Why Spirituality Comes First
Why Spirituality Comes First
It is hard to say what Christian spirituality is. It is not equivalent to giftedness because there are eloquent and talented people who are full of themselves. It is not the same as theological exactness because those who are less correct in their understanding of the truth are sometimes strong in grace and love to Christ.
Spirituality is not something which can be measured by studying one aspect of a person's life but by taking account of all aspects. It is roughly equivalent to what we mean by 'Christian character'. It is the measure of our spiritual renewal after the image of Christ himself.
Our assessment of our own and others' progress in spirituality must begin with the realisation that there is a basic distinction to be made between what a man has by nature and what he has by grace. One man has a naturally clear intellect, another a naturally accurate memory, a third has a naturally charming temperament. These are all valuable assets but their possession does not prove spirituality, still less spirituality of a high order. It proves natural charm and natural talent and nothing more. Such talent is to be found also in the unconverted.
Spirituality, however, is proved by the presence in the soul of those graces which are not natural. These are such characteristics as humility, fear of offending God, delight in communion with Christ, love of souls, ambition to glorify God and to enjoy him, love towards other believers as one's brethren, repentance for all known sin, frequent confession to God and longing for the eternal state of glory. Such things as these cannot arise out of natural inclination or temperament because they require the supernatural energies of the Holy Spirit to produce and promote them.
There is, of course, an infinite distance between what is natural and what is supernatural. The two do not shade off the one into the other. The least Christian is in a different category from the most devout non-Christian. The work of God in the most charming and respectable unbeliever is not qualitatively as excellent as the work of God in the weakest of his own true children. The lowest spark of grace in any man places hire in a spiritual class far above all natural excellence.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.John 3:6
It seems to human wisdom to be offensive to say that a man cannot cultivate himself so as to be pleasing to God. After all, man can pray and preach, read the Bible and take the Lord's Supper, go to church services and even become an authority on some aspects of religious study. But all of this falls short of spirituality because it is not the outcome of that act of the Holy Spirit which we call the new birth and which alters a man radically in his whole nature.
To be religious and not spiritual is to be in the most dangerous state of soul possible to man in this life. Christ has the sternest warnings for such persons. He denounces their religious condition to be that of whited sepulchers (Luke 11:44), persecutors (Luke 11:47-51), hinderers of men from salvation (Luke 11:52), hypocrites (Matthew 23:13f), 'serpents' and a 'generation of vipers', who cannot 'escape the damnation of hell' (Matthew 23:33).
Such language is a reminder to us that a purely nominal religion is worse than useless. It is a fearful snare to the soul and leads away from God under the pretext of serving him. It causes 'the light in us to be darkness' (Matthew 6:23). It leaves us, children of the devil, while we imagine ourselves the children of God (John 8:41, 44). It will at last shut the door of heaven forever against us even though we have convinced ourselves that we are safe (Matthew 7:21; 25:10-12).
Let a man become a church-member without the new birth and the probability is he will be secure in his church-membership till he wakes up in a lost world. Let a man become a preacher, a divinity professor, a missionary, a church-historian, a moderator, an assembly-clerk, a printer of Bibles — all without the new birth — and such persons are only twofold more the heirs of hell than they would otherwise have been (Matthew 23:15). However hard it is for us to take in this doctrine, there cannot be the least doubt that it is the plain and obvious teaching of Christ in many places of the Gospels.
Spirituality therefore comes first and must be put at the top of all our priorities. The preaching of our blessed Saviour is remarkable for the emphasis it places always on the need for man to be spiritual. The beatitudes, for instance, are a word-picture of the spiritual man. Then, too, the judgments Christ passes on men's behaviour and men's attitudes show that his all-seeing eye searches after one thing in man — spirituality. When a person came to him with spirituality of soul he received commendation and blessing. When any came without it they departed much as they had come.
