These are deeply emotional words from Paul. In the previous verse, he said he was assured of deliverance. And now he is getting personal, and said, regardless of whether he lives or dies, he is confident that Christ will be exalted in his body.
There is a theology of the body that we would take a little bit of time to explore. Some have a theology that deprecates the body. That presents a theology where what is important is the spirit, and the body is given little or no regard. But we have no such view from the scriptures.
Listen to Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:23
Now may the God of peace himself make you completely holy and may your spirit and soul and body be kept entirely blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We see no hint of a depreciation of the body in that verse that lays out the totality of the human person. Paul refers to the inner man and the outer man (2 Corinthians 4:16), but he did not say that the outer man is less than the inner man. That something is different does not mean it has less value or that it is less critical.
What we do with our bodies is seen as the basis of judgment before the throne of God.
Listen to Paul:
2 Corinthians 5:10: For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be paid back according to what he has done while in the body, whether good or evil.
We know the inner life informed the action.
Mark 7:20-23:
He said, “What comes out of a person defiles him. For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, and folly. All these evils come from within and defile a person.”
It cuts both ways: The basis for both the good and bad rewards.
The body is not an inconvenience; it is a record-keeper, a spiritual digital recording of what we are doing, so that it may serve as a witness to all that we have been doing.
God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And later God said, after the sin of man, that dust he is and to dust he will return. You might think the body is bad, right, because it is subject to death, right? Not so fast.
Jesus came with a body to offer a sacrifice to God.
Hebrews 10:5-7: So when he came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.
Whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you took no delight in.
Then I said, ‘Here I am: I have come—it is written of me in the scroll of the book—to do your will, O God.’”
That God became flesh is an eternal testament to the value of the body.
Anyone who says Christ did not come in the flesh received the greatest condemnation of John. He was saying such a thing must not be treated as a slip of the tongue.
2 John 1:7: For many deceivers have gone out into the world, people who do not confess Jesus as Christ coming in the flesh. This person is the deceiver and the antichrist!
So Jesus had a real body and bled real blood. And to put a capstone on the value of the body, we have been promised a resurrected body (1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 51-53). Things are not finished until we have our resurrected body in the order of Jesus himself.
A solid theology of the body will put in mind the words of Paul, where he said that every other sin is outside of the body, but sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20: Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin a person commits is outside of the body” – but the immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.
I don't know if a theology that depreciates the body was developing in the church in Corinth that Paul had to make something plain. Where are they having an idea about the body that seems to say sexual immorality was not such a big deal because it was done with the body? I don't know.
A low view of the body is not encouraged. Paul calls it our clay jar (2 Corinthians 4:7). The vessel may be different from the content, but if something happens to the vessel, then the content is useless.
That is why a living dog is better than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4).
When Paul thinks about holiness, he thinks about the body and the avoidance of sexual immorality, which is a primary distinction between believers and unbelievers.
1 Thessalonians 4:1-5: Finally then, brothers and sisters, we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received instruction from us about how you must live and please God (as you are in fact living) that you do so more and more. For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is God’s will: that you become holy, that you keep away from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own body in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God.
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The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® https://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved
