Pastoral Ponderings ~ People, and the Worlds in Which We Live

          Human beings were created by God to live in two worlds. One world is physical, or material; the other world is spiritual, or immaterial.

          For us to live in both worlds God gave us a physical body to relate to the material world, and a spirit to relate to the spiritual world.

         Neither our body, nor our spirit, is us. This is why people can be spiritually dead and still live in the material world, and why we keep on living after our body dies. There is the “us” that is designed to live in both the material and immaterial worlds through our material body, and our immaterial spirit.

          The reason that a naturalistic worldview cannot tell us who we are, or where we came from, is because it disallows any consideration of the immaterial side of life. It has no means by which to test if there is a spiritual life, and so it denies that such spiritual life exists. It must be noted that science is only limited to the material world by naturalistic people.

         However, since God is spirit,[1] and he created a material universe to reveal “his eternal power and divine nature,”[2]the only way we can understand our humanity is to get to know God in both the spiritual and the material worlds in which we live.

          The problem is that we begin life with a huge, major, all-encompassing limitation. What is it, you may ask? It is that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,[3]we have all earned the wages of sin which is death,[4] which means we all begin life “dead in the trespasses and sins,”[5]that characterize every human being.

          We all know that human beings who are spiritually dead can still do amazing and creative things in the material world. Even secular scientists who deny the spiritual world (an expression of their deadness to the spiritual world) invent and create things that are for some material good. If life was only about the material world, such materialistic creativity would be of much greater value.

          However, since we were created by God who is spirit, and we were created by God with a body and a spirit, something is seriously wrong with human beings who are spiritually dead. When we are spiritually dead, we are oblivious to what God is doing. We are also oblivious to any help God would offer us from his ministering angels.[6]

          At the same time, our spiritually dead condition cuts us off from understanding how God’s arch-enemy Satan, along with Satan’s demonic army, are working to keep us dead. With such spiritual blindness, Satan and his demons convince people that the spiritual world does not exist, or that Satan and demons do not destroy people from the spiritual world.

          However, deadness to the spiritual world does not make the spiritual world cease what it is. Deadness is a bad thing, no matter whether it is physical or spiritual. Deadness “in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,” also means, “following the prince of the power of the air,” and doing those things that makes us “by nature, children of wrath,” meaning, those who are under the just condemnation for our sin. Being dead in sin does not remove us from our guilt, but guarantees our condemnation because of our guilt.

          The good news is that God is still in the business of making dead people alive. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”[7]Our participation in sin had earned us the wages of death. God’s expression of mercy, love, and grace, brings us to life.

 
          God saves people by grace, bringing them to have faith in his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The wages of sin is death, but salvation by grace through faith is a free gift of God. What we earned through our works killed us; what we receive as a gift of God’s merciful love and grace restores us to life.

          Once we understand that the “us” of our humanity is designed to live in two worlds, we must be sure that what we have is truly life. When Jesus spoke of Satan and his demons he said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”[8]Satan desires to steal your joy, your hope, your very life.

          However, when Jesus told us why he came, he said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”[9]Jesus came to give us spiritual life that brings us into fellowship with him and his Father. We can live in both the material and spiritual words in this abundance of life now, with the promise of even greater things to come in the future.

          For the moment, be sure that you come to Jesus for that life that is truly life. Once you have it, he can show you how he works to make it as "abundantly" as he promised.

© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

         

         

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[1] John 4:24

[2] Romans 1:20

[3] Romans 3:23

[4] Romans 6:23

[5] Ephesians 2:1

[6] Hebrews 1:14

[7] Ephesians 2:4-5

[8] John 10:10

[9] John 10:10