I would not have you think, however when I speak of growth, that with Paul this meant a natural growth, an evolutionary development, so to speak. It is above and beyond nature, at least, as we know and understand nature. I should call it supernatural, if that word had not been abused. With Paul, nature is, as he says, of the law, of the flesh. Here we are dealing with a new creation. That new creation is natural, if we only knew it. It deals with material as substantial as our planetary bodies, or this table, but it is a different order of material and we do not see it. But Paul knew. Listen:
"Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now know we him no longer. Wherefore, if any man is in Christ he is a new creature (a new creation). The old things are passed away. Behold, they are become new. All things are of God (not nature)."1 II Cor. 5:16–18.
Does that sound like what we call natural evolution?
Again:
"But ye did not so learn Christ, if so be that you heard him and were taught in him, (You see even a thing like learning, hearing, teaching, is nothing unless it is, "in Him") even the truth in Christ Jesus. But ye learned that ye put away the old man, (that is, the flesh) crumbling away with the desires that deceive, (Those desires are just our ordinary desires; but they deceive us because we do not have them, they have us.) that ye may be made anew in the spirit of your mind and clothe yourselves with the new man created according to God (not nature)." Ephesians 4:21–4.
You see, we clothe ourselves with a new body; we actually build. That is what Paul meant in II Cor. 5:1–5. His words are so explicit, they cannot be misunderstood:
"For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle (in the margin it says "bodily frame") be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (That does not mean some heavenly mansion) For verily in the old tabernacle we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven; if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked (as we certainly should be some time or other if we depended only on the earthly tabernacle). For indeed, we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life. Now, he that wroght us for this very thing is God, who gave unto us the earnest of the spirit."
There is a recognition of normal function, of man's duty in the universe, of his place in the scheme of God. This building of the higher body is the very thing that God made us for.
The building of the incorruptible body is at the back of Paul's repeated use of the word which we translate "edify." The Greek word means simply "to build up," "to build a house." I think that Paul intended the literal meaning.
"So then let us follow after the things which make for peace and for upbuilding" Romans 14:19. "Let each of us please his neighbour for that which is good, unto upbuilding." Romans 15:2.
"Everything is allowable, but not everything builds up." I Cor. 10:23.
"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." I Cor. 8:1.
The new body Paul sometimes calls the body of glory.
"But all of us, as with unveiled faces we mirror the glory of the Lord, are metamorphosed into the same likeness, from glory to glory." II Cor. 3:18
"The Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation to the same form as the body of his glory." Phil. 3:21.
We cannot build the new body alone. It is not the result of any natural form of action or reaction, as we understand the natural, but there is a subtle catalysis in process. The presence of an outside influence is necessary in order to make the change possible which indeed Paul thought impossible until he discovered the catalytic agent. "When He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is."
Paul refers to the body of glory in Romans 3:23 in the passage translated, "We all fall short of the glory of God." That translation does not convey the meaning. The text means we are lacking the God-glory, that is, that the body of glory has not been built. It is not that we fall short of God's ideal, but we are lacking in the actualization of the God-glory that should be ours; that is what Paul means.