When Paul says the wages of sin is death he does not mean if we sin we will die physically or if we do not sin we will live physically. Some sinners live a long life and some righteous die young. The good die young, they say, and I am seventy-one years old. What does that tell us?

So Paul must mean some other kind of death, some other kind of life. We submit that Paul is referring to our relationship to God and also, and perhaps especially, to the eternal resurrection life of Christ that dwells in the follower of Christ.

We have resurrection life in us now, the very Life of the Father. If we continue to sow to the Spirit of God we will continue in eternal life now and in the Day of Resurrection our inward life will expand into our outward frame and then our entire personality will be clothed with our house from Heaven.

This reminds us of the Ark being brought from Zion and the Tabernacle from Gibeon and both of them placed in the Temple of Solomon.

But if we sow to our flesh we lose our eternal resurrection life now. We do not walk in fellowship with the Father. In the Day of Resurrection there is no inward life present to expand into our outward frame. Also we have not endured the process of dying with Christ and living with Christ and therefore there is no house from Heaven to clothe our personality.

So our mortal frame is called forth from its place of interment by the voice of Christ (for all shall be raised) to stand before the Judgment Seat. Our flesh and bones will be animated by spiritual force but not by the incorruptible, eternal resurrection Life in which Jesus and His saints live, move, and have their being. Satan is animated by spiritual force but not by the eternal Life of God.

What can we expect? Salvation by fire at the very best. Eternal torment in the Lake of Fire at worst. But all of this will take place in the body. For man, unlike angels, is spirit, soul, and body. He will be judged in his body, rewarded in his body, and punished in his body.

To be saved by fire does not mean we will have a two- story mansion instead of a ten-story mansion. It means that most of our personality will be burned away and we will begin life again as a small child with no inheritance to bring with us into the Kingdom of God. By God's mercy we have been permitted to enter the righteous world to come. There we will be given into the charge of others who will raise us. After our punishment has been concluded our memory will be erased and we will start again.

To be continued.