Natural Man Transformed
By Eliza H. Morton
Created Perfect, but Degenerated—Perfection to Be Restored MAN was made a little lower than the angels, and it was natural for him to be spiritually minded. Heb. 2:7. He was surrounded by a spiritual atmosphere. He was permitted to talk with God face to face, and the angels were his teachers. When he yielded to the tempter, he lost his spirituality, and sin became natural for him. When first created, his body was perfect physically; and as long as he ate of the tree of life, his life was perpetuated. Because of sin, he was barred from the tree of life; and consequently his body degenerated, and at length returned to the dust from which it was taken. The natural body, with all its tendencies to evil, is our inheritance. Though marred by sin, it will be raised by Christ from the grave. 1 Cor. 15:22. Those who in this life refuse to separate themselves from sin, will be raised in the image of the corruptible, and be despised of God. Ps. 73:20. They would not enjoy the society of heavenly beings; and God will do the best for them He can, and that will be to destroy them from the face of the earth. They will be as though they had never been. Obadiah 16. The natural mind is carnal. “It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Rom. 8:7. The spirit of the devil works in the minds of the children of disobedience. Eph. 2:2. The natural heart “is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jer. 17:9. Its awful condition is graphically described in Isa. 1:4-6 by the loathsome picture of a body covered with sores. “From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment The carnal mind is defiled (Titus 1:15), puffed up with fleshly lusts (Col. 2:18), and an enemy to God (Col. 1:21). The end of those who mind earthly things is destruction. Phil. 3:19. The word of God is a seed which begins in man a spiritual mind. 1 Peter 1:23. It transforms and renews the mind of him who submits to its workings. The power of the Spirit of God is in His word. It writes the moral law upon the heart, and takes away the desire to sin. Jer. 31:33. Temptations will come; but he who yields his will to Christ, and thinks His thoughts, will have power to resist evil. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 2:5. To be spiritually minded is life and peace. Rom. 8:6. The Renewed and Perfect Body
The spiritual body is beautifully illustrated in 1 Cor. 15:35-38. The farmer plants the bare seed—it may be wheat, rye, oats, barley, or some other grain. When the seed comes up, every kind has its own body. The bare seed is glorified, or manifest in fields of rich, green, waving grain. But the seed produced is the same—wheat is wheat, and oats are oats. So also in the resurrection of the just the natural body will be changed as it springs from the ground, but the identity will remain. We shall know our friends by their old familiar characteristics. The new body will not have corruptible blood in its veins, but it will be spiritual and incorruptible. Those who have spiritual bodies “shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Isa. 40:31. “O, blessed change that's soon to come!
No sickness and no pain!
We'll be with Jesus evermore,
And meet our own again.”