What Does It Mean to Be Spiritual?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | We'll ask three people to explain what it means to be spiritual, and you'll get four different answers.
00:00:10.000 | That's a humorous way to state the problem.
00:00:13.000 | Definitions of spirituality are very squishy things.
00:00:16.000 | The term means something different to everyone.
00:00:19.000 | So what is biblical spirituality?
00:00:21.000 | And can we settle on an objective definition of spirituality from the Bible?
00:00:26.000 | That's the question today from a young woman, and for her it's not a theoretical question at all.
00:00:32.000 | "Pastor John, my mother and I have differing views on biblical spirituality,
00:00:36.000 | so much so that she has said that my husband and I are not spiritual.
00:00:40.000 | I believe this is because she embraces spirituality as spiritual gifts,
00:00:44.000 | such as speaking in tongues, interpreting dreams, and claiming healing.
00:00:49.000 | My husband and I have worked in the mission field, are heavily involved in church,
00:00:53.000 | love the Lord, and seek after Him in all things.
00:00:55.000 | I don't know what to say to this.
00:00:57.000 | Is it possible that we, my husband and I, are not spiritual?
00:01:02.000 | I feel that this is not the case, as I see the fruit of the Spirit in our lives."
00:01:06.000 | How would you respond to such a statement toward yourself,
00:01:09.000 | and more broadly, what does authentic Christian spirituality look like?
00:01:15.000 | Let's start with a few comments about the use of language and the importance of definitions.
00:01:24.000 | And then we'll move over to the biblical use of the term "spiritual,"
00:01:28.000 | which is especially interesting because in the ESV, the word "spiritual" or "spiritually"
00:01:36.000 | occurs 29 times, and 27 of them are in the writings of the apostle Paul,
00:01:43.000 | and the other two are in Peter's first letter.
00:01:46.000 | So it isn't a very widespread term, and we're mainly dealing with Paul,
00:01:52.000 | we're dealing with his understanding of it, when we talk about the meaning of spirituality
00:01:58.000 | or being spiritual in the New Testament.
00:02:00.000 | So first, a few thoughts about the use of language.
00:02:06.000 | I wonder what our friend would feel or think if a New Age spiritualist
00:02:17.000 | who practices divination and fortune-telling and necromancy and palm-reading and earth worship
00:02:24.000 | were to say to her, to our mature Christian friend,
00:02:30.000 | "You're not spiritual because you don't pursue these spiritual practices like I do."
00:02:36.000 | Now, my guess is that our friend would not feel very threatened at all
00:02:42.000 | or seriously criticized because she knows that those practices
00:02:48.000 | are not at all what the Bible means by "spiritual."
00:02:52.000 | In fact, just the opposite. The Bible opposes those practices.
00:02:58.000 | But the point is that the New Age spiritualist is spiritual by his own definition.
00:03:08.000 | So there would be no point in arguing which of those is spiritual.
00:03:14.000 | If you don't define your terms, it would go nowhere.
00:03:17.000 | The argument would go nowhere if you said, "Which one of us is spiritual?"
00:03:21.000 | Because they don't agree on what they mean by "spiritual."
00:03:25.000 | They are using the word in drastically different ways.
00:03:29.000 | So when our friend says, "My mother and I have differing views on biblical spirituality,"
00:03:37.000 | she could mean, "My mother and I agree on the meaning of the word,
00:03:43.000 | but we disagree on whether my husband and I are living up to it."
00:03:47.000 | Or she could mean that they seriously disagree on the biblical definition of spirituality,
00:03:55.000 | and so they can't assess the other with the same criteria,
00:04:01.000 | and we just talk past each other.
00:04:04.000 | Now, I'm pretty sure from what she says that our friend takes the latter view,
00:04:11.000 | because she says she embraces spirituality as spiritual gifts,
00:04:17.000 | such as speaking in tongues, interpreting dreams, claiming healing.
00:04:22.000 | So the mother thinks that being spiritual in a biblical sense is exercising spiritual gifts,
00:04:32.000 | while our friend thinks being spiritual means something else.
00:04:37.000 | So let's go to Paul, Paul's writings, and see what the term actually means.
