DEATH AND BEYOND

The question has to be asked also, whether Paul would contradict himself in his second letter to the Corinthians, about the hope he had given the Corinthians in his first letter.
The view that is often attached to these words is essentially the view of Plato and Greek philosophy, which is common throughout Christian thinking today. This view says that we have an immortal soul within us that can live independently of the body and goes to live elsewhere when released from the body by death.

The Platonic view came into the Jewish religion before the time of Christ but it did not appear in Christianity until nearly AD 200 in the Roman church. Paul was writing about AD 58. Early Christians would not have seen this meaning in the words. The heresy had not yet taken hold in Christianity.
What is the background to Paul’s words? Paul was a tent maker and worked with other tent makers to help provide finance for himself. It is not surprising therefore that Paul is using ‘tent-tabernacle’ imagery. He compares the mortal body to a temporary tent. He is looking forward to his permanent house, his resurrection body, and does not wish to be found without a house at any time. This is what he is saying in verse 1-3. At the same time he changes the imagery and talks about being clothed and not found naked. He is looking forward to the time when he will receive his heavenly house which is eternal. In Philippians 3:21 Paul himself talks about Christ ‘who shall change our vile body’ at the time He comes from heaven (v20.). Paul knew of only two lives – present and future – ‘the life that now is’ and ‘that which is to come’, Ephesians 4:8. Paul referred consistently to life that is mortal and life that is immortal. He says that this life is lived in a natural body, the life to come will be lived in a glorious body, an incorruptible body. Life in the New Testament is always connected with a body. No New Testament writer speaks of disembodied spirits, but this view was held by one group of Jews and may be found in the Apocryphal writings.
Paul said that we could not enter the presence of the Lord with our natural body. He knew this as he had been blinded by the brightness of the glory of the Lord on the road to Damascus.

John says in 1 John 3:2 that when He comes ‘we shall be like Him.’ We will meet him in our new and glorious bodies. This change takes place in the blink of an eye when He comes the second time in all His glory with a retinue of angels. Paul always equates life with having a body.
In verse 4 Paul is saying that he groans in this present body. He longs to have his immortal body (and probably to have good eyesight again). He does not wish to be unclothed, or dead, or without life either. He looks forward with hope to the time when he will have his new glorious body.

He has already told his readers that they, if they are righteous, will receive their new bodies at the Second Coming of Christ when all the righteous shall be changed, both those who are sleeping and those who are alive to see Jesus come in glory. Paul’s preference would be not to die but to be alive when Jesus comes and to be changed and taken to heaven – to be translated. Elijah and Enoch had both been taken to heaven without dying.

They had been translated, and they were examples of the people who will be alive when Jesus comes. Paul’s body was a battered body with eyesight difficulties, the scars of many beatings and times in the cold and showing the results of hunger. In the previous chapter he had described our bodies now as ‘an earthen vessel.’ He knew that as long as he had this mortal body, he could not come into the presence of God. He could only wait and hope for the Second Coming when all would be changed. In this waiting time we live by faith, but not yet by sight.

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