What he calls in verse 1, “our earthly house,” he designates in verse 6, as being “at home in the body.” The chief characteristic of this house is that it may be dissolved, or is mortal. This earthly house is therefore our mortal body, or what is essentially the same thing, this present mortal condition. The house from Heaven is eternal or immortal. This, therefore, by parity of reasoning, is the immortal body or the state of immortality which awaits the redeemed beyond the resurrection. Paul, in Rom. 8:22, 23, speaks very plainly of these two conditions: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” None can fail to see the parallel between this passage in Romans, and that portion of 2 Cor. 5, now under consideration. To the Corinthians, Paul says, that in our earthly house we groan, being burdened; to the Romans, that we groan within ourselves, or in this mortal body; to the Corinthians, that while in this state we have the earnest of the Spirit; to the Romans, that we have the first-fruits of the Spirit, which is the same thing, the pledge, assurance, or earnest; to the Corinthians, that we desire to be clothed upon with our house from Heaven; to the Romans, that we wait for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. The ultimate object in view in both cases, as a matter of hope and desire, is the redeemed or eternal state; but in the one case it is being “clothed upon with our house from Heaven,” and in the other, it is “the redemption of our body.” These two expressions, therefore, denote one and the same thing. Returning to a consideration of the meaning of the terms which Paul uses, we inquire what is meant by being unclothed. And the evident answer is, The dissolution of our earthly house, or the falling of our mortal body in death. The state of death, then, is that condition in which we are unclothed. And the being clothed upon, is being released from this state, when mortality is swallowed up of life, and we are taken into the presence of the Lord. Then Paul states a conclusion very apparent from his premises, that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord, and adds that he is willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. The only verse in which consciousness in death can even be supposed to be intimated, is the 8th verse, which speaks of our being absent from the body and present with the Lord. But even here it will be seen that the whole question turns on the time when we enter the presence of the Lord. Is it immediately on the dissolution of our earthly house? This the text does not inform us; but on this the preceding verses are very explicit, as we shall presently see.