We Love Change

 

DEVOTION

THE 1^ST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

WE LOVE CHANGE

1 Cor 15:50-58

50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."  

55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"  

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

NIV

It is absolutely impossible to get to heaven in the form or state of the human condition we currently are in. Our bodies are flesh and blood and are going to evidentially die. That is a fact and there is nothing we can do to change that. However, we have been born again, our spirit has been reborn into the family of God. Once our spirit was dead because of our sin, both the sin of Adam and our own personal sin. Now because our spirit is alive in Christ, we live in this temporary tent, this body which is mortal. This is not our home, nor is this world our home, we are just passing through, our treasures are laid up beyond the blue. We will lay this tent aside one day and leave it behind to be in that place Jesus has prepared for us. However, from these verses, we also get that truth which gives us how the resurrected of our bodies will be. There is the idea that when we die, we simply fall asleep, and we are not yet in the presence of the Lord. We are simply dead or sleeping until the sound of the last trumpet. Then we will be raised, in a new bodily form, a glorified body as Jesus was in when he was raised. Whether we are dead for a day or a thousand years, we will not know, as it will be when we sleep at night, we are not aware of sleeping until we wake. So what does it matter how we will enter the kingdom? On the other hand, it is said that if we are absent from the body, we are present with the Lord, so as we die, we step into eternity, in a flash, we are changed from being flesh and blood, which we leave, and become our spirit in some other form, and enter the presence of our Lord. Either way, death loses, and we give up mortality for immortality. We give up being perishable and become imperishable. We give up being corruptible and become incorruptible. Death has no hold on us, and we will not stay dead although we die, for we will live. This body will give out on us, but it is not who we are, for we are spirit. We also know that is the only way we can truly worship God, in spirit and in truth. How can flesh and blood, that is corruptible, perishable, and mortal worship God who is none of those things?

John 4:23-24

23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth ." 

NIV

These are the very words of God, and so let us understand that we are a spirit who can indeed worship God. This is fact and we will not be moved from the truth of God, nor will be moved from God or His presence. We will stand firm in our faith, never wavering from this truth, that even though we die, we will live. We love this change that has happened and will happen.