Chapter 13: Substantial Healing in the Church
Chapter 13
Substantial Healing in the Church
Let us now examine true spirituality in relation to our separation from our fellowman, particularly in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a strong tendency in current theology to speak of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in terms that totally equate it with the beginning of a church, referred to as “his Body.” This is pernicious and confusing. The Bible insists that this is not the case, and that Jesus was raised physically from the dead. However, let us never forget that according to the teaching of the Word of God, the church is spoken of as the body of Jesus Christ. We must not forget the one, in rejecting the other. “For as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ and every one members one of another” (Romans 12:4-5). We are one body, in Christ. “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many” (1 Corinthians 12:12-14).
So Jesus Christ rose physically from the dead, and also the church was born at Pentecost in the particular form in which we now know it. It is, in very specific ways, his body. And as his body, the church should exhibit him to the world, until he returns. Just as our bodies are our means of communication to the external world, so the church as the body of Christ should be Christ’s means of communication to the external world. We think our thoughts and then we convey our thoughts to the external world through our bodies; our physical body is the point of communication with the external world and this is the way we affect the world. So the church, as the body of Jesus Christ, is called to be the means whereby he may be exhibited and whereby he acts in this external world until he comes again. Since the fall of man there have been two humanities, and not just one. There are those who are still in revolution against God, and there are those who by God’s grace have returned to him on the basis of Christ’s work. The church should be the reality and the exhibition of this distinction, in each generation. There should never be a moment when any generation can say, “We see nothing of the exhibition of a substantially restored relationship between men in this present life.” Every single generation should be able to look to the church of that generation and see an exhibition of a supernaturally restored relationship, not just between the individual and God, though that is first; not just between the individual and himself, though that is crucial; but between man and man, in the church.
“Church” in Greek (ekklesia) simply means “that which is called out,” called out of a lost humanity. That is the calling of the church of Jesus Christ. In our generation in the arts, in music, in philosophy, in drama, everywhere you turn, man is coming to see that man is less than he knows he should be. Our generation sees this, but the problem is not new in our time. Ever since the Fall, rebellious man has been this way. And the church is called out of this humanity, in order to be humanity before a lost humanity.
The basic thing is not organizational unity, though it has its place. The human body is directed by the head. The hands are not in direct relationship with each other. The reason they cooperate is that each of the hands, each of the joints, each of the fingers, is under the control of a single control point, and that is the head. Block the body from the head and the body is spastic; the fingers, for example, could never find each other, and uniformity of action would come to an end.
It is exactly the same with the church of Jesus Christ. The real unity is not basically an organizational unity; the real unity is not of one part with the other parts, but a unity in which each part is under the control of the Head and therefore functions together. The unity of the church is basically the unity of the Head controlling each of the parts. If I as an individual, or if groups of Christians, are not under the leadership of the Head, the church of Jesus Christ will be functioning like hands that cannot find each other; the whole thing will be broken and a “spastic” situation will exist in which the church functions in a most disjointed way. This is true not only in the whole church of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it is also true in any specific group of Christians. A specific local church, a specific school that is supposedly Christian, a specific mission, or whatever you are talking about—proportionately as each of the Christians of that group fails to be under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, under the headship of Christ, that group will proportionately be spastic.
Remember the two chairs. As I am living individually in the supernatural, moment by moment there will be individual results, and an individual exhibition. But equally, as we are living as a corporate body in the light of the supernatural, there will be corporate results and an exhibition. It is not only that the individual should so think and live, but the whole group as a group should be attuned to living consciously, moment by moment, in the reality of the supernatural. Then there is the exhibition; then there is the result there should be.
There is a very special calling, a special oneness in Christians working together—a unity that is not merely organizational or abstract. It will not be perfect in this life, because the Bible does not say we are going to be perfect in this life, but on the basis of the finished work of Christ there should be a substantially restored relationship among Christians in this life. Thinking of these things, we come to some immediate practical considerations. First of all, as the church exhibits who and what God is to each generation, there must therefore be a proper legal emphasis. God does have a character. We are not exhibiting a God who is “the unknown God,” in the sense taught by Tillich. God has a character. And because he has a character, there is to be an exhibition of that character, and this means functioning in the proper legal circle. The proper legal aspects of the church will deal first with doctrine, because otherwise the body is telling lies about its Head.
The next step is that in the proper legal circle there will be a dealing with the life of both the individual and the group. The legal aspects are not arbitrary. They are rooted in God’s existence and in his character, concerning which he has spoken to us in the Bible. The church is not a body that thinks up ideas; the church is a declarative statement of what God has revealed concerning himself in the Scripture. So the legal aspects are fixed by God himself. The church should represent the supernaturally restored human race in reality, and as such it is very obvious that there must be the proper legal circle of those in the church in distinction to those not in it.
Many stress that a Christian must not marry a non-Christian, but then they are willing to be in a church where many, including the outstanding officers, openly reject the God of the Bible. To try to have proper love and communication that would please God in such a condition is like trying to have a sexual life that would please God with another man’s wife or woman’s husband. The proper legal circle must be first or the church in name is not the church in reality. Men will not always be led to apply the same action at the same moment in regard to the Bible’s command concerning the practice of the principle of the purity of the visible church, but if the principle is given up as such, the proper legal circle falls to the ground just as certainly as if we cast aside Christ’s and the Bible’s command concerning the proper legal aspect of marriage. So the church has its legal relationships in regard both to doctrine and life.
