What does it mean that to be "present with the Lord" when we are absent from the body (2 Corinthians 5:8)?

For the moment we are at home in the body and absent from the Lord, left here to walk not by sight but by faith. Paul's confidence was such that he was willing — even 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 those who have died in the faith of Christ. They are absent from their bodies which have been laid in the grave, waiting the moment when they shall be clothed in bodies of glory. But even now they are present with the Lord, and in all the conscious blessedness of His presence, as the opening verses of 2 Cor. 12 bear witness.

In the passage the words translated in the A.V. (1) as present means "at home with," and (2) as absent is literally "to be away from home." So that we can substitute these phrases for the words: "present and absent." Our beloved sister who was snatched from us so suddenly three days ago is obviously 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 judging by sight or appearances. It is only as we walk by faith, that fact becomes good to our apprehension. The sentence begun in v. 6 is partially broken off so as to introduce that explanation and is resumed in v. 8. Apparently the Apostle preferred death to life because that would bring him to be "at home with the Lord." We are content rather to be away from home as to the body and thus to be at home with the Lord. If death comes before the coming of the Lord the Christian will have the far better part, hence we need not mourn in reality for our departed relative and friend because she has a far better part than if left here. She had a sudden death but that does not imply sudden glory as is so often said, for that she has to wait (as we have) the glad resurrection morning to receive a body of glory, like unto His body of glory! But she is happy at home with the Lord, waiting that certain first resurrection which will be indescribably blessed and glorious. Wherefore the Apostle could say we make it our ambition that whether present or absent we may be well pleasing to Him. Hence our main exercises are not relative to the departed, but for those who are left over in view of the great reunion. Her sudden homecall has the object in view that in the infinite grace of the Lord we may be found walking before Him as children of the family of God, growing in grace and in our apprehension of the preciousness of Christ, stimulating one another to love and good works. The sudden transition from the seen to the unseen is very desirable for the christian. There has been no time for heart-rending farewells but we should live each day with relation to each other so that farewells will be unnecessary. But for anyone who does not know the Lord, sudden death would be an irrevocable disaster for eternity. Therefore such should seize the opportunity because now is the day of salvation. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be safe for time and eternity!

Hence the apostle sums up with a somewhat irregular but all the more forcible emphasis, δέ being used like our "well," or "why," or "nay." "We are confident and well pleased rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord." (Ver. 8.) Granted, that it is a state imperfect for man, and short of the glorious consummation according to the counsels of God. But grace has intervened even now; and as the God who spake light to shine out of darkness, shone in our hearts here below for the shining forth of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, so our departure is, if we value His presence, incomparable accession of enjoyment. For we go to no abode of dimness unworthy of Him and His blood, but to the brightest realms of heaven where He is in everlasting joy and glory. The Lord Jesus receives our spirits; as it is to be with Him. No wonder we are pleased rather to go from our home in the body, and to come to our home with the Lord.

There is on the one hand no excuse for the unbelief which makes everything of going to be with Christ after death and stops short of the only adequate answer in our resurrection and change at Christ's coming by the power of His resurrection. But on the other it is a real slight of God's grace and of Christ's redemption to darken the condition of the disembodied soul in order to heighten the splendour of the resurrection morn. It is not true that the apostle when looking to the dissolution of his earthly tabernacle was comforted only by the building of God not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; for in this very context he shows that we choose rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. And in fact inability to look at death or Satan in the face is a proof of weakness, not strength, of faith. The apostle does exactly the right thing in the Holy Ghost: for while he does present in the forefront the full triumph of life in Christ, he does not misrepresent departure to be with Him as bare and ghastly, or the state as airy, shadowy, or fantastical. It is of course unworldly, but not therefore inert; for it is to be with Christ which is far better than remaining in the flesh, though far short of the triumph we shall share when He comes. Never does the apostle treat it as sepulchral gloom and pale moonlight, which is the mere depreciation of the human spirit vexed with the perversity of such as blot the glorious hope of resurrection from their Bibles. Again, leaving out Christ, death is a parting, not a meeting; but is it a sorrowful parting if we go to be with Him in paradise? No doubt it is not our one hope; but is it then the cheerless parting, the sorrow without hope, which unbelief makes it? Such exaggeration is mischievous, most of all in those who call on the saints to wait for Christ's coming; for what is false in their statements acts powerfully to discredit what is true, and thus to hinder souls instead of helping them. The balance of truth is lost, and such as on scripture warrant look for the blessedness of those with Christ who fall asleep are stumbled by the doubt cast on it and indisposed to receive what may be doubtless truly said of the triumphant result of His coming.

