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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - 2 Corinthians 5:4 - 5:4
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Being burdened (βαρούμενοι)
Compare weight (βάρος) of glory, 2Co 4:17.
Not for that we would be unclothed (ἐφ' ᾧ οὐ θέλομεν ἐκδύσασθαι)
Lit., because we are not willing to divest ourselves (of the mortal body). Regarding the coming of the Lord as near, the apostle contemplates the possibility of living to behold it. The oppression of soul (groan) is not from pains and afflictions of the body, nor from the fear of death, but from the natural shrinking from death, especially if death is to deprive him of the body (unclothe) only to leave him without a new and higher organism. Therefore he desires, instead of dying, to have the new being come down upon him while still alive, investing him with the new spiritual organism (clothed upon), as a new garment is thrown over an old one, and absorbing (swallowed up) the old, sensuous life.
“For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleadng anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?”
Gray, “Elegy.”
Swallowed up
A new metaphor. Compare 1Co 15:54.