But though the legal is important and has its proper place, it is not all. Within the proper legal relationship of the church, the person of God and his full character are to be set forth by words and exhibition. Only God is infinite and finite man cannot exhibit that. But as we are made in his image, individually and together we are called upon to exhibit the fact that he is personal. This we can do; it is our calling. Because of the Fall it will not be perfect exhibition—we must keep saying that. But as Christians it can and should be a true one, and of all relationships this is most certainly the calling of the church as the body of Christ.
The matter of the proper legal circle, the battle against false doctrine and sin, will never come to an end in this life. But the proper legal relationship, while right in itself, should be only the vestibule to the reality of a living, personal relationship, first the group with God and then between those who are in the church. Really to glorify God, to enjoy him, and to exhibit him, can never be mechanical and can never be only legal, but also personal. When the church of Christ functions on less than the personal level, it is exhibiting less than what God is, and therefore it is less than the church should be. There should be an exhibition of redeemed human personal relationships.
The church has always put emphasis, in words, upon these things. We speak of the brotherhood of believers, and we have already mentioned the fact that we come into a new relationship with other Christians when we accept Christ as Savior. At the new birth, I come into a new relationship with each of the three persons of the Trinity, and I become a brother to all other Christians, to all the others who are in Christ, the family of God. It is meant to be a true brotherhood and therefore a visible demonstration of brotherhood. As orthodox Christians we reject the present emphasis that destroys the distinction between saved men and lost men. The liberal theological deliberately breaks down the difference between saved and lost. But woe to any church of Christ that is strenuous in keeping this distinction clear, but then shows no sign of brotherhood. In the Apostolic Creed we state, “I believe in the communion of saints.” We state this as firmly as we do the other items of the Creed. This is not to be merely a theological phrase, yet how little communion we see—how little reality. It is not just to be comprehended that it exists, and that it reaches across all space and time with all believers. There is a mystical union of saints, true enough, but the communion of saints is to be exhibited as well.
What should the church consciously be then? The church consciously (and my emphasis is very strongly on the word consciously) should be that which encourages its members in the true Christian life, in true spirituality—in that which we have set forth in this book. It should encourage them in freedom in the present life from the bonds of sin, and in freedom in the present life from the results of the bonds of sin. It should encourage substantial healing in their separation from themselves and a substantial healing in their separation from their fellowman, especially fellow Christians.
No matter how legally right a church is, if it does not provide an environment conducive to these things, it is not what it should be. First, the church should teach the truth, and second, the church should teach a practice of the existence of God, and a practice of the reality of and the exhibition of God’s character of holiness and love. The church cannot merely teach these things in words; we must see the practice of these things in the church as a corporate body. Can faith be taught? People often ask me that, and I always have an answer: Yes, faith can be taught, but only by exhibition. You cannot teach faith only as an abstraction. There must be an exhibition of faith, if faith is to be learned. Each group must operate on the basis of God’s individual calling for them—financially and in other matters—but there is an absolute rule, and that is that if our example does not teach faith, it is destructive. There can be many callings but there cannot be a calling to destroy the teaching of faith. The church or other Christian group that does not function as a unit in faith can never be a school of faith. There is only one way to be a school of faith and that is consciously to function by faith.
The church or other Christian group must also teach in word the present meaning of the work of Christ. Then as a corporate body it must consciously live on this basis. It must not think that just because the church or group is legally right, its corporate Christian life will come automatically. It never will; God does not deal with us automatically. Any Christian group must function moment by moment by conscious choice on the basis of the work of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, by faith. It is not that the group just calls its individuals to so live, but that the group as a group so lives. It is death to think that things are going to come automatically just because of past legal decisions, even though they were right. There must be the present choice, a moment-by-moment choice, a conscious choice of operating on the basis of the work of Christ.
Every Christian group must also teach in words the duty to exhibit that God exists and that he is personal, and then as a corporate body practice this truth. There is a cost in this, for the church’s methods must be chosen with much prayer and care, and “results” alone will not now be the sole, simple criterion. It must practice the choice of means in its work which will exhibit that God exists.
In words and practice the church must also, as a corporate body, show that it takes holiness and love, and love and communication, seriously. And how can it do this unless it consciously practices holiness and love, and love and communication, both toward those inside the church group and those Christians outside their group?
In short, if the church or other Christian group as a corporate body does not consciously seek freedom from the bonds of sin, and freedom from the results of the bonds of sin, on the basis of the finished work of Christ in the power of the Spirit by faith, how can it teach these things with integrity in words, and how can it teach these things at all by exhibition? And if the church, group, mission, or whatever it is, does not care enough to function in this way as a corporate body in its internal relations, as brothers and sisters in Christ; and then in its external human relationships to those outside the group, how can we expect individual Christians to take these things seriously in their personal lives—in the husband-wife, parent-child, employer- employee, and other relationships?
Thus the church’s or Christian group’s methods are as important as its message. It is to deal consciously with the reality of the supernatural. Anything that exhibits unfaith is a mistake, or may even be corporate sin. The liberal theologians get rid of the supernatural in their teaching, but the unfaith of the evangelical can in practice get rid of the supernatural. May I put it like this? If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that all that the Bible teaches concerning prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed (not as a liberal would remove it, by misinterpretation, but really removed) what difference would it make in practice from the way we are functioning today? The simple tragic fact is that in much of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ—the evangelical church—there would be no difference whatsoever. We function as though the supernatural were not there.
If the church does not show forth the supernatural in our generation, what will? The Lord’s work done in the Lord’s way does not relate only to the message, it relates also to the method. There must be something the world cannot explain away by the world’s methods, or by applied psychology. And I am not at all speaking here of external, special manifestations of the Holy Spirit, I am thinking of the normal and universