What is the context?
Because God has prepared His people for life and given the Spirit, Paul speaks with confidence. Present bodily life is described as being away from the Lord, and he would prefer to be away from the body and at home with Him.
The statement about walking by faith rather than sight belongs within that contrast. The Lord’s presence and the promised future are trusted before they are seen. Paul is not presenting faith as a reason to reject every form of observation or evidence.
His desire centers on being with the Lord. It gives the paragraph its hope without making present life worthless. The following verses describe the continuing ambition to please Him.
How is this passage commonly understood?
The Reformed Westminster Confession 32.1–2 teaches that the righteous are consciously with God after death while awaiting bodily resurrection. Wesley’s note on verse 8 similarly understands being with the Lord as happiness that begins before resurrection.
Seventh-day Adventists teach a different account of the time between death and resurrection. Their official Belief 26 describes death as an unconscious state until Christ returns and the righteous are raised to meet Him. That should not be caricatured as denying resurrection or saying death permanently ends the believer’s hope.
The difference concerns what happens while resurrection is awaited. Both accounts look toward life with the Lord, but they should not be presented as the same explanation of the interval.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
Philippians 1:21–24 expresses the same desire to depart and be with Christ while recognizing the fruitful service still possible in bodily life. Paul holds both concerns together.
The future God promises is personal fellowship with Christ, and the present remains a place to serve others because of Him. Hope beyond death supports faithfulness here rather than making care for the people still around us pointless.
What is our position?
In Should We Seek Signs From God?, we draw on verse 7 to describe trust in what God has revealed without needing repeated physical confirmations to keep that trust standing. Here that principle sits within Paul’s confidence about being with the Lord before he sees the promised future. The study does not establish our position on every detail of the time between death and resurrection.