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As regards nature, as distinct from sinful nature, instead of having done with it, where it is taken into account — and if I die, it is taken into account — it is carefully guarded and owned. Being without natural affection is one of the signs of the last days, the worst state of evil. As created of God, it is carefully owned. Relations which in nature still subsist were established before the fall. Everything in man is spoiled by that fall, but when nature is separated from its fallen condition, in which it is called flesh, it is carefully maintained, not died to; sin is — at least the Christian is reckoned to be dead to it, not nature. So in speaking of divorce, that was the effect of sin, but in the beginning it was not so, says the Lord: “God made them male and female.” He maintains, and insists on maintaining, what God created —nature. So the Apostle: Forbidding to marry was a doctrine of demons, though if a man could give himself up to Christ’s work, it was better.
And it is not only existing relationships which are maintained, but the absence of natural affections is a mark of the last degradation of human nature. As regards the relationships, they are surely to be held in the Lord. But nature, if taken apart from sin and flesh, we do not die to in Scripture. It is what God has made. In speaking of it, we have to abstract our thoughts from the state into which it is fallen, but, so abstracted, it is what God made and owned and carefully maintained, though a power is brought in which is above it and out of its sphere; dying to it is utterly unscriptural and false. It is what God owned and God maintains and owns, as of Him, and asserts it and even denounces as of Satan what does reject it as created by Him.