Verse 3 continues, “If indeed, being clothed, we shall not be found naked.” To be naked is to be without a body. A dead person, being disembodied, is naked, without a body as a covering before God. The apostles were expecting to be transfigured in their body, to be clothed with a spiritual body to meet the Lord before they died and were disembodied, that they might not be found naked.
Many Christians think that when a believer in Christ dies, he goes to heaven. If this is true, then there are a great many naked persons in heaven, for those who have died are now disembodied. God, however, will not allow such naked persons to come into His presence. In the Old Testament it says that someone who is not properly clothed cannot come into the presence of God. The priests, in particular, had to wear a long robe. This was a type. If we would be in the presence of God, we cannot be naked; that is, we cannot be disembodied.
When Paul said that he did not want to be found naked, this means that he did not want to die. To die is to be naked. Paul’s desire was to be clothed and thereby not to be found naked. Of course, after our bodies are transfigured, none of us will be found naked. We shall live eternally. The point here is that in verse 3 to be naked means to die.
In verse 4 Paul says, “For indeed, we who are in the tabernacle groan, being burdened, in that we do not desire to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” To be burdened here means to be weighed down, depressed, oppressed. The apostles groaned in the desire not to be unclothed, disembodied, that is, not to die but to be clothed upon, to put on the spiritual body. This is to have our body transfigured (Phil. 3:21), to have it redeemed (Rom. 8:23).
In verse 4 “what is mortal” denotes our mortal body (2 Cor. 4:11; Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:53). To have our mortal body “swallowed up by life” is to have it transfigured by resurrection life swallowing the death in our mortal body (1 Cor. 15:54).
Our fallen, mortal body is a great burden to us. Under the weight of this burden, we groan, not that we would be unclothed, or be found naked, but that we would be clothed with a transfigured body.
Paul did not want to die, but he certainly did desire to be raptured. He wanted to be clothed upon, to have his body transfigured. Then what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. When we are raptured, transfigured, and clothed with the heavenly, spiritual, and resurrected body, then that which is mortal will be swallowed up by life. This was Paul’s longing. Most of us have not yet come to this stage in our Christian life. Rather, the younger ones may prefer to linger on earth. But those who are older desire to be raptured.
Verse 5 says, “Now He Who has wrought us for this very thing is God, Who has given to us the pledge of the Spirit.” The Greek word rendered “wrought” can also be translated fashioned, shaped, prepared, made fit. God has wrought us, fashioned us, shaped us, prepared us, made us fit, for the very purpose that our mortal body might be swallowed up by His resurrection life. Thus, our entire being will be saturated with Christ. God has given us the Spirit as the pledge, the earnest, the foretaste, the guarantee, of this wonderful and marvelous part of His complete salvation for us in Christ.
In what way has God prepared us? First, He has sown Himself into our being. This is indicated by the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. The Lord Jesus came as a sower to sow Himself into us. Our heart is the soil for growing Christ. Eventually Christ will grow in us and saturate our entire being. This is the preparation for Christ’s saturating our body. On the one hand, when we are transfigured, we shall be clothed with a spiritual body outwardly. On the other hand, transfiguration means that the indwelling Christ is saturating our body and swallowing up the element of death in it. He has been sown into our spirit and heart, and now He is saturating our soul. Then one day He will spread from the soul into the body and saturate the body. When our body has been saturated in full, it will become a new body, a new building, with which we shall be clothed.
According to verse 5, as the One who has wrought us for this very thing, God has given to us the pledge of the Spirit. The Spirit is the guarantee that God will accomplish this. The Spirit is Christ, and Christ is the embodiment of God. Actually, therefore, God has put Himself into our being as the guarantee that He will change our body so that we shall be entirely conformed to Christ in resurrection.
In verse 6 Paul continues, “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that being at home in the body, we are away from home from the Lord.” Our body is in the material realm; the Lord is in the spiritual realm. In this sense, we are absent from the Lord when we are present in our body.
Verse 7 says, “For we walk by faith, not by appearance.” Appearance refers to that which is seen; hence, to sight. The apostles regulate their life and conduct themselves by faith, as testified in Hebrews 11, not by that which is seen. It is in this way they realize that they are away from the Lord while they are in their physical body. This corresponds to the word in 4:18.
Today nearly all of mankind walks by appearance. Doctors, scientists, and professors take the lead to walk by what they can see. When we speak about a building in the heavens made by God and eternal, they regard this as nonsense. But eventually it will be proved that they are wrong to doubt this truth and that we are right to believe it. We shall have a heavenly body. Until we are transfigured, we walk by faith, not by appearance, not by what we see.
In verse 8 Paul says, “We are of good courage then, and well pleased rather to be away from home out of the body and to be at home with the Lord.” To be away from home out of the body is to die, to be out of the material realm and to be with the Lord in the spiritual realm. The apostles, who are always being persecuted unto death (1:8-9; 4:11; 11:23; 1 Cor. 15:31), are well pleased rather to die, to be out of their confining body that they may be released to be at home with the Lord in a better realm (Phil. 1:23).
As the apostles lived according to their spiritual constitution to shine out the glory of the gospel, and as they were living a crucified life, they were constantly longing to be clothed with a heavenly body. Their desire was to be raptured, to be transfigured. This is a description of the ministers of the new covenant. They are people who do not belong to the earth. Rather, they belong absolutely to another realm and are living in that realm. Although they are on earth, their aspiration is to be in another realm. Their desire is to be clothed with another body and to be in another home with the Lord.