“Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Heb. 10:37). In Hebrews 11:32-40 we are told the reason we are to have patience in suffering and in waiting for the Lord to come. The “worthy ones” he speaks of are those of whom the world was not worthy. They obtained a good report [record] by faith, but they received not the promise, “God having provided [foreseen] some better thing for us.” What is that? “That they without us should not be made perfect.”
What does he mean in saying “made perfect”? These ones that have died in faith are resting with the Lord long since, but they are not perfect. In what sense are they imperfect in God’s presence? They are absent from the body and present with the Lord, but they are in, what is called in another scripture, an “unclothed state.” “Being made perfect” here is resurrection. When God made man, He did not make him without a body, and death has come in and separates a man from his body, strips him of his body, and he is unclothed, without his body. Resurrection brings him back to perfection. Man is clothed again with his body. He is clothed with a body that will never know death. Man has a soul that will never die now, but not yet a body that will never die. All this is developed and enlarged upon in 2 Corinthians 5.
“Not for that we would be unclothed” (2 Cor. 5:4). If death comes, it is very blessed for the believer. It is “far better to depart and be with Christ,” but it is not what we want. As the Apostle says, “Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” That is what will take place in the resurrection. They will be clothed with immortal and incorruptible bodies, spiritual bodies.
W. Potter, adapted