FOREIGN & NATIVE

                                                                    Foreign & Native

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    ‘I believe in the Resurrection of the body’ (Apostles’ Creed) means that Christians believe that even though they die yet shall they live. This was illustrated when the dead contents in Lazarus’s tomb became alive again. Jesus, beforehand, had said to Martha, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ (John 11:25). However, some Christian have forgotten about the resurrection of their bodies and now believe they are foreigners rather than natives of the planet earth!

As Christians we may be foreigners to this fallen world but still natives. After all, even Christians are earthlings, and as such, when we are dead and in our graves, Jesus will open our graves (and urns!), making alive the dead contents therein. Along with our bodies, we will be resurrected.

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The LORD promised Abraham and his fellow believing descendants the world. ‘For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith’ (Rom. 4:13). ‘Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham’ (Gal. 3:7-9).

It becomes even more clear that we are not foreign but native to Earth where Jesus quotes Psalm 37:11 in one of His Beatitudes, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’ (Matt. 5:5). Again, inheriting the earth means that we Christians are heirs because, along with Abraham, we belong to Christ. ‘And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Gal. 3:29). In other words, we are natives of earth because the man Christ Jesus is a native. This is where some Christians begin to neglect our belief in ‘the Resurrection of the body.’

‘As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man’ (1 Cor. 15:48-49). The error is in thinking that, as to His humanity, Jesus is not made of the same stuff as Adam, i.e., the dust of this earth, and that Jesus was not resurrected with the same body with which He died on the cross. However, the dead contents of Jesus’s tomb became the alive Jesus when His departed soul was reunited with His body on day three. Others complicate things even more by believing that Jesus’s divinity absorbed His humanity after the resurrection of His body. In this we end up with the popular but unbiblical belief that, when we die, we spend eternity sitting on clouds with halos on our heads while strumming harps!

We are not foreign but native to earth which the Father has gifted to His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, for a job well done! ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein’ (Psa. 24:1).

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        'For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death’ (1 Cor. 15:21-26).