Confident, Knowing
- Pastor Corey Erman
“So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” — 2. Corinthians 5:6-8
“...We are always confident, knowing...” This is wonderful! Not hoping. Not guessing. Not may be so. But knowing! Knowing that while “we” are at home in the body, “we” are absent from the Lord. Yes, God’s Spirit is in our hearts, crying “Abba, Father,” but Jesus Christ, with a physical, flesh-and-bone resurrected body is at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. And when “we” are absent from the body, “we” will be present with Him there.
Who is “we”?
At the time of his physical death, man leaves his body. When he does, he is no less man than when he had his body. When we die we will be outside our bodies, but we will be no less man than we are inside of our bodies. For us, we will be just as real as we are now. We will have the same shape, same form, same size. And we will know everything we knew before we leave our bodies.
“For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” — Philippians 1:21
When the body dies, the inward man still lives. In this text, Paul was talking about physical death—and he said it is gain.
That does away with the theory that when you die, you just float around like a cloud in the sky. There wouldn’t be any gain to that, either.
And it also does away theory of reincarnation. (That’s all it is—a theory! It is certainly not scriptural.) Some people think they will be born again into this life—that the next time they might be a cow, or a horse, or even a fly. There wouldn’t be any gain to coming back as a cow—you might get eaten. If you were a mosquito, you might get squashed. How foolish people can become when they leave the Bible and get off into false teachings!
The truth is just as the Bible presents it: At physical death, the born again believer—an eternal spirit being—departs to be with Christ, and that is gain!
Make the following confession:
The real me lives inside of my body. The real me is an eternal spirit being that will never die! For “me” to live in this physical body is Christ. The life of Christ dwells within the real me—the man on the inside, the eternal spirit being.