Death and Hope

We have a hope to live; a hope for life and a hope to never experience death.  We loath the thought of death. Death is the ultimate enemy of hope.  Death is final.  It extinguishes hope.  In death, hope ceases. Death, its process and the inevitable coming experience on the other side of death is out of our control. Perhaps that is why we tend to shy away from discussing death. And we are aware that it extinguishes our hope. But does it? For sure, death seems to end our temporal hopes.  All of it ends and eventually burns.  However, we are encouraged to migrate to and embrace an eternal hope, one that transcends the temporal, that which we see. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18: “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Accordingly, in properly understanding death, the outcome results in hope. For in the case of physical death, which is guaranteed, as our soul lives on into eternity, our physical bodies get replaced by new ones. 1Corinthians 15:38: “But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.” So Glory to God, the suffering in the decay of our current bodies...

Sex, Body and Soul – Part 3

In Part 2 we discussed man’s body and soul/spirit. To review, God created man with two parts: a body and a soul/spirit. As Christians we spend this life investing in our souls. This is the process of dying to ourselves (e.g. Luke 9:23-24 and John 12:24-25), of being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29), of allowing Jesus to increase as we decrease (John 3:30). Investing in our souls during this earthly life impacts the quality of our souls in eternity. But what about our bodies? The bible tells us that bodily discipline is of little profit (1 Timothy 4:8). I may be convicted out of stewardship to invest in a healthy earthly body, but a healthy earthly body does not translate into a healthy eternal body. So, how do I invest in my eternal body? The bible teaches us that there is one area in our earthly lives that impacts our eternal bodies: sexual morality. 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 is one of the New Testament’s foundational passages on sexual morality. In these verses the Apostle Paul teaches the importance of sexual purity, and the connection between morality and our resurrected body. Early in the passage Paul makes a distinction between our temporal and eternal body. Food and the stomach are temporal, and both are perishing (v. 13). But the resurrected body is eternal. That Paul has our resurrected body in mind is made clear when he states that God raised Christ from the dead and He will raise our body up as well (v. 14). In verses 15-17 Paul goes on to explain the connection between immorality and...