A lack of spirituality is the hidden cause of so many of the evils which vex the church of Christ. It accounts for a great deal of the theological and spiritual confusion to be seen on every hand. It explains how leading churchmen can deny the virgin-birth and scoff at the physical resurrection of Christ. It accounts for the way in which churches subscribe to orthodox articles of faith and then ignore them in practice. It is the reason why office-bearers take vows at the time of ordination and then conveniently forget them. It explains how those who are high in church office can on occasion be low in personal integrity. It accounts for the way men may hold the mystery of the faith with an uneasy conscience and with a bad reputation. It accounts for all the compromise and all the moral fudging we see in church and state. Unspirituality is a tap-root of every sort of hypocrisy and duplicity There is little hope that society will 'get back to basics' till it is faced up to and dealt with biblically.
There are degrees of spirituality among those who are spiritual. The new birth makes all those who are the subjects of it into spiritual men. But spiritual men differ in their measure of spirituality. The difference in this case is that of the measure of their progress.
It is all too possible for us to judge incorrectly as Christians. Our habit is too often to judge by men's natural talents rather than by evidence of their inward grace. It is surely to warn against this tendency that our Lord informs us that 'the last shall be first, and the first last' (Matthew 20:16). Our Saviour's meaning must be that Christians whom we place high in the scale of eternal rewards will often be among the lowest, and vice versa. This text is full of deep interest and should constantly remind us that the world's judgment of spiritual things is worthless. Even as Christians we often make an assessment of men which is very defective. In the judgment of Christ many a humble widow and many a praying mother will enter into the kingdom of glory much ahead of some who in this life have been biblical scholars perhaps, or popular preachers.
If spirituality is first in importance, it follows that it should be that which we seek first for our own souls. It involves the active and deliberate cooperation of the Christian with those processes of grace within him by which he becomes ever increasingly renewed into the likeness of Jesus Christ. In particular, it may be viewed as a bending of every part of the soul towards the one aim of living unto God in this life.
Spirituality comes to us with difficulty and it involves us in costly self-discipline. It is a discipline, however, which yields precious fruit and well repays the effort. Each faculty of the soul needs to be daily schooled to behave in a particular way. The intellect (or mind) has to be daily trained to absorb the truths of holy Scripture till the habit of our thoughts is to judge all we hear and see by Scripture light. We cannot trust the judgment of the press or the media too far. The Christian must constantly unscramble the maze of facts which he hears, and attempt to pass all that he knows through his mind in the light of Holy Scripture.
The feelings and emotions also of a self-disciplined Christian must be trained to react appropriately. Our emotions ought to vary as we hear and read God's Word. The promises of God are to evoke comfort, gladness and hope; the threatenings of Scripture should lead us to tremble and respect the justice of God; the laws of God should make us strict and dutiful, and they ought to fashion our conscience till it habitually loves obedience and protests at lawlessness. The willpower of the Christian requires to be daily urged to perform each duty till it is done as well as strength and time will allow. Of course, when all is done we shall still need to remind ourselves that we have done nothing yet as we ought to do and that we are, at best, but 'unprofitable servants' (Luke 17:10).
No small part of spirituality consists in our attitude to ourselves. Here is where the difference between Christian and Christian betrays itself. It is painful but essential in our progress towards true spirituality that we should mortify our natural excess of self-love. This begins with the way we think of ourselves and ends with the way we speak of ourselves. The pattern we must follow is that of the Apostle Paul who admits to a constant warfare in his soul against his own corruptions (Romans 7:14f) and whose self-judgment is that he is 'less than the least of all saints' (Ephesians 3:8), 'the chief of sinners' (1 Timothy 1:15) and 'the least of the apostles' (1 Corinthians 15:9). Such language is genuine evangelical humility. It is not the false modesty of religious formality but the realisation, which we should all heartily share, that apart from God's grace we are nothing.
The day has come upon the church of Jesus Christ in which it is imperative that we should all strive after much spirituality. We are facing extraordinary moral and spiritual opposition on many sides. Only a spiritual approach to the evils around us will be sufficient to carry us safely through. Weak spirituality is crumbling before our very eyes in so many churches. The walls are sinking because men built them of sand. Christ did not suffer and die to beget a perishable church but an imperishable. O let us cry to God to give us a sufficiency to stand and to withstand in this evil day! If spirituality is our main study how can we fail?
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