What
is Spirituality? Romans 5:18-21, Romans 6:1
Romans
chapters 6, 7 and 8 shift us now completely from having talked about and
focused on the topic, How is a person righteous before God? to the topic of,
how does a righteous person live before God? or, How does a righteous person
live on the basis of righteousness? The whole theme that Paul has developed in
this epistle of Romans is on righteousness related to the righteousness of God.
The starting point is God’s righteousness, so we have to ask the question as
His creatures: a) How do we become righteous?; b) How do we as righteous
creatures (those who have been declared righteous) experience righteousness in
our own lives? That is related to the whole topic of spirituality or,
theologically speaking, the topic of sanctification.
What
is fun about the topic of spirituality is that whenever we try to talk about
this with anyone we know it is evident that there is a lot of confusion that
comes out, because today the word “spirituality” has almost as many different
meanings as individuals. And if we are going to engage in any kind of
conversation about the spiritual life we really need to begin by defining some
terms and making sure that the people we are talking to understand what the
spiritual life is, what spirituality is, and what “spiritual” means. We find
there is almost an unending number of definitions for spirituality.
An
article appeared on the new spirituality in the Boston Globe that emphasised a
principle that is obvious to everyone, that is, people in America now embrace
many flexible notions of spirituality; people sort of make up their own
spirituality. They want to do what they want to do. It is reminiscent of the
period in the Old Testament known as the time of the Judges. The theme in the
book of Judges is that there was no king in the land and everyone did what was
right in his own eyes. That phrase “there was no king in the land” was a phrase
that had a double meaning. First of all there was no physical king but they did
have a king, and the king under the Mosaic Law was to be God Himself. But the
people had rejected God and in place of God they had substituted their own
ideas, their own authority, their own wishes. And this is the essence of any
sort of relativism, which is what dominates in western civilisation today. We
have this idea that we really do reject any kind of external authority. No one
can tell us what spirituality is.
In
opinion polls that have been taken over the last decade or so usually we find
that somewhere between 80-90 per cent of Americans claim to believe in “God.”
What do they mean by God? A lot of Americans are basically Hindu in their
beliefs. What they mean by “God” is not what an orthodox Jew would believe in
terms of God. It is not the same as what a Presbyterian would define as God, or
a Buddhist in terms of defining God; but they all believe in something like a
higher power. What is also concerning is that if there are 90 percent, as one
poll suggested, believe in God does that mean that all of the scientists of
America are in the ten per cent range? When we think about the whole creation
versus evolution type of debate and 90 per cent believe in God that can’t be
the Judeo-Christian creator God. It is just an amorphous term for something. So
we have to define that.
What
is interesting is that starting in the late eighties more and more Americans
believe in some sort of spiritual growth—the necessity of spiritual
growth, the necessity of feeding their spiritual life. Then we begin to ask:
What do you mean by spiritual life? That, again, takes us just about anywhere.
Forty-three per cent said in one poll that their interest in spirituality had
increased over the previous year. This is just to point out that this is a
popular topic and idea. In 2010 there was a Newsweek belief net poll and
according to that 24 per cent of those polled said that they were not religious
but they were spiritual. So in terms of its popular understanding for many
people spirituality is no longer related to a religious belief. For almost
fifty per cent, though, spirituality was still somewhat related to a religious
belief. Of course that religious belief could be any of the major religious
systems but it was still somewhat anchored to that.
The
impact of the New Age movement (which is just another form of Hinduism or
eastern mysticism) in the eighties and nineties really led to this sort of
subjective view of spirituality. We will read some articles and spirituality is
more related to psychological wellbeing. In other articles it is related to
some sort of self-fulfilment, so it is very much related to pursuing one’s own
goals and objectives and reaching them. In other contexts it is related to
emotional wellbeing. But who determines what emotional wellbeing is? Certain
groups of people are very quiet, very cerebral, what psychologists refer to as
very obsessive people, career oriented. Then there are others who are very
people-oriented. Usually people-oriented types are telling the business and
goal-oriented types that they need to get in touch with their emotional self.
But what makes them right? What makes their criteria right?
The
point is, once you cut yourself loose from an absolute that can establish the
meaning of terms everybody is just sharing their ignorance, their own opinions,
and nobody knows what is going on. It once again puts you back into a total
state of chaos and anarchy such as what was experienced at the time of the
judges. Nobody knows what they are talking about, everybody has their own
opinion, none of which is informed or based upon anything that is solid, and
everybody wants to do basically what makes them happy at any particular moment.
