Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Corinthians · About this commentary
At Home with the Lord
2 Corinthians 5:6-10
6 Therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord; · WEB
Two words for being at home and away carry the whole passage, and what makes absence preferable is company rather than escape.
The passage turns on a pair of matched verbs, one meaning to be at home among one's own people and the other to be abroad. Both are used twice, and they are swapped between the two halves.
While we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. Then: willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
The symmetry is exact and it makes the argument. Wherever a person is at home, he is away from somewhere else, and the two locations are the body and the Lord. What is being weighed is not existence against non-existence but which absence to prefer.
And the reason for the preference is stated as company, not release. The desirable thing is being at home with the Lord, never being rid of the body — which is consistent with the previous paragraph's refusal to want to be unclothed 2 Corinthians 5:4.
Verse 7 explains the present condition in six words: for we walk by faith, not by sight. That is why the body counts as absence. Not because it is bad, but because it is the state in which the Lord is believed rather than seen — and the chapter has already said the seeing available now is indirect, as in a mirror 2 Corinthians 3:18.
Twice the disposition is named as courage rather than resignation: we are always confident, and we are courageous, I say. The word means good cheer.
Verse 9 then makes the whole question practical and refuses to rank the two states: whether at home or absent, to be well pleasing to him. The aim does not change with the location, which quietly removes any advantage in hurrying toward one.
And verse 10 gives the reason the body matters: we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
The accounting is in the body and by deed. Whatever the passage grants about preferring the Lord's company, it does not treat the bodily life as a period that will turn out not to have counted.
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