Dear Friends,
Today I intend to draw your attention toward something about the dichotomy between body and soul, and I believe it will prove very useful to you.
Whatever we have to do for our spirit, we have to do
while living in the body. Bible does not teach that looking after and
fulfilling the requirements of our body is sin. Bible is against fulfilling the
sinful desires of our body, not against fulfilling its basic needs which are
necessary for staying alive. Bible compares our body with a seed which we have
to sow in the ground in order to harvest a spiritual body. Therefore, we have
to do all that we can for our body in order to stay alive.
Today I intend to draw your attention toward something about the dichotomy between body and soul, and I believe it will prove very useful to you.
There are people in this world who consider their body
as their enemy due to the weaknesses attached to it – weaknesses which come in
the way of achieving spiritual perfection. They are quite ignorant about God’s
purpose behind giving us our body.
Whatever we have to do for our spirit, we have to do
while living in the body. Bible does not teach that looking after and
fulfilling the requirements of our body is sin. Bible is against fulfilling the
sinful desires of our body, not against fulfilling its basic needs which are
necessary for staying alive. Bible compares our body with a seed which we have
to sow in the ground in order to harvest a spiritual body. Therefore, we have
to do all that we can for our body in order to stay alive.
Jesus has something very important to say in this
respect:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life
more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air;
they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father
feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can anyone of you by
worrying add a single hour to your life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers
of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even
Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God
clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into
the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not
worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we
wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father
knows that you need them. But seek first
his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as
well.”
Jesus wants you to make it a priority of your life to
attain to the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven and the righteousness of
God. So far as you are driven by these goals, God has committed Himself to
fulfill all your physical needs without fail.
One day when one of Jesus’ disciples asked Him, “We
have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”
Jesus’ reply was: “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of
all things, when the Son of Man (Jesus) sits on His glorious throne, you who
have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or
mother or wife or children or fields for My sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.”
Dear friends, this little book does not afford scope
for explaining in detail what Jesus meant when He talked about ‘the renewal of
all things’. However, it suffices for now to say that anyone who sacrifices
anything for Jesus, Jesus is going to repay a hundred times as much when the
appointed time comes. Not only He will give hundred fold for anything that you
forsake for His sake, He will give you eternal life.
In other words, you have reward both in this life and
the life that is to come after death. And the reward that we shall get from
Jesus will be infinitely greater than anything that we might ever sacrifice for
Him. He is God and will repay us like God. We are human beings and, therefore,
are bound to give like humans.
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