LIVING AS IMMIGRANTS

Living in our physical bodies is like living in a foreign country far from home. We think we are at home in these bodies, but we long for our eternal, heavenly bodies whenever we suffer demoralizing pain and sickness. We instinctively know as Christians we were made for heaven and expect that God will transport us there one day, reconfiguring our bodies into forms fit for the new world. Being always confident (2 Cor. 5:6), we are confident (2 Cor. 5:8) that one day we will be at home with Jesus. The participle "being confident" (θαρροῦντες) introduces a break in the sentence, and the thought is picked up again in verse 8 with the main verb "we are confident" (θαρροῦμεν).

The intervening thought is introduced by "and knowing that" (καὶ εἰδότες ὅτι). The conjunction (καὶ) should not be understood as causal - because we know a truth. Paul introduces an additional thought as a parenthesis.  The additional thought is not the cause of our confidence. It explains our current status in life more fully. Our confidence is not based on our current status in life. We are always (πάντοτε) confident no matter our circumstances. The additional thought explains our circumstances.

"While we are home in the body we are absent from the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:6). The play on words is clearer and more vivid in the Greek text. We "are at home" translates ἐνδημοῦντες and "are absent" translates ἐκδημοῦμεν. The second word means to leave one's country or to be away from home in a foreign land (BAGD, p.238). The temporal participle, "while we are at home in the body," explains our current circumstances. We live in these bodies but living in our bodies means that we are far away from home with the Lord. We are immigrants in this life. Our true home is with Jesus.

Paul goes on to explain how we can have communion with Jesus even though we are immigrants in a foreign land. We are far away from Jesus in one sense, but we still know His presence in another because (γὰρ) "by faith we are walking, not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:7). We are walking (περιπατοῦμεν) is a present tense verb indicating the current, ongoing life we live. "By faith (δὶα πίστεως) and "by sight" (δὶα είδους) are on opposite ends of the sentence for contrasting emphasis. The preposition (δὶα) with the genitive indicates "by means of" (Moule, Idiom Book, p.56). Faith and sight are opposite ways of living as immigrants in a strange land.

The noun translated "sight" has both an active and a passive meaning. The passive meaning refers to form or outward appearance. The active meaning is seeing or sight (BAGD, p.221). Some understand the verse using a passive meaning. We are not walking by what is seen (Hughes, 2 Corinthians, p.176) in this life but by faith in Him. Living by the way things appear to be is not living by faith. Others argue for an active sense of the word. We are not walking by what we can see because we cannot see Jesus. We are living in a foreign land, and He is invisible to us.  We walk by faith that He is with us even though we cannot see Him now (Martin, 2 Corinthians, p.111). The active sense is probably better because it forms a more vivid contrast to walking by faith.

We live in our bodies like an immigrant who has left his loved one in a foreign country. The immigrant cannot see the one he loves, but he works hard to see her again one day. We cannot see Jesus, but we work hard for the day when we shall see Him again. Believing not seeing is the only way to live in our declining and decaying bodies.

SWALLOWED BY LIFE

Christians do not look forward to death. We look forward to life. Death is plan "B" for the Christian, not plan "A." Plan "A" is to be alive when Christ returns so we can be transformed directly into our resurrection bodies without the stripping that we experience in death. Death strips the body from the soul leaving us naked until the coming of Christ when we receive our resurrection bodies. Paul writes, while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life (2 Cor. 5:4).

We are groaning in these earthly bodies as people who are weighed down (βαρούμενοι) by a depressing thought (R&R, Linguistic Key, p.466). We know that death is coming for all of us unless Jesus comes back first. What we will experience in death is the cause of our mental burden. The next clause begins with a causal connection (ἐφ᾿ ᾡ) explaining the reason for the depressing weight we carry in life (Turner, Grammar, 3:272). We want to be clothed (ἐπενδύσασθαι) with a new body not stripped (ἐκδύσασθαι) of the old body and left naked until the resurrection (2 Cor. 5:3). We don't want to die and live in a bodiless state. God never designed the soul to be separate from the body as Greek philosophy, and later Gnosticism promoted. God created the soul and body as one whole being in perfect unity. Sin brought the curse of death which is the separation of the soul from the body.

We want to be clothed so that the mortal will be swallowed up by the life. Mortal (θνητὸν) means that which is subject to death (BAGD, p.362). Our bodies, not our souls, are subject to physical death. Paul uses the euphemism of a "tent" (σκήνει) to describe our bodies because a tent is a temporary form of housing. Our bodies will be swallowed up by life at the resurrection. The verb translated "swallowed up" (καταποθῇ) is a picturesque term. The compound verb comes from the preposition κατά meaning "down" and the verb πίνω meaning "to drink." The compound verb means to "drink down" or "swallow" (BAGD, p.416).

