One Correction To Sunday's Sermon.
Dear CommonGround InnerCity,
I feel that I need to make one correction to my sermon from this last Sunday. I said that based on Galatians 5, Paul argues that there is a war going on inside of us as Christ-followers.
On the one hand there is the human side, the flesh, the sinful-nature which is wanting to pull us down and lead us to sin.
On the other hand, the Spirit of God within us, is calling and causing us to be more Christ-like, calling us to honour Christ and to serve him. And these two sides are at war; there is struggle between the two.
I think that, this is fine and biblical.
I then said that we know that one day, the one side (our humanness, flesh and sinful nature side) will fall away and we will united with Christ in heaven and our Spiritual side will reign free and victorious, but until that time, there is a war, a tussle going on and you can feed one side or the other.
And the point I was making is that if you feed your humanness and your sinful nature, that part of you will become stronger and more dominant in your life. If on the other hand you ‘feed’ or ‘sow’ to your spiritual side, then that will become stronger and your sinful nature won’t pull you down as easily. I think that is (in very simply terms) Paul’s argument in Galatians 5.
However I think my previous statement about ‘one day the one side will fall away and only our spiritual side will remain’ is theologically incorrect. The way I said it sounded very much like the teaching of Gnosticism which teaches that the material world is bad, evil and defiled and that the spiritual or immaterial world is good, and therefore we look forward to the day when this material world is done away with and we are all spiritual and immaterial.
But that’s not the teaching of the bible. The bible teaches that all creation (including our human bodies and flesh) is good, because God made it, but that all creation is under the curse of Adam and Eve sinning, which is why there is pain, there is frustration, there is sin and evil in the world. Not because the material world is evil – the world is good but sin has entered the world. And that one day Christ will return, but when He does, he is not returning to take us away from this evil material world so that he can wipe out creation and leaving us to float around in a spiritual world called heaven. That is the Gnostic teaching. Rather the bible teaches that Christ will restore creation to its proper place, and we will spend all eternity on a new material earth. That’s what Revelation 21-22 clearly teaches, and as Christ followers we will have material bodies, but they will be made new, without blemish, without decay, without the affects of a fallen and sinful world.
What I said, made it sound like our bodies and this world is sinful and to be despised and that all that is spiritual is good and holy and one day we’ll leave this damned material world and go to the next which is all spiritual and holy. But that is more Gnosticism that Christianity. (If you want to read more about this, the first couple of chapters of NT Wright’s book ‘Surprised By Hope’ are very helpful).
So I repent and ask that you don’t think Gnostically about the world, but rather that we think Christianly and look forward to when Christ returns and we live with him in the new earth under the new heavens, with Christ as our king, and we his creation joyfully at work in his renewed and restored creation, doing everything we do to the glory of God.
For the fame of His name…
Kevin



