Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature …
Summary: Understanding Paul’s words requires the ability to discern our invisible qualities.
The Bible talks a lot about life and death and, of course, we all know what “life and death” is.
Right?
As we have discussed in past meditations, there are two kinds of “life and death.” One is the obvious one that we see and hear about in our natural lives. People are “born,” people “live,” and people “die.” All the time.
What we can’t see is what happens to our eternal soul.
Our soul is part or maybe even all of our spiritual self. This is the part that Jesus talks about when he says we need to be “born again” (John 3:3). It is also the part that the Bible tells us will be thrown into the “lake of fire” if the owner of the soul rejects Jesus Christ (Revelation 20: 14-15).
Now Paul tells us to “put to death … whatever belongs to your earthly nature …” It is as if there is a battle between our spiritual nature and our physical nature.
An interesting thought experiment is to ask the question, “What would happen if our soul were separated from our body?” Normally, this happens when the physical body dies, but what if a person were still “alive” physically when their soul was taken away?
One has to wonder what influence the “earthly nature,” as Paul calls it, would have on a body without a soul. Would the body, suddenly unrestrained by the moral compass of the soul, begin to indulge every vice of the flesh?
Probably not.
Wrapped up with the soul are other parts of our invisible self. Our mind and will appear to be linked to the soul, which means without a soul, the body cannot function as a person.
So what is Paul saying?
The “earthly nature,” as he calls it, is the physical impulses that originate in the flesh. Hunger, for example, belongs to our earthly nature. Once free from our physical body, the spirit does not hunger for physical food.
What else does the earthly nature crave?
In the rest of this verse, Paul details five major impulses that originate in the flesh. We will look at each one more closely in the coming meditations.
Application: Think about which parts of your being are godly and which are not.
Food for Thought: What does Paul mean by “death” in this case?
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