Blessed Hope Bible-Presbyterian Church
500 Upper Bukit Timah Rd, Singapore 678106
Every believer has this hope that his mortal body will return to earth but God will remake new an immortal body. This immortal body is described as spiritual and heavenly. It is a body that is fitted for glorious, heavenly living.
The first Adam became a living being when God breathed life into him as recorded in Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
The contrast is made to highlight the glory of the resurrection body of the saints at the last day. He uses the words “incorruption, glory, power, spiritual body” to describe the glorified body given to the believer when the Lord returns.
The beginning of the human soul is at physical birth. Born into this world after the fall of Adam and Eve, man is plagued with the disease of sin that brings to him misery, suffering and finally death and then judgment in hell-fire. But God in His mercy did not leave men to eternal misery and torment.
Contrast is made with the glories of the bodies of sun and stars, and moon that God has made in the heavens above and the things that he has made on earth beneath, the birds, the animals, and the fishes. This contrast is made to distinguish our present physical body and the glorified body that we will receive from the Lord when He returns to bring us to glory.
This is the hope of the believer as one age and sees the decay of the earthly body. God will create anew a superior body for every believer. To the believer, there is no loss for him in the final equation in the light of eternity because God has promised to him a glorified body that will not decay and wear out like the earthly body.
The Apostle Paul impresses the truth upon our hearts that the resurrection body is starkly different from our present mortal body by the illustration that the animals are different from the fishes and the birds in God’s created world. Although they are all fleshly beings but are different from one another. They provide for us the wonders of God’s creation that bring glory to Him.
We cannot tell by looking at a seed the first time what the plant will look like and the fruit that the plant will bear. It is God, who by His wisdom, gave the plants and the herb yielding seeds, to be what it is. It is God, our blessed Creator, who does so, as the Apostle Paul writes, as it hath pleased him.
A plant begins its existence in the form of a little seed that is sown on the ground. And from it, a plant shoots up as the seed germinates. When there is no seed, there will be no plant. A natural state in God’s created world. The plant derives its features from the seed.
William MacDonald observed, “It is wonderful indeed to think of the mystery of life that is hidden in every tiny seed. We may dissect the seed and study it under the microscope, but the secret of the life principle remains an unfathomable mystery. All we know is that the seed falls into the ground and from that unlikely beginning there springs forth life from the dead.”