Reference: Nature
Hastings
The term 'nature' is not used in the OT. nor was the conception current in Hebrew thought, as God alone is seen in all, through all, and over all. The idea came from the word physis from Hellenism. Swine's flesh is commended for food as a gift of nature in 4Ma 5:7. In the NT the term is used in various senses: (1) the forces, laws, and order of the world, including man (Ro 1:26; 11:21,24; Ga 4:8); (2) the inborn sense of propriety or morality (1Co 11:14; Ro 2:14); (3) birth or physical origin (Ga 2:15; Ro 2:27); (4) the sum of characteristics of a species or person, human (Jas 3:7), or Divine (2Pe 1:4); (5) a condition acquired or inherited ('/Ephesians/2/3/type/acv'>Eph 2:3, 'by nature children of wrath'). What is contrary to nature is condemned. While the term is not found or the conception made explicit in the OT, Schultz (OT Theol. ii. 74) finds in the Law 'the general rule that nothing is to be permitted contrary to the delicate sense of the inviolable proprieties of nature,' and gives a number of instances (Ex 23:19; 34:26; Le 22:28; 19:19; De 22:9-11; Le 10:9; 19:28; 21:5; 22:24; De 14:1; 23:2). The beauty and the order of the world are recognized as evidences of Divine wisdom and power (Ps 8:1; 19:1; 33:6-7; 90:2; 104; 136:6 ff., Ps 147; Pr 8:22-30; Job 38; 39); but the sum of created things is not hypostatized and personified apart from God, as in much current modern thinking. God is Creator, Preserver, and Ruler: He makes all (Isa 44:24; Am 4:13), and is in all (Ps 139). His immanence is by His Spirit (Ge 1:2). Jesus recognizes God's bounty and care in the flowers of the field and the birds of the air (Mt 6:26,28); He uses natural processes to illustrate spiritual, in salt (Mt 5:13), seed and soil (Mt 13:3-9), and leaven (Mt 13:33). The growth of the seed is also used as an illustration by Paul (1Co 15:37-38). There is in the Bible no interest in nature apart from God, and the problem of the relation of God to nature has not yet risen on the horizon of the thought of the writers.
Alfred E. Garvie.
See Verses Found in Dictionary
And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The first of the first-fruits of thy ground thou shall bring into the house of LORD thy God. Thou shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.
The first of the first-fruits of thy ground thou shall bring to the house of LORD thy God. Thou shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.
Drink no wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tent of meeting, that ye not die--it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations--
Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shall not let thy cattle engender with a diverse kind. Thou shall not sow thy field with two kinds of seed, neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together.
Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you. I am LORD.
They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh.
That which has its testicles bruised, or crushed, or broken, or cut, ye shall not offer to LORD, neither shall ye do [thus] in your land.
And whether it be cow or ewe, ye shall not kill it and its young both in one day.
Ye are the sons of LORD your God. Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
Thou shall not sow thy vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole fruit be forfeited: the seed which thou have sown, and the increase of the vineyard. Thou shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. read more. Thou shall not wear a mingled stuff, wool and linen together.
A bastard shall not enter into the assembly of LORD, even to the tenth generation none of his shall enter into the assembly of LORD.
O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set thy glory upon the heavens!
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.
By the word of LORD were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deeps in store-houses.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or thou had ever formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou are God.
to him who spread forth the earth above the waters, for his loving kindness [is] forever,
LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth was, read more. when there were no depths. I was brought forth when there were no fountains abounding with water, before the mountains were settled, before the hills. I was brought forth while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the beginning of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there. When he set a circle upon the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when the fountains of the deep became strong, when he gave to the sea its bound that the waters should not transgress his commandment, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was by him, a master workman. And I was daily [his] delight, rejoicing always before him,
Thus says LORD, thy Redeemer, and he who formed thee from the womb: I am LORD, who makes all things, who stretches forth the heavens alone, who spreads abroad the earth (who is with me?),
For, lo, he who forms the mountains, and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads upon the high places of the earth--LORD, the God of hosts, is his name.
