In Matthew 15:9 the Lord is recorded to have said to some of His hearers, "In
vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men". In
Mark 7:9,13 He said, "Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may
keep your own tradition . . . making the word of God of none effect through your
tradition".
Whenever we hear a portion of Scripture persistently misquoted, we can be sure
that traditional belief is obscuring the vision, and distorting the Scriptures.
The passage before us is a case in point. Over and over again it is quoted as
though it read:
"Absent from the body is To BE present with the Lord"; whereas, instead
of making an assertion, the Apostle expressed a choice between two alternatives,
saying:
"We are confident, I say, and willing RATHER to be absent from the body,
and to be present with the Lord".
His ground of confidence was in God Who hath wrought us for the self-same thing,
Who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Nowhere in Scripture do
we learn that we have been thus "wrought" in order to attain unto an
intermediate or unclothed state; nowhere in Scripture do we learn that we have
received the earnest of the Spirit for an intermediate state, but always for
resurrection glory. This is the background of all that the Apostle has said in 2
Corinthians five. The tent or
earthly house in which we now pass our pilgrimage will one day be dissolved or
taken down, but the blessed alternative is not some "unclothed" condition, but a
building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. The goal
of the
Apostle's desire was "that mortality might be swallowed up of Life". This figure
is a repeat of 1 Corinthians 15:54 where we read:
"So WHEN this corruptible shall have put on incorruption (which refers
to those who have died), and this mortal shall have put on immortality (which
refers to those still living at the time), THEN (and not till
then) shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is
swallowed up in victory".
Whether there be an intermediate state or not is not discussed in 2 Corinthians
five. All we know from that chapter is that an "unclothed" condition was
something which the Apostle did not desire, and it satisfies our intentions in
this Analysis, if the positive teaching of any word or doctrine examined shall
be demonstrated and accepted. A parallel passage is found in Philippians 1:23
and is discussed under the heading DEPART. Further
light can be received by pondering the meaning of the Saviour's words, "This day
shaft thou be with Me in paradise" (see
PARADISE),
which quotation we purposely leave here, unpunctuated. Three other articles
should be considered where a greater range of teaching is possible, namely
IMMORTALITY, RESURRECTION and SOUL. Sidelights will also be found in pondering
the articles entitled SPIRITISM and SLEEP. May "the blessed hope" in all its
Scriptural splendour be ever before our renewed minds. Let us set our affection
on things above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
