God's building

“Sometime we shall learn how Spirit, the great architect, has created men and women in Science.” This promise from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 68 , citation 9) provides a springboard for this week’s Bible Lesson titled “Soul and Body.” It invites us to dive in and explore the metaphor of God, Soul, as builder and architect, and man as His creation, whose true body is “a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (II Corinthians 5:1 , cit. 8).

Great architecture expresses beauty, harmony, strength, and integrity—all qualities of Soul. Proverbs adds, “Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established” (24:3 , cit. 15). Other spiritual “building supplies” include righteousness, health, and individuality.

Buildings also have form. Though often meaning physical shape, the words form and formation can have a more spiritual connotation—“to develop in the mind; conceive” and “the essence of something” (thefreedictionary.com). For example, identity is defined as “the reflection in multifarious forms of the living Principle, Love” (Science and Health, p. 477 , cit. 1).

To grasp our own unique, spiritual form or identity, we may need to “renovate” our concept of body—but don’t hire mortal mind for the job! Mimicking Soul’s creative power, “this so-called mind builds its own superstructure, of which the material body is the grosser portion; …” (Science and Health, p. 177 , cit. 7). The Bible is the place to look for examples of spiritual restoration that overcome limitations and bring about physical healing. Three such healings in this Lesson illustrate how Soul rebuilds lives and restores health.

In First Kings 17 (cit. 11), the prophet Elijah restored to life a boy who had “no breath left in him” (verse 17 ). Elijah “stretched himself upon the child three times” (verse 21 ). The ancient listeners to the narrative might have anticipated this physical contact to transmit health, a common belief of the time, but that wasn’t Elijah’s thought—he looked to a higher source for healing and prayed fervently to God until the child revived. 

Nor was it physical contact with Jesus that healed the woman with the issue of blood. Having lost faith in material means of healing, she reached out to Jesus, just to touch his clothes. But he understood that this was a mental call for spiritual renewal and declared that it was her faith that had made her whole (see Mark 5:25–34 , cit. 13)—faith in the healing Christ, which attests that “consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered” (Science and Health, p. 425 , cit. 20).

Peter brought restoration to a lame man by calling on the name of Jesus Christ. He then took the man “by the right hand, and lifted him up” (Acts 3:6, 7 , cit. 18), again, not healing by physical contact but by establishing “in truth the temple, or body, ‘whose builder and maker is God’ ” (Science and Health, p. 428 , cit. 27).

How awe-inspiring to know that “ye are God’s building” (I Corinthians 3:9 , Golden Text and cit. 23), furnished with the healing touch of Christian Science! God is so delighted with His creation: “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined” (Psalms 50:2 , cit. 19). That’s you—designed by Soul and built to last!