Everything is Spiritual
It's hard at times to resist overstating a point - especially when our traditional thinking about an issue is entrenched so deeply that we revert to patterns of speaking and acting without thinking about their real basis at all. Sunday was such a time - I overstated the case (did I?) for viewing everything in life as spiritual. Unlike the Greeks, who saw the material world and everything associated with it as evil, the Biblical picture is of a material cosmos created good by a good God who gave it to us for our benefit and enjoyment. What we refer to as 'mundane life' is the fabric of human existence given to us by a loving Creator who expects us to embrace it with all of our hearts and worship Him through living it to the full! Being human is a good thing, not bad - and glorifying God has at least something to do with being fully human in the way He intended. This kind of 'humanness' is only possible through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and what He accomplished on the cross - for sin has distorted and polluted our lives, and only God through Christ has the answer to that! But once we have received His grace and mercy, everything in life becomes spiritual, everything takes on new meaning and purpose in His kingdom. If true, this view of spirituality makes sense of Biblical injunctions such as Colossians 3:23-24: "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." True spirituality is rooted in daily human experience - not in escaping it to some higher plane!
In Association with Church of the Nations International 
Comments
'Everything Is Spiritual'
'If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you will also appear with him in glory.' - Colossians 3:1-4
It seems from the above verses that we are still waiting for something. Could it be glorification? Is not creation waiting to be set free from its bondage to corruption? Are we not waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies? Do I smell a bad case of over-realised eschatology?
Everything is Spiritual
Only if you didn't hear the whole message :)
Heard the whole message on
Heard the whole message on my run yesturday. Agree with a lot of what you said, but
'Everything is Spiritual' is not a Biblical concept nor does it line up with reality.
The apostle Paul, who was trained by a Rabbinical teacher wrote the following words to the Corinthian church;
"But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.'
Paul makes a clear distinction between the natural and the spiritual so logically not everything is spiritual just yet.
As I said in my previous post - we are still waiting...
'For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.'
The Kingdom was inaugurated
The Kingdom was inaugurated with the coming of Jesus; but it is still to come in its fullness in the age to come. Our present bodies are subject to corruption, but they will be fully redeemed (it has always interested me that after the resurrection Jesus could be recognized and touched - with a body of the new age, but still physical in some sense?) in the age to come. We wait for that age. Even the material creation is waiting for that age:
"Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay" (Rom 8:20, 21).
Perhaps that clarifies what I think about the Kingdom and what is still to come.
Everything is spiritual in the sense that all of life is about serving Him - there is no pre-eminence of explicitly spiritual practices such as prayer or reading the Bible over maintaining integrity, relating to others, working hard, etc. Worship is about more than singing. This body of mine - currently subject to physical death - is to glorify Him because I have the life of the age to come resident in it (Rom 6:12); whether I eat or drink, I do it for His glory (1 Cor 10:31), and so on. The Gnostics rejected the idea that the physical has spiritual significance. They drew dogmatic and definite distinctions between the two, and the material world is to be rejected in favour of the spiritual. The Hebrews (and Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews) did not see it that way at all. This is not to deny that there is a difference between material or spiritual - just that in Biblical thinking the distinction is perhaps not all that popular understanding makes of it.
Resources: "Our Father Abraham," Marvin R Wilson, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989; "Spiritual Spider Web," Dr Derek Morphew, Vineyard Bible Institute.