As long as they have that sense of happiness and fulfilment, whatever it is, at
that time in their life then they apparently seem to say that they are
spiritual and pursuing spirituality. In this context spirituality has come to
be defined as anything from making an emotional connection with other people to
pursuing some sort of journey, to various contemplation or meditation
techniques, to reaching some sort of self-actualisation.
One
blogger recently defined spirituality as that which deals with issues of inner
beliefs and feelings and is closely associated with religion and philosophy,
but not necessarily so. He also notes that people practice spirituality because
they are looking for something—inner peace, enlightenment, success, new
girlfriend, whatever. So this is all part of the modern context of
spirituality.
But
when we come to talking about the Bible, the Bible is very clear as to what
spirituality is. But as we find in other areas of life and other disciplines,
whatever the Bible says is something that is somehow excluded from discourse.
We’ve rejected the Bible as having anything to say about spirituality, so having
rejected that we are just going to start off on our own course trying to figure
out what the word means and then pursuing it. Some people go into meditation,
various rituals, but these things are also leaking into Christianity. There is
the emergent church movement, the latest devolution among Christians that has
been on the horizon for at least the last 12-14 years. It is not biblical
Christianity at all. It deteriorates into a lot of psychological, feel-good
emphasis on entertainment, emphasis on some feeling, emphasis on some
characteristics of mysticism, and it brings with it its own
vocabulary—contemplative spirituality, being centered,
labyrinths, etc. It is just more and more confusion and absolutely no
certainty.
So
it is important when we talk about anything to define terms and to define our
basis for those terms. This takes us right to the issue of authority and to the
issue of how we know anything. How do we know we are spiritual beings? In fact,
if you believe in evolution and you try to implement anything on the basis of
Darwinian evolution then you really are totally illogical and irrational if you
believe in any kind of spirituality. Because at some level spirituality is
emphasising something related to the immaterial nature of man. Or even if they
are focusing on emotional wellbeing they would be talking about emotions that
are not part of a deterministic framework. If you believe in a material origin
for man, which is necessary of you believe in evolution, then with a material
view of man there is no room for the immaterial. In a materialistic view of man
there is no such thing as the soul, there is only the brain. And the brain’s
thoughts and ideas and concepts are all determined by various chemical balances
and imbalances, various electrical charges, and these kinds of things; and that
is where some aspects of modern psychology go: everything is related that which
is purely material and physical.
So
“spiritual” by the very nature of the word implies something that is not
material, something that is related to something that goes beyond the senses.
So therefore it can’t be known and truly comprehended via empiricism, because
empiricism restricts the area of knowledge to that which is perceived and
understood only by the physical. Spirituality itself would be excluded from
that. The conclusion in all of this is when spirituality can mean anything, it
means nothing. When any word, any concept becomes so nebulous, so abstruse it
loses all content; you can’t have a discussion about it. But the Bible talks
about spirituality in several different ways, and it clearly defines
spirituality from the very beginning in the Old Testament Scriptures. In
Genesis there is an emphasis on spirituality.
At
its most fundamental sense spirituality is being in right relationship with
God. It is going to express itself in a couple of different ways. Then the
question: What does it mean to be spiritually alive? We can catch a reaction
from people if we say that they are spiritually dead. If they are not Christians
then they don’t like the idea of spirit beings, spiritually dead, because they
feel very much to be spiritual in their lives. And there are some Christians
who have some different ideas on what it means to be spiritually dead or
spiritually alive, so this is a term that needs to be investigated. What does
it mean to be spiritually alive? What does it mean to have a spiritual life?
Those are closely related ideas but they are different. You can be spiritually
alive but not have a spiritual life. We need to understand the distinction. We
need to understand how we acquire a spiritual life, how that spiritual life
matures, and how that is nourished. What are the goals, objectives, meanings
and methods of spiritual growth and spirituality? In order to do that we have
to start investigating some of these terms.
Throughout
the Scriptures, especially starting back in the Torah, there is this contrast
between death and life, from the very beginning in Genesis 2:17 and God’s
warning to Adam and Eve that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil they would certainly die. And there is a Hebrew idiom there
emphasising the certainty of that death. And it is not talking about different
kinds of death there, it is just talking about one kind of death in that
particular passage. When Israel is given the Mosaic Law what is emphasised is
that there is a path to life, which is obedience to the law, and there is a
path to death, which is disobedience to the law. Both Moses and his successor
Joshua emphasised to the people that they had a choice—life or death. It
is that choice that we find emphasised all the way through Scripture. When we
come to the New Testament this is a major emphasis in Jesus’ message—that
He has come to bring life. He came to give life and to give it abundantly. So
there is a dual sense in the meaning “eternal life.” One is a quantitative
sense in terms of what this new life is that is life everlasting, life without
end with God. Then there is a qualitative sense to that that is talking about
the richness, the fullness of the life that God has given us: experiencing all
of the blessing, all of the benefits that God has already given us so that we
have the richness, the fullness, the happiness and peace; everything that God
has given us in terms of the quality of life.
