Paul's Desire to be Found "Clothed" rather than "Naked" at the Second Coming

Paul's Desire to be Found "Clothed" rather than "Naked" at the Second Coming

Below is the 38th of multiple excerpts from The Parousia, the late 19th-century masterpiece on the Second Coming by James Stuart Russell. "EXPECTATION OF FUTURE BLESSEDNESS AT THE PAROUSIA [SECOND COMING]. "2 Cor. v. 1-10 [2 Cor. 5:1-10]---‘For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved [by death], we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this [natural body] we [who are alive] groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed [in a transformed, spiritual body] we shall not be found naked [without a body]. For we that are in this tabernacle [mortal body] do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of [by] life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (for we walk by faith, not by sight:) we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the [natural] body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.' "This is the most complete account that we possess of the mysterious transition which the human spirit experiences when it quits its earthly tenement [mortal body] and enters the new organism [a transformed, spiritual body] prepared for its reception in the eternal world. It comes to us vouched by the highest authority,---it is the profession of his faith made by an inspired apostle,---one who could say ‘I know.’ It is the declaration of that hope which sustained St. Paul, and doubtless also the common faith of the whole Christian church. Nevertheless, the passage ought to be studied from the standpoint of the apostle, as his personal expectation and hope. "Observe the form of the statement---it is rather hypothetical than affirmative: "If my earthly tabernacle be dissolved,’ etc. This is not the way in which a Christian now would speak respecting the prospect of dying; there would be no ‘if’ in his utterance, for what more certain than death? He would say, 'When this earthly tabernacle shall be taken down;' not, ‘if it should be,’ etc. But not so the apostle; to him death was a problematical event; he believed that many, perhaps most, of the faithful of his day would never suffer the change of dissolution [by death, 1 Cor. 15:51]; would not be unclothed, that is disembodied, but would ‘be alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord’ [1 Thess. 4:15]. Perhaps at this time he had begun to have misgivings about his own survival [because of his afflictions in Asia, 2 Cor. 1:8, Acts 19:21-31]; but what then? Even if the earthly tenement of his body were to be dissolved, he knew that there was provided for him a divinely prepared habitation, or vehicle of the soul; an indestructible and celestial mansion, not made with hands; not a material [natural], but a spiritual body. His present residence in the body of flesh and blood he found to be attended with many sorrows and sufferings, under the burden of which he often groaned, and for deliverance from which he longed, earnestly desiring to be endued with the heavenly vesture which was awaiting him above (ver. 2 [2 Cor. 5:2]). The Pagan conception of a disembodied spirit, a naked shivering ghost, was foreign to the ideas of St. Paul; his hope and wish were that he might be found ‘clothed, and not naked’ [2 Cor. 5:3]; ‘not to be unclothed, but clothed upon’ [2 Cor. 5:2]. ...It was not death, but life, that the apostle anticipated and desired; not to be divested of the body, but invested with a more excellent organism, and endued with a nobler life [1 Cor. 15:51-53]. There is an unmistakable allusion in his language to the hope which he cherished of escaping the doom of mortality, ‘not for that we (I) would be unclothed’ [2 Cor. 5:4] etc., i.e. ‘not that I wish to put off the body by dying,’ but to merge the mortal in the immortal, ‘that mortality might be swallowed up of life’ [2 Cor. 5:4]. "The following comment of Dean [Henry] Alford well conveys the sentiment of this important passage:--- "‘The feeling expressed in these verses was one most natural to those who, like the apostles, regarded the coming of the Lord as near, and conceived the possibility of their living to behold it. It was no terror of death as to its consequences, but a natural reluctance to undergo the mere act of death as such, when it was within possibility that this mortal body might be superseded by the immortal one, without it [death].’ "In the succeeding verses the apostle intimates his full confidence that in either alternative, living or dying, all was well. ‘To be at home in the body was to be absent from the Lord; to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord.’ [2 Cor. 5:8] In either case, whether present or absent, his great concern was to be accepted by the Lord [at judgment] at last; ‘For,’ he adds, ‘we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to that which he hath done, whether it be good or bad’ (verses 6-10 [2 Cor. 5:6-10]). "Thus the apostle brings the whole question to a personal and practical issue. All were alike on their way to the judgment seat of Christ, and there they would all meet at last. Some might die before the coming of the Lord, and some might live to witness that event; but there, at the judgment seat, all would be gathered together; and to be accepted and approved there was, after all, a greater matter than living or dying, ‘falling asleep in the Lord,’ or being ‘changed’ [1 Thess. 4:15-17; 1 Cor. 15:52-55] without passing through the pangs of dissolution. The judgment seat was the goal before them all, and we have seen how near and imminent that solemn appearing [of Christ] was believed to be. That all this heartfelt faith and hope [in Christ's Second Coming, declared to be imminent in the 1st century], cherished and taught by the inspired apostles of Christ, was [allegedly] after all a mere fallacy and delusion appears an intolerable supposition, fatal to the credit and authority of apostolic doctrine."