"Q: What about the Bible verse that says “absent from the body, present with
the Lord (II Cor. 5:8)?”
A: A careful reading of this passage, beginning
with II Cor. 4:7, reveals that Paul is speaking about the trials and
pains of this life, experienced in our mortal bodies.
We do not “lose
heart” though (II Cor 4:16), because God has planned something so great
that our present affliction will seem like nothing compared with what
God has planned for us.
Paul, the tentmaker, compares our present
mortal body to a tent, portable and temporary (II Cor. 5:1) which will
fail one day and we will die.
But we look forward to the “house” (that
is, our heavenly body) which God will give to us then.
*Notice the contrast between earthly tent which can be destroyed and heavenly house which is eternal.
Paul makes it very clear that our heavenly existence will be in a body,
(the “heavenly house”) like the one Jesus had following His
resurrection (Phil. 3:21), which will be given us at His second coming
(I Cor. 15:51-55).
We look forward with eager anticipation to receive
that new body, free from the ailments and frailties of
our present condition -- “to be clothed with our habitation which is
from heaven” (II Cor 5:2).
Notice very clearly that it is the changed, immortalized body and the life that goes with it, that Paul is focusing on.
Between this present life, with its sorrows and tribulations, and the
second coming of Jesus when the glorious new body will be received, for
most of the saints is the period of death, when the body returns to dust
as God promised Adam (Genesis 3:19).
This intermediate condition Paul
describes as “naked” (II Cor 5:3), that is, without a body.
Because death is an unconscious state, when one dies the next 
thing he
will be conscious of will be the resurrection. For the believer who
closes his eyes in death, the next thing he will know will be
coming to life when Jesus returns, so as far as their own conscious
reality is concerned, it is as if the future life, in
the heavenly body, follows right after this present life in the mortal
body.
With this in mind, of course Paul could proclaim he would rather
be absent from this body (the word “the” in verse 6 is the same Greek article as in verse 1 and verse 4 where the translators rendered it “this tent”) and to be with Jesus (in that
heavenly body), but this statement in no way nullifies the clear Bible
teaching that one rests in the grave between the two conditions of this
mortal existence and that future immortal life."
John Anderson/F7
