1 Corinthians 15:42–49 ‘If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.’(vv44b–45)
The Christian proposal turns on the fact that mortal life is not the same as our existence. Rather, an eternal creator God establishes the basis for a route of recovery from sin, which obstructs human access to God. What we experience on earth is just a brief sojourn outside paradise, which is presented in Scripture as the original state of God’s creation. Our physicality is subject to decay, for everything outside of God wastes away.
Life is only found in friendship with God, a free, grace-given gift born of the cross and sealed through the resurrection. Once we choose Christ, and make our peace with God (Rom. 5:1–2), we can nurture the life of the Spirit and invest into our eternal destiny, whilst still mortal and earthbound.
Each decision about how we live our life lies within our gift. We simply say yes or no to God (Matt. 5:37). Obviously, our decision is constantly challenged from both external voices seeking to demolish the Christian proposal wholesale, and our inner appetites demanding attention and encouraging us to disobey God’s Word to serve or promote our own felt needs. This external and internal battle is the battleground on which our journey of being formed in Christ’s likeness is decided. Always a hard-fought battle, it will require much of us.
SCRIPTURE TO CONSIDER: Psa. 103:11–18; 1 Cor. 10:6–13; James 4:7–12; 1 John 3:1–10.
A PRAYER TO MAKE: ‘Lord, may I be diligent in growing up into all that God created me to be. Amen.’
Photo by Marko Kovic on Unsplash
