There are some who stop their search for truth by submitting their faith to the words of man, overlooking the plain language of inspiration. Such is the subject of our discussion, today, THE BODY. Of all the expressions of genius, the creation of the human body was God’s highest accomplishment during the creation era. Its purpose and use are mostly comprehended while the original purpose and intention is overlooked. How did the end of the human body change in the sin of the Garden of Eden? Did God create the human body lacking the ability to control it and understanding its use in the “Great Mystery” of the faith of the Lord Jesus? Was the body meant to exist forever (using this word, forever, as a play on words). Finally, did God have a plan for the body in life or death when He created it? Did God make the human body, eternal?
Immortality is an interesting word in the Greek language. This word is used many times. What does it exactly mean and how does this reflect on the sin of the Garden? Immortality is a trait of the nature of they who are God. Hebrews 13:8; 1 Timothy 6:16 Simply, it means “unchangeable.” This earthly physically body was never meant to be immortal, it was, though, meant to last as long as God a purpose in using it. Hebrews 9:27 There will again come a time when the body which we inhabit will be as “intended from the beginning of the world.” What the sin of Adam and Eve did change was the desecration God determined for this physical tabernacle of clay.
Most think of death as a curse; “they have no hope” 1 Corinthians 15:14-19 The excessive weeping on the day honoring the promotion of a loved one “in Christ” shows someone has not been teaching on this subject!! In the church of the first three centuries, crying at funerals was so looked down on they actually would dis-fellowship those who wept!
The Tree of Life in the Garden was a real, working thing. They who would eat of this fruit would actually “live forever,” IF we know what “forever” means symbolically we will know that there have been a few who have almost reached that plateau. Forever is used of God in the writings of the scriptures to mean 1,000 years or “all those that belong to Him.”. When the words are stated repetitively, it meant eternal. There have been men who have lived almost to the age of 1,000. One of these men had access to the Tree of Life. Whether he ate of that tree or no, we know not, but that he had access to it caused one of they who share the nature of God to say to the other two; “behold, the man has become one of Us to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden.pf Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken.” So He drove out the man. He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden a cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” Genesis 3:22-24
There have been several “hints” in the Old and New Testaments which may have been overlooked. Our bodies were given to us as a place in which to stay UNTIL “God’s use for the body was finished, then He would just “take it” (rapture us)!! Sin changed the way in which the body was to be separated from the soul and spirit. God said to Adam: “dust thou art, mto dust thou returnest,” Genesis 3:20. The resurrection of the body on the last day,. 1 Corinthians 15:52, will have been a body “sown in weakness”!! The occurrence of sin changed not only the way in which the body was disposed, it also changed man’s relationship to the garnering of food, use of the soil to grow food, and keeping the Garden clean-since he did not like the garden of Eden well enough not to eat ONE Man’s body is physical and will change, we are mortal, we cannot take a “mortal” body into an immortal realm!! 1 Corinthians 15:50 God cannot change, He is immortal. When God, the Father spoke to God the Son at His resurrection He said: “And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest; and art the same, and thy years shall not fail they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall change: but Thou.art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.” Hebrews 1:10-12. When the body takes on immortality then shall be brought to pass (fulfillment) the saying written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is they victory?”
