You Blessed My Nature in You
You Blessed My Nature in You
When the Lord united Himself with our human nature, He blessed, purified, sanctified, and glorified it. He restored to it the divine image in which it was created from the beginning (Genesis 1:26). After we had lost this divine image through sin, He renewed our nature and even granted us a new nature. As the Apostle says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), and continues, “Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” Yes, we have put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new (Colossians 3:9), and this new man is being renewed according to the image of his Creator, after our old man was crucified with Christ in baptism (Romans 6:6) “that the body of sin might be done away with,” “that we should no longer be slaves of sin,” and thus “walk in newness of life.”
And when the Lord blessed our nature, we were able to become temples of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit dwells in us through the Sacrament of Holy Chrismation (Myron), and the words of St. Paul the Apostle apply to us: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). When we became temples of the Spirit, God’s Spirit began to work in us and with us, and we entered into the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:14). We also became worthy to receive the gifts of the Spirit, which He distributes “to each one individually as He wills” (1 Corinthians 12:12).
Through the work of the Spirit in us, our nature received a power it had never possessed before.
The Lord said, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me” (Acts 1:8). This was the promise He made before His Ascension: “until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).
When the faithful person experiences this power, he gives thanks to the Lord, saying, “You blessed my nature in You.” With this strength, St. Paul the Apostle said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). It is amazing that a man could say, “I can do all things,” but it is no longer strange when he adds, “through Christ who strengthens me,” because You have blessed my nature in You. This is not merely the Apostle’s saying, but the Lord’s own promise: “All things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23). We know, as the Lord said, that “with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27). But that all things are possible to the believer—this is something granted in the blessings of the New Covenant, when the Lord says, “You blessed my nature in You.”
Through this blessing, human nature received from God the power to perform miracles, as shown abundantly in the Acts of the Apostles. Yet the most wondrous statement I have read in this regard is the Lord’s saying to His holy disciples:
“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do” (John 14:12).
Here I stand in awe before this divine promise. I can only explain it by saying, “You blessed my nature in You.” Through this blessing and the power granted by it, we have been given authority over demons. In the Old Testament, Satan had terrifying power—he led most of the world into idol worship—“Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant” (Isaiah 1:9). Such was the strength of sin that Scripture says, “For she has cast down many wounded, and all who were slain by her were strong men” (Proverbs 7:26). Satan was even described as “the ruler of this world.”
But through the Incarnation of Christ, it was said, “The ruler of this world is judged” (John 16:11), and also, “Now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (John 12:31). The Lord said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). When the Lord defeated Satan, He gave us authority to defeat him as well: “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19). Truly, O Lord, You have blessed my nature in You, granting it power over all the enemy’s strength. Thus You gave Your disciples “power over unclean spirits, to cast them out” (Matthew 10:1), and said to them as You blessed our human nature: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons” (Matthew 10:8). Before Your Ascension You promised, “These signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons… they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17–18).
In His Incarnation, the Lord united Himself with human nature that overcame the world. He said, “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Yes, You, O Lord, have overcome the world—but what does this mean for us? Shall we overcome it as well? It is as though the Lord says: I have overcome it as the Son of Man, with the nature I took upon Myself—and I gave that nature the power to overcome. I overcame the world with your nature, as a pledge that your nature also would overcome the world.
The Lord blessed our nature in Himself and gave it authority to conquer the world, the flesh, and death, and to inherit all the promises given to those who overcome (Revelation 2–3). In blessing our nature, He blessed both soul and body. Thus St. Paul says, “Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:20). The body has become an instrument for glorifying the Lord—a body blessed by Him. Amazingly, it was said of St. Paul that “even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them, and the evil spirits went out of them” (Acts 19:12).
In the Old Testament, whoever touched a dead body became unclean (Leviticus 21:1), because he had touched one under the judgment of death, still unpurified from sin. But in the New Testament, when the Lord blessed our nature, everything changed.
Now, when we touch the bodies or relics of the departed, we receive blessing.
We suffer when sin controls the body and uses it for its purposes. Yet the fault lies in sin, not in the body. Even when the body yields to sin, the defect is in its submission, not in its nature—for the Lord has blessed and sanctified the body.
And since the Lord blessed our nature, He granted it victory over death. Our mortal nature received from Him the gift of immortality. As the Apostle says of our body: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53). It was Satan’s desire that man die and remain in death. For this he set all his traps and snares. But through the blessing of our nature, we now sing:
“O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).
The power given by the Lord to His disciples to raise the dead was merely a pledge of the eternal resurrection to come. Thus, in our prayers for the departed, we say, “There is no death for Your servants, but a departure.” Truly, O Lord, You have blessed our nature in You. Death no longer frightens it, for it has become a prelude to the general resurrection, when we shall put on spiritual bodies.
And perhaps one of the deepest and most beautiful sayings about our nature in baptism is:
“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). That is, you have put on righteousness in Christ, victory in Christ—and later, you will put on glory through Christ at the resurrection, “who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).
The Lord gave our nature another blessing: the life of righteousness. In His Incarnation, He lived without sin, in human nature obedient to the Father’s will. By blessing our nature with righteousness and unity of will with the Father, He granted our nature the same potential—if it does not yield to Satan. He taught us to say daily to the Father, “Thy will be done.”
If you sin one day, do not say, “My nature is weak.” Do not despair of your nature, but praise the Lord saying, “You blessed my nature in You.” The Lord has blessed your nature, granted it adoption to God, justified and sanctified it, and allowed it to partake of the Holy Mysteries so that it may abide in Him (John 6:56). He gave us a practical example to follow in His steps and granted us grace through the work of His Holy Spirit within us.
Article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, published in Watani newspaper on January 2, 2000.
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