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Romans
8:1-17
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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (ESV)
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Spirituality
Thursday of Pentecost 8
26 July 2012
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Today a great deal of religious talk is about "spirituality." In fact, when asked if they are religious or even Christian, people will answer, "I'm spiritual." What does this mean? Often, nothing. What is it to be spiritual? Is it a vague religious sense disconnected from any specific content? Or is it something more? Should it be something more? We must keep in mind that a great deal of the created universe is "spiritual." Satan and his evil angels are spiritual. Is that what we mean when we claim to be spiritual; that we are like Satan? In the case of those who worship Satan, it is. "Spirituality" is susceptible to any number of different interpretations.
In Christianity, the concept of spirituality cuts a number of different directions across reality. Spiritual life is a gift of God in Christ and is specifically tied to the very fleshly life of Jesus of Nazareth. He who is spirit and life was also flesh and blood. Spiritual reality inheres in the flesh of the Son of God.
We humans are spiritual beings in the most generic sense because God has created us. We have a capacity for life in connection with the God who is a Spirit. This does not answer the question whether we participate in it, nor how we participate in it when we do. That remains the work of Christ who through His incarnation brings spirit and life to His creatures. He uses fleshly means to bring us into that relationship. The means of grace all become vehicles of the spirituality that comes from God. The means of grace are preaching and sacraments. These things are assured to the church by Christ who gives them to us to give Himself in them. But because they are the things of this world, we cannot judge them by their outward appearance of weakness, but rather as we might judge a nut, by what is inside. Their weakness does not tell us what they really do. Here spirituality is tied down to the means God uses to convey Himself to us.
On the last day, God will also take the fleshly remains of our bodies, even if those remains have been scattered to the four winds, and they will become the immortal vehicle of spirituality, only with none of the weaknesses to which bodies are susceptible here and now. Every resurrected soul will be what the Apostle calls a "spiritual body." So while all true spirituality is a gift from God and is tied down to means, spirituality differs in us and our Lord God and in this era in and in the next. The perfection of the spiritual life to come is only a matter of conjecture for us weak humans now. Christ gives us glimpses of it, but beyond that we can only live in the hope that the means of grace assure.
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Augustine of Hippo
"Whatever has been taken from the body, either during life or after death shall be restored to it. In conjunction with what has remained in the grave, it shall rise again, transformed from the oldness of the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, and clothed in incorruption and immortality. But even though the body has been all quite ground to powder by some severe accident, or by the ruthlessness of enemies, and so diligently scattered to the winds, or into the water, that there is no trace of it left, yet it shall not be beyond the omnipotence of the Creator, no, not a hair of its head shall perish. The flesh shall then be spiritual, and subject to the spirit, but still flesh. It will not be spirit, as the spirit itself, when subject to the flesh, was fleshly, but still spirit and not flesh. Of this we have experimental proof in the deformity of our suffering. For those persons were carnal, not in a fleshly, but in a spiritual way, to whom the apostle said, 'I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh' (1Co 3:1). A man is in this life spiritual in such a way that he is yet carnal with respect to his body, and sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind (Rm 7:23). But even in his body he will be spiritual when the same flesh shall have had that resurrection of which these words speak, 'It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body' (1Co 15:44).
"What this spiritual body shall be and how great its grace, I fear it reckless to pronounce, seeing that we have as yet no experience of it. Nevertheless, since it is fit that the joyfulness of our hope should utter itself, and so show forth God's praise, and since it was from the profoundest sentiment of ardent and holy love that the Psalmist cried, 'O LORD, I love the habitation of your house' (Ps 26:8), we may, with God's help, speak of the gifts He lavishes on men, good and bad alike, in this most wretched life, and may do our best to conjecture the great glory of that state which we cannot worthily speak of, because we have not yet experienced it. For I say nothing of the time when God made man upright. I say nothing of the happy life of 'the man and his wife' in the fruitful garden, since it was so short that none of their children experienced it. I speak only of this life which we know, and in which we now are, from the temptations of which we cannot escape so long as we are in it, no matter what progress we make, for it is all temptation. I ask, who can describe the tokens of God's goodness that are extended to the human race even in this life?"
Augustine, The City of God, 22.21
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Prayer
Lord Christ, give us Yourself in the means of grace. Help us to hope for that which is yet to come at the consummation of the age. Keep us from falling into formless or self-centered spirituality, but rather keep us tied to Your Word, which is spirit and truth. Grant us Your forgiveness given through Word and sacraments in the church. Amen.
For the Lutheran Malaria Initiative, that those who are imperiled by the disease might be freed from suffering and the fear of death
For the Building Committee of Memorial Lutheran Church and School as they prepare to continue the ongoing building campaign of the congregation
For the Praesidium of the LCMS as they serve the church, that they might be faithful to their calling and love toward the bride of Christ
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Art: DÜRER, Albrecht The Adoration of the Trinity (1511)
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 © Scott R. Murray, 2012
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