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This Metamorphosis: the Race Against Death |
| Name: |
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JamesMRohde |
| Date Posted: |
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Aug 23, 08 - 10:56 AM |
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| Message: |
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This Metamorphosis: the Race Against Death
In Philippians 3 Paul talks about being in a race. In accordance with the goal he says, "...am I pursuing into the prize of God's calling above in Christ Jesus." (vs.15) If it must be for a time you seek, waiting on God, then the path is passive reception; but, he's not lying in a porch at the pool of Bethesda hoping someone will come along and help. He is aggressively apprehending. Just prior to describing toward what he aspires with active stretching out to a prize in a competition, a prize defined as being summoned by God into a higher dimension in Christ, he speaks of his target as, "...attaining into the out resurrection that is out from among the dead." (vs.11) After calling it a prize in a race he says "...our realm is inherent in the heavens, out of which we are awaiting a Saviour also, the Lord, Jesus Christ, Who will transfigure the body of our humiliation, to conform it to the body of His glory, in accord with the operation which enables Him even to subject all to Himself." (vs.20-22) This prize is physical metamorphosis, the salvation of our bodies. It is overcoming our mortality. The liberation of the Glory frees the created aspect from the slavery of corruption. (cf., Rom 8:21) The Lord's spirit present in our body metamorphoses it, by an out raying of glory into greater glory. (cf., 2 Cor 3:17-18)
What the Authorized Version translates with the word "perfect" also means "mature" and "finished" in Greek. The "finish" line in this race is where our "maturity" is brought to "perfection." The issue is to beat death. We seek to obtain being so possessed of God, to grasp for what God has grasped us, (cp., vs. 12) that we arrive at sufficient "maturity" to be out of whatever is dead. Rather than being aged by the dying or mortal processes we would be matured by Christ into deathlessness, immortality and incorruptible life. "Corruption [is not] enjoying the allotment (inheritance) of incorruption." (1 Cor 15:50) Whatever of the body is a decaying (or corrupting) corpse it cannot obtain incorruption. The same is said in that passage of flesh and blood not obtaining the kingdom of God. The mystery is we shall not all sleep (in death,) "...yet we all shall be changed." This metamorphosis is the mystery we must be shown, we must see. Whatever impact our devotion may have had on our entrance into the Divine nature, there is ultimately no choice, "For this corruptible MUST put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality." Not the mortified which means already dead, but the mortal, those dying with the aging processes, this is who must put on deathlessness or immortality." Those appointed royal priests in whom this grace strives now apprehend to impart to others what they have obtained.
It is a contest. The race is against death. "The wages of sin is death." That the principle manifestation of the Adversary is through humans seems incontrovertible. But it is not only what within ourselves operates in the realm of death which is the sphere in which sin reigns, (cf., Rom 5:21) it is through others affecting us also. Our "battle is not with flesh and blood," our own or others', yet the immature readily mistake it for such. The truly carnal commit to prove it in actual battles with physical weapons against their misidentified opponents. Well, by this time they may well be actual co-deceived opponents. But the victory over death is achieved in another war. It is in the liberty from God's presence, by, "...uncovered face, mirroring the Lord's glory...being transformed into the same image, from glory into glory, even as from the Lord, the spirit." (2 Cor 4:14) "For if you are living in accord with flesh, you are about to be dying. Yet if, in spirit, you are putting the practices of the body to death, you will be living." (Rom 8:13) "...we are suffering together [with Christ,] that we should be glorified together also." (Rom 8:17) So, to be clothed with glory. "I am...deeming all to be a forfeit because of the superiority of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, because of Whom I forfeited all, and am deeming it to be refuse, that I should be gaining Christ, and may be found in Him, not having my righteousness, which is of law, but that which is through the faith of Christ (His faith,) the righteousness which is out from God on faith: to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, conforming to His death, if somehow I should be attaining into the out resurrection that is out from among the dead." (Philp 3:8-11)
your brother, James M. Rohde |
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