John Calvin Commentary


John Calvin Commentary
"if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked." — 2 Corinthians 5:3 (ASV)
He restricts since clothed to believers, concerning what he had said about the certainty of a future life, as this is something unique to them. For the wicked, too, are stripped of the body, but as they bring nothing before God except a disgraceful nakedness, they are, consequently, not clothed with a glorious body. Believers, on the other hand, who appear before God clothed with Christ and adorned with His image, receive the glorious robe of immortality.
For I am inclined to take this view, rather than that of Chrysostom and others, who think that nothing new is said here, but that Paul simply repeats here what he had previously said about putting on an eternal habitation. The Apostle, therefore, mentions here a twofold clothing with which God clothes us: the righteousness of Christ and sanctification of the Spirit in this life; and, after death, immortality and glory. The first is the cause of the second, because those whom God has determined to glorify, he first justifies (Romans 8:30).
This meaning, too, is drawn from the particle also, which is undoubtedly introduced to amplify—as if Paul had said that a new robe will be prepared for believers after death, since they have been clothed in this life also.