It seems to me from reading the entirety of Scripture that there are only two forces that give energy to our little human lives. These two animating forces are opposed to one another…like oil and water. Paul, a letter writing rabbi from the first century, summarizes simply: The Flesh – or – The Spirit.
I have been startled to learn that much of my “Christian” experience is nothing more than mindfulness; an ordered arrangement of thoughts, ideas, mental assents to dogma and doctrines that I attempt to apply to my life, by my own power, with varying seasons of intentionality, in hopes of producing a life well-lived. The results? As my mentor used to say, you get a big smile, with sad eyes, and nobody wants what you’ve got.
Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, is a rollicking story. It is an epic saga of a people and their God. Along the way, this God is progressively revealed…from Glory to Glory, as the authors eventually conclude. The ongoing revealing of this God has never ceased. It is as if this God can enter a room, but the train of His robe never ceases to press in as fold after fold of who He really is manifests yet another aspect of His goodness…to us. The biblical authors eventually call this the manifold (many folds) goodness of God.
The full revelation of God did not cease when Jesus was born…or with Jesus on a cross…or Jesus resurrected…or Jesus ascending to the right hand of God…at least according to Jesus’ own words. All of this was to enact God’s most precious, anticipated gift of Himself not just to, but into! the crown of His creation – men and women – to be filled with Holy Spirit – thus becoming Spiritual people. No longer flesh people, helplessly controlled by its fallenness and bent towards all-things-self-and-sin.
Being born again in and by the Spirit inaugurates yours and my spiritual life. Until the event of being “born of the Spirit,” to quote Jesus, we simply are not in any way yet spiritual. We may know some spiritual principles. We may even attempt to practice some ways of behaving that we have been taught to be spiritual. But, until our new birth – the birth of our spirit by His Spirit – we are hopelessly in the flesh; controlled by its antics and desires.
Oh, but the mystery of God swoops in! Like a nor’easter wind charging dramatically down the hills and valleys of our soul. In a moment of divine exhalation, our little spirit inhales and becomes awake –Alive! –existing in the same substance as God Himself, for He is Spirit…and life. And so, our spiritual life begins.
Sadly, some are born again but never really live. They remain alive in the Spirit, but defeated in their flesh, never learning the ways of the Spirit which is our inheritance. They never learn that by the Spirit they can shed the thin, dirty, tattered covering of the flesh. Like taking off clothes, so says Paul in one of his many letters to friends in faraway towns, our spirit, enlivened by Holy Spirit, presents a new man – a spiritual man – who, because of his spirit-to-Spirit likeness, can now live as Jesus claims to have lived: In God. Hearing God (who is Spirit). Seeing God. Capable of maturing in the Spirit from glory to glory…
…just like Him.
