Therefore [we are] always confident, and know that while present in the body we are absent from the Lord,
Paul has just said that God shaped believers for glory and gave the Spirit as a down payment. That is why he can speak of courage now, and of a life still spent away from the Lord.
The confidence does not come from staring into the future. It rests on what believers already have. One writer traces the connecting word back to the verse before. (Older translations read "Therefore we are always confident," and the writers quoted here keep that wording.)
The word "therefore" is not linked, as you take it, with this glorious future state, as if that made him confident. It is linked with what he already had while in the body. "He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. Therefore we are always confident," and so on. Now you cannot fail to see how immensely important this is to the whole question. It was what Paul had already as God's workmanship, which made him so courageous at all times.
Paul writes "we," not "I." He describes what belongs to every believer — and he says it with death and judgment in plain view.
"Therefore we are always confident." Think of such language! Think of it as the apostle's words describing our portion, and in full view of both death and judgment! "We are always confident." … But he did enjoy it deeply. What is more, he puts it as the common enjoyment of all Christians. It is not just a question of his own personal feelings. It is about what God gave him to share now with God's people as God's people.
What backs such certainty? Two facts outside himself:
Where it is a question of the word of God, or the work of the Lord Jesus, the believer is entitled to have the fullest confidence. So the apostle Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5, in full view of all the perils of death which daily confronted him, does not hesitate to say "We are always confident," and to repeat it, "We are confident."
Being "at home in the body" is no compliment to our present situation. It means living away from the One our hearts belong to.
So we are courageous at all times, whatever God's way with us may be meanwhile. And we know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. This world is not our rest; it is polluted. He is not here but risen and in glory, and our hearts are with Him where He is, and we look for Him to be like Him as well as with Him.
Readers have pulled this clause in two directions. Some make the distance itself the reason for confidence. Others treat it as the one thing that spoils it. Commentators differ here, and Kelly rejects both readings:
This is not the ground of our confidence, as Calvin strangely misread it. Nor is it an exception to it, as Roman Catholics and Rationalists have thought. It goes along with our good cheer as part of what we know as Christians. And it explains why we are ready in mind to leave the body when called, and to go home with the Lord.
The verse sets up a straight swap. Death does not break the pairing; it flips it — and the trade is in our favour.
Here we are absent from the Lord, there we shall be present with Him. Here at home in the body, there at home with the Lord. Even here our spirits enjoy communion with Him, in spite of this sinful world and the poor sinful bodies we live in. How much more in that safe place, where it will flow on unhindered, in an unbroken stream.
Certainty about the future does not slacken effort.
Understanding this rightly will not lead to loose living, or to being at ease and complacent. It leads instead to spiritual energy. As the apostle said, "We are always confident … we make it our aim to please Him." In every way, as he presses on, the true soul seeks to please the One who suffered for him. He wore the crown of thorns, but He now wears the crown of glory and honour.
- Cause. The courage is a conclusion, not a mood. It follows from what God has already done. He shaped us for glory and gave the Spirit as the pledge.
- Gift. God gives this confidence; we do not earn it. Paul writes "we," so it belongs to all believers, and he says it with death and judgment in full view.
- Distance. The same knowledge that steadies us also unsettles us. At home in the body means away from the Lord. He is risen and in glory, and this world is not our rest.
- Exchange. The two states are a straight trade. Home here means away from Him. Away from the body means at home with Him, with communion flowing on unhindered.
- Result. Certainty produces energy, not ease: always confident, therefore always aiming to please Him.
(for we walk by faith, not by sight;)
Paul has just described the body as a temporary tent and admitted that while we are at home in it we are away from the Lord. Verse 7 drops in one short line about how a Christian lives in that gap, and it raises a hard question: how do you walk toward someone you cannot see?
The sentence is short, but one writer treats it as a rule over the whole Christian life, not a passing remark. It explains why our spiritual blessings never show up to the eye.
Verse 7 is a very important aside: "For we walk by faith, not by sight." It rules our whole life while we are still in a body of flesh and blood. All the spiritual blessings we have are real to faith, but we cannot see or touch them. We are away from the Lord, so we have not seen Him with our eyes. Yet faith carries great certainty, and Hebrews 11 says the same: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
The Greek word behind "sight" has been debated, and one commentator works through it carefully before landing on a sense that changes little of the meaning but sharpens it.
This verse has given scholars much trouble, though the general sense is plain enough… The way the New Testament uses the word leaves us with "appearance," unless we keep the sense of "sight" that the older English translators chose. That meaning is doubtful in any writer, religious or not. Either way it comes to much the same thing. We walk by faith, not by appearance, being absent from the Lord and heaven. We do look at the unseen and eternal, but we look by faith. We do not yet see the things or the persons themselves, as we will when we are there.
God led Israel through the desert one way, and He leads Christians another. The new way comes with someone to copy.
Nothing else given to a believer on earth compares with faith. More than anything else it honours God and the word of His grace, because it makes us lean on the good Shepherd through the Holy Spirit… For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). Israel did not march through the desert that way. They were guided by the cloud and the pillar of fire, which they could see. The Christian now, whether a Jew or a Gentile, has to walk through faith, of which the Lord Himself was the blessed pattern and perfection.
The pull back toward a religion of the visible is not only ancient history. One writer sees it alive among believers now.
But there is always this great difference between the Jew and the Christian — "We walk by faith, not by sight." The Jewish religion was mostly by sight. "The law is not of faith." Sadly, much of what is in many believers is Jewish as well as Christian. So feelings, works and ceremonies take a large place with many.
