The
tendency of humanity is to seek comfort and ease; due to the fall
this tendency has led to a lowering of mankind's eyes from his true
goal: life in Christ. Too often instead of striving for the Kingdom
of God we surround ourselves with earthly pleasures and worldly ease.
Moreover, modern man has become all the more fixated on instantaneous
pleasure: “I want it now, easy, and my way.” This desire is then
projected onto the Christian life. The search is for a spiritual
experience which satisfies now, while all struggle and effort are
avoided. Many seek a message that is centered around earthly
enjoyment and self-satisfaction. A system that offers instant results
and power. You too can be a super apostle! Yet if we are to pursue
true life in the Spirit we must lay aside such ideas and desires for
instantaneous results, self promotion, and worldly pleasure, which
are thinly cloaked in spiritual jargon. Few want to be reminded of
St. Paul's words, “We must through many tribulations enter the
Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). St. Macarius the Great echoing this
councils Christians, “Most want to possess the kingdom without
labors and struggles and sweat, but this is not possible … Most
wish to obtain the kingdom and desire to have eternal life, but,
following their own wills, they refuse to control them. They are
rather more like a sower who sows vain desires. They refuse to deny
themselves and still wish to receive eternal life, which is a thing
impossible” (The
Fifty Spiritual Homilies).
Life
in the Spirit is not a way of ease. To embark upon the pursuit of God
is to walk upon the narrow way: “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide
is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there
are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is
the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Mat.
7:13-14). To seek authentic Christian life in the Holy Spirit is to
undergo a life-long transformation. Christ Himself compares
following His life-giving commandments to the building of a house
(cf. Mat 7:24-27). Each process must be done with care, labor, and
diligence. Each step builds upon and relies on the preceding.
Progress forward is not a distinct categorical movement from one
level to the next. It is, instead, an organic unity and progression;
each stage is ever sustaining, feeding, and supporting the next.
There is never a time when the building stops relying on the
foundation: without it the whole structure would collapse. Even
though one may speak of various separate parts of a structure it is
understood that only as a whole do they comprise the building. So, it
is with life in the Spirit. Simply because we have laid a foundation
does not yet mean we have built a house.
The
believer pursuing life in Christ must respond to His divine grace.
St. Symeon the New Theologian says, “'Grace' is … the gift of the
Holy Spirit which makes us co-participants and communicants of God.”
The Holy Spirit does not enter into the temple of our body and soul
uninvited. A Christian is free to refuse the gift of the Holy Spirit;
this refusal may be passive or explicit. Once grace moves upon the
heart the believer is called to answer, thus beginning a work of
synergy. The Holy Spirit stands waiting; we must open the door and
allow Him continued reign in our life. The believer builds, through
grace, his heart into a temple of God.
It
must be stressed that only within the Theanthropic Body of Christ,
the Orthodox Church, can personal experience be true and authentic.
The believer partakes of the Holy Spirit, the fulness, given to the
Church (cf. Eph. 1:23) by being biologically linked to the life
giving Body; it is this partaking, safeguarded in and by the Church,
which communicates true personal life and experience in the Spirit to
the member, the believer. Personal experience outside of the
Community of the Body of Christ becomes prey to deception and
delusion (prelest), indeed it becomes individual experience and thus
impersonal. The modern day pursuit of “Christian” Spiritual life
detached from (and many times explicitly at the sake of) life in the
Body of Christ becomes a dangerous type of spiritual self diagnosis
and evaluation. The base of such a desire for an individual
experience of God is many times based on our own human pride and
perverted self reliance. Somehow I know better than everyone
else, I will decide for myself what is true, I am my
own sure spiritual guide (most of the time one adds some authority
for effect, the Bible and I, the Holy Spirit and I, etc). This
attitude is found nowhere in the Scriptures or experience of
Christians through out all time. Rather true spiritual life in the
Scriptures and testimony of Holy ones reveals that true life in the
Spirit is received through much sacrifice, humility, and labor (just
because God gives a free gift does not mean that we are yet capable
of receiving it in its fullness). True Christianity understands that
mankind is not capable of acute spiritual self diagnosis, and thus a
Christian is called in humility to trust the Living witness of Christ
in His Church, the bearer of true and clear Spiritual diagnosis and
therapy; thus our limited experiences are weighed against the eternal
experience revealed by Christ and His Body. True personal faith
flowers within the safeguards of the Faith of the the community,
which is the Body of Christ.
St.
Justin Popovich writes: “In it (the Church), God has truly blessed
us with all spiritual
blessings (Eph. 1: 3); He has given us in it
all the means to be holy and without blame before God (Eph. 1: 4); He
has adopted us in it through His only-begotten Son (Eph. 1: 5-8); He
has revealed to us in it the eternal mystery of His will (Eph. 1: 9);
He has united time and eternity in it (Eph 1: 10); He has made it
possible in the Church for all beings and all matter to enter Christ,
the Spirit and the Trinity (Eph. 1: 13-18). For all these reasons the
Church constitutes the greatest and holiest mystery of God in all the
worlds.”
In
an age when there are thousands of voices shouting that Christ is in
the dessert or inner room ready to give you your hearts desires
(passions), and that one can instantly and easily attain the
spiritual life, and receive the Holy Spirit in a lickety-split
manner, pouring out seemingly great power with great ease, Orthodox
Christians must be aware of the ancient and living teaching on life
in the Spirit and refuse to believe these christs. True life in
Christ is good and light, it is the tribulation of the Cross in this
life, a losing and death of the self with all its desire for the easy
way and self evaluation and reliance. Yet in following this path of
seeming death (at which the fallen self revolts) one finds in
reality resurrection and ascension with Christ in “Spirit and in
Truth” to the right hand of God the Father. True Christian life in the Spirit is a thing impossible unless we are willing to die in Christ. “Unless a grain of
wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it
dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24).
