FLESH AND SPIRIT

In chapter 3 of John’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus revealed to Nicodemus that the Kingdom of God was spiritual in character, neither seen nor entered in any natural way, a Kingdom closed to natural faculties.

To remove any doubt about the spiritual import of being born-again, He confirmed it in the most emphatic way, saying, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (verse 6). The form of life that is sourced in nature is earthly, whereas that which is sourced in God is heavenly. There is access to the Kingdom for the heavenly but not for the earthly, the two forms of life being intrinsically different, unrelated and mutually exclusive.

This is highly instructive, a fundamental spiritual principle of the utmost importance to a right understanding of the nature of the present testimony.

The Kingdom of God is the sphere of divine rule and in this present age of grace it is ideally found in the local New Testament church or assembly. Because it is spiritual in character, it comprises a spiritual people and has to do with spiritual things. Peter knew this (I Peter 2:5); though he was of the same stock as Nicodemus he had come to understand the spiritual nature of the Kingdom and so he wrote to Jewish saints, “Ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house ………….”. This basic truth seems to have eluded many, for we live in a day when the assembly appears increasingly to be regarded as a kind of religious social club. The Kingdom of God is not food and drink (Rom.14:17) nor is it any other natural thing. The reality is that it is a spiritual fellowship designed by God primarily for the sharing of spiritual things, the things of heaven, not the things of earth (Col.3:2).

This spiritual Kingdom (the local assembly) is unrecognised by that which is born of the flesh, for natural man thinks that Christianity is enshrined in Christendom. However, it is evident that Christendom is in much the same predicament as Nicodemus was; it thinks the Kingdom can be seen and entered by natural (religious) means and it interprets the things of faith in a naturalistic way. Consequently, its brand of ‘Christianity’ is concerned with those secular things and issues of everyday life that it understands as, in common with Nicodemus and his contemporaries, it cannot discern that which is spiritual; in other words, it transforms the faith into a religious ethic. This is the widely accepted view of Christianity in the world today but in the light of the Lord’s words in John 3, it is plainly erroneous, as indeed it must be for unregenerate man cannot know the things of God (I Cor:2:14). As discerned and recognised by intelligent faith, Christianity is the active, corporate spiritual presence on earth of the redeemed (the assembly), not an ethic that the world can understand and in which it can participate. It is about the new (spiritual) life God has given us, eternal life, and the spiritual things of faith – heavenly things – whereas Satan’s Christendom is a religion concerned with the things of natural life, whether social, moral or political – earthly things.

Some may ask, if Christianity is concerned with spiritual matters, as the Lord’s words plainly indicate, how is it that the New Testament Epistles treat of secular and moral issues? Clearly, because the believer has a natural, secular life in the world and Scripture gives guidance for that sphere also, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars”. These issues are not matters of faith (faith is a spiritual faculty) but are matters relating to the believer’s life in the world. It may be stating the obvious but the believer has both a natural life and a spiritual life and God has made abundant provision in His Word for both. The word “spiritual” seems to cause a problem for some and one has heard it spoken of in the strangest terms, as though it was some kind of abstract thing. Clearly, it describes the things of divine revelation that can be discerned only by the divine nature, the spiritual things of faith that are unknown and unseen by natural man; in other words, the things of Christianity. That which is natural is natural and that which is spiritual is spiritual.

To recognise this important scriptural principle and its implications is to distinguish things that differ and to establish a spiritual basis for the interpretation of divine revelation. To deny it is to be identified with the Pharisees in their wilful opposition to divine truth and, in present day terms, with the naturalistic delusion of Christendom, missing the whole point of being born-again as a present spiritual experience. The Scripture says to avoid all such, Rom.16:17-18.