Now he that hath wrought us for Or to, this longing for immortality; is God For none but God, none less than the Almighty, could have wrought this in us; who also hath given us his Spirit In its various gifts and graces; as an earnest Of our obtaining the heavenly habitation. We are confident, therefore Or courageous in all dangers and sufferings, and dare venture even upon death itself; knowing that while we are at home Or rather sojourn (as ενδημουντες here signifies) in the body, we are absent, εκδημουμεν, we are exiles; from the Lord
Christ, in the enjoyment of whom our chief happiness consists. For While on earth; we walk by faith Are influenced, guided, and governed in our whole course of life, by our faith in objects yet unseen; not by the sight Of heavenly glories. In other words, we cannot now see heavenly and eternal things, as we expect to do after death. It is true our faith gives us an evidence of them, (Hebrews 11:1,) which implies a kind of seeing him who is invisible, and the invisible world; yet this is as far beneath what we shall have in eternity, as that evidence of faith is above the evidence of bare, unassisted reason. We are confident, I say And bold, through the influence of these views which God hath given us; and willing Ευδοκουμεν, take complacency and delight, in the expectation of being absent from the body And from all intercourse with the persons and things of this world, however dear some of them may have been formerly to us; and present with the Lord This demonstrates that the apostle had no idea of his soul sleeping after death, but expected it to pass immediately into a state of felicity with Christ in paradise; and consequently that the happiness of the saints is not deferred till the resurrection. See 2 Corinthians 12:4.