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3.10 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
The Christianity of Paul
Danger of Subjection to Flesh
The resurrection of the body, of which Paul speaks at some length in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, does not mean the resurrection of our present fleshly body -- its resurrection would be not a blessing, but a curse; it means on the contrary, the resurrection of a spiritual body which is not simply the present fleshly body purified, but a body of an entirely different nature. It is this contrast between the present fleshly body and the future spiritual body that Paul emphasizes in the chapter referred to.
The new spiritual body is distinguished from the old fleshly body just as sharply as the new spiritual life is distinguished from the old fleshly life. The resurrection of one's body, therefore, is simply the natural sequence of one's resurrection with Christ to the new life in the Spirit here on earth.
Those who have already risen here in the Spirit shall rise again after the death of their present bodies in a new spiritual body, by its very nature holy and immortal, and thus fitted for the new spiritual and eternal life.
The death unto the flesh, which has already taken place in the case of the believer, means his release form the control of the flesh, but not his separation from it. Contact with the flesh still continues. He still has flesh, but the flesh no longer rules him. He is now its master, not its slave. He lives no longer in it, but in the Spirit, and he is therefore a truly spiritual and not a fleshly man. [Cf. Rom. 8:4, 5, 12 sq.; 1 Cor. 6:15 sq.; 2 Cor. 4:7 sq.; Gal. 5:16, 18, 24]
But so long as the flesh remains alive, it maintains a constant struggle against the Spirit, striving continually to regain the mastery of the man. [Gal. 5:17 sq.] For that reason the Christian is in constant danger. Though he has died with Christ unto the flesh and risen with him in the Spirit, and has thus been freed from the control of sin and become a servant of God, [Rom. 6:22] he may lose his hold upon Christ [Col. 2:19] and fall back into his old bondage; [Gal. 5:1, 4, 13] having begun in the Spirit, he may end in the flesh; [Gal. 3:3] for even a spiritual man may be tempted, [Gal. 6:1] and coming again under the domination of the flesh, may be lost. [1 Cor. 9:27]
That a man can be at the same time under the control of both the flesh and the Spirit, and can live at the same time in accordance with both, Paul denies unequivocally. [Rom. 8 6-9; cf. 1 Cor 10:21] But he that is not under the control of the Spirit, he that is living in the flesh and not in the Spirit, is none of Christ's [Rom. 8:9]
The Christian's flesh which still clings to him, is sinful, and continues to serve the "law of sin," as it did before his conversion, [Rom. 7:25] but he himself is no longer under its control, he is a "new creature". [2 Cor. 5:17] Nor can he come under its control and follow its behests without ceasing to be a spiritual man and a disciple of Christ. It is the realization o f this danger of subjection to the flesh, which besets a man even after he has been released form its dominion, that draws from Paul the earnest warnings admonitions, and exhortation with which his epistles are filled.
Those exhortations are addressed to Christians, and are none the less urgent because he is continually reminding them that they have already died unto sin and been released from its control. On the contrary, they gain added force and point from that very fact; for having been thus liberated, there is the more reason for Christians to guard their liberty jealously, that they may not fall again into the old and deadly bondage. [Cf. Rom. 6:12, 13; 8:12, 13; 13:12-14; 1 Cor. 6:20; Gal. 5:1 sq., 16-25; Phil. 2:12; Col. 3: 1-10]
Used by permission of the publisher.
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