I see it as just being a play on words.
All we have are words. Giving each word its proper weight is something that very few are able to do. But especially with Paul, we must be painstaking. He has a way of saying things that sound like he is making definite statements when he is actually comparing things.
In this case he is comparing being absent from the body (dead) to being absent from the Lord (not in the Spirit) His transitions are NEVER very clear. He almost needs a scribe to explain his constant shifting. Like Napoleon needed a very competent chief of staff to make his orders understood. (He lost his last battle because his orders were not understood correctly)
So then God made this happen...he chose Paul...because UNLESS there is a reliable prophet to explain Paul's orders, people are going to lose their battles. Paul needs a chief of staff to get his orders across and achieve victory.
So God puts we Gentiles to the test. Unless people can discern the BODY they will not get Paul.
Paul is ALWAYS using these kind of comparisons...I teach them. I don't always like the way he jumps from one kind of law to the other....never being precise....he speaks of the law of Moses in one sentence then goes to God's law, then jumps to the law of the Spirit...so that hordes of people get him all wrong.......turning being "present" with the Lord (after death), into speaking of being present in the body. But it might be possible there is a dual meaning there, I just dont know for sure. We need to be careful with those, in case we are just seeing/ascribing something we want to see because we want to see it to support our doctrine/theology, rather than that the scripture is teaching us.
And this is by design. God is testing the proud Gentiles who think they know anything, but they don't. God will catch the proud in their pride. I could explain in more depth but we would need to go to the Hebrew scriptures to see these warnings.
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