TENSION BETWEEN THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH?

 

I have been trying to come up with a way to address through scripture the apparent tension between the Spirit (life, perfection and grace) and the flesh (death, sin and the law). It  strikes me that two parallel passages written by Paul might do the trick.  They are the following:

 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:   ^"Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

 1 Corinthians 15:49-51:  "And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.  Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.  Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.  When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory'.”

 In the first passage we read that wrongdoers cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.  One might ask:  how can that be?  Aren't we all wrongdoers, even after we have accepted Christ as our savior?  See 1 John 1:10, "If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us."  The second passage resolves this apparent contradiction where we read that "flesh and blood" cannot inherit the kingdom of God.  See also Matthew 26:41, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."  Thus our old flesh, enslaved by the law and sin, dies, while our spirit, quickened by the free gift of the Holy Spirit through Christ, is fully clothed with a new, heavenly body. 

 See 2 Corinthians 5:1-5:

 "For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.  We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing.  For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.  God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit."  

 We again read in Romans 8:21-23 that all of creation, including each of us, "groans" and is "in travail" awaiting the "redemption of our body."  At first blush this does not appear to be a comforting message, since it acknowledges the agony of the flesh, which includes not only sickness but worry and discomfort and our broken relationships, and many other torments afflicting all of us in various ways.  The comfort afforded by this passage is not that these pains will necessarily be taken away from us in this life (see, e.g., 2 Corinthians 12:7, where Paul writes of his "thorn in the flesh"), but rather that we can nonetheless live on, with or without these torments, in the firm knowledge that even now Christ is clothing us with our new, eternal bodies, and that these worries and ailments will not get the best of us, that Christ will triumph in the end, and we will triumph with him.  See 2 Corinthians 3:18, "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord".  

 Thus, our job here on earth is to do the best we can to serve Christ, and He will handle the rest; but even if we don't do our best, (and it may well be that we that we don't do very well at all) He will still handle everything for us, with some admonishment and correction along the way, so long as we continue to believe in Him.  See, e.g., Mark 8:33, where Christ sternly rebukes Peters.  

SALVATION IS ONLY THROUGH CHRIST

 

Leviticus 5 makes clear that when a sin offering is properly made, the underlying sin "shall be forgiven."  See, e.g., Lev. 5:16.  Thus, if you were a real stickler for the continuing efficacy of the law as a means to salvation, you might argue something like this.  Sacrificial offerings remove the underlying sin. In other words, God forgives the sinner his or her sins once the sin offering is made. Thus, each year when the Jewish priest offers atonement, the people are cleansed of all their sins and for that nanosecond stand perfect before God. Thus, the argument would go, why do we need Christ, risen of otherwise, since we can through this ritual attain purity from our sins, if only for a brief instant, on our own? The problem with this argument is that even if it is true for a brief moment in time that all our sins are forgiven through the rituals and prescriptions of the law, that is not enough to save us. For that we need to become new creatures.  See, e.g., Cor. 15:50-52:

 "Now I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery.  We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.… "   

Only Christ's death and resurrection enables us to become new creatures acceptable to God.

 As an aside, many believers have a problem with 1 Cor. 6: 9:  "Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?"  They wonder:  Aren't we all wrongdoers, and if so how can we ever get to heaven since even with grace we still sin?  In the Greek the language of 1 Cor. 6: 9, with reference to sinners, and 1 Cor. 15: 50, with reference to flesh and blood, is identical ("shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.")  Thus, what Christ's resurrection offers us is the opportunity not just for forgiveness of sins, but to become new creatures, which we must be to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  See John 3: 3:  "Unless you are born again, you shall not enter the Kingdom of God.     

 Lev. 16:22 states that the scapegoat is sent out into a "Land not inhabited."  KJV.  The LXX uses the term abaton, which means "untrodden, inaccessible, impassable, desolate, not to be trodden, waste lands, desert."  Lust, A Greek—English Lexicon of the Septuagint.  This tells us that Christ's journey on our behalf was not accessible to us. In other words, only He could have done it.     

