📖WEB · 2 Corinthians 5:6
What does 2 Corinthians 5:6 mean?
"Therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord;"
— 2 Corinthians 5:6 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
if so be that being clothed we will not be found naked.
For indeed we who are in this tent do groan, being burdened; not that we desire to be unclothed, but that we desire to be clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
Now he who made us for this very thing is God, who also gave to us the down payment of the Spirit.
Therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord;
for we walk by faith, not by sight.
We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.
Therefore also we make it our aim, whether at home or absent, to be well pleasing to him.
Explanation
2 Corinthians 5:6 finds Paul in the middle of a longer reflection on what happens to believers between this present life and the resurrection life to come. In plain language, the verse says that Christians can live with steady courage and assurance, and part of that confidence rests on an honest recognition: as long as a believer remains alive in this physical body, they are not yet in the full, unmediated presence of the Lord. Paul is not saying God is absent from us now, but rather that our present bodily existence involves a kind of distance or separation from the face-to-face communion with Christ that awaits believers after death or at Christ's return.
To understand the context, remember that Paul wrote this letter to the church in Corinth, a congregation he had founded but which had experienced conflict, false teaching, and doubts about his apostolic authority. In chapters 4 and 5, Paul is addressing suffering, mortality, and the fragility of the human body — he calls it an "earthly tent" (5:1) that is wasting away, contrasted with the eternal "building from God" that awaits believers. Paul had endured immense physical hardship and persecution (see 2 Corinthians 11:23-28), and he writes to reassure the Corinthians that present bodily weakness and even death are not defeats but a doorway to something greater. Verse 6 sits within this argument: because we know a better, fuller existence with the Lord awaits us, we can face bodily suffering and mortality with confidence rather than despair.
Theologically, this verse touches on the tension between the "already" and "not yet" of Christian
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