2008 PENTECOST

2008 Pentecost
"God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spi ri t and truth." John
4:24
Very likely there were always some people who knew
that God is spirit and not a mute graven image. However, the
evolution of mankind's understanding of God as spirit
and the source of all life has a long history. If we want to
approach God, we must become spiritual-minded. God told
Moses,"...you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me
and live." (Exodus 33:20) In the same vein Jesus told
Nicodemus, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the
kingdom of God without being born from above." (John 3:3)
Although some people always knew it, the development of this
concept must come to the conclusion that the human being
is not body (i.e.substance) but spirit. Radical materialists assert
that we are only bodies and nothing else, that in death we
loose everything, that the soul does not exist. Ancient Greeks
proclaimed that the human being is both body and soul and
these must be kept in harmony with each other.
We Christians maintain that human beings use their God-
given bodies temporarily but we are not bodies, but spiritfilled
souls.
The body is the earthly clothing of the soul only. This clothing
eventually wears out and eventually returns to the earth
from which it was taken.
"...God said,'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness. ...So
God created humankind in his image..." (Genesis 1:26-27)
Thus because God is spirit human beings must be spiritual
beings according to God's likeness.
The human being is not the external body but the internal
person, the soul. Geza Gardonyi, an eminent
Hungarian author wrote of this internal person in his novel "The
Invisible Man" and as his epitaph had inscribed on his
tombstone the words:
"Only His Body".
The child gets to know his body.
As he grows his body changes not only in shape and size but
also in its constituent materials of its cells and molecules again
and again throughout his life.
The soul of the child, however, remains the same throughout
his life. Thus the soul must learn the law of God, how
punishment is related to sin, how to live in justice and true
love, and how to achieve salvation and avoid eternal
damnation. The inner man in our temporary
body guards the unbreakability and immortality of the inner
image of God. To be reborn by the spirit means that we have to
die to the sin.
The ego must be emptied of selfishness before it can be filled
by the Holy Spirit, so the soul unites with the inner image of
God.
This is the rebirth of which John speaks as he tells us,:
"But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he
gave power to become the children of God, who were born,
not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but
of God." (John 1:12-13)
Thus, the final goal of our life is not wealth or power but spiritual
rebirth in the spirit, the union with the divine entity of God.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ help us reach this goal.
AMEN Attila L. Gyorgy
English version was adjusted by
Mary White Feher