Saturday 1 March 2014

DO WE HAVE OUR IMMORTALILTY IN THE FACE OF OUR MORTAL BODIES?

The doctrine of Paul is a clear indication of our duality in the physical as well as in the spiritual sense after our re-grafting into the kingdom of God through the Christ.
This line of thinking is made clear in all the evidence laid bare through the sacrifice of  Jesus for our sake. It is also clear that before the fall at the Garden of Eden, man had with him the endowment in the inheritance of our sonship with the Christ, in that, as much as He was the first born of God, we were endowed with similar attributes to the Father during creation.
According to Genesis, it was after disobeying of God's command at the Garden of Eden that our immortality was affected. This immortality is in the attributes of God in us, which includes the image of God- our divinity.
The sinning of man caused the Spirit of God in us to fall from the center of our being  making our higher self to pay homage to the desires of the lower self.
But Jesus was to later, sacrifice his position in the heavenly kingdom and come to rescue us. It is, however, in the rescue that lays the greatest significance of our position in the kingdom of God, as well as our immortality.
To begin with, we see, according to the scripture, Jesus taking our sin and going to the lowest depth so that He may exchange the sin with our spirit in this lowest depth.
And so, we see in Ephesians 2:6 that God raised us with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realm in Christ Jesus. And in Him, we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
We also see Him who descended to the lowest, ascending above the highest heaven, to fill the universe in every way according to Ephesians 4: 10, accompanied by our spirit according to Ephesians 4: 8.
We, likewise, see him seated in the heavenly realm, with our spirit, and being given power over everything in the heavens and under the heavens with our spirit still hidden with Him in God.
We also get insights from Paul, on how our spirit is hidden with Christ in God.
It is hereby, in this knowledge of where and how our spirit is hidden with Christ in God, that we get the understanding of our immortality.
It is also through the insights given by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2: 6- 16 that we get the revelation of the fact that we have been given the Immortal Spirit of Christ as well as His Mind.
It is no wonder, then, that we groan to be clothed with heavenly bodies according to 2 Corinthians 5:2.
It therefore, follows that, as we are hidden with Christ in God, we are omnipotent, omnipresent as well as omniscient, just as He is.
Immortality is not confined in time and is not constrained by space. This means that if we have our immortality, it cannot be based on future events as it is not bound by time. Similarly, as we have just seen, it cannot be bound by space.
This may be found to be the reason behind Paul's calling on us to focus our mind on higher things, for it is in the higher things, which is achieved by taking on the yoke of Christ, contained in His principles, that we may attain to righteousness and enjoy our deific nature found in the gift of the fulness of Christ in us.
It is therefore not only that we are immortal beings in mortal bodies, but we can enjoy the attribute of immortality while here on earth through the understanding of the law of cause and effect by fixing our eyes not in the seen, but in the unseen, for, according to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4: 18, what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal. This focusing of our mind on higher things is in essence the finding of the kingdom of God in the unseen- the eternal, after which all other things in the seen- the temporary, are added unto us.
 

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