2 Corinthians 5:4 (KJV) Immerse Mortality into Service

2 Corinthians 5:4 (KJV)
For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

Paul’s contrast is not between death and life but between mortality and life. He does not say that he wishes death to be swallowed up of life but that mortality should be swallowed up of life.

Of this Gill writes, “…his desire is, that it may be swallowed up “of the life”, which is properly and emphatically life, as this life is not…” As this life is all we know, we tend to cling to it as life. Paul did not believe it to be so but was confident that mortality is a cheap substitute of the real thing.

Paul did not want to replace death with life. Perhaps this is the thinking of the person who commits suicide. His concern is not with the eternal but with the now. Earthly life has been a failure in his eyes so that it is more a death than life and death would seem more like life. Paul’s mindset was on the eternal. This mortality is so far below what awaits the believer that it isn’t properly called life. Life is what we have in heaven. He wasn’t looking for this mortality to end. He used it to the fullest for Christ. He was, however, completely confident that a day was coming when what he then experienced as mortality would be so swallowed by what God promised as life that his mortal years would be as nothing.

Such a confidence compels a person to plunge mortality into Christian service.

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2 Corinthians 5:4  (KJV) Immerse Mortality into Service

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