Originally posted by AThousandYoung
The body needs a new appearance and to be transformed into something better? Is that kind of how Jesus will have brass feet and a sword for a tongue when he comes back to smite all us heathens?
The idea is that Christ works His salvation from the inside out.
He begins with your deadened spirit by enlivening it. He continues to spread from your spirit into your soul, transforming it. Finally He spreads from your soul into your body, transfiguring it.
He are the passages related to the transfiguration of the body:
" ... we eagerly await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of His glory, according to His operation by which He is able even to subject all things to Himself." (Phil. 3:21)
This fallen sin filled and aging body is called
"the body of our humiliation". And by the power with which Christ can subject all things to Himself, he will transfigure the bodies of the believers to be confromed to the glorious resurrection body which He now enjoys.
Reality is much more fascinating than fiction.
" Behold, I tell you a mystery; We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will all be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
And when this corruptible will put on incorruption and this mortal wil put on immortality, then the word which is written will come to pass, 'Death has been swallowed up unto victory." (1 Cor. 15:51-54)
These are words you can take to the bank, not like the two or three sweet little nothings offered by dying liars.
The culmination of Christ's salvation will clothed the body in incorruption.
Very important things the Bible mentions multiple times. So here also it speaks of the salvation even of the physical body.
"For also, we who are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened, in that we do not desire to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
Now who has wrought us for this very thing is God, who has given to us the Spirit as a pledge." (2 Cor. 5:2-5)
To be unclothed here means to have a immaterial soul and spirit without a body. This is to be found naked before God. God does not want the saved ones to be naked. He therefore prepares for them a glorified body "tabernacle" which is immortal.
"[S]wallowed up by life" means saturated and permeated with the divine life of Christ which has been planted into the saved ones spirit and eminates outward from the born again spirit, into the soul, and finally swallowing up the physical resurrected body.
Paul also says that the believers have a garuantee of this in the form of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Spirit is given as a pledge. The Spirit is given as a foretaste of a much fuller enjoyment to come.
Unbelievers do not understand that we Christians have the Spirit as a foretaste and a pledge. He is within us as a down payment, so to speak, the promise of a greater enjoyment to come.
Those who do not have the Holy Spirit assume that everyone is pretty much just like they are. How could anyone know of anything that they do not know of?
But the Holy Spirit is given to the disciples of Jesus as a pledge and appetizer of a greater enjoyment to completely swallow them up.
The human spirit and spirituality
11 Jun '08 00:43
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