There is some sense in which we will, in our resurrected bodies, retain something we gained from our mortal existence. I have no idea how to express this, but there is something we will bring with us from this life into Eternity.
That’s inherent in what Paul wrote about Christ. His short catechism about Jesus in Colossians 1:15-20 was a powerful counter to the Gnostic heresies and the Judaizers and their denial that Christ could be both human and divine. Paul said that all we could know about God was inherent in Jesus. But that He was the firstborn from the dead makes a critical statement that whatever we can expect to see in the Resurrection will echo what Jesus looked like and acted like during that forty days He hung around before Ascension.
What makes it difficult is that we cannot know what part of His post-resurrection body was merely a manifestation of where He was at the time. In the Final Resurrection, we cannot estimate what our glorified bodies will be, but we will have them. What that represents is affirmed in the teaching that only what we do for His glory will follow us into Eternity. Thus, whatever we hope to have there will depend on how thoroughly we dedicate ourselves to His glory here. It’s an added reason to walk in faith. Don’t you want to look your best in Eternity?
It’s impossible to come up with a clinical distinction between flesh and eternal nature. The only clue we have from Scripture is how we must allow the Spirit to reign over our lives through our hearts, not through the intellect. The intellect is part of our fleshly nature, and it always wants to be its own god. We do have the equipment to subject the flesh, but it’s not a status we can achieve. Rather, it’s an ongoing process and something that must be fed in order to grow stronger than the fleshly nature.
Every day we kill just a little bit more of the fleshly nature, until the day we graduate to our rest. It does not require a definitive clinical explanation. The demand for that kind of thing is the flesh itself seeking an excuse to take control and manipulate. We must rely on the ineffable nature of divine truth to keep the flesh on the back foot.
That demand for clinical data, for “propositional truth”, is always a matter of flesh. This is why we reject a lot of so-called historical church orthodoxy. That orthodoxy, starting with early church history and the propositional statements on Christology, are catering to the flesh. It turns theology into a profession with certifications and markers for fleshly consideration, for something that is supposed to deny the flesh. We don’t need factual precision; we need obedience. We need only a functional definition of who Jesus is in order to follow Him.
Elect souls know how to find Him. The only thing we need to teach them is denying the fleshly nature and escaping its manipulations. By refusing to satisfy intellectual curiosity on things, we deny the flesh’s control. Our biggest problem is that the fleshly nature is the very foundation of our Western Civilization. Everything that makes the West “great” in the minds of Western Civilization’s advocates happens to be catering to the flesh and its lust for control, it’s lust for rejecting God’s way of things.
Serving Christ is purely personal. It’s nepotism and playing favorites; it’s unashamedly feudal in making Him Lord. It’s not about the rules; the rules are Him. He is the One living and active and able to slice cleanly between spirit and flesh. And how we learn that in our heads is to recognize the tendencies and where the choices lead. We seek a powerful internal sense of God’s priorities in this life.
Each victory over the flesh, each empowerment of the Spirit in our mortal existence, adds beauty and character to our eternal bodies in the next life. I don’t know about you, but I want all the charisma the Lord will give me.
