Perspectives on the Unseen

To hold a biblical perspective on reality is to affirm that there is more to reality than what meets the eye. In fact, what you don’t see matters far more than what you do see. Paul writes, “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).  It’s not that the present universe isn’t important, it’s just that we need to be repeatedly reminded that all of the current physical creation “will perish,” and that God “will change it like a robe,” but the Lord and his people “will have no end” (Psalm 102:25-28).

It might be compared to your computer. There is a lot you can physically see, touch and analyze – you can test the power supply, touch the memory chips, and dissect the motherboard – but far more important, is the data which resides on and is expressed through the hardware. Those digital realities are what really matter to us. That is what we value. That is what we will carefully preserve and keep to transcend the limited lifespan of our aging and soon-to-be-outdated laptops. The Bible asserts that the physical world was created by our non-physical God, as a vehicle to embody and express the unseen sprits of men, women and children.

As others have rightly said, “you do not have a spirit; you are a spirit, who has a body.” And because of the sentence of sin, the bodies we have will continue to age on this decaying planet while we and it “wait with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” to be “set free from bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom.8:19-21).