251 Rom4:15 & 5:13
252 Jn9:41
253 Deut24:16
254 Rom5:18
255 Rom4:10
256 The discardable intellectual vessel being the infants’ problem, not the God-given soul 257 Christos Yannaras: The Freedom of Morality (p151)
42
Paul is nevertheless insistent that this disordered human body is to be loved and cherished by its owner, satisfied by its sexual partner if it has one258 and for the Christian acts as a temple for the Holy Spirit. Even this carnal version is a wonder of science, fearfully and wonderfully made and potentially beautiful to behold, whilst what remains of it will eventually be utilized to create a glorious new body. Certainly in the visual sense, the body one currently inhabits will always remain a part of one’s identity. Physical and spiritual have become one but will be later separated and the physical component redeemed and ennobled before being reunited with its eternal spiritual partner such that body, soul and spirit become a holy and inseparable unity. In the meantime, the Christian must pummel the temporary vessel and bring it under subjection259 for the disciple of Christ has been set a course to run; he is like an athlete straining for a prize, which is the high calling of God260.
The body of this death
Paul describes this temporary vessel as “the body of this death”. Regrettably,
“Somatos tou thanatou toutou261 is often inadequately translated, such as in the New Jerusalem Bible utilized by Catholics where it is “the body doomed to death”. That is not what the Greek relays and entirely misses the point. The apostle is not referring to the human body’s fate but its current condition. It is the degenerative procreated intellectual vessel that leads the divinely planted soul into death (i.e., disruption in divine communion).
Such spiritual deprivation is what the apostle means by “this death”, i.e., the death the person he was illustrating was currently experiencing. It is not damnation or total depravity, which would pertain to the soul or whole person. The mortal body is indeed “doomed to die”; an obvious fact but not the point Paul was making; for that issue can and will be resolved at resurrection. The body of this death on the other hand requires a more immediate remedy for those who are to relate to God whilst still in it so that their soul may be fashioned for a still greater destiny. That remedy is participation with Christ262.
It all stems from the Garden of Eden incident and God’s previous warning to Adam:
“You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day
you eat of it you shall surely die”263
These children of God would “die” the very day they ate the forbidden fruit, and so they did; their relationship with God was disrupted from that moment. That is the cessation of the Life God has intended for the pinnacle of His creation: intimate communion of the human soul with the Source of its eternal life. This is recoverable only by being “born again”
and coming to know the sacred interior presence of Christ who restores Life to those who feed on Him264.
The sting of death is sin?!
258 1Cor7:5
259 1Cor9:27
260 Phil3:13-15
261 Rom7:24
262 Rom7:24-25
263 Gen2:17
264 Jn6:57
43
One needs to observe carefully what the apostle writes concerning spiritual death265:
“The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law”. The converse idea, namely that the sting of sin is death is better understood and Paul quotes as much from Hosea. But once again the apostle intends exactly what he writes. It confirms among other things that when Paul speaks of death it is not a reference to a state of damnation for in this case sin results
from death, not leads to it. Something being spiritually dead has resulted in sin, that something being the mortal body and brain. In responding to the body’s natural inclinations, the soul rebels against the divine light of conscience and so disrupts the relationship with the Source of its spiritual life. For what had been conceived in sin266 has “died” leading in turn to sin that destroys Life once the “law” (a sense of right and wrong) is perceived and invariably breached267. Hence the need for heavenly grace by which one can be spiritually purified, receiving ongoing cleansing of the soul - so that those predestined to such privileges and responsibilities may serve God whilst in mortal flesh.
The apostle had further asserted that “death will be swallowed up in victory”, yet even celestial grace does not fully resolve the problem of mortal embodiment. God intends to save our soul and body, but He does not do so simultaneously. So even the Christian is tempted to sin whilst in mortal flesh which is why it is his body that is to be offered as a living sacrifice “so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk after the flesh but after the spirit”268; for it is the spirit that having been supplied by God loves His law and wishes to serve righteousness. Not until “this corruptible” (body) has been transformed at resurrection will death (physical and spiritual) finally be swallowed up in victory when the body itself is redeemed269. The soul’s vessel in its current degenerative state is the cause of the human problem being the outworking of original sin; the final solution will not be for the soul to lose a body altogether and be eternally at rest in the spiritual realm (a spurious dualism), but to be re-clothed in a new body which is from
heaven270 and to be united to the Man who is God and actively participate within His realm; that will be joy unspeakable and full of glory.