Living in the Spirit

August 29, 2021

Scripture Reading:

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.‘ –Mark 7: 14-15, 21-23

Humans have struggled since the beginning of time with self-understand and self-awareness. Jesus is quoted as telling us in John 3:6, What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Early humans quickly learned that if eating certain plants made them sick and could kill them. The Deuteronomic food laws most likely were developed from such observations. The Bible is full of references regarding how vital salt was in food preservation etc. We learned the lesson so well that we now watch our salt intake, so we do not intake too much of a good thing. Such warnings are designed to care for what the Bible refers to as the flesh. We need to care for our bodies if we continue to do the work God has called us to do.

Our work on God’s behalf is, however, designed to address the spiritual aspects of life. The scripture above gives us a long list of examples of the things which defile us. We do not use the word, defile, much in our world today. It comes from the Greek word, koinoó, and means ceremonially defile, by treating what is sacred as common or ordinary*. Most of the behaviors listed we now call sin, that which separates us from God.  In a spiritual sense, such actions are like eating plants that make us sick or kill us—giving us sin-sick souls, as the song describes.

There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole.
There is a balm in Gilead

to heal the sinsick soul**.

The song was written to answer the question Jeremiah raised: Is there no balm in Giliead?

Is there no balm in Gilead?
   Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
   not been restored? –Jeremiah 8:22

Of course, the answer is yes, there is a balm for sin, and yes, there is a physician who can and will restore all to wholeness. His name is Jesus, the Christ. But, unfortunately, we, humans, want to make everything more intricate and more complicated than Jesus set forth for us. Humans want to know the limits of how much we must love to meet the minimum requirement. Jesus places no boundaries on love.

Prayer: Lord, forgive us for seeking in all the wrong places answers to the problems we face in this world. Infuse us with your love so that we might love one another. Amen

*https://biblehub.com/greek/2840.htm
**http://www.pateys.nf.ca/cgi-bin/lyrics.pl?hymnnumber=747

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.