So
life is contrasted to death and death is brought in and that is the first term
we need to remind ourselves of when we talk about this concept of spirituality.
Spirituality is the development of that spiritual life; it is in contrast to
spiritual death. The penalty that God assigned to disobedience to Him is stated
initially in the second chapter of the Torah as God warned Adam not to eat of
the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The
concept of death really starts to get developed in the epistle of Romans in the
section we are in, Romans 5:12-22. There is an important emphasis on death, the
death that comes from Adam’s disobedience and that from that disobedience death
spreads to all man kind. Then that becomes contrasted by the end of Romans
5:21, 22 with the phrase “righteousness of life.” This concept of bringing in
death and then transitioning from the end of Romans 5 to this concept of
righteousness of life shows that what Paul is doing in his thinking is moving
from the topic of how to be justified before God (related to the doctrine of
justification by faith alone) and regenerated to having this new life, and
having this new life we are to live as righteous people.
In
the Old Testament, parallel to that, when the Israelites came out of Egypt God
redeemed them. And the major picture that God gives them historically is what
happened at the exodus event. With the death of the firstborn, the final
plague/judgment on the Egyptians, God redeemed the Israelites. They came out of
Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. 1 Corinthians 10 compares that to baptism; they
are identified with Moses, and they have a new life. They have been delivered
from the bondage of slavery in Egypt and now they have new life and new freedom.
The question is: how are these Israelites who are newly made alive supposed to
live? Then God gives them the law at Mount Sinai, telling them how a
now-regenerate people are supposed to live. The Mosaic Law wasn’t given to show
them how to be redeemed (they are already redeemed), it was given to show how a
redeemed people were to live. In the same way the New Testament was given to
believers to teach justified believers how they are to live now that they are
righteous.
We go back to the problem
of death and understanding what this means. There are several different kinds
of death in the Scripture that we have noted. The first is spiritual death.
Then there is the first mention of physical death in Genesis 3:19 – “…For you are
dust, And to dust you shall return.” The point is that this is a minor
reference to death and it is part of a stack of consequences that God has
spelled out for Adam, the woman, and the serpent. So physical death is not seen
as an overarching, defining concept for all of these different aspects.
Physical death is part of these ramifications of something that happened when
Adam disobeyed God—spiritual death.
In two passages in the New
Testament Paul reiterates this and gives us an understanding that there is
something that transpires relative to a person’s regeneration. In both of these
Paul talks about the fact that there is a previous time when we were dead.
Colossians 2:13
NASB “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together
with Him [regeneration], having forgiven us all our transgressions.” Ephesians
2:1 NASB “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins … [5] even
when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by
grace you have been saved).” The point is that when we are made alive in Christ
it is because we are born in a state of death—but we are physically
alive. That tells us that that word “death” doesn’t have as its primary meaning
physical death in this context. It has as its primary meaning a real death but
not a physical death. So we define this as spiritual death, which is being
separated from God so that we are separated from the source of life.
This is the idea that lies
behind the last parts of Romans chapter five where Paul is moving in the
direction of explaining what spiritual death is. He is establishing this so
that by contrast when he talks about the life that God has given us then it
stands out in contrast to the present reality of our condition of spiritual
death and living in a spiritually dead world, a world under condemnation.
So in verse 12 he starts
the topic: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and
death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Then
Paul explains this in a parenthesis from v. 13 to v. 17 because he wants people
to understand before he starts talking about the new life that we have why it
is necessary and from whence it comes and what the foundation is. He doesn’t
want any confusion over the fact that we are all born spiritually dead and we
experience the effects and consequences of spiritual death from the very
beginning of our life. We live in the midst of spiritually dead people and
cultures produced by spiritually dead people who are just trying to somehow
anaesthetise themselves to the reality that we are living in a dead culture and
a dead world with dead people. He concludes the parenthesis in verse 17 by
stating, “For if by the transgression of the one, [the] death reigned through
the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.” That is what
he wants to emphasise. He is not browbeating us with the fact that we are under
condemnation or punishment, but by understanding the contrast between the
status of death, that that doesn’t produce anything, then we can see that all
of the life that we have through God’s grace is brought out in all of its
glory.