The word was also used of waves of water overwhelming someone. The Septuagint uses the word to describe how God drowned the Egyptians in the Red Sea (Exodus 15:4). Life drinks down that which is subject to death. Our mortal bodies are absorbed into life when Christ comes back (Hughes, 2 Corinthians, p.170). The same verb is used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:54 when he writes that "death is drowned (swallowed up) in victory."

Our mortal bodies are swallowed by the life. The preposition (ὑπὸ) with a genitive object and a passive verb as in this case denotes the agent that does the swallowing, not the instrument by which we are swallowed (Blass/Debrunner, Grammar, p.122). The swallower of death is the life (τῆς ζωῆς). Normally the definite article is not used with abstract nouns like "life" (Blass/Debrunner, p.134) so the question is why is the article used in this case? The definite article is used with nouns designating persons (Blass/Debrunner, p.133) so "the life" is a substitute for a person, not an abstract noun. Jesus is "the life" (John 14:6) so Jesus, as the life, swallows up our mortal bodies when He returns for us (Hughes, 2 Corinthians, p.170, fn35).

We want to be alive when Christ comes back so we can be drowned by life in Him. When Christ comes back, He immerses us in the tsunami of His life. Jesus, who is life itself, swallows us, who are subject to death, alive, so we never taste the curse of death.

WILL WE HAVE BODIES IN HEAVEN?

Physical death is the separation of the soul from the body. We know two important truths about death and the afterlife. 1) To be absent from our bodies is to be present with our Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). 2) We receive our new bodies at the resurrection when Christ returns (1 Cor. 15:50-54). What happens to us in the interim, between death and the resurrection? We go to heaven, but will we have bodies in heaven?

Paul gives us a clue in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4. When the tent that is our body is folded up in death, we know we have an eternal home to clothe our souls, yet Paul expresses a longing to be clothed at death. Why? So as not to be seen as naked. Paul writes in verse three, "of course if (εἴ γε καὶ, see Hughes, 2 Corinthians, p.169, fn32) having clothed ourselves (ἐνδυσάμενοι), we will not be discovered (εὐρεθησόμεθα) naked (γυμνοὶ)." Textual note: the reading "having put on" (ἐνδυσάμενοι) is better attested than the reading "having put off" (ἐκδυσάμενοι) even though it might seem tautological (Metzger, Textual Commentary, p.579-580).

What does Paul mean by expressing his desire not to be found naked? There are three popular options. 1) Paul is talking about his desire not to experience the suffering and shame of our current mortal lives any longer (Bible Knowledge Commentary). 2) Paul is talking about his desire for a temporary intermediate body that God gives to us until the resurrection (Woychuck, BSac, Vol. 108, April-June, 1950). 3) Paul is talking about his fervent wish not to be found in a bodiless state after death until the coming of Christ (Hughes, 2 Corinthians, pp.169-173).

The third interpretation is best. Paul is expressing a concern he feels about what happens after death and his desire to be clothed rather than unclothed after he dies (2 Cor. 5:4). The future tense "will be found naked" (εὐρεθησόμεθα) is a future fear, not a present reality. The experience of "nakedness" follows death. Why express his concern at all if he knows already he will be clothed immediately with his new body when he dies? Furthermore, the intermediate body is nowhere else taught in Scripture and seems foreign to New Testament theology (Hughes, p.173).

Paul wants to be alive until Christ returns so he can skip the disembodied intermediate state between death and the resurrection (Martin, 2 Corinthians, p.106). Paul does not fear death, and neither should we, but he does not want death either. He is like the martyrs under the throne of heaven crying "How long, O Lord" (Rev. 6:9-10). These disembodied souls were waiting in heaven for the coming of Christ to judge the world.

I draw four conclusions from Paul's longing not to be discovered naked after death.

1) God created humans to be complete as soul and body together. Our souls were never designed to live bodiless like the Platonic (and later Gnostic) idea that our souls have been imprisoned by our bodies and long to be freed from bodily existence. We are less than fully human without a body, so our bodies are vital to the fullness of eternal life (Hughes, p.170).

2) We live as disembodied souls in heaven between death now and the resurrection to come. Yet, somehow, in a way we find hard to grasp, our souls will still be recognizable to others during this interim period.

3) It is far, far better to remain alive until the coming of Christ and so enter immediately into the fullness of resurrected life. Our "blessed hope" (Titus 2:13) is to see Jesus at His appearing and never experience death at all.

4) We know for certain that to die is gain (Phil 1:21) - even in our disembodied state. We prefer to be separated from our bodies because we are, then, at home with our Lord (2 Cor. 5:8).

Even so, Lord, come quickly!