From Worm to Butterfly

David said of himself, "I am a worm, and no man." Such we are by nature--helpless, foolish, earthbound, purposeless. We cannot change ourselves. But the Lord from Heaven came into our nature and our likeness in order that He might bring about a transformation into His nature and likeness. He does not change us by a sovereign act of His will alone; for then He would be working counter to His plan whereby He would have willing and obedient sons, desiring to do His will.

And yet we know, "Apart from Him, we can do nothing." From Him therefore who is the Head, there comes to us as members of His Body, that Divine hormone--that Divine influence of the Spirit--which reacts upon and works in conjunction with our hearts and minds, thereby bringing about a spiritual metamorphosis, a complete changing of our whole being: spirit, soul, and body. This is God's order in restoring Man to His image, just as it was the order in which Man fell from that image. For Adam continued to live on in the natural long after his spirit had "died" as far as his relationship with God was concerned. So in redemption God restores first our spirit, then our soul, and ultimately our body.

Therefore we hear the apostle praying for God's people; for the perfecting of their "spirit, soul, and body," in that order (1 Thess. 5:23).

Knowing the corruption of this human body many would teach that there is no hope of coming into the image and likeness of Christ until our bodies put on immortality. But this is not so. Christ walked in perfect union with the Father, though dwelling in a mortal body. But He was sinless, we are reminded. True... and that's what redemption is all about. He fully dealt with our sin at the Cross, and it is the work of the Spirit of God within us to render the body "dead indeed unto sin" and to make it to be the very temple of God in the earth.

And until we are eventually glorified God has made provision for a "quickening" of our mortal body, by His Spirit that dwells within (Rom. 8:11). And so the groaning continues within us that we might be "clothed upon" with our new house from Heaven, and enter into immortality. But it is not God's intention that we continue to groan in the bondage of sin. It is a groaning rather to be released from the limitation and humiliation of our mortality, that we might know and experience the new life for the body that we have experienced, and are experiencing, for our soul and spirit.

God purposed it this way, that now in the midst of our weakness and mortality we might be the fragile vessels He needs as vessels for His glory. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us" (2 Cor. 4:7).