00:04:44.000 | So Paul uses the word "spiritual" to refer to spiritual wisdom, spiritual blessings,
00:04:51.000 | spiritual songs, spiritual bodies, spiritual gifts, spiritual rock, spiritual food.
00:04:58.000 | Now, we're going to leave all that aside.
00:05:01.000 | We're only going to talk about spiritual people.
00:05:04.000 | I think he uses the term in three ways, but they are all rooted in the same basic idea,
00:05:15.000 | and I think that basic idea is that a person is spiritual
00:05:21.000 | if by the power of the Holy Spirit, he has experienced a new birth
00:05:29.000 | and is no longer defined by the flesh, which opposes God,
00:05:36.000 | but is defined by the Holy Spirit, who causes him to trust God and love God.
00:05:43.000 | So a spiritual person is most fundamentally a supernaturally transformed person
00:05:51.000 | who has been transferred by the Spirit from the natural condition of unbelief
00:05:59.000 | to the Spirit-created condition of new creature in Christ.
00:06:06.000 | They are spiritual in the sense that they were created by the Holy Spirit
00:06:13.000 | and are indwelt and formed by the Holy Spirit.
00:06:19.000 | So you can see that if I'm right, Paul's use of the term "spiritual" gets its meaning
00:06:27.000 | mainly from God's Spirit, not my spirit.
00:06:32.000 | Paul doesn't call somebody spiritual because their spirit is especially active
00:06:38.000 | or because they have an unusual preoccupation with mystical things, spiritual things.
00:06:45.000 | Now, the most important text for seeing these things is 1 Corinthians 2, verses 12 and following.
00:06:53.000 | So let me read a couple of verses.
00:06:56.000 | "Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God,
00:07:05.000 | that we might understand things freely given to us by God;
00:07:11.000 | and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit,
00:07:20.000 | interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual."
00:07:27.000 | Now, who are they? Those who are spiritual.
00:07:31.000 | So we've received the Spirit.
00:07:33.000 | We're imparting things from the Spirit by words taught by the Spirit,
00:07:39.000 | but we can only do that to those who are spiritual.
00:07:43.000 | Who are they? That's what Paul turns to.
00:07:47.000 | They're the only ones to whom Paul can successfully transmit spiritual truths.
00:07:54.000 | So Paul explains why that is and who they are in verse 13, the next verse.
00:08:00.000 | "The natural person," now that's the unregenerate, unsaved person
00:08:07.000 | without the Holy Spirit, "contrasted with the spiritual person."
00:08:11.000 | The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,
00:08:17.000 | for they are folly to him, and he's not able to understand them
00:08:21.000 | because they are spiritually assessed.
00:08:25.000 | Spiritually assessed.
00:08:28.000 | That is, in the sense that the indwelling Holy Spirit
00:08:32.000 | enables a person to assess them rightly.
00:08:35.000 | They're not foolishness, but they're true and beautiful.
00:08:39.000 | Then he goes on, verse 15.
00:08:41.000 | "The spiritual person," now he's contrasting that with the natural person,
00:08:46.000 | the unregenerate person.
00:08:48.000 | "The spiritual person assesses all things, but is himself assessed by no one,
00:08:56.000 | for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?"
00:09:01.000 | But we have the mind of Christ.
00:09:03.000 | That is, we have the Holy Spirit shaping the way our mind assesses things
00:09:09.000 | so that we don't call wisdom stupid or foolishness.
00:09:13.000 | Instead, we assess things in the true light of Christ.
00:09:17.000 | But natural people can't make that act.
00:09:21.000 | They can't do that because it's not real to them.
00:09:24.000 | It's just foolishness to them.
00:09:26.000 | So my conclusion from this passage is that Paul's most basic use of the term
00:09:33.000 | "spiritual" is to refer to true Christians who have the Holy Spirit
00:09:39.000 | and therefore are no longer merely natural people,
00:09:43.000 | but supernatural people who have been born again by the Spirit
00:09:47.000 | and whose minds are therefore able to see in the gospel the beauty of Christ
00:09:53.000 | and the wisdom of God.
00:09:55.000 | So all true Christians are spiritual in that fundamental sense,
00:10:03.000 | and that's his most basic sense.
00:10:05.000 | Now, I think there are two other uses of the term in Paul,
00:10:12.000 | and both of them are adaptations of this meaning, not contradictions of it.
