Monday, July 12, 2010
8:41 PM
A sacrament is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. Notice that the actions in the physical universe are, in fact, meaningless were it not for the meaning given to them by the spiritual realities. Thus, all of the sacraments have meaning, but not in meaning merely in relation to human free will. What is meant by "in relation to human free will" is this: That the spiritual meaning of something is a direct consequence of human choice. The Mosaic Law is of this sort. (In Romans 7:4-25) Paul emphasizes how sin gained power through the Law. Before the Law, how could man be accountable for unrighteousness save because of the Law written on his own heart? If man did not have the Law written on his heart, nor had he received the Law in writing, man would not be accountable for his physical actions as to the breaking of the Law. It is not the physical actions that matter, but it is the heart.
"I would not have known what sin was except through the Law... For apart from the Law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful." (Rom 7:7-13)
"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law." (Rom 15:56)
"But sin is not taken into account when there is no law." (Rom 5:13)
Thus, it is the spiritual reality that is important. Nevertheless, God has chosen to give the physical meaning through the spiritual. He does this in a variety of ways: through the Mosaic Law, through the human body, and through the sacraments.
God deemed it necessary to give humans a physical form so that they might interact with a world and each other and recognize themselves as distinct individuals. Yet more than that, God gave humans a particular physical form that He could raise from the dead as He did with His Son. The physical body allows the death and resurrection of all of the faithful, including the Son of God, making it possible for God the Son to complete His mission of love through the crucifixion. The resurrection of the dead is of great importance to Christianity, as the Apostle Paul emphasizes, because it plays a major role in the meaning of the human body and the purification from sin (and escape from the law). If God did not give spiritual value to the physical body of the individual, there would be no purpose for Him to resurrect it or even provide it to human beings at all. For God, who is all powerful, could have made human beings in such manner without the need of a physical body and still would be capable of conveying to humanity His great love through some sort of death and resurrection of His Son. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, discusses the importance of the Resurrection, especially with respect to salvation and eternal life.
"If there has been no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith... And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man." (Rom 15:13,14,17-21)
"But some may ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?' How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as He has determined... So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
"If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: 'The first man Adam became a living being"; the last man Adam [(Jesus)], a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as if the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
"I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. List, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - 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. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'
" 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?' "
(Rom 15:35,38,42-55)
We see in the last passage that the new man will be different than what he was before. It seems at first that Paul is suggesting that humans' spiritual body will not include their physical body, but then he sums his message by saying "For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality." Before that, in verses 39-41, he says that not all flesh is the same, that "men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another", and he further speaks of the differences in the splendor of the heavenly bodies. Notice that all of these "fleshes" are different, yet all of them are physical.
Recall two important things: First, recall that when Jesus rose from the dead, His physical body was resurrected, but, different from before, His body was now IMPERISHABLE!!
"...Jesus himself stood among them [(the disciples)] and said to them, 'Peace be with you... Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." (Luke 24:36,39)
The second thing to recall is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Their bodies were imperishable, for their was no death, but "sin entered the world though one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned - for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as did Adam." (Rom 5:12-14)
One fascinating aspect of the resurrection is the unity of the physical. Considering the interrelationships between the matter and energy in the physical, as well it the transcendence of time of the existence of particles, it may be possible to better understand the meaning of the physical body as a member of the Church via partly by the unity of the physical universe. That is, at the resurrection of the dead, the righteous may be ever more unified to each other and Jesus because of the unity of the physical. In this way, God fills all things, and in this way, Jesus becomes the first born of many brethren. "For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also GLORIFIED" (emphasis mine) (Rom 8:29-30)
Note that Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren in many respects. (cf. Rom 14:8-9) In Rom 8:29-30, the primary two respects are the glorification after the resurrection ("...He also glorified") and possibly the change in character, both of which can be seen in "conformed to the likeness of His Son" (for the resurrection, this means a new, glorified body and immortality; for character, this means righteousness). The surrounding context of the passage is encouragement of the saints ("we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom 8:23)), which seems to suggest Paul is referring to the former idea (glorified body via resurrection).
One of the sacraments that Jesus instituted is baptism. This sacrament is a physical act of being immersed in water, and it is symbolic of the dying and rising again with Christ as well as purification of the soul. In the Jordan River, Jesus, before He is baptized by John, says, "It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." (Matt 3:15) Part of the spiritual meaning in baptism is found in the purification of the soul that occurs when the person is baptized. ALL sin is removed from the person (cf. Acts 2:38), and thus the sins are "washed away", not by the water itself (since the physical is meaningless without the spiritual), but by God reacting to the consent of the baptized who are willing to follow Him. The sacrament of baptism unifies a person with Christ, and they are thus unified with Him in His death and resurrection, as the Apostle Paul declares:
"...don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just a Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once and for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God." (Rom 6:3-10) (cf. Col 2:12)
The unity with Christ results in unity in Christ with all of God's sons and daughters. Thus we become part of the Body of Christ, the Church, with Christ as its head.
"...for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:27-28)
"For we were all baptized by (by/with/in) one Spirit into one body - whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." (1 Cor 12:13)
Baptism is a necessary part of salvation (cf. John 3:5), especially since it is a uniting with Christ in His death and resurrection. From time to time, however, some people may die without having received baptism. Yet God does not judge according to physical accomplishments (recalling that the physical is meaningless without the spiritual) but judges men by their hearts. Thus, those in pursuit of God who die without baptism can be supposed as having a willingness of heart to have partaken in the sacrament should they have known of its necessity. To show that it is only the heart that matters, God chose to poor out the Holy Spirit upon those in Cornelius' house who believed even though they had not yet been baptized (see Acts 10, esp. Acts 11:16).
Finally, the Lord Jesus commands His disciples to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19).
In conclusion to the matter, baptism is a spiritual uniting with Christ. All of the sacraments lead a person closer to being united with Christ and thus more with the Church. The sacraments are not just symbols, but they actually do things spiritually. Nevertheless, they all require the physical, and through them, God gives the physical more meaning. In baptism, water maybe symbolic of life, yet, in order to be baptized, a person must be baptized in water, indicating that the physical form/molecules of water are significant, that is, have meaning to all that baptism does.
The result of baptism is a new creation, one that is freed from sin. Nevertheless, temptation still reigns in the body, though it cannot harm the person unless they submit to it. It is still possible for a person to sin, and death still reigns in the members of one's physical body. At the resurrection, such will change. The freedom from slavery to sin will be accompanied by the freedom from death, and death shall be the last enemy to be defeated. From the grave shall spring forth new life in the glorified bodies of the righteous. And the faithful will ascend to God in their glorified physical bodies, now clothed in immortality for all eternity.
