If the above do not prove that the apostle expected to be clothed upon with his house from heaven shortly after his earthly tabernacle were dissolved, then I must acknowledge my ignorance of his meaning.  He desires not to be unclothed so as to be found naked at the coming of Christ.  By this I understand that between death and the resurrection there is a state of insensibility of several days duration, while the spiritual body is putting on, and if he died so near the coming of Christ, that the process was not completed, and mortality not swallowed up of life, he would be found naked, i.e.  In the state of the dead.  He therefore expresses no desire to be found unclothed at that period but clothed upon and present with Christ.  This is evident from verses 6, and 7.

“Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.  We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.”

While in the body, though they had many consolations in the faith of Christ, though “he was with them always even unto the end of the age,” though “to live was Christ,” yet this condition he terms being absent from the Lord in comparison to being present with him, which cannot mean in the unclothed state of insensibility, but where “mortality is swallowed up of life.”

Let it be distinctly noticed, that the apostle is speaking of three states—­

1st. as being in this earthly house or body where they were absent from the Lord—­

2nd. as being unclothed and found naked at his coming for which they had no desire—­

3rd.  As being absent from the body and present with the Lord where they should be clothed upon with their house from heaven that mortality might be swallowed up of life, for which they had a desire.

Verse 9. “Wherefore we labor that whether present or absent we may be accepted of him.”  Here we perceive that they did not labor to obtain entrance into his presence, because the immortal resurrection is the gift of God.  But they labored, whether alive on earth or immortal in heaven, that they might be accepted among those, who were worthy to obtain a crown of righteousness in the first resurrection for having continued faithful unto the end—­that they might be worthy to form a part of that glorious body of witnesses in heaven who were slain for the testimony of Jesus.  And the body of christians on earth, who continued faithful to the coming of Christ, were to be fashioned like those above, and receive the same exalted honor in his gospel kingdom, and the whole compose one bright body of infallible witnesses, whose testimony can never be shaken by all the powers infidelity.  “To depart and be with Christ which is far better” must mean in an immortal existence.