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/nsb'>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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The earth was without form and empty. Darkness covered the deep water. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters.
Bring the choice first fruits of your soil into the house of Jehovah your God. Do not boil a young goat in the milk of its mother.
I am Jehovah your God! You must bring the first part of your harvest to the place of worship. Do not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.
Never drink beer or wine when you or your sons enter the sacred tent. If you do, you will die right there! This is a long lasting law from generation to generation.
Obey my laws. Never crossbreed different kinds of animals. Do not plant two kinds of crops in your field. Never wear clothes made from two kinds of material.
Never slash your body to mourn the dead, and never get a tattoo. I am Jehovah.
You should never mourn by shaving bald spots on your heads, shaving the edges of your beards, or slashing your bodies.
Do not bring Jehovah an animal that has bruised, crushed, torn out, or cut out testicles. Never do any of these things to an animal in your land.
Do not slaughter a cow or a sheep and its young the same day.
You are the sons of Jehovah your God. Do not cut yourselves nor shave your forehead for the sake of the dead.
Do not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, or all the produce of the seed that you have sown and the increase of the vineyard will become defiled. Do not plow with a bull and a donkey together. read more. Do not wear a material mixed with wool and linen together.
No one of illegitimate birth shall enter the assembly of Jehovah. None of his descendants to the tenth generation shall enter the assembly of Jehovah.
([Psalm of David]) O Jehovah, our Lord, how excellent is your majestic name in all the earth! You have displayed your glory above the heavens.
([Psalm of David]) The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky displays what his hands have made.
The heavens were made by the word of Jehovah, and by the breath of his mouth their entire host. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He puts the ocean depth in his storehouses.
Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and its inhabitants, you are God from everlasting to everlasting.
Jehovah created me in the beginning of his way, before his works of antiquity. I was made from long ago, before the earth began. read more. When there were no depths or fountains abounding with water, I was brought forth. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills I was brought forth: He had not made the earth or the fields or the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he circled the face of the deep: When he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the deep, When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his command, when he appointed the foundations of the earth, Then I was beside him, as a master workman with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.
I am Jehovah, your savior. I am the one who created you. I am Jehovah, the Creator of all things. I alone stretched out the heavens! No one helped me when I made the earth (I was by myself) (Who was with me?).
Behold he who formed the mountains and created the wind and declared to man his thoughts, also made the morning darkness and treads upon the high places of the Earth: Jehovah, the God of Hosts, is his name.
You are the salt of the earth. If its taste goes away, how will you restore it? It is good for nothing. All you can do is throw it on the ground and walk on it.
Look at the birds of the sky, they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you worth more than they?
Why are you worried about clothing? Look at how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil. They do not spin.
He told them many illustrations. He said: A farmer went out to sow. Some seeds fell by the roadside, and the birds devoured them. read more. Others fell on rocky places and did not have much soil. When they grew, the sun scorched them, and because they had no root they withered and died. Others fell upon the thorns. The thorns grew up and choked them. Some fell on good ground and yielded fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. He that has ears let him hear.
He offered another illustration: The kingdom of heaven is similar to leaven. A woman hid leaven in three measures of meal until it was all leavened.
For this cause God gave them up to vile affections for even their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature.
When those of the nations, who have no law, practice by nature the things of the law they are a law to themselves even though they do not have any law.
The uncircumcised person is by nature, fulfilling the law. He will judge you because you transgress the law with your written code and circumcision.
God did not spare the natural branches and he will not spare you!
If you were cut out of the olive tree that is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a garden olive tree: how much more could these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
Does not even nature itself teach you, that, if men have long hair, it is a shame?
That which you sow, you sow not that body that will develop, but bare grain, it may be of wheat, or of some other grain: But God gives it a body as it pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
We are Jews by birth, and not sinners from the nations.
However at that time, you did not know God. You were in bondage to things that are really not gods at all.
We all once lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires (lusts) of the flesh and of the mind. We were by nature children of anger and violent passion, like everyone else.
Every kind of beast and bird, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by mankind.
He offered us his precious and exceedingly great promises. Through these you may become partakers of the divine nature. You will escape from the corruption that is in the lust-filled world.
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 not even nature itself teach you, that, if men have long hair, it is a shame?
We all once lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires (lusts) of the flesh and of the mind. We were by nature children of anger and violent passion, like everyone else.
They disciplined us for a few days for their own pleasure. He disciplines for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
He offered us his precious and exceedingly great promises. Through these you may become partakers of the divine nature. You will escape from the corruption that is in the lust-filled world.
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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If you were cut out of the olive tree that is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a garden olive tree: how much more could these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
Does not even nature itself teach you, that, if men have long hair, it is a shame?
We are Jews by birth, and not sinners from the nations.
We all once lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires (lusts) of the flesh and of the mind. We were by nature children of anger and violent passion, like everyone else.