There is an intimate connection between the experiences of the spiritual life and the clearness and correctness with which scriptural truth is held in the mind. A crooked theology will inevitably produce either fictitious religious experiences or mystify and cripple a serious one. The subject of the redemption of the body is a problem around which more religious experiences have gone to wreck than perhaps any other thing. In order to have a scriptural understanding of the redemption of the body, we need to consider the entire scope of redemption as it applies to the three kingdoms of nature, grace and glory. God's blessed dominion is one extending over the whole universe, but for the sake of convenience, and to facilitate our grasp of truth, spiritual writers have divided creation into three kingdoms -- nature, grace and glory". So let us notice the redemption accomplished by Jesus as applied to these three kingdoms. The word redemption means to buy back any person or thing which has been captured or forfeited, and inasmuch as the world was captured by Satan, and man forfeited eternal life by sin, Jesus has redeemed or bought back man from sin and the world from Satan's authority. The purchase treasure has been in the life and death of Jesus, but the effects of the" purchase will be consummated in its ultimate form at the final judgment.

But redemption is being wrought out in its results, first in nature, then in grace, and will issue in that of glorification. St. Paul covers all these thoughts in the 8th chapter of Romans, where he represents all creation, and even the work of grace in our hearts, as waiting for its highest manifestation at the time of the redemption of our bodies.

I. The redemption purchase of Jesus is related to the kingdom of nature. Unless the eternal Son of God had agreed, before the world was made, to his incarnation and death for the human race, then just as soon as Adam sinned, his natural life would have been cut off, all the animals would have perished, and this fair earth would have been shrouded in the blackness of utter desolation. But by virtue of the covenant of redemption the natural kingdom was maintained, the effects of sin were modified and postponed, the animals and natural product of the earth, and the beautiful law of nature were allowed to move on, the human race was permitted to propagate under a system of merciful probation, and thus every rolling sea, every rising and setting sun, every green landscape, every blessing that comes in the natural life of men, animals, or insects, was secured and perpetuated because Jesus agreed to pay for it all by the sacrifice of himself. Thus men have the privilege of living, and thinking, and seeking happiness, and have an opportunity of accepting salvation, and proving whether they will choose righteousness or sin, because the privilege has been bought for them by the Saviour. Every man alive to-day on earth is alive and has the use of his faculties because Jesus died. Hence it is in this sense that the apostle says. "Jesus is the Saviour of all men, but especially of them that believe," that is, Jesus gives all men natural life, with its thousand-fold advantages, and then he becomes in a special way the Saviour from sin of those who receive him into their hearts. This redemption in its relation to the natural life of mankind is unconditional, and life, the universal sunshine, throws its golden mantle alike over the just and the unjust.

II. Redemption in relation to the kingdom of grace. This embraces the whole range of moral and spiritual renovation and restoration to God. It includes the giving of the law, that it may form a standard of right, and also be the minister to search the heart and manifest the nature and extent of sin, for the great office of God's law is not to save but to show us sin and diagnose our disease; but none the less it is God's grace that gives us the law to show us our need of grace. It also includes the work of repentance, justification, sanctification, the fullness of the Spirit, the healing of physical diseases for gracious purposes, divine correction, and the perfect victory of the soul over the devil and the fear of death. These are the great items embraced in the kingdom of grace which could include many subdivisions and many elaborate trains of thought.

Now, one of the greatest mistakes which is made on the subject of divine healing is in not putting it as a part of the kingdom of grace. There are two extreme views which unbalanced or uninstructed minds hold in connection with the healing of bodily diseases by faith. One view is in ignoring divine healing for the body entirely, as having any relation with the gracious redemption of Jesus, and so relegating it to the region of fanaticism or chance. The other extreme view is in putting divine healing as in some way connected with glorification, and as being a part of the redemption of the body from the grave, and thus taking the subject of healing out of the kingdom of grace and making it a part of the kingdom of glory, and this inevitably leads to the rankest fanaticism, and plays sad havoc with the Christian life. Many persons take the words of Paul, in Romans 8:11, where we are told that the Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead will also quicken our mortal bodies, and push them into an extreme application. The direct and main application of that verse is that the Holy' Spirit will cause the dead bodies of Christians to be brought to life again and rise from the grave just as truly as the Holy Spirit raised the dead body of Jesus from the tomb. The word "quicken" means to make alive, and the word mortal means dying or subject to death. Now, in a minor sense, this quickening applies to divine healing, simply because the greater includes the less, and if the Holy Spirit, because he has once lived in our bodies, will raise them again from the dust of the grave, how much more can He now, for gracious purposes, heal the diseases of the body by expelling sickness with the virtue of the life of Jesus.

