Faith Venture

Read Chapter 8

Let’s continue our lessons on spiritual formation or spiritual growth using the Letter to the Romans as our guide.

Paul now turns to living in the Spirit of God. If we have gone through the stages of awareness of our capability for sin into faith in God and into understanding of God’s grace provided through Jesus’ death and resurrection, then we need to know how to live in this new life. That will more or less be the theme of the rest of the letter.

He begins with a little recap of the last chapter (understanding that he didn’t right in chapters, but a careful reader can begin to see his outline), “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death”

Paul was so thoroughly taught in the law of the Pharisees, that he just cannot escape that thought. He tries here to incorporate a word known to the Jewish followers in Rome, and probably known to the Gentile, as well. Law. But he tries to redefine law from rigid rules to life in the Spirit. We must be careful not to get caught up in deciphering his unfortunate wordplay.

Let’s consider the Spirit some more.

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”

I love a word that comes to us from making a pot of tea—infusion. As a contemplative, that word has experiential meaning for me. But even if you aren’t particularly contemplative, the feeling of a new Spirit residing in you should happen. It will give life to your mortal body, as Paul says. In another letter, Paul tried to define this more completely as the “fruit of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Who wouldn’t want to have those qualities in their life? These are also visible to anyone you meet.

Further, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” Let’s pause a moment and consider our weaknesses. Perhaps we have deep feelings of emotions such as grief, despair, anxiety, worry (once my favorite), and the like. 

Paul offers a reason for hope, “…for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Having built a formidable argument about God’s power and God’s grace, he asks the rhetorical question, “If God is for us, who is against us?”

And he concludes these thoughts with the bold declaration:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

35 mph gusts outside my window

The banks of evergreens shimmying like 60s go-go dancers

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound

Said Jesus

But you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

The Spirit blows. I know not from where it comes nor to where it goes.

But those who feel the Spirit blowing will see the kingdom of God.

Be still for a moment. Listen for the Spirit blowing towards you.

It’s there. Rather, it’s here.

I read the word “infused” in Eugene Peterson’s Message Bible translation. That word and the concept held within it is fascinating.

Zen Buddhist monk Henry Shukman said recently during an interview, “Life is like hot water and meditation is like the tea bag.”

Try this thought for size.

You (me, everyone) are body living within the soul. We don’t know the true meaning of the Temple that Paul references when he says that our bodies are now the Temple where the Spirit resides. Ancient peoples built temples for a place where their god lived.

Jesus sort of blew up that entire view. He said that God was all around us. As a spirit. And Paul tried to explain it that God as the Holy Spirit lives in us. It would be like that tea bag that infuses the hot water of our being.

Before I get too nerdy in philosophy, let us just consider this:

What would it mean for us that we opened to the Spirit allowing it to infuse our entire being, our entire life, how we live, how we think, how we relate?

Made me think back to the 60s,

What’s It All About, Alfie?

Is it just for the moment we live?

—Burt Bacharach

During last week’s technology conference, a speaker told us “automation should be about empowering people.”

We read the stories about Jesus.

We read the stories about the early church.

Is it all about joining the (name your type) community?

Is it all about going to heaven at the end?

Is it all about doing good?

Or, maybe, all about telling others how to be good?

Maybe it’s all about following Jesus, being empowered by the Spirit?

Empowered to live a life of service to God and others?

Empowered to live in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?

Some people believe that we are born sinful and must live a life of striving toward perfection. Others think we are born perfect and develop illusions as we age requiring a life of recognizing and eliminating illusions.

I have no wish to plumb the depths of theological rationalism.

Somewhere along the journey we call life most of us will stumble on a large root across the path. The sudden realization like a stumble and fall on the wooded path that either we have been living a life wallowing in sin or that we realize that within us lies the capability of performing great sin needing only a trigger event to bring it out.

Perfection is impossible. Striving toward it leads to frustration and psychological trauma. Recognizing the possibility or actualizing of narcissism or cynicism or negativity or spreading hate and hurt can lead us out of the depth. Shedding each negative impulse one at a time by not-striving but allowing the Spirit to touch us (Romans 8:16) until we live the life defined by the fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).