I once lived in a house that was located across the road from a soybean field. In the early summer that field was lush with green, leafy soybean plants. In autumn the large leaves on the soybean plants turned bright yellow. As the autumn days became shorter and cooler the soybean leaves would begin to shrivel and the plant would start to die. When it seemed that the field became a soybean plant cemetery, then the farmer would come to harvest the soybeans from the dead plants. The Apostle Paul explains that the death of the natural body is necessary for the resurrection to a spiritual body:
"What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain....So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable" (vs. 36-37, 42). Just like the farmer harvesting his soybean field, God harvests the lives of His people for eternity from the lives they live in the present age when they pass through death. The way human beings enter into eternal life is through the death of the physical body (unless you happen to be living when Jesus returns). You have to die to live eternally. The death of the physical body is your entrance into eternal life, so you will want to closely consider what you sow in your present life to ensure that you will be all that God wants you to be for eternal life.
