The Bible: A Pleasant Garden to a Precious City (4)
God’s eternal purpose proceeds from a pleasant garden to the pure and precious New Jerusalem. This wonderful city is built together by God’s life entering and spreading in all His people.
In the garden “Jehovah God formed man with the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul..” This man was good, not yet fallen into sin and death. But God had not yet become man’s life.
Through the redemption of Christ and the regeneration of the Spirit, man’s spirit is enlivened.
Romans 8:10 tells us, “if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.” Our spirit, our innermost part, is life but our body, from the dust in Genesis 2 and the fall in Genesis 3, is still dead.
Second Corinthians 4:7 says “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” We remain earthen but Christ the treasure has been imparted into us. We are still waiting for “the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23). This will be accomplished by “the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:21).
As a result of transfiguration, our entire being will be in resurrection and in glory, matching New Jerusalem. We will no longer be in a body of dust so that we can fully participate in New Jerusalem, which is composed solely of precious materials without any dust.
Photo courtesy of Good Free Photos.
Bible verses quoted in these posts are from The Holy Bible, Recovery Version, published and © by Living Stream Ministry, Anaheim CA, 2003. The New Testament of this Bible, with its outlines, is at online.recoveryversion.org; this too is © by LSM.
Posted by Don on February 2, 2022