If the rule is real, it cuts into ordinary decisions — how we choose, what we lean on, where we look for direction.
This is where a Christian stands right now. If I am ruled by anything I can see, I have left the path of faith… The moment I am ruled by something around me that I can see, or treat it as my motive or my aim, or look to it for guidance, direction, or understanding about my path, I have left this simple, blessed path of faith. It is the path God has marked out for His own.
Faith is not just refusing to look at what is in front of us. It puts something else in front of us, and that lifts the heart above where we are. One writer pictures this with two places from Israel's story: Egypt, the land of their slavery, and Canaan, the land God promised them.
It was so then, and it is so now. "We walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Cor. 5:7) "What we will be has not yet appeared." (1 John 3:2) We are shut in by the body here, "away from the Lord." In fact we are in Egypt, yet in spirit we are in the heavenly Canaan. Faith brings the heart under the power of divine and unseen things, so it can rise above everything down here, in this place "where death and darkness reign."
The verses on either side tie this way of living to confidence — in the body now, and in death later.
We enter into this glorious prospect by the Spirit, whom God gave as the guarantee of it, and so we are "always confident." If we are still at home in the body, and so away from the Lord, we are confident, for we walk by faith, not by sight. If called to pass through death, before the Lord comes, "we are confident," for this will mean the blessedness of being "present with the Lord."
- Absent. We cannot see the Lord now. While we are at home in the body, we are away from Him.
- Certainty. What faith holds is unseen, but it is not uncertain. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
- Contrast. Israel followed a cloud they could see. Faith leads the Christian instead, with the Lord Himself as the pattern. Drifting back into feelings and ceremonies is drifting back to sight.
- Test. The moment anything visible becomes our motive, object, or guide, we have stepped off the path of faith.
- Confidence. Nothing we can see shakes a walk that rests on the unseen. Not life in the body, and not death, which only brings us to the One we already trust.
we are confident, I say, and pleased rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.
Paul is writing about death and what lies beyond it. His words raise two questions: what happens to a believer between death and resurrection, and how anyone can face death with courage instead of dread.
Paul's two words are pictures of a house. Older translations print them as "present" and "absent," and one writer, speaking at a graveside, explains them:
In this passage the word translated "present" means "at home with," and the word translated "absent" literally means "to be away from home." Our beloved sister was taken from us so suddenly three days ago. She is clearly away from home as to the body, since we have put it in the grave. But that she is at home with the Lord is not evident if we judge by sight or appearances. It is only as we walk by faith that this fact becomes real to us.
One writer traces that confidence to what God has already done and given:
God has prepared all of us Christians for the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. He has not given it to us yet, but He has prepared us for it. He has also given us the Spirit as the pledge. This is what gives me confidence. He calls it "our house," not my house. So I have two certainties. I am prepared for it, and I know it now while I am here, because God has given me the Holy Spirit.
Another writer asks where such willingness comes from, and answers from Christ's death:
It is unusual to find men willing to be absent from the body. Even the devil once said, "All that a man has he will give for his life." So we have to ask what the ground of the apostle's confidence was. His own words in Romans 5:8 tell us all we need to know: "God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Know this and believe it, and all dread of death leaves the soul.
Paul does not say he wants to die. He says he prefers it to staying here:
The apostle never says that he desired to be absent from the body, but that he was willing rather. That is, it was not the object of his desire, but he preferred it to being in the body… He knew God had prepared him for this glory, and he had received the Spirit as the pledge. So if death did come, he was no less confident. And please remember that he had actual death right in front of his eyes.
What he actually longed for stands a few verses earlier, and it is something better still:
Here he speaks of what is best of all. "We groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling… not that we would be unclothed" — that is, death and the separate state — "but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." He longed for the change at Christ's coming.
One writer describes where believers are now, and what they still wait for:
Paul's confidence was such that he was willing — more than willing, pleased — to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. This is his portion today, and the portion of all who have died in the faith of Christ. They are absent from the bodies which have been laid in the grave, waiting for the moment when they will be clothed in bodies of glory. But even now they are present with the Lord, in all the conscious blessedness of His presence.
One writer warns against two opposite mistakes:
On one side, there is no excuse for the unbelief which makes everything of going to be with Christ after death. It stops short of the only adequate answer: our resurrection and change at Christ's coming. On the other side, it is a real slight on God's grace and on Christ's redemption to darken the state of the soul apart from the body, so as to heighten the splendour of the resurrection morning… To be with Christ is far better than remaining in the flesh, though far short of the triumph we shall share when He comes.
This prospect also shapes life now:
The prospect braced up the soul of the apostle, stirring him to tireless zeal in everything he did, so that he sought only the approval of Christ. In fact, this is exactly what it does for us. It enables us to bring all our actions into the light of His presence now, and helps us to do them for Him and to Him. This is where our strength lies.
- Home — "Present" and "absent" are house words. Away from the body means at home with the Lord. Faith sees this, not sight.
- Ground — Courage rests on what God has done. He prepared us for glory and gave the Spirit as the pledge, and Christ died for sinners.
- Preference — Paul does not desire death; he prefers it to staying. His full hope is resurrection and change at Christ's coming.
- Interval — Those who have died are with the Lord now, awake to His presence, still waiting for bodies of glory. Writers warn against both overstating and darkening this state.
- Result — This hope is not idle comfort. It fuels a life aimed at pleasing Christ, doing everything in the light of His presence.