context as the fact He has first made us mortal, and allowed us to groan for immortality. For we who understand not only Bible teaching about death, but also the insistent Biblical emphasis upon it, we don&rsquo;t live life in an eternal now. We live now for tomorrow, joyful in our awareness of the eternal consequence of our actions and personalities beyond the grave, knowing that all our beliefs, actions, faith, character developments- all come to their ultimate term before the judgment seat of Christ.&nbsp; In speaking of our mortality and our longing for immortality, Paul comments that &quot;He that has wrought us for the selfsame thing is God&quot; (2 Cor. 5:5 AV). The reference to how God &quot;wrought us&quot; NEV &quot;prepared us&quot; would appear to comment upon the mortality of our bodies; human mortality when correctly understood makes us long for the coming of the Lord to clothe us with our new nature which is to be brought to us from Heaven (2 Cor. 5:2). God &quot;wrought us&quot; as He did in order to enable us to have this longing. According to the Bible, the spirit of man is God's. He gave us that life force (Is. 42:5), and at death &quot;the spirit returns to God who gave it&quot; (Ecc. 12:7). If we seriously believe this, then we will see death as an opportunity to give back to God what He gave us, namely our very life force. If in our lives we followed this principle, realizing nothing we 'have' is really ours but His, and therefore we were open handed with our possessions and knowledge of Him, freely giving it out as it were to Him, then giving back our life force to Him will be but a natural progression from this way of living. And thus we will see immortality not as something we personally crave for our own benefit, but rather a further opportunity to reflect back to Him, to His glory. Thus understanding Bible truth about death affects how we face death and eternity, and therefore radically influences our lives now.</p>