p. 8 | Being with Christ by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 29, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 17.

Being with Christ

By Editor

No. 547. Being with Christ.

PLEASE explain Phil. 1:23 and 2 Cor. 5:8. It would seem as tho Paul meant he would be with Christ when he died.

Phil. 1:23: "For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better." 2 Cor. 5:8: "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."

Paul was in a strait betwixt two things, life and death. "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. . . . Yet what I shall choose I wot not." Phil. 1:21, 22. Death or life, either, would magnify Christ; but the apostle knew not which to choose of these; but he did desire a third thing, which was "far better" than the other two, and that was "to be with Christ." Therefore to be with Christ is not death.

The same thought is expressed in 2 Cor. 5:8. The thing he desired there was not to be "unclothed" or to die (verse 4), or to remain here in the body, this present mortal existence, and suffer (verses 2, 8), but to be out of both of these conditions, and be "present with the Lord."

Now when are the people of God present with him?—In a sense, of course, Christ is always present with his people by his Spirit, but they are not present with him personally until he comes. Then when he changes the mortal to immortal; when "mortality" is "swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. 5:4); when the dead in Christ shall rise incorruptible, and the living shall be changed (1 Cor. 15:51-54); when he shall descend from heaven with a shout (1 Thess. 4:16); when he shall reward every man according to his works (Matt. 16:27), in this way, at this time, "so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thess. 4:17). It was this for which Paul longed, when Christ should come from heaven, and he would leave the earth, caught up to meet him in the air.