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/nheb'>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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Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. God's Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.
The first of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.
You shall bring the first of the first fruits of your ground to the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk."
"Drink no wine nor strong drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the Tent of Meeting, that you do not die: it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations:
"'You shall keep my statutes. "'You shall not crossbreed different kinds of animals. "'you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; "'neither shall there come upon you a garment made of two kinds of material.
"'You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you. I am the LORD.
"'They shall not shave their heads, neither shall they shave off the corners of their beards, nor make any cuttings in their flesh.
That which has its testicles bruised, crushed, broken, or cut, you shall not offer to the LORD; neither shall you do thus in your land.
Whether it is a cow or ewe, you shall not kill it and its young both in one day.
You are the children of the LORD your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole fruit be forfeited, the seed which you have sown, and the increase of the vineyard. You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. read more. You shall not wear a mixed stuff, wool and linen together.
No one of illegitimate birth shall enter into the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation shall none of his enter into the assembly of the LORD.
LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth, who has set your glory above the heavens.
The heavens declare the glory of God. The expanse shows his handiwork.
By the LORD's word, the heavens were made; all their army by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
Before the mountains were brought forth, before you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
To him who spread out the earth above the waters; for his loving kindness endures forever:
"The LORD created me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth existed. read more. When there were no depths, I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled in place, 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 on the surface of the deep, when he established the clouds above, when the springs of the deep became strong, when he gave to the sea its boundary, that the waters should not violate his commandment, when he marked out the foundations of the earth; then I was the craftsman by his side. I was a delight day by day, always rejoicing before him,
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and he who formed you from the womb: "I am the LORD, who makes all things; who alone stretches out the heavens; who spreads out the earth by myself;
For, behold, he who forms the mountains, and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought; who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the high places of the earth: The LORD, the God of Hosts, is his name."
"You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted? It is then good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men.
See the birds of the sky, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they?
And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil, neither do they spin,
And he spoke to them many things in parables, saying, "Listen, a farmer went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell by the roadside, and the birds came and devoured them. read more. And others fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched. Because they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among thorns. The thorns grew up and choked them. Still others fell on good soil, and yielded fruit: some one hundred times as much, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear."
He spoke another parable to them. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, until it was all leavened."
For this reason, God abandoned them to their degrading passions. For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature.
(for when Gentiles who do not have the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves,
Won't the uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfills the law, judge you, who with the letter and circumcision are a transgressor of the law?
for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.
For if you were cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree, how much more will these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
Doesn't even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?
That which you sow, you do not sow the body that will be, but a bare grain, maybe of wheat, or of some other kind. But God gives it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own.
"We, being Jews by birth, and not Gentile sinners,
However at that time, not knowing God, you were in bondage to those who by nature are not gods.
among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
For all kinds of animals, and birds, of reptiles and sea creatures, are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind.
by which he has granted to us his precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by 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
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Doesn't even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?
among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
For they indeed, for a few days, disciplined us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.
by which he has granted to us his precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by 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.
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For if you were cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree, how much more will these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
Doesn't even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?
"We, being Jews by birth, and not Gentile sinners,
among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.