The Holy Spirit and salvation

Holy Spirit and Salvation: A Meditation on Romans 8 and Ephesians 1

The Apostle Paul's meditation on the nature of the spirit is an important reminder for all believers to keep their minds on spiritual rewards, rather than upon the transient gains of earthly affairs. The Apostle Paul was famously a great sinner who became a great saint. He lived previously a law-bound life as Saul, persecuting Christians and narrowly adhering to the doctrines of his government. However, he had a conversion experience, the first 'Road to Damascus' experience, an experience that gave birth to the Damascus metaphor of a changing life event. Paul's experience afflicted him with a temporary blindness that knocked him senseless and brought him to a new life in Christ. Saul died to his old ways and took up a new life in and name of Paul.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2). Paul says in his letter to the Christian community in Rome that his old life was mired in sin, but by dying upon the Cross in body, Christ lives eternally in the spirit, and so all who follow Christ's example of dying to the flesh and living in the spirit will live eternally. "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11).

This truth is exemplified not only in the Apostle Paul's life, but in the life of every Christian who experiences a tension between the attractions of securing worldly esteem and the rewards of a more spiritual existence. Paul lived as he did before his conversion experience because of the prejudices of his society, and his desire for power as an official. But Paul realized that the internal joys of living a meaningful existence with a connection to the divine outweighed the rewards of living a life focused upon enforcing the laws that govern the flesh, laws made by human minds. Laws are set into place by men, to 'force' men to be good at a particular point in historical time while divine law is willingly taken on as a burden of obedience because it is eternal. God may approve of the need of laws at times, but God also wants us to remember that the laws humans live by on earth are ultimately less important than the eternal laws of heaven, and what we gain from the laws of men, whether the laws of a legal code, the laws a state, or the economic laws of supply and demand, are meaningless without a spiritual life.

The pleasures in modern society of conspicuous consumption, of 'getting ahead' and going along with the crowd provides only transient satisfaction. How many times have you met someone who 'has it all' in the form of possessions, a good family, a house, a well-paying job, but says that because he does not believe in the value of what he is doing, it all seems meaningless? All too often I have seen people sacrifice themselves to an ideal that is ultimately very insignificant in the great scheme of things, the ideal of making a high income or of accumulating power within an organization. Although some good things can be achieved by living according to societal dictates, a Christian must always had a consciousness that these strictures are not eternal, and are generated by the will of men and not created by God. It is the spirit within all of us that is eternal, and that is why we must cultivate this spirit, and infuse it into all of our actions, otherwise we will surely be lead astray, as Paul was before his conversion experience.

When we are feeling low, we can take comfort in the words of Paul: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18). When we are pleased with how we are faring in the world, we must still proceed with humility, knowing that whatever we win in the body, it is of limited value in the grand scheme of things, and only the Spirit redeems. As Paul stresses in his letter to the Christian community of the Ephesians, that trust and faith in God is essential, regardless of one's positive or negative circumstances. At times, it can seem as if God has abandoned Christians on earth, as He seemed to abandon His son upon the cross. But one must have faith in the ultimate redemption and glory of God at the end of time, and not expect that the rewards will be easily won, understood, and collected, like the actions of a tax collector, or like returns on a financial investment. The Lord gives and takes away in material terms, but the accumulation of temporal rewards is not how we can judge our spiritual progress. The spiritual life's rewards are never physical and tangible, but they are, Paul urges us to remember, very real, even though they are of the spirit.