This idea, of future capability and exaltation for human nature, as
proved by the Saviour's incarnation, is brought to view in the second
chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The second Psalm is there quoted
as speaking of man: "Thou hast put all things under his feet." "But
now," the apostle says, "we see not yet all things put under him;" man,
as a race, has not reached his full destiny of glory and honor; but, in
the person of Christ, human nature has taken possession of its future
inheritance. We see not yet all things put under man, as a race; but "we
see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering
of death, crowned with glory and honor;"--a sign and pledge of our
destiny.
To the mind of Paul, the sight, in heaven, of what he was to become, set
forth by the glorified person of the Son of God, his Saviour and
infinite Friend, no doubt made the resumption of the body, at the last
day, the most desirable experience of which it was possible for him to
conceive. Paradise, with all its social pleasures, gates of pearl,
streets of gold, every thing, in short, external to him, must have
seemed, to the apostle, not worthy to be compared with the glory which
was to be revealed in him. An intelligent man is far more interested in
his own personal endowments, than in the accidental circumstances of his
situation. Every one, who is not degraded in his feelings, would prefer
to be enriched with natural, moral, and intellectual powers, rather than
be the richest of men, or an hereditary monarch, with inferior talents
and worth. To such a man as Paul, the possession of his complete,
glorified nature, at the resurrection, must, for this reason, have
seemed far better than all the pleasures or honors of the heavenly
world. That completed nature would constitute him a being wholly
perfected, invest him with a likeness to the Son of God, bring him into
still nearer union with that adorable Redeemer, who, Paul says, loved
him and gave himself for him, and for whom, he says, he had suffered the
loss of all things. The sight of the man Christ Jesus wearing Paul's
nature in a glorified state, no doubt lived and glowed in his memory
after his return to earth, and made him think of the resurrection as the
event, in his personal history, to which every thing else was
subordinate. He shows the interest which he felt in this event, when,
writing to the Romans, he says, "And not only they,"--that is, "the
creatures," or creation,--"but ourselves, also, which have the first
fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting
for the adoption, to wit, the redemption, of our body." In his address,
at Jerusalem, before his accusers and the people, he cried out, "Of the
hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." It was
uniformly a prominent topic of his thoughts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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