Last week we read about Abraham being
called to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Although in God’s ultimate mercy, he was
not required to complete the act, only to show a willingness to do so. Abraham
was foreshadowing the complete sacrifice God the Father would perform for us in
Jesus. From this, and our knowledge of the Old Testament, we see that sacrifice
is a key theme in Christianity to repair relationships.
In this week’s epistle from Romans, Paul
speaks of a relationship, but one not created by sacrifice. He speaks of a debt relationship; this
implies that we Christians owe something.
This is not enumerated in money,
which is the way that most of us picture debt. Rather it returns to St. Paul’s
concept of slavery or service to something or someone.
Thus, the question, what do we owe, and to
whom? St. Paul describes a dualism; in fact, he directs our attention to the
great dichotomy of Christian existence here on earth: the flesh vs. the spirit.
Truly it is the “great divide” in our Christian life, as it highlights the
material vs. the immaterial, the earthly vs. the spiritual, and the tangible
vs. the intangible. It has divided the Church since its beginning. One major
heresy of the early Church, Gnosticism, had this issue at is very core. The
Gnostics distrusted plain experience through the flesh, so much that they
sought “secret” knowledge to lead them to Christian enlightenment. This distaste for things carnal led them into
great heresy, as they began to deny the physical reality of Jesus as the
Christ. Instead, many Gnostics
over-spiritualized His sacrifice at Calvary, even claiming that, since God
can’t die, only Jesus the man suffered on the Cross. If this were so, how could Jesus take all the
world’s sin unto Himself? One can see
that the implications of this threaten the core of our salvation.
Paul
tells us “For if ye live after the flesh, ye
shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye
shall live.”[1] Here it is
in its plainest sense, expressed that if we give our total allegiance to the needs,
wants and lusts of the flesh, we shall die. If our total orientation is towards
the things of this earth, we shall not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. We shall be
bound by mortality, forever.
There is
a better way, one that leads to life and peace.
That way, to use the language of the KJV, is to “mortify” the deeds of
the body. We must kill our old behaviors
and embrace the way of the Spirit.
This is
certainly not news. It is not exactly a news flash. It is something we have all
heard for a long, long time. We must not
give our total allegiance to things of the flesh to the exclusion of things of the
Spirit. This has been preached upon for
centuries, from both the negative and a positive side.
The
negative side is the total negation of the flesh, even to the point of absolute
survival. This is the way of severe
monastic living, denying the flesh even the barest physical comforts in order
to avoid the lusts of the flesh. This
is, of course, extreme, and unacceptable to all but a few.
There is
also a much more positive side to this passage. That is where we are willing to
be led by the Spirit to become the sons and daughters of God. Not bound in fear, that is, not completely tied
to the physical, tangible realm, but instead we experience the freedom of
adoption. Through the Spirit of God, we cry “Abba”, Father, and are accepted
into the loving freedom of the heavenly family.
Why
would St. Paul equate fear and the physical realm? Why does he mention the “spirit of bondage
again to fear”? This is the bondage that comes when one owes a greater debt to
the physical over the spiritual, or lets the balance between physical and
spiritual become lop-sided. One can be so
consumed with the flesh and the World that all else pales in comparison. Then, there may be a spirit of bondage again
to fear. When one has a lot of “stuff”
and is consumed with the ownership of it, what is one’s greatest fear: the loss
of that “stuff”!! Wealth by itself is
not a bad thing but sought to the exclusion of all else it acquires a totally
different nature. Then, acquisition of wealth alone becomes a dark and
spiritually dangerous enterprise.
Let us,
however, focus on the positive. St. Paul tells us that we have a unique
privilege and honor. Our God, our Maker,
and our eternal Creator allows us to call Him Abba, Father. This is unknown in virtually all of the
religions of the world. Our God is not a dispassionate force like the Tau, or
the nebulous sense of the One as in Buddhism.
He is not the stern, unapproachable figure of Allah, with whom one
doesn’t know one’s status of salvation or even have a relationship, except that
of submission. Islam finds it distasteful that we Christians have this familiarity
to call God “Our Father”, because Islam believes that it detracts from the
sovereignty and dignity of God to address Him in such a manner.
How
sad. How diminished a view of God that
is! Christians are the children of the God
of love. We come to our Father with eyes full of love and our hearts full of
joy. How? Simply because the Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirits that we
are indeed the children of God.
We are
indeed the children of the Most High and we are heirs of the Kingdom. We are joint-heirs with Christ. We are to share in his Glory, just as He
shared in our humanity. It is because of this sharing that all this is
possible.
Is there
a positive side of the flesh-spirit dichotomy?
Is there a way that we Christians can enjoy the fruits of this world
without being consumed by them? Surely there must be a way that we can rejoice
in our material possessions without giving them the mastery over us.
There is
a way. It is the way held out to us in today’s Epistle. Yes, it does involve
some “mortification”, or denial of the flesh.
It may even involve some suffering along the way. It will certainly
involve our giving up some sinful and potentially deadly pleasures.
In so
doing, we will find something wonderful has happened. We will find ourselves being led by the
Spirit to other, better things.
Herein
lies our true freedom, our escape from the “spirit of bondage again to
fear.” We will learn to appreciate all
things, to fear nothing except the loss of Christ, and to value the whole of
Creation, especially the portion of it God gives us here and now. Not in a spirit of greed, not in a spirit of
concupiscence, and certainly not in a spirit of fear will we learn to live.
This is
freedom. This is adoration and appreciation.
This is what it means to be a child of God.
AMEN
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