If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.
All Commentaries on 2 Corinthians 5:3 Go To 2 Corinthians 5
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
If so that being clothed we shall not be found naked. Instead of clothed, some read unclothed, through a difference of a letter in the Greek compound verb. This reading is followed by Augustine and Bede, Ambrose, Tertullian, and Paulinus; and Augustine thus gives the sense: "We shall be clothed upon with heavenly glory, when once we are stripped of this body and clothed with Christ."
We should observe that the Apostle here distinguishes three things, (1.) the being unclothed and naked, (2.) the being clothed, (3.) the being clothed upon. As in the last verse he called our heavenly glory a house, so here by another metaphor he calls it a robe. Now some explain this passage thus: We long to be clothed upon with our heavenly home, the heavenly and incorruptible body, in such a way, however, that we may be gifted with immortality and glory, and be found not bare, but clothed with glory. For, as the Apostle says in I Cor. xv51: "We shall all rise indeed to immortality, but we shall not all he changed into glory." But this is true of the reprobate alone. Although they will have an immortal body, yet it cannot be said that they will have a celestial body; this will be the endowment of the Blessed only. A celestial body, then, is one that is both immortal and glorious, and consequently they that have this are necessarily clothed and not found naked. This is the distinction pointed out here by the Apostle in the conditional statement, "If so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked."
Secondly, S. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Theodoret, Ambrose explain the passage differently. They say: This house, i.e, this celestial glory will be our portion if we be found worthy of it, and are placed among the elect and not the reprobate: in other words, if we are found clothed with grace, charity, and good works, and not naked without them. This is the sentence of S. Paulinus ( Ephesians 8 ad Sever. Sulpit.). He says: "If, when you are stripped of your body, you be not found naked of good works." If we be clothed with them, then God will super-clothe us with the new robe of eternal glory. But since in the next verse he explains this nakedness to be the separation of the soul from the body, in the words not for that we would be unclothed, i.e, of the body, so that the soul alone be beatified in nakedness, but clothed upon, it seems better, with Tertullian (de Resurr. Carnis, c42), to say that we are called naked and unclothed when we are dead, and when the soul has lost the body; and consequently that we are clothed when the soul regains the body, and puts it on as her robe, and are clothed upon when the body is clad and adorned with heavenly glory as its robe. As the soul"s dress will be the body, so the body"s will be glory; and thus the soul will be clothed with the body, and clothed upon with glory. Therefore, we long to be clothed upon with it, "if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked."
We should notice again that the word if points to something that is peculiar and not common to all the elect, but proper to those only who shall be found at the end of the world alive and clothed with the body, and who so live, or so die, as quickly to rise again, and seem to be not dead but alive, clothed upon with immortality. As Cajetan rightly points out, the sense therefore is: It will not be our lot to be dissolved in death, from which we naturally shrink, and on account of which we groan, but to be clothed upon with glory, which we so ardently long for; that is to say, if at the end of the world we be found remaining and not yet dead, but clad with the body, and so not be made naked; or if Song of Solomon , at all events for so short a time that we may be said to pass from this life to eternity.