Ye are the salt material of the earth. But if the salt material becomes ineffective, by what will it be salted? It is potent for nothing further, except to be cast outside and to be trodden down by men.
Look to the birds of the sky, because they sow not, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are ye not more valuable then they?
And why are ye anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, nor do they spin,
And he spoke many things to them in parables, saying, Behold, the man who sows went forth to sow. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the birds came and devoured them. read more. But others fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much soil, and straightaway they sprang up because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun was risen, they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered. And others fell in the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. But others fell upon the good ground, and yielded fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.
He spoke another parable to them. The kingdom of the heavens is like leaven, which having taken, a woman hid in three measures of meal until it was all leavened.
Because of this God gave them up to shameful passions, for even their females changed the natural use into what is against nature.
For when the Gentiles who have no law do by nature the things of the law, these men, not having law, are a law to themselves.
And the man of natural uncircumcision who fulfills the law, will judge thee, a transgressor of law through a document and circumcision.
for if God spared not the natural branches, perhaps neither will he spare thee.
For if thou were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural ones, be grafted into their own olive tree.
Or does not nature itself teach you that if a man actually wears long hair it is a disgrace to him?
And what thou sow, thou do not sow the body that it will become, but a bare grain, if it may happen of wheat, or of some other kind. But God gives it a body as he wills, and to each of the seeds its own body.
We are Jews by nature and not sinful men of the Gentiles,
But of course not knowing God then, ye were in bondage to those in nature who are not gods,
Among whom we also all once behaved in the lusts of our flesh, doing the intentions of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath as also the others.
For every species, both of beasts and of birds, both of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by the human species.
Because of which, the precious and greatest promises have been given to us, so that through these ye might become companions of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption in the world in lust.
Morish
The inherent qualities of a being manifested in the various characteristics which mark and display its existence: the aggregate of such qualities is what is termed its nature, and one class or order of being is thus distinguished from another. Men by nature are the children of wrath, Eph 2:3; whereas the Christian becomes morally partaker of the divine nature, 2Pe 1:4; of which love is the characteristic: he is made partaker of God's holiness. Heb 12:10. The work of God in the Christian which forms his nature thus finds its expression in him. The Creator can design and predicate the nature of a being before that being has an actual existence in fact; but we, as creatures, can discern the nature only from the existent being, and cannot therefore rightly speak of the nature save as characteristic of the being.
Nature is also a term descriptive of the vast system of created things around us, to each part of which the Creator has given not only its existence, but its use, its order, its increase, its decay
See Verses Found in Dictionary
Or does not nature itself teach you that if a man actually wears long hair it is a disgrace to him?
Among whom we also all once behaved in the lusts of our flesh, doing the intentions of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath as also the others.
For those men indeed for a few days chastened us according to that which seemed good to them, but he for that which is advantageous, in order to be partakers of his holiness.
Because of which, the precious and greatest promises have been given to us, so that through these ye might become companions of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption in the world in lust.
Watsons
NATURE. In Scripture the word nature expresses the orderly and usual course of things established in the world. St. Paul says, to ingraft a good olive tree into a wild olive is contrary to nature, Ro 11:24; the customary order of nature is thereby in some measure inverted. Nature is also put for natural descent: "We who are Jews by nature," by birth, "and not Gentiles," Ga 2:15. "We were by nature the children of wrath," Eph 2:3. Nature also denotes common sense, natural instinct: "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that if a man have long hair, it is a shame to him?" 1Co 11:14.
See Verses Found in Dictionary
For if thou were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural ones, be grafted into their own olive tree.
Or does not nature itself teach you that if a man actually wears long hair it is a disgrace to him?
We are Jews by nature and not sinful men of the Gentiles,
Among whom we also all once behaved in the lusts of our flesh, doing the intentions of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath as also the others.