But when persons take divine healing as a part of glorification, and draw the conclusion that because diseases are healed they can get into a state where their bodies will never die, and then into the delusion that their bodies will be translated even before Christ comes, it leads to wild and unscriptural theories and invariably ruins the personas religious experience, and they become the victims of demons. Some fancy that by long fasting they will lose the principle of death out of their bodies and have physical immortality. Others think that by living a life of celibacy their bodies will become extra holy and so escape death. Some think that by eating only vegetables they will gain physical immortality. Others think if Jesus can heal my body why should he not exempt it entirely from death and the grave? These false notions spring from not understanding that the immortality of the body does not belong at all to the region of probationary grace, but that it lies in the region of glorification, beyond the state of probation and of saving faith.

The thousands of persons that Jesus healed while on the earth were healed as a part of his work of probationary grace, and all of them ultimately died, and he never once hinted about giving immortality except at that day when he would raise the just from the dead. The healing of disease while on probation is included in the kingdom of grace because it relieves suffering and shows forth the compassion of Jesus, and leads people to accept him more fully, and for the purpose of being witnesses for Christ and of using their health in his service.

All these things lie in the region of grace. But as soon as any one begins to stretch and strain themselves into some awful tension after physical immortality they at once become the victims of evil spirits who are always hunting for people on to whom they can fasten. Healing the body of disease is distinctively a work of grace, but exempting it from all immortality is distinctively a work of glory. We must keep these scriptural distinctions in our minds, or we will go to wreck both in faith and practice. Hence, divine healing should never strictly be spoken of as the redemption of the body, which is a Scripture word that refers expressly to raising the dead body from the grave. And yet we do and may use the word redemption in a general way to include all the economy of grace.

III. Redemption in relation to glorification. The kingdom of glory includes all the ultimate results of the redemption wrought by Jesus, such as raising the dead bodies of believers, or translating and glorifying their bodies at his second coming; also, the complete rectification of the mental faculties, and the uniting of body and soul in a form of transcendant glory, like the glorified Christ, never again to be separated, or to be sick, or subject to pain, or mistake, or deformity, or weakness of any kind, but fitted in everything for a heavenly and divine mode of existence. The work of glorification is of divine sovereignty, the crowning and consummating of what Jesus purchased by his death. Redemption is related to the glorified body in three directions. In the first place it is the avenging of the believer's body on the devil for all he has done in bringing sin into the world, and inflicting so much suffering and death on our bodies. When we are raised to a blazing and beautiful immortality, Satan will receive his punishment for all the evil he has done to us. Hence the day of resurrection will be the day of divine revenges for all God's people. In the second place the redemption of our bodies has a relation to rewards, for it is in our glorified bodies that we are to receive the ocean streams of divine rewards for our faith and service while we lived in a state of humiliation and subjection to death. It is in these bodies that we are now to serve Christ, and we are told we shall be rewarded according to the deeds done in the body, and when we receive our glorified bodies it will be in those bodies that we receive our rewards. When the righteous die they enter into rest, and their works do follow them, so their rewards will be poured into the glorified body. This is the thought that runs through a large part of the 8th of Romans, especially from verses 18 to 28. In the third place the redemption of the body is directly related to the divine glory, because, being fashioned like the glorified body of Jesus, it will be one of the most beautiful and transcendent vehicles for the showing forth of the glory of God.

In such a radiant form there will be concentrated all the divine perfections, and wherever such a body moves it will be a floating orb of light to illustrate the glory of God as Creator, Redeemer, Law-giver, Father Rewarder and King. Such a glorified body will serve as a miniature history of redemption, and will reveal the character and purposes of God in all the vast domains of nature, grace and glory. It will be the crown and summit of the results of the incarnation and death of Jesus. So we see redemption in its full sweep covers nature and the natural life unconditionally, and thus covers the regions of grace on the condition of faith, and then includes the resurrection and glorification of the body on the conditions of divine sovereignty and the justice of his rewards.