The Paradox That Relieves All Tension

 

How can we relieve tension in our daily lives—through arduous human effort and toil, through obedience to societal norms, through meditative contemplation, through science and philosophy, through the combined resources of an enlightened civilization? The problem is that all of such human-centered effort just leads to more tension and conflict.  Is there a better way?

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1:18 that salvation, and the corresponding relief of all tension, contradiction and complexity arising from daily life, results from the the cross of Christ: foolishness to the Greeks and a scandal to the Jews, verse 23. 

 The good news for us is that the difficult work of the cross was done by Christ and Christ alone.  It is not a burden that any of us must bear.  We also don't need to go to some elite school for rigorous academic training to condition our minds to receive it; neither must we engage in difficult physical activity to prepare our bodies to obtain it.  We need not run a race or climb a mountain or pass an exam or, for that matter, do anything especially arduous or difficult.  All we need is faith in Jesus. Even a little child can do that. Thus, for us the paradoxical and stressful nature of life is completely resolved by Christ on our behalf.  As a result, all may partake of salvation, the foolish and the wise, the weak and the strong. 

Life need not be, as most secularist thinkers would tell us, some booby-trapped obstacle course full of hurdles and failure.  The Christian message of the Cross, as paradoxical as it might seem, removes all the worldly paradoxes, tensions and complexities associated with daily life.  See e.g., Micah 7:19, "You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea," and Isaiah 43:25, "I, yes I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and remembers your sins no more."

Nevertheless, even if the paradoxes and tensions and contradictions of our lives are blotted out, we may still feel some anxiety about them anyway from time to time.  The Bible tells us that this anxiety will go away, too, if only we have just a little faith.  See e.g., Matthew 8:26, "He [Jesus] replied, 'You of little faith, why are you so afraid?' Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm."

 This simple Christian message of salvation is thus an anathema to most communities and societies throughout history.  They want to do it their way, not Christ's way.   

By relieving us of the burdens of attaining our own justification, righteousness and salvation, Christ frees us from all the worries and constraints of life and death and thereby allows us to go forth in this life and be good citizens by making a real contribution to our communities and to human betterment.  This contribution, however, the world frequently rejects, often violently, because it is not based on human effort but rather on God's grace.  Just as Adam rejected life in the Garden, our natural inclination is to reject God's free gift of eternal life beginning now in the flesh.  What a paradox! Let us receive and embrace the paradox of the Cross that leads to life. 

1 Corinthians 13:8, Love Never Ends

 

In 1 Corinthians 13.8, we read, "Love never ends."  There are no finite limits or dimensions to the risen Christ.  Christ can not be put in a box.  We can not get our arms around Christ in any way, psychologically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, or theologically.  Jesus, however, can and will get his arms around us, and the ways He does this are as numerous as the stars in the heavens or the grains of sand along the sea.   

 In other words, when Jesus says that "no one comes to the Father except by me," He is not making a restrictive or limiting statement, which is the way we in our sinfulness and narrow-mindedness tend to interpret it.  To the contrary, He is opening to us a vast and rich trove of possibilities that we cannot even begin to imagine, and which He offers to us on a daily basis, whether we believe in Him or not.  At some blessed point He will reveal Himself to us, and then we must choose whether to follow Him or not.  

The World is One-Size-Fits-All. Jesus Looks at the Heart of Each One of Us.

 

Jesus treats each of us individually.  Jesus is not a "one-size-fits-all" kind of savior.  That is the way the world thinks.  Jesus looks instead at the heart of each of us. See 1 Samuel 16:7, "The Lord does not look at the things people look at.  People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."  

The world accuses Christianity of making things too simple, and not accounting for the rich texture of life.  In reality it is quite the opposite.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit peer into the heart of each of us.  Nothing is too small for God. See Hebrews 4:12, "For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."