185 The intermediate state, then, is not glory (for that we must wait for the body. It is raised in glory, He shall change our vile bodies, and fashion them like His glorious body); but it is blessedness where no unholy evil is. It is being with Christ Himself, the source of joy ineffable. The hopes and "always confident" of Paul, of Stephen, were not disappointed, nor did the assurance given by the Lord to the thief fail of fulfilment. I ask if the bright hopes spoken of in 2 Corinthians 5, Philippians 1, in Acts 7, and the Lord's words to the thief, for any honest mind, can mean going fast asleep, and knowing nothing? When the Lord described the state of the rich man and Lazarus, did it mean that either the wicked or the just were asleep, and knowing nothing? I shall be told it is a figurative description. I admit it fully; but it is not a false one, and it is not a figure of men going to sleep and knowing nothing. But, further, if 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 means being happy with Christ, it means being happy with Him when we die. Death is the subject spoken of, for the apostle had despaired of life (2 Cor. 1); and absent from the body, and present with the Lord, is not resurrection, it means leaving the body, not taking it; departing and being with Christ is not His coming and raising or changing us to be in glory. The apostle is speaking there again of death, remaining here, or leaving the world. It was dying which was gain; Phil. 1:21. Life and death are in distinct contrast in verse 20, and then analuo is used for dying (v. 23), as is analusis; 2 Tim. 4:6. The attempt to apply analuo or analusis to Christ's return, because it is used for breaking up from or leaving a festival, is a poor conceit, contradicting the express statements of the passage. The word means disuniting or destroying what is united, and so is used for death. Neither Philippians 1 nor 2 Timothy 4 leave a trace of doubt in the matter. The effort to pervert Luke 23:43 and Philippians 1:20-23 is only a proof that the force of the passage cannot be got over, and the character of the effort to set them aside betrays itself.

Thinking again of the “unclothed” condition, referred to above, it is to be “present with the Lord.” Paul does not elaborate upon this state but the word “present” may be rendered “at home” (RV). This is a comforting word. At death the spirit leaves the mortal body but for the believer there is the consciousness of being at home. There is no such thought in Scripture as “soul sleep.” It is the body that is asleep, awaiting the shout of the Lord (1 Thess. 4:16). This “unclothed” condition is referred to in another place as being “with Christ; which is far better” (Phil. 1:23). There is no doubt about this. The Lord Jesus made this promise to the dying thief: “To day shalt thou be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). How sweet is the thought, “with Me” — it is His desire. When the Lord comes again, to raise the sleeping saints and to change the living saints, the apostle says, “and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). To go back again to our original theme, we will spend that eternal day “with Him,” having “a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Now what is hades for the believer? Scripture tells us that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, and when the believer is absent from the body he is at home with the Lord. The thief went the day he died into companionship with Jesus. There is no such thing as soul-sleep, but death is gain, and introduces the believer to the “far better” portion. The moment the breath leaves the body of the believer his spirit, conscious and happy, goes to be with His Saviour, there to await the resurrection day, which will end for his soul the condition of hades, as it will end the condition of death for his body.

So Philippians 1:23 lays down departure and being with Christ as being very much better than remaining here, even though exulting with joy unspeakable and full of glory. It is not of God to let the hope of glory lessen this, because it would dishonour Christ and his work. If we fall asleep, we go to be with Christ; and where is He? He is not only in heaven but in its brightest part. As Adam's Paradise was the brightest spot on earth, so this so-called Paradise; it is the Father's house in John 14. They are both figures, but figures of divine truth. To literalise either is folly. It is the blessed scene on high where God in love glorified His son on accomplishing His work on the cross; and there the saints are with Him, they, it is true, waiting for the redemption of their bodies when He comes. But no joy or glory on earth will equal that which they will there have, then in their best form of being with Him, that they may behold His glory, entirely above the world, as He was loved by the father before it was founded. This is far above the kingdom which the world will see "in that day."

2 Corinthians 5 tells us no less clearly of the condition of the Christian's soul after his death. "Now he that wrought us for this very thing (i.e., to be swallowed up of life) [is] God who gave us the earnest of the spirit. Therefore being always of good courage, and knowing that, while at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by sight), we are indeed of good courage, and well-pleased to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord." This is not as Jews or Tradition-mongers conceived. But it is "the intermediate state," the state between death and resurrection. It is a human term like the Trinity, and the thing in both cases, if not the word, is a clear truth of God. How unwise and unworthy to cavil at the expression! Why should any object, unless the sleep of souls or some worse error be held which jars with the truth? But if they live to God, after death and before resurrection, what is this but "the intermediate state" which the paper treats with unbelief and contempt. Is there a single sound Anglican who excuses him?

363 The apostle, having considered the purpose of God, now turns to the side of man's responsibility. That place, as sinners, is death and judgment; where is the Christian as to these? If I die, he says, I am absent from the body, and present with the Lord. In dying for us, He has made death, which closed our path in darkness, the way, as with Israel at the Red Sea and Jordan, of getting out of all the ruin here, and the way of getting into blessedness with Christ. When I take up, not the purpose of God, but that which lies on me in my responsibility as a child of Adam, death becomes a positive gain: I have done with trial, temptation, sin, the world, and I have begun with Christ in heaven: "present with the Lord."

We may see that it is after speaking of the earthly and heavenly body at the opening of chap. 5 that he describes three states of the Christian clothed upon, when mortality will be swallowed up of life; at home in the body and absent from the Lord; and absent from the body and present with the Lord. Of the last he says, "We are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." To be willing rather to go testified to the supreme place Christ had in the soul, above every thing and person. It manifested also that Christ governed the heart as to heaven above and all circumstances below; heightened with the joy of being with the Lord even without the glorified body.