What do you say to the widow of a Christian man when she asks: “Please, tell me what’s happened to my husband. Is he fully conscious with the Lord, or is his soul asleep as he waits for the resurrection?” How would you answer that question?

It all depends on what you believe about the afterlife. Within the church today, there is enormous confusion over what happens to the believer when he dies.

Do we receive our resurrection bodies at the point of death? Or do we enter a state of unconsciousness which will only end when Christ returns? Do we travel to a different dimension that is not measured by what we know as “time”?

Paul answers these questions in his second letter to the Corinthians (5:1-8). In short, he tells us that Christians who have died are now in heaven, fully conscious and enjoying the company of Jesus. However, they are not yet complete. They will only get their resurrection bodies when Christ returns.

As Paul deals with the issue of the after­life, he uses three different images to help us understand existence beyond the grave.

The first image is of a house. In verse one he says:

If the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven...

Here Paul refers to death as the dismantling of the believer’s earthly tent. This word “tent” would have reminded Jewish readers of the desert wan­derings of the Israelites after the Exodus before the building of a permanent temple.

The meaning is quite clear. For Paul, our physical bodies are like small tents that are dismantled when we die. Once we leave our earthly tents behind, we enter a permanent building. Paul is obviously referring here to our permanent bodies –– that is, our glorified resurrection bodies that he mentions in 1 Corinthians 15:44. This is the body we receive at the point of the Second Coming.

In verse one Paul is comparing two houses. The first house stands for our physical body which will be destroyed in death; the second house is the eternal resur­rection body that we receive at the Second Coming. So what happens to us if we die before Jesus returns?

The answer is simple. We enter into a bodiless state. And this is exactly the situation Paul addresses in verses two to four with the clothing image. There he tells us:

Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.

This clothing image introduces us to the heart of Paul’s thinking on this matter. In one sense, he is eager to leave this life. In another sense, he is afraid. He tells us why in verse four,

For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.

Paul tells us that he’s very keen to put on his heavenly dwelling over his earthly tent, as though he was putting an overcoat on top of his other clothes to keep himself warm. If this happens, his mortal body will “be swallowed up by life” (v4). That’s what would take place if Paul was still alive at the moment Jesus returned.

However, he also tells us that there is a sense in which he is anxious about death. If he dies before the Second Coming, he will be forced to put off his earthly body before he can put on his heavenly one. This will leave him without any clothes at all; he’ll be naked (v3). In other words, Paul will be in some form of bodiless existence.

Therefore, he groans at the painful prospect of putting off his current clothes (his earthly body). He would much prefer to put on the overcoat of his resurrected body without having to strip off his earthly body first.

These two images, the first of the house and the second of the clothes, show a ten­sion in Paul’s thinking. He looks forward to being at home with the Lord, yet he shrinks from the thought of being some­how naked in a disembodied state. It’s not that he’s afraid of death; it’s just that he’d prefer Jesus to return while he was still alive so that he didn’t have to experience losing his earthly body. The way Paul gets over this tension comes out in his third image — that of the homeland.

In verses six and eight Paul tells us that “as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord”, but “we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord”.

Earlier, in verse three, Paul has said that while he does not look forward to losing his earthly body in death, nevertheless his relationship with Jesus is always more important than whether or not he has a body.

While we are in our present physical body, we are “away from the Lord” (v8). This does not mean that we don’t have a relationship with Jesus in our current bodies. However, when we go to Heaven, at the point of death, our relationship with Jesus will no longer be spoilt by sin. We will therefore be “at home with the Lord”.

Some people say that Paul contradicts himself here. In verse three, he has said he doesn’t want to be naked. But now in verse eight, he says it’s OK because he’s “at home with the Lord”. Isn’t he being inconsistent? Not really. Just because Paul has two perspectives on dying doesn’t mean that he’s changed his mind. While being without a body is physically unattractive to him, nev­ertheless being with Christ is relationally attractive. The two ideas can fit together quite happily.

So let’s get back to the widow’s question: “What has happened to my Christian hus­band? Where is he, and what state is he in?”

Paul’s answer is quite simple: at the point of death her husband passed immediately into the presence of Christ. When he departed this life, he “went home”. It is futile to speculate about what his bodiless state is like. She should be comforted by knowing that since he died in Christ, he is now with Christ.

Both he, as well as all of us who are still alive, should be looking forward to the day of Christ’s return. On that great day, we will all receive our new resurrection bodies. But in the meantime, those who have died in Christ are away from the body and at home with the Lord.