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| The Church Spiritual. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XIV.—The Church Spiritual.
So, then, brethren, if we do the will of our Father God,
we shall be members of the first church, the spiritual,—that
which was created before sun and moon; but if we shall not do the will
of the Lord, we shall come under the Scripture which saith, “My
house became a den of robbers.”4394
So, then, let us elect to belong to the church of life,4395
4395 Comp. 1 Pet.
ii., iv.
sqq. | that we may be saved. I think not that
ye are ignorant that the living church is the body of Christ (for the
Scripture, saith, “God created man male and
female;”4396 the male is Christ,
the female the church,) and that the Books4397
4397 i.e., The Old
Testament. |
and the Apostles teach that the church is not of the present, but from
the beginning. For it was spiritual, as was also our Jesus, and
was made manifest at the end of the days in order to save you.4398 The church being spiritual, was made
manifest in the flesh of Christ, signifying to us that if any one of us
shall preserve it in the flesh and corrupt it not, he shall receive it
in the Holy Spirit. For this flesh is the type of the spirit; no
one, therefore, having corrupted the type, will receive afterwards the
antitype. Therefore is it, then, that He saith, brethren,
“Preserve ye the flesh, that ye may become partakers of the
spirit.” If we say that the flesh is the church and the
spirit Christ, then it follows that he who shall offer outrage to the
flesh is guilty of outrage on the church. Such an one, therefore,
will not partake of the spirit, which is Christ. Such is the life
and immortality, which this flesh may afterwards receive, the Holy
Spirit cleaving to it; and no one can either express or utter what
things the Lord hath prepared for His elect.4399
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