A Kingdom of Blood, Sweat and Tears
The apostles, infallibly inspired by the Holy Spirit, took up common Greek concepts of their day but changed their meaning so as to carry the Truth and testify to God. A prime example is the word "logos". The word "logos" in the classical and Hellenistic worlds had a pedigree. The Apostle John took up the word, emptied it of its Hellenistic content, reference, and connotations, and used it to reveal glorious truth about our Lord.
The same can be said for "spirit" and "spiritual"--which was a widely used concept in the Hellenistic world--but with this difference: "spirit" also had an Old Testament pedigree. To rid the modern church of pagan notions of spirituality we must submit to the Bible's denotation and connotation of these terms. And as we said in our previous post, those who are not aware of the issues and what is at stake has probably imbibed the pagan concepts of "spirit" and "spiritual" not biblical truth.
We have been reflecting upon an enervating and sapping dualism which has dogged the church on and off for over two thousand years. Essentially, this has involved using concepts like "spirit" and "spiritual" and taking over their Greek denotation and connotation, rather than insisting upon their biblical meaning. The core Scriptural focus when words like "spirit" and "spiritual" are used is to highlight the influence and control and ministry of the Holy Spirit upon men.
The following theses will help us get our thinking grounded in Scripture and will help expel the pagan influences which have come into the Church from Hellenistic, not biblical principles.
1. The glory, wisdom, power, and greatness of God is manifested in the creation of all things, out of nothing, in the space of six days, and all very good. God's glory is manifested in and through material things as well as intangible realities.
2. God has made covenants with the matter He has created. His faithfulness, integrity, and steadfastness mean that the earth, blood, flesh, bodies, time, space, and matter not only exist, but will continue to exist. For example, His covenant with Noah after the Flood is really a covenant with the earth, to sustain it and keep it for the sake of man.
3. If Adam had not fallen into sin, the glory of the creation would have been progressively unfolded upon earth for eternity, without end, break, or disjunction: this necessarily means that eternity would have been an earthy and material and sentient existence.
4. Before the Fall, man's spiritual service to God involved being fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth, subduing it, and making it bring forth and bud. These were constituted as both spiritual and holy service.
5. Adam's sin brought a curse to all his descendants born by ordinary generation, and to the creation as a whole. But, it did not make the creation itself intrinsically evil; it was an imposition that has made the creation groan under the weight of man's sin, but it does not make the creation itself evil. God's gifts in the creation continue to be holy, just, and good.
6. Christ has come forth as the re-Creator of the creation; His work is to remove sin as far as the curse is found; the removal of sin's curse means that in Christ all of the original creation is restored.
7. As the second Adam, Christ (and His people) complete what Adam would have completed, had he not fallen. The creation will eventually be perfectly unfolded and consummated.
8. Our eternal existence in Christ will be a bodily, material, earthy, and tangible existence--albeit a thoroughly spiritual existence, for creation will be imbued completely with God's Spirit pouring forth the gifts and ministry of Christ--even as it would have been, had not Adam fallen into sin.
9. Our eternal existence will be upon earth, not in heaven. In reality, heaven comes down to earth, for God's eternal dwelling place will be upon earth, not in heaven (Revelation 21, 22).
10. The place that our Lord has prepared for us in heaven when we die is a hotel; it is not a permanent dwelling place or our eternal home. At Christ's Final Advent all departed saints in heaven will be re-united to their bodies in the resurrection, and will return in Christ's train as He descends to earth--that is, as He comes back to His (and our) eternal home and dwelling place. (I Thessalonians 4: 16-17)
11. The resurrection of Christ means that Christ's bodily existence is harder, more physical, more tangible, and more real than our own flesh and blood. It is so empirically hard and so spiritual that it is eternal and indestructible.
12. The resurrection of Christ's earthly, mortal body to immortality means that His redeeming work involves reclaiming this world; there is a deep and fundamental continuity between our current temporal existence and our immortal existence. It will be our actual temporal bodies which are resurrected and raised to immortality.
13. Eternity will represent a perfection and consummation of our present life and worldly existence, not a denial and dismantling of them.
14. The image of God in man includes his physical body and material existence. When men die, their existence as image bearers is impaired and incomplete; we will not exist as consummated image bearers of God Himself until our own resurrected bodies are restored to us and we are fully like Christ.
15. When we die in Christ, our bodies being still united to Christ rest in their graves until the resurrection; our souls immediately pass into glory. This is not our final glorious state, but an intermediate state only--and, therefore, impermanent and temporary.
16. Christ redeems the whole man, not just part of Him; He redeems the entirety of creation (Hell excepted), not just part of it.
17. Because the glory of God is magnified not just in creation, but also and particularly in His redemption in Christ, we know that the works and fruit of the redeemed will follow them into eternity, so that the glory of His redeeming work can be fully proclaimed. Thus, none of our work in Christ in this life will come to nothing, but will continue, for our work itself is not in vain (I Corinthians 15:58).
18. Our work-in-Christ includes all our labours in the creation: in self, family, church, community, state and the natural order, for His work involves removing the curse from the entire creation.
19. Non-Christians who labour in this life are deployed by God as hired workers in His vineyard; the saints are deployed as His sons and daughters, His heirs. The saints will inherit the fruits of the labour and work of Unbelievers in the creation.
20. God's people are called to work in all facets of their lives as co-workers with God and co-heirs with Christ. All lawful vocations and avocations are, therefore, equally spiritual (that is, of the Spirit), and are holy, just, and good. Thus, skills and gifts of craftsmanship when exercised by the saints are also seen as being Spirit filled (Exodus 35: 30-31)
We believe that if we take heed to these twenty theses we will go a long way toward expunging vestiges of a neoplatonic dualism from the Kingdom.
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