5:4
“While we are in this tent we groan”. The Bible is utterly realistic. Any notion that life will be easy is pure fantasy, and unbiblical fantasy at that. At the same time, any notion that God will never intervene in our lives nor make any difference to them is equally unbiblical. We should be longing to be with the Lord, and “to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling” and that all is mortal is passed away. By the way, there are those (especially Tom Wright) who emphasise that getting saved is not a matter of “going to heaven” and that this earth is important. There is a lot of truth in this, but the notion of “going to heaven” is not totally without truth. We need to have full understanding of the Biblical revelation.
5:5
God has prepared us for this very thing. What is this "very thing"? It could mean that He is preparing us for heaven, or it could be that He has prepared them for the way life is now, ie enduring suffering for the sake of the gospel, knowing that this life is important, but that it is also temporary. This latter interpretation seems to be more in context with the letter, and also with the whole of Paul's life. Right at the start God told Paul that he would suffer many things for the sake of the gospel. We need to appreciate the nature of life, and any "everything will be easy" teaching or philosophy is wrong and doomed to failure.
Paul also mentions that the Holy Spirit was given as a guarantee. This guarantee aspect of the giving of the Holy Spirit is a consistent theme in Paul's writings and clearly viewed as very important by him.
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