Flesh v. Spirit (1 Corinthians 3 & Matthew 5)

Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd on February 13, 2011.

Last week, we talked about fasting in order to remove that thing that is covering up our communication with God. Fasting from something that we think of as necessary to our lives allows God to do the work instead, and we end up having an intense spiritual experience. Well, this week, I want to ask, what is spirituality? Have you ever heard someone say, “I'm spiritual but not religious?” What does that mean? Even people who claim to not believe in God are into finding spirituality in their lives. I know an atheist who is a very prominent member of his church. He goes in order to be spiritual, even though he doesn't even believe in a spiritual realm.

We really are preoccupied with spirituality. There is a spiritual hunger out there, and most of it is misplaced. We have a lot of earth worship that ranges from extreme environmentalism to actual worship—Mother Earth, Gaia—to re-creations of the Wiccan and Druid religions. We've got a lot of alternative healing methods that offer up “union with the divine” in the process—stuff like Yoga, Crystals, and psychic energy centers called Chakras.

Oh, we can dabble, too. We don't have to become a full-blown Druid. For the dabbler we have Psychic readings, hypnotherapy, energy healing, and spiritual counseling so that we can find our true identity, our purpose as a spiritual being. There is a huge spiritual awakening out there, but this awakening says that all we have to do is slip off those chains of organized religion and we can achieve enlightenment. Perfect selfhood. Ah, here's where it's all pointing. All of this New Age stuff is all about one thing—finding out how You are God.

That's a little different from Christianity. Christianity does not help us find out how we are Gods, it helps us find out who the real, one, true God is—the creator of the universe who wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. But this search for the self as God is not new. This has been happening for a long time. We can read in the New Testament and among the church fathers about a “new age” version of Christianity called Gnosticism.

According to Gnosticism, all material is evil. Anything that physically exists—flesh, creation—is all bad, and the spirit is good. This sort of rules out the Christian God who created everything, doesn't it? How can an all good God create something that's evil? Also, is Jesus really God if he's flesh? The Gnostics didn't think so. Or maybe he just pretended to be flesh and was really spirit? Well, then a completely spiritual Jesus is unable to suffer and die on our behalf. The cross becomes meaningless.

In first Corinthians 3, Paul says that he can not address the Corinthians as spiritual people because they are still people of the flesh. This sounds like Paul is a Gnostic, right? It sounds like the Corinthians are still materialists and they need to break free and be spirit, so they can be like Gods! The problem is the word flesh. Everywhere Paul uses the word “flesh” in his letters, he does not mean man's physical nature only. He means both man's physical and spiritual nature. So, flesh means being human. He even says it in verses 3 and 4: when we are of the flesh we are behaving in a human way.

Well, then what does Paul mean when he talks about being spirit? If it's not the human spirit, then what is it? It's actually God's spirit. It is the way of God. Paul is telling the Corinthians that they are not walking according to God, because of the strife and jealousy, but are still walking according to man. Even though they are Christians, they are still walking in the way of mankind. Being human is being in a fallen state, so it means continuing to sin. That's why we see believers sinning all the time, and we say to ourselves hypocrites, but they can't help it. They are still human. They are not walking in God's way. They are still walking the human way.

Well, if even believers have difficulty walking in God's way, how can we possibly do it? Well, it's always good to turn to Jesus when we are in doubt, so let's do that now. Our Gospel reading is very important in this regard. First, we have to remember two things. One: Jesus was without sin, even though he was God in the flesh. His flesh did not cause him to sin, so we should not blame our flesh for causing us to sin. This leads us to point two: Creation is not bad. As we read in Genesis, God made things and saw that they were good. One of the first commands God gave us is to be fruitful and multiply. The flesh is not evil. His creation is not a source of evil. No, corruption has come to us first through the spirit, and our sins are symptoms of the evil in our hearts, our fallen nature.

Jesus shows us this in the Sermon on the Mount. We have a law against murder, he says, but anger is the source of murder. Anger is the problem. Even if you haven't physically murdered anyone, because you have anger in your heart you are a murderer, because anger causes murder. Jesus never held anger in his heart, so he was incapable of murder. There is a law against adultery, Jesus says, but adultery is not the problem, it is the symptom. The source of adultery is lust. Even if you have not committed adultery, because of the lust in your heart, you are an adulterer. Jesus never committed adultery, because he had no lust in his heart.

Do the sources of evil sound familiar? They are the seven deadly sins: anger, lust, envy, sloth, greed, gluttony, and pride—and pride is the first sin that brought all the others in. Pride is the one that convinces us that we are Gods. The serpent convinced Adam and Eve that they could eat the fruit and be like God. Remember the whole spirituality movement and finding perfect selfhood that I talked about in the beginning? That's a symptom of our pride.

How do we get rid of these roots causes of sin? Well, Jesus seems to say that we need to cut them out. If your eye causes you to sin, cut it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Is this possible? It may be easy for us to keep our anger from causing us to physically assault someone, but is it easy to keep our anger from happening at all? No. I guarantee that everyone in this room was angry at some time this past week. What about Lust? We can keep ourselves from committing adultery, but can we keep ourselves from looking twice at the waiter or waitress? Can we keep ourselves from having thoughts about the sexy movie star we just saw in that last movie? Pride is the worst one. That's one where everything can be a symptom. We can abhor the spirituality movement, and say we're only going to read scripture and pray, no more trips to the fortune teller! Next thing we know, we're getting all proud about reading scripture and praying. Look at how righteous I am! I am so much more righteous than anyone else. Pride is the sin we just cannot escape by ourselves.

We just cannot dig any of these roots out our gardens alone. It is impossible with man, but with God, nothing is impossible. If we ask, if we plead with Jesus, to remove these root causes of evil—those seven deadly sins—he not only will answer our prayers, but he will replace each one of those sins with virtues. Again and again, we should be going back to the beatitudes to see what these virtues look like. They look like this: to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to hunger for righteousness, to be pure in heart.

So, when we say that murder is caused by anger, we can also say that God's antidote is being meek, which includes loving your enemies and forgiving others. When we say that adultery is caused by lust, we can also say that the antidote to lust is being pure in heart, which includes innocence, chastity, and true desire for God. Desire for God. We are turning our desire away from that movie star, and we're turning it toward God. And only Jesus can help us do that very difficult thing.

Let's take anger and look at an example: Corrie Ten Boom lived in a concentration camp during World War II. She watched her sister die there. After the war, one of the cruelest guards in the camp came up to her in public and asked her to forgive him. She couldn't do it. She had too much anger in her heart. She had to plead with Jesus to allow her to forgive him, to replace the anger with meekness. Listen to her own words:

“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘… Help!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’ And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’”

Pride, the root sin that caused not only the fall of man, entrance of all the other sins, and especially all that self-centered spirituality that is practiced today, is countered by humility, which is described by Jesus as being poor in spirit—the first beatitude. Jesus is such a model for humility. He knew no pride, and so he never gave into any of the seven deadly sins. Listen to a few of the things he said about himself, all from the Gospel of John:

“The Son can do nothing by himself. By myself I can do nothing, I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. I do not accept praise from men. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will. My teaching is not my own. I am not here on my own. I do nothing on my own. I am not seeking glory for myself. The words I say to you are not just my own. These words you hear are not my own.” Sounds repetitive, but all of these statements are spread throughout the Gospel of John.

This is Christ's testimony. His life was in complete submission to the will of the Father. And that was the source of perfect peace and joy for him. So, let us look to the life of Christ, let us listen to his words, let us understand those beautiful attitudes, and find that we, too, will be living life by the spirit of God.