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/bbe'>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.
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And the earth was waste and without form; and it was dark on the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God was moving on the face of the waters.
The best of the first-fruits of your land are to be taken into the house of the Lord your God. The young goat is not to be cooked in its mother's milk
Take the first-fruits of your land as an offering to the house of the Lord your God. Let not the young goat be cooked in its mother's milk
Take no wine, or strong drink, you or your sons with you, when you go into the Tent of meeting, that it may not be the cause of death to you; this is an order for ever through all your generations.
Keep my laws. Do not let your cattle have offspring by those of a different sort; do not put mixed seed into your field; do not put on a robe made of two sorts of cloth.
You may not make cuts in your flesh in respect for the dead, or have marks printed on your bodies: I am the Lord.
They are not to have their hair cut off for the dead, or the hair on their chins cut short, or make cuts in their flesh.
An animal which has its sex parts damaged or crushed or broken or cut, may not be offered to the Lord; such a thing may not be done anywhere in your land.
A cow or a sheep may not be put to death with its young on the same day.
You are the children of the Lord your God: you are not to make cuts on your bodies or take off the hair on your brows in honour of the dead;
Do not have your vine-garden planted with two sorts of seed: or all of it may become a loss, the seed you have put in as well as the increase. Do not do your ploughing with an ox and an ass yoked together. read more. Do not have clothing made of two sorts of thread, wool and linen together.
One whose father and mother are not married may not come into the meeting of the Lord's people, or any of his family to the tenth generation.
O Lord, our Lord, whose glory is higher than the heavens, how noble is your name in all the earth!
The heavens are sounding the glory of God; the arch of the sky makes clear the work of his hands.
By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the army of heaven by the breath of his mouth. He makes the waters of the sea come together in a mass; he keeps the deep seas in store-houses.
To him by whom the earth was stretched out over the waters: for his mercy is unchanging for ever.
The Lord made me as the start of his way, the first of his works in the past. From eternal days I was given my place, from the birth of time, before the earth was. read more. When there was no deep I was given birth, when there were no fountains flowing with water. Before the mountains were put in their places, before the hills was my birth: When he had not made the earth or the fields or the dust of the world. When he made ready the heavens I was there: when he put an arch over the face of the deep: When he made strong the skies overhead: when the fountains of the deep were fixed: When he put a limit to the sea, so that the waters might not go against his word: when he put in position the bases of the earth: Then I was by his side, as a master workman: and I was his delight from day to day, playing before him at all times;
The Lord, who has taken up your cause, and who gave you life in your mother's body, says, I am the Lord who makes all things; stretching out the heavens by myself, and giving the earth its limits; who was with me?
For see, he who gave form to the mountains and made the wind, giving knowledge of his purpose to man, who makes the morning dark, and is walking on the high places of the earth: the Lord, the God of armies, is his name.
You are the salt of the earth; but if its taste goes from the salt, how will you make it salt again? it is then good for nothing but to be put out and crushed under foot by men.
See the birds of heaven; they do not put seeds in the earth, they do not get in grain, or put it in store-houses; and your Father in heaven gives them food. Are you not of much more value than they?
And why are you troubled about clothing? See the flowers of the field, how they come up; they do no work, they make no thread:
And he gave them teaching in the form of a story, saying, A man went out to put seed in the earth; And while he did so, some seeds were dropped by the wayside, and the birds came and took them for food: read more. And some of the seed went among the stones, where it had not much earth, and straight away it came up because the earth was not deep: And when the sun was high, it was burned; and because it had no root it became dry and dead. And some seeds went among thorns, and the thorns came up and they had no room for growth: And some, falling on good earth, gave fruit, some a hundred, some sixty, some thirty times as much. He who has ears, let him give ear.
Another story he gave to them: The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took, and put in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.
For this reason God gave them up to evil passions, and their women were changing the natural use into one which is unnatural:
For when the Gentiles without the law have a natural desire to do the things in the law, they are a law to themselves;
And they, by their keeping of the law without circumcision, will be judges of you, by whom the law is broken though you have the letter of the law and circumcision.
For, if God did not have mercy on the natural branches, he will not have mercy on you.
For if you were cut out of a field olive-tree, and against the natural use were united to a good olive-tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be united again with the olive-tree which was theirs?
Does it not seem natural to you that if a man has long hair, it is a cause of shame to him?
And when you put it into the earth, you do not put in the body which it will be, but only the seed, of grain or some other sort of plant; But God gives it a body, as it is pleasing to him, and to every seed its special body.
But at that time, having no knowledge of God, you were servants to those who by right are no gods:
Among whom we all at one time were living in the pleasures of our flesh, giving way to the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and the punishment of God was waiting for us even as for the rest.
For every sort of beast and bird and every living thing on earth and in the sea has been controlled by man and is under his authority;
And through this he has given us the hope of great rewards highly to be valued; so that by them we might have our part in God's being, and be made free from the destruction which is in the world through the desires of the flesh.
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
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Does it not seem natural to you that if a man has long hair, it is a cause of shame to him?
Among whom we all at one time were living in the pleasures of our flesh, giving way to the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and the punishment of God was waiting for us even as for the rest.
For they truly gave us punishment for a short time, as it seemed good to them; but he does it for our profit, so that we may become holy as he is.
And through this he has given us the hope of great rewards highly to be valued; so that by them we might have our part in God's being, and be made free from the destruction which is in the world through the desires of the flesh.
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.
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For if you were cut out of a field olive-tree, and against the natural use were united to a good olive-tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be united again with the olive-tree which was theirs?
Does it not seem natural to you that if a man has long hair, it is a cause of shame to him?
Among whom we all at one time were living in the pleasures of our flesh, giving way to the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and the punishment of God was waiting for us even as for the rest.