Then Paul makes the
transition from talking about judgment and condemnation to now showing that
when this is solved we can have life and righteousness. Romans 5:18 NASB
“So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation [punishment]
to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted
justification of life to all men.” The way that we should understand
“condemnation” here is by the word “punishment.” It results in punishment. When
we read that word condemnation and we are talking about spiritual death we are
often thinking about eternal punishment. But that is not Paul’s emphasis here.
The emphasis here is that we are living in a state of punishment in a world
that is under punishment right now and it is not what it is supposed to be;
life isn’t what it is supposed to be. We experience that on a day-to-day basis.
That is because we are living in a world, a universe that is under
condemnation.
Romans 5:19 NASB
“For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so
through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.” So one man’s
decision leads to punishment; the other man’s decision leads to the potential
that many will be declared to be righteous or made righteous. The verb here
“will be made” is one that has not been used much by Paul—kathistemi [kaqisthmi], indicating the idea of will be appointed or will be made,
and it also has the same idea of being declared righteous. So there is the
contrast between the previous state of condemnation and the present state of
being made righteous.
In verse 18 the word
translated “justification” is the Greek word dikaiosune
[dikaiosunh] and it has the idea of righteousness. It is righteousness,
and then there is the preposition eis
[e)ij]—“righteousness toward life.” So the reason we are
given righteousness is so that now we can experience life. Life comes from
living in the realm of righteousness and producing righteousness in terms of
experiential righteousness; it doesn’t occur in the realm of unrighteousness.
If we are a Christian living in the realm of carnality, sin, disobedience to
God, that is not going to produce life; it is going to produce
death—carnal or operational death. But if we are living and walking by
the Spirit on the basis of our justification then that righteousness that we
have in Christ will result in life, and that life that we have is a life
consistent with experiential righteousness. It is that foundation of
righteousness that is the platform from which we can produce experiential
righteousness and righteous living; we are not against living in a righteous
manner.
Romans 5:20 NASB “The
Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased,
grace abounded all the more.” The law doesn’t make sin sin;
sin was already sin for all of those generations prior to the giving of the
Mosaic law. There was a period of 2500 years before Moses where there was no
Mosaic law, so the Mosaic law doesn’t define these things as a sin but in the
Mosaic law code many things are identified as sin that weren’t spelled out that
precisely prior to that. Sin is exposed in a greater and more detailed way than
it was previously, and that is what Paul is talking about here. By defining sin
more tightly people become more aware that just about anything that they do can
be classified as a sin, because sin is anything that violates the character and
revelation of God. By giving the law we have even less of an opportunity to
rationalise away sin.
What happens as a result of
that? Grace just super-abounds because even though sin is more evident God’s
grace in dealing with that sin becomes even more evident.
Romans 5:21 NASB “so
that, as sin reigned in death …” That means that during this time of history
when there wasn’t a law, and then the time after the law between the giving of
the law and the coming of Jesus the Messiah sin reigned in death. People lived
in a death-dominated world. “… even so grace would reign …” And here he uses
the subjunctive mood verb indicating it is potential; it is dependent upon human
volition. It only reigns if we do what God says to do. “... through
righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The eternal life
that is mentioned here is quantitative eternal life, i.e. life without end. The
eternal life mentioned here in context has gone beyond the life we receive at
regeneration to living in a time of the condemnation and spiritual death on the
earth to experience the richness and fullness of the life that God has given
us.
Remember that when Paul
wrote this there were no verses divisions or chapter divisions. When we move
from verse 21 and down to verse 4 of chapter six we have the transition. Romans
6:1 NASB “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that
grace may increase? [2] May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still
live in it?” There is death and life again. [3] “Or do you not know that all of
us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
[4] Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that
as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too
might walk in newness of life.” That is where Paul is going. He has left the
concept of moving from positional death to positional life back in chapter four
and now is moving experiencing the fullness of that life. He uses this same
phrase “eternal life” when we get to the end of chapter six: “For the wages of
sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord.” It is the same concept, and Romans 6 is all about learning how to live
as a believer not in bondage to sin but living as a slave to righteousness. If
we live as a slave to sin then that produces death but if you live as a slave
to righteousness that produces life. That is the life that is talked about in
Romans 6:23. The wages of sin—a reference to a believer who is continuing
to live in carnality and not experiencing the fullness of life, not letting the
righteousness reign as eternal or full life in his spiritual life.
That is how Paul sets this
up, talking about life and death. So we see the first two key terms here in
talking about the spiritual life in Scripture and understanding the nuances and
the distinctions between life and death.