Philippians 3:21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like to his glorious body… If you take man's body in some of its aspects it is a noble thing. Surely there are marks of design upon it which speak of its Divine origin. Consider the marvellous mechanism of respiration and the circulation of the blood. Trace that network of arteries and veins. Note how the eye and the hand have been singled out as leading to the conclusion of the existence of a God. Mark every joint and every limb. Take our physical nature as you see it in its fair beauty in slumbering infancy. Look at the maiden in the first blush of her beauty or the matron in that beauty's maturity, and then tell me if the body is not a beautiful thing; whether the contemplation of its out ward aspect or its interior mechanism be not a study for our wonder and admiration. But we turn to the other side and hear Paul speaking of it as a mere tent, which is to be taken down, and we turn to the last passage of the preacher of the Old Testament, and there we have a wonderful description so exquisite with its imagery and poetry of the day, "when the keepers of the house shall tremble," etc., which sets forth the sinking and failing powers of old age. But if we want to see the humbling side of this body of ours we must listen to Abraham whose wife's beauty had once been so great. She was so fair a woman that he was induced to lie for her, and yet a few years later from the same Abraham comes the piteous appeal, "Give me a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight" — the same fair, beloved Sarah. And in order, further, that we may see that this body is indeed a body of humiliation, listen to those words which go home to our hearts as we read them — "Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days." (Canon Miller.) Parallel Verses KJV: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. |
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