“We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1).
We live in a temporary abode, a tent-house, subject to being taken down, for all of us live in mortal death-doomed bodies, and “in this [tabernacle] we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.” We know that “our earthly house of this tabernacle,” the body, is only the dwelling-place for the spirit, and that for those of us who know Christ as Savior “to be absent from the body” is “to be present with the Lord,” and that “to be with Christ ... is far better.” So death for the believer is just the entrance into the Lord’s presence, and “in Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.” Nevertheless, “we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” While we are “willing ... to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord,” we are “earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.” Day by day, “we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.”
“To be absent from the body”
Is “to be present with the Lord,”
Where there is His “fullness of joy,”
With full harmony and accord.
2 Cor. 5:2,8; Phil. 1:23; Psa. 16:11; 2 Cor. 5:4,8,2; Phil. 3:20-21.