In parts one and two of the Christian Parody, I insisted that the most important thing lacking in the church today, the thing that makes it the parody Tozer identified is the lack of spiritual understanding. I cited wise men who said that the way to spiritual understanding is through a deeper knowledge of God’s Word. I recalled that Jesus said God is spirit (John 4:24) and that He said His words are spirit. It should be clear then that we must go to the Bible if we want to understand the spiritual nature of God and the spiritual nature of our existence.
As I said in part
two, I believe humans are essentially spirit beings who possess an immaterial
soul and live in a physical body (for the time being). When we examine God’s
act of creating Adam, we see that God did something unique with Adam that He is
not reported as having done with the other animals: “[God] blew into his
nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” This is
a fascinating text because the word “creature” (nephesh) is often
translated “soul,” and the words translated “blew” and “breath” are from the
same root word, nephesh. It is also curious that in New Testament
Greek, the word for breath or wind is translated in certain contexts as spirit.
It is always
dangerous to argue from a negative, but I think it is significant that no other
creature is said to have received God’s “breath of life.” I take this to mean
that while all living creatures have a “soul,” not all have the “breath of
life.” It is my opinion that all animals have “soul,” but only humans have “spirit.”
The Hebrew word for “soul” is notoriously difficult to translate properly into
English. One of the most trusted dictionaries of the Bible languages is Vine’s, which states plainly that “soul” is not the best translation
of the Hebrew word, nephesh, which is used in this and almost eight
hundred other passages. Vine’s suggests that the best we can do is think
of nephesh as a constituent part of the human being.
There are places in
the Old Testament Hebrew where nephesh or soul is paired with another word for
contrast. This is a common practice in Hebrew literature. To me, the most
telling comparison is in the Shema, the central tenet of Jewish religion, in
Deuteronomy 6. The Jews were instructed to love God with, “with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might.” If I
overlay my New Testament understanding of the human constitution on this verse,
I see spirit (heart), soul, and body (might).
I feel safe in
saying that “heart” in the Old Testament language is a close parallel to
“spirit” in the New. It is a common idea that God progressively revealed more
of His truth as His relationship with His people matured. Moses understood more
than Adam; the prophets understood more that Moses; the writers of the New
Testament knew God’s truth to the fullest extent possible, and they shared it
by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
I have said all
that to emphasize that to be in the spirit is to be fully human. By contrast,
to be in the flesh is to be worldly, a condition which is not fully Christian.
Paul makes this distinction to the Corinthians when he tells them that their
petty squabbles are “fleshly.” Throughout his writings, Paul uses the word
“flesh” as a synonym for soul. I love J.B. Phillips translation of 1 Corinthians 3: “For you are still unspiritual [Greek: fleshly]; all the time that there is jealousy and squabbling
among you, you show that you are living just like men of the world.” Phillips
translates “fleshly” as unspiritual. This fits Paul’s context perfectly, as he is
chiding the Corinthians for not behaving spiritually but acting on fleshly,
soulish, worldly desires.
After recommending
serious Bible study as the route to spiritual growth, R.C. Sproul goes on to
say, “We are not to be like the rest of the world, content to live our
lives with a superficial understanding of God. We are to grow dissatisfied with
spiritual milk and hunger after spiritual meat…. To be spiritual has only one
real purpose. It is a means to an end, not the end itself. The goal of all
spiritual exercise must be the goal of righteousness.” Sproul goes on to equate
righteousness with holiness. This makes sense because to be right with God, we
must be holy as He is holy. That’s another way of saying we must be separated
from all that is not of God – separated
from the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The soulish, human tendency to feel connected to the world is part of our nature – it’s natural. By contrast, the Bible calls us to be super-natural; in this context that means to be spiritual. We not only fail to please God when we are fleshly; we also miss out on some of the blessings we would otherwise enjoy. We read that Jesus promised to be present with us after He died, was buried, and rose again. Tozer points out that we don’t properly prepare for that presence. “Christian expectation in the average church follows the program, not the promises…. Today we need a fresh spirit of anticipation that springs out of the promises of God! We must declare war on the mood of nonexpectation and come together with childlike faith. Only then can we know again the beauty and wonder of the Lord’s presence among us.”
The presence Jesus
promised is spiritual. We are told not to expect the bodily presence of Jesus
until He comes again to collect His Bride, the Church. But like Tozer says, “When
Christians meet, they do not expect anything unusual to happen: consequently,
only the usual happens, and that usual is as predictable as the setting of the
sun.” We seldom experience the blessed presence of Jesus because we don’t
expect it. We don’t expect it because it is a spiritual reality that we haven’t
fully comprehended.
God is at work in
the spiritual world around us all the time, but we are like Jacob who after dreaming of the stairway to heaven declared, “Surely Yahweh
is in this place and I did not know!” Take Paul’s advice: “Wake up sleeper, and rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you. Therefore, consider carefully how you live, not
as unwise but as wise, making the most of the time because the days are evil.”
I mentioned in Part One that being in touch spiritually is like having the
proper receiver tuned in. If we are going to escape the evil parody of
Christianity that plagues the church, we must get on God’s frequency; that
means being tuned in to the spirit (Spirit) every hour of every day.
I will close with
some good advice from A. W. Tozer: “The Holy Spirit is God’s imperative of
life. If Christ is to be the Christ of God rather than the Christ of intellect
[aka soul], then we must enter in beyond the veil, until the illumination of
the Holy Spirit fills our hearts, and we are learning at the feet of Jesus—not
at the feet of men!" Anyone
who wishes to abandon the parody of Christianity must learn to live in the
spirit. Get on your knees, church. Jesus is waiting.
Related Posts: Christian Parody, Part One; Part Two; The Presence of God; Ghost Buster—the Holy Ghost That Is; Where’s My Cloud
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