00:10:20.000 | So the first is that Paul can use the term "spiritual" for Christians
00:10:25.000 | who are more mature in their experience of this newness of their spirituality.
00:10:33.000 | 1 Corinthians 3, verse 1.
00:10:36.000 | "But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people,"
00:10:43.000 | which is different than saying that they're not spiritual people.
00:10:47.000 | "I couldn't address you as spiritual people, but as infants in Christ."
00:10:52.000 | Now, I don't think that means--I used to think this,
00:10:54.000 | but I don't think that means that they're not spiritual in the first sense,
00:11:00.000 | but they weren't acting like it.
00:11:03.000 | Strife and jealousy was all over the church,
00:11:07.000 | and so Paul treats them as babies.
00:11:10.000 | Here's another example of this use of the more mature Christian
00:11:15.000 | as spiritual in Galatians 6, verse 1.
00:11:17.000 | "Brothers, if anyone is caught in a transgression,
00:11:20.000 | you who are spiritual should restore him."
00:11:24.000 | Now, he's a Christian, and yet he's calling these folks spiritual
00:11:28.000 | to go restore him in the spirit of gentleness.
00:11:32.000 | Those who are walking in the more mature influence of the Spirit,
00:11:37.000 | the Spirit's fruit, like meekness he refers to,
00:11:40.000 | you go restore that one back.
00:11:44.000 | That's my second use of the word,
00:11:47.000 | a more mature experience of that spirituality.
00:11:52.000 | The other use of the term "spiritual" is ironic in 1 Corinthians 14, 37.
00:11:59.000 | It goes like this.
00:12:01.000 | "If anyone thinks that he's a prophet or spiritual,
00:12:06.000 | he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you
00:12:10.000 | are a command of the Lord."
00:12:12.000 | So ironically, there are those who have spiritual gifts,
00:12:17.000 | and they really do.
00:12:19.000 | Like, I think, our friend's mother is thinking.
00:12:23.000 | They have spiritual gifts, and they claim, therefore,
00:12:27.000 | to be spiritual.
00:12:28.000 | But Paul says, "Now, here's the real test,
00:12:32.000 | you people who are speaking in tongues
00:12:35.000 | and experiencing healings and exorcisms.
00:12:39.000 | Here's the real test of being spiritual.
00:12:42.000 | It's not gifts, but submission to the apostolic word.
00:12:49.000 | Do you acknowledge that our word is from the Lord?"
00:12:54.000 | So my counsel to our friend who sent this question
00:12:59.000 | is that she will, with all humility,
00:13:05.000 | in the pursuit of all the fruit of the Holy Spirit,
00:13:08.000 | not be shamed by her mother's misunderstanding.
00:13:16.000 | Don't let her words shame you.
00:13:20.000 | She should realize that having spiritual gifts
00:13:24.000 | does not make a person spiritual.
00:13:28.000 | That was the problem at Corinth.
00:13:30.000 | It's having the Holy Spirit that makes one spiritual,
00:13:36.000 | and being formed into the image of Christ by His fruit,
00:13:41.000 | that's mature spirituality.
00:13:44.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, for that definition.
00:13:46.000 | And that mention of 1 Corinthians 14, 37 here in this episode
00:13:50.000 | reminds me of one of my all-time favorite APJ episodes.
00:13:54.000 | We titled it, "Should We Listen for the Audible Voice of God?"
00:13:58.000 | Should We Listen for the Audible Voice of God?
00:14:01.000 | That's APJ 167, an oldie, but a classic,
00:14:05.000 | to me at least, when I found helpful.
00:14:07.000 | 1 Corinthians 14, 37 pops up there too in that episode.
00:14:10.000 | Find APJ 167 at AskPastorJohn.com.
00:14:15.000 | In fact, all of our episodes are housed and searchable there.
00:14:18.000 | All the audio and the transcripts are all there,
00:14:21.000 | fully available for you free of charge.
00:14:23.000 | Check it out, AskPastorJohn.com.
00:14:27.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we will see you back here on Monday.
00:14:30.000 | See you then.
00:14:31.000 | [END]
00:14:33.000 | [END]
00:14:35.000 | [END]
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