But if the heavenly house is our future immortal body, it may be asked how Paul can say, as he does in 2 Cor. 5:1, “We have [present tense] a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” We have this in the same sense that we have, at the present time, eternal life. And John tells us how this is: It is by faith, or by promise, not by actual possession. 1 John 5:11: “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life.” God hath given it to us; and on the strength of this promise we have it. But where is it now? “And this life is”--in us? No, but--“in his Son.” And when he, the Son, who is our life, shall appear, we shall be clothed upon with our heavenly house, and appear with him in glory. Col. 3:4. Again, it may be asked how Paul can speak of two houses, as though we moved from one into the other, if it is only a change of condition from mortal to immortality. He illustrates this in the figure he takes to represent conversion. Eph. 4:22-24: “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Here the simple change of heart, the change of the disposition, from sin to holiness, is spoken of as putting off one man and putting on another. With even greater propriety, may the change from mortal to immortality be spoken of as removing from an earthly, perishable house, to an immortal, heavenly one. The terms Paul uses to describe the two states, are clearly defined. On the one side it is an earthly house, groaning with burdens, mortality, absent from the Lord. On the other, it is clothed upon with our house from Heaven, mortality swallowed up of life, present with the Lord. He did not desire to be unclothed, which, as already noticed, signifies the condition of death; but he did desire to be present with the Lord; therefore in death he would have us understand that the Christian is not present with the Lord. From all this, we can only conclude that when he says he is willing to be absent from the body and present with the Lord, he means to be understood that he is willing that this burdened, groaning, mortal state should end, and the promised glorious and eternal day begin. And being confident, through the presence of the Spirit of God in his heart, that when this change should be wrought, he would have a glorious part therein, he was more than willing it should come. It was but the breathing again of that prayer which has arisen like a continual sigh from the heart of the church through all her weary pilgrimage, “Thy kingdom come; yea, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly;” not, “Let our immortal souls,” which they did not suppose they possessed, “enter a conscious state in death” in which they did not believe. CHAPTER XXIII. IN THE BODY AND OUT.