April 16, 2009

Spiritual Understanding

I have been reading Watchman Nee's "The Spiritual Man" for a few days now. I started the book a long while ago but only got a little bit through it… probably because I have so many books to read, but regardless I've been chipping away at it of late (seeing as how it's such a hefty book… well… actually three books…). Essentially the book is a systematic anthropology, and I am completely floored at how extraordinarily systematic he is. I suppose it probably doesn't mean much to most of those reading this blog… but it is quite exhaustive in the anthropological field, and he is very precise, clear, and scientific in his manner of writing.

I've probably said this before, but Watchman Nee has been one of the heroes that has gotten me where I am today. Reading the small biography on him in the 'Heroes of the Faith' series reduced me to tears and has deeply influenced my thought. The Spiritual Man is the only writing he left behind (there are many many compilations of notes from his preaching in different collections, but those are not directly penned by him), and what an amzazing piece of work it is.

Essentially, the major theme of the book is anthropology, as I previously stated. There are three different parts that make a man, his body, his soul, and his spirit. The overarching point of God's salvation is to make us spiritual once more, that is, controlled by the spirit and not the body or soul. The spirit is the part of a man that communicates with God. After the fall, the spirit became ruled over by the body or the soul, and an imbalance took place, resulting in sin. So to make us whole and right once more, our spirit must be put back in it's proper place: ruling over the body and the soul.

"Most likely there are many fleshly believers today who grasp so much so well that they can even preach to others but who are themselves yet unspiritual. Genuine spiritual knowledge lies not in wonderful and mysterious thoughts but in actual spiritual experience through union of the believer's life with truth."

When Nee says 'unspiritual' he means fleshly or carnal; that is, not ruled by the spirit but by the soul or body. This really got me to thinking about the difference between spiritual knowledge and carnal knowledge. What *is* the difference?

You can know something in your mind and you can have knowledge, and this is carnal. I can know that sin is a horrible thing. I can know that God is holy. I can memorize these fact and make logical deductions about them. I can decide that because God is holy, then that should induce certain reactions from me. I can decide that sin is a vile thing in God's sight, and deduce from that fact that I should abhor sin. But all that is in my head if that is as far as my thinking goes: it is in essence carnal knowledge; mere facts.

I have decided that I am a rather carnal believer, because I think I've begun to realize that in fact I don't realize a lot of things, or have a good spiritual grasp or understanding of them. There are some things I have come to understand truly and in a spiritual sense, though, the first that comes to my mind is love. I wrote a few posts on love over the past month or two, and I really do think I am coming to understand what true love is, in a spiritual sense. When one knows something spiritually, it really isn't knowledge at all but is more experience. It is something you do and feel, not something you think. It is something you are, not something you make logical conclusions from. It is not something to which you say "I believe that," but it is to which God says "You believe that." One will die for carnal knowledge, but one will live for spiritual knowledge.