Absent from the body

Reading the whole paragraph

We began this book with the verse that everybody quotes. Now we can read it where Paul put it. The phrase “absent from the body” comes at the end of a paragraph that begins with a building, a tent and a set of clothes.

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.

Paul is describing three states, and he is very clear about which one he wants. The first is the present mortal body: the “tent”, the “earthly house”. The second is being “unclothed” or “naked”: the state of having no body at all. The third is being “further clothed” with the “building from God”, the “habitation which is from heaven”: the resurrection body. And Paul says, in so many words, that he does not want the second state. “Not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed.” He is not longing to be a disembodied soul. He is longing for the resurrection body, so that “mortality may be swallowed up by life”.

When does mortality get swallowed up by life? Paul has already told us, in a letter to the same church:

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

At the last trumpet. At the resurrection. That is when the mortal puts on immortality and death is swallowed up. The “habitation which is from heaven” in 2 Corinthians 5 is the same thing as the incorruptible body of 1 Corinthians 15, and it is received at the same moment.

Now the famous verses

So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

Having set out the three states, Paul now says which two matter to him: being at home in this mortal body, which means being absent from the Lord, and being present with the Lord, which means being absent from this mortal body. He is contrasting this life with the life to come. He simply does not mention the interval, because, as we have seen, from the sleeper’s point of view there is no interval. The believer closes their eyes in this body and opens them in the presence of the Lord. Paul can speak of leaving the one and arriving at the other in a single breath, exactly as a person might say, “I went to sleep in Johannesburg and woke up in Cape Town,” without any claim to have been conscious on the way.

Nothing in the passage says that the moment of being absent from the body is the moment of being present with the Lord. Nothing in it says that the soul survives the body. What it says is that Paul would far rather be with the Lord than remain in this frail tent, and that the way to be with the Lord is to be “further clothed”. We know from Paul’s own words when that happens. To read a disembodied intermediate state into the paragraph, we have to ignore verse 4, where Paul explicitly says he does not want to be unclothed, and ignore his own timetable in 1 Corinthians 15.

“To depart and be with Christ”

The companion passage is in Philippians, where Paul, in prison and facing a possible death sentence, weighs the two outcomes:

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you.

Again Paul is weighing two things, life and death, from the standpoint of what each means for him and for the church. To die is gain because the next conscious moment for Paul is Christ. That is true whether the resurrection comes an hour after his death or two thousand years after it. What Paul does not say is “to depart and be with Christ immediately”. The word is supplied by the reader. And in the same letter, two chapters later, Paul tells us where his hope actually rested:

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.

Paul was waiting for the Saviour to come from heaven and transform his body. That is the resurrection, again. When Paul wrote his last letter, knowing that his execution was near, he said the same thing a third time: the crown was laid up for him, to be given “on that Day”, the day of Christ’s appearing, together with all who love it (2 Timothy 4:8). A man who expected to receive his reward at the moment of death would not keep pointing past that moment to the day of the Lord’s return. Paul does, every time.

Putting it together

Three principles settle this text. First, read the whole paragraph: Paul explicitly rejects the unclothed state. Second, let Paul interpret Paul: he tells us elsewhere, repeatedly, that the mortal puts on immortality at the last trumpet. Third, remember that for the sleeper there is no interval, so Paul can speak of leaving the body and being with the Lord as one movement without teaching anything about consciousness in between. “Absent from the body, present with the Lord” is a wonderful promise. It is a promise about the resurrection.