Reading: “How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?” 1 Corinthians 15:35
The body is the antagonist, and not the auxiliary of the soul—it is its clog, its prison, its foe. The moment that Jesus condescends to “grace this mean abode” with His indwelling presence, there commences that fierce and harassing conflict between holiness and sin, which so often wrings the bitter cry from the believer, “Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Oh, what a cumbrance is this body of sin! Its corruptions, its infirmities, its weaknesses, its ailments, its diseases, all conspire to render it the tyrant of the soul if grace does not keep it under and bring it into subjection as its slave.
How often, when the mind would pursue its favorite study, the wearied and over-tasked body enfeebles it! How often, when the spirit would soar in its contemplations of God, the inferior nature detains it by its weight, or occupies it with its needs! How often, when the soul thirsts for divine knowledge, and the heart pants for holiness, its highest aspirations and its strongest efforts are discouraged and thwarted by the clinging infirmities of a corrupt and suffering humanity! Not so will it be in the morning of the resurrection—“Then shall this corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality.” Mysterious and glorious change! “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” the dead in Christ shall awake from their long sleep and spring from their tombs into a blissful immortality. “Sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” Who can imagine, who describe it—“A spiritual body”? All the remains, all the vestiges of corrupt matter passed away!
“Lord, help me to glorify you; I am poor, help me to glorify you by contentment; I am sick, help me to give you honor by patience; I have talents, help me to extol you by spending them for you; I have time, Lord, help me to redeem it, that I may serve you.”— C. H. Spurgeon
Adapted from Octavius Winslow.
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