When the first people sinned the Holy Spirit of Life left the earth. The material creation, including mankind, was made subject to uselessness and corruption. Entrance to the Tree of Life was sealed off.

All of nature became corrupt and dead. The life of human beings was restricted to that which comes from corruptible blood. The human body always is moving toward weakness and death. The Divine Life has left our planet.

The life that comes from human blood is not very satisfactory. The Life of the Holy Spirit, the incorruptible holy Presence and energy of the Godhead placed in every aspect of our personality, is highly desirable.

Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Romans 8:21)

At the coming of the Lord the material creation will experience the wonderful Life of God. That which is now cursed with destruction and death will become a storybook land of love, joy, and peace. The most vicious of animals will be harmless. The trees of the field will clap their hands. Sickness, pain, and death will be a thing of the past.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. (Romans 8:22)

All of nature, including mankind and the animals, is struggling for existence in a world that at one time had been a garden of delight. Humans and animals alike experience pain. What a lesson the past six thousand years have been, teaching angels and people the folly and madness of disobeying the Father!

And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:23)

Here is one of the key verses of the Scriptures. We can see so much in it.

We Christians ought to be groaning within ourselves, eagerly looking forward to the day when the Lord God fills our mortal body with the eternal Life of God.

The great problem with the doctrines of our day, such as the rapture to escape tribulation, the use of faith to make money and be successful, the stress on escaping Hell and going to the spirit Paradise to live forever, the use of Christ to solve all the problems of our work, marriage, ownership of property, and so forth, is the lack of emphasis on the perfecting of our inner personality. We shall never be clothed with a glorified body like that of the Lord until our inner nature has attained the spiritual resurrection from the dead.

It must be obvious to us that a worldly, sinful, disobedient inner nature will never be raised into the fullness of resurrection life in the body. Such a hope is neither scriptural nor logical.

Speaking to Christians:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. (Galatians 6:7,8)

To be continued.