Mystical body of Christ

“ AN ASSURED HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. 2 Cor. 5:1-8 describes the longing of the Christian to be clothed with a body after he has been called upon to lay aside this earthly tabernacle. He has no desire for a bodiless existence. The ascension and exaltation of Christ assures the believer that as Christ, so he also will take his place in heaven with a body like unto Christ's own glorious body. ”

“ According to the Catholic dogma of the person of Christ, he filleth the universe only by virtue of his Godhead. With his life as the Son of Man he filleth only the Church, his body. But how much more largely does God reveal himself by his personal inhabitation of the sacred humanity of Christ than by the creative power wherewith he penetrateth and filleth all in all! Here a single ray, a faint reflection of his glory, flutters through the veil of created nature, there the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily. ”

“ For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.’ His earnest expectation and hope was, ‘that Christ be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.’ The relation between body and spirit is so intimate, the power of sin in the spirit comes so much through the body, the body is so distinctly the object both of Christ’s redemption and the Holy Spirit’s renewal, that our study of holiness will be seriously defective if we do not take in the teaching of Scripture on holiness in the body. ”

“ But Christ's body after the Resurrection was truly made up of elements, and had tangible qualities such as the nature of a human body requires, and therefore it could naturally be handled; and if it had nothing beyond the nature of a human body, it would likewise be corruptible. ”

“ So that, using the figure He used, we may say that the company of Christians now on earth are Christ in a new form, His body indeed. “That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but bare grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body.” Christ having been sown, lives now in His people. They are the body in which He dwells. ”

“ It is a fact then that those who knew most both about the body and about the spirit of Jesus believed they saw the body and were encouraged so to believe. Besides, if we accept the view that though Christ is alive, His body remained in the grave, we are at once confronted with the difficulty that Christ's glorification is not yet complete. If Christ's body did not partake in His conquest over the grave, then that conquest is partial and incomplete. ”

“ It is because he has no true conception of the infinite purity and holiness of God, or of what they must become who shall be in harmony with His character; because he has no true conception of the purity and exalted loveliness of Jesus, and the malignity and evil of sin, that man can regard himself as holy. The greater the distance between himself and Christ, and the more inadequate his conceptions of the divine character and requirements, the more righteous he appears in his own eyes.
The sanctification set forth in the Scriptures embraces the entire being,—spirit, soul, and body. ”

“ Since deity and humanity are indissolubly united in Christ's single person, we cannot regard Christ's human soul as limited to place without vacating his person of its divinity. But we cannot conceive of his human body as thus omnipresent. As the new bodies of the saints are confined to place, so, it would seem, must be the body of their Lord. But, though heaven be the place where Christ manifests his glory through the human body which he assumed in the incarnation, our ruling conception of heaven must be something higher even than this, namely, that of a state of holy communion with God. ”

“ Let that pure face shine upon heart and spirit, and as the sun photographs itself on the sensitive plate exposed to its light, and you get a likeness of the sun by simply laying the thing in the sun, so He will ‘be formed in, you.’ Iron near a magnet becomes magnetic. Spirits that dwell with Christ become Christ-like. The Roman Catholic legends put this truth in a coarse way, when they tell of saints who have gazed on some ghastly crucifix till they have received, in their tortured flesh, the copy of the wounds of Jesus, and have thus borne in their body the marks of the Lord. ”

“ As, in truth, God straightway took dust from the earth, and fashioned man in His image, [and no man is able to say that he is not the image of God] , so also was it the case of the bread of which He said, ‘This is My Body,’ for it is not to be regarded as a merely commemorative thing, and we believe that it is indeed the Body of Christ. ”

“ They are obliged to worship not only the divine nature of Jesus Christ, but also his human nature, his soul and body. Yet, the human nature of Christ is a created and finite substance, not possessing a single divine attribute. ”

“ For, just as the natural body is one though made up of diverse members, so the whole Church, Christ's mystic body, is reckoned as one person with its head, which is Christ. Thirdly, by way of efficiency, inasmuch as Christ's flesh, wherein He endured the Passion, is the instrument of the Godhead, so that His sufferings and actions operate with Divine power for expelling sin. ”

“ But glorified bodies, Christ's especially, do not stand in need of being so contained, because they draw nothing from the heavenly bodies, but from God through the soul. So there is nothing to prevent Christ's body from being beyond the containing radius of the heavenly bodies, and not in a containing place. Nor is there need for a vacuum to exist outside heaven, since there is no place there, nor is there any potentiality susceptive of a body, but the potentiality of reaching thither lies in Christ. ”

“ If Christ, as the Eternal Reason, inspired each man, as well as enlightening him, he need never have assumed flesh. If the Holy Ghost inspired each man as he did the prophets and apostles (instead of communicating to him the grace of faith, planting him in the church, feeding him with the Lord's body, quickening his devout affections, etc.) ”

“ Christ has a body, incorruptible and glorified indeed, such as they who are Christ's shall also wear at his coming, yet still a body. Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the clouds have received him out of our sight: yet he may be conceived of as in one place--at the right hand of God; as in one certain and well-known form--the form of the Son of man. Yet let us observe again, and be thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. ”

“ But if any one were to think that the earthy image is the flesh itself, but the heavenly image some other spiritual body besides the flesh; let him first consider that Christ, the heavenly man, when He appeared, bore the same form of limbs and the same image of flesh as ours, through which also He, who was not man, became man, that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” ”

“ It was the instrument of the incarnation and of the manifestation of God among men, of the death and the resurrection by which we are saved. And as in His own body Christ was incarnate among men, so now it is by means of the bodily existence and energies of His people on earth that He extends His influence.
The body then is for the Lord. He finds in it His needed instrument; without it He cannot accomplish His will. And the Lord is for the body. Without Him the body cannot develop into all it is intended to be. It has a great future as well as the soul. ”

“ The flesh of man was incurably vitiated, and if he was to be saved a new body must be prepared for him. This Christ had done. [20] That Christ's body was not as other men's bodies was proved after his resurrection, when it showed itself independent of the limitations of extended substance. In virtue of these mysterious properties it became the body of the Corporate Church into which believers were admitted by baptism. ”

“ The baptism of Jesus was, in fact, His anointing as the Messiah; and this anointing by which He became the Christ was an anointing, not with a symbolic oil, [41] but with the Divine Spirit (Acts x. 38) . This Spirit descended upon Him “in a bodily shape” (Luke iii. 22) , because it was not one member or faculty or power which was communicated to Jesus, but a whole body or complete equipment of all needful Divine energies for His work. “God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him;” there is no gauge, no metre checking the supply. ”

“ It is made in a mystic manner; that is to say, when Christ is offered in the Mass, we cannot see him with our eyes as the Jews saw him on the cross, his body and his wounds, and his blood, but all we can see is that humble appearance of bread and wine under which he hides himself now from our sight. It is made in an unbloody manner; that is to say, in the Mass our Lord does not die again, his life is not taken as formerly by the shedding of his blood. Although he is really present on the altar, and he is there as a living victim, his death is only represented. ”

“ The only trouble in the matter is, that the theory is not true or orthodox. The body and blood of Christ are made present under the sacred species by the force of the consecrating words, not his soul or divinity. The soul and divinity of our blessed Lord are present by concomitance; but transubstantiation is the change of the substance of the bread into the body, and of the wine into the blood of Christ, and here is the chief mystery of the dogma which the author, in endeavoring to explain, has explained away. ”

“ That is, as at Christ's coming the dead saints will be raised, so the living saints will be translated without seeing death. A change will come to them, so far as we can understand, like that which came to Jesus at his resurrection—the body glorified, all of mortal and earthly belonging to it by nature eliminated in an instant, and the Holy Ghost so completely transforming and immortalizing it that it shall become perfectly fashioned to the likeness of Christ's glorified body. ”

“ One may venture to speak of the mysticism of Jesus, not in the sense that he was himself climbing into the divine life, for he was the divine life, but in the sense that he set himself before men as the One into whom they were to climb. That Christ was in a manner egoistic — may one put it so? — indicates how mystical he meant men to be; for to that egoism of his only mysticism on the part of men could adequately or appropriately respond. ”

“ Jesus had flesh and bones, a body like ours, and the Bible informs us that He ascended into heaven after His resurrection, having the same body that He had at the time of His crucifixion. Jesus was so much like other men that He was called the carpenter's son, and for daring to say He was the Son of God His enemies hanged Him on the cross. Now, as Jesus was like we are, and is like we are, having a body of flesh and bones, and is in the express image of the Father, must not God have a body of flesh and bones? ”

“ The association of Christ with matter through His body and through His human nature was, in their eyes, a degradation of deity. That Christ took matter up into His being as a permanent element, that He dignified the body and glorified human faculties, these facts seemed to the monophysite mind improbable, and, if true, devoid of religious significance. It came natural to him to explain Christ's body as a phantom. He was prepared to regard the human nature as unsubstantial. The mystic's view of matter, of sense and human existence characterises the whole monophysite outlook. ”

“ This criticism brings us back to the necessity of recognizing a resurrection which was in some real sense corporeal, difficult as that conception is for us. The gospels assert this with great simplicity and delicate reserve. They represent Jesus as returning to his disciples with a body which was superior to the limitations which hedge our lives about. It may be well described by Paul's words, "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." ”

“ Christ, God’s true temple while on earth; the truth of the one body claims the attention of all Christians; human and divine relationships; Satan’s grand object to hinder the present operation of God in the saints; and succeeds at man’s weak point in that man likes to be something; and so easily falls a prey to the working of the enemy; the glory of Christ’s Person as maintained by the Holy Ghost, the mainspring of the life and conversation of a Christian man; difficulties met with in reasoning about the Church on Old Testament analogy ”

“ And yet the drama below is real enough; there are ever crucifixion and piercing and the drinking of vinegar and gall, before the triumphant Christ is born. It is by such means that His Body is [Pg 31] conformed; it is the mystery of the transformation of what we call evil into good. The Body of the Christ is perfected by the absorption of the impersonal evil of the world, which He transmutes into blessing. ”

“ It accords with the frequently recurring scriptural figure by which the true Church of Christ is compared, in its perfection of parts and harmonious blending of divisions, to the human body. The preservation of this completeness is an absolute necessity. How can the human bodily structure be deemed perfect when it is decapitated, when denuded of its extremities, or when the trunk is lacerated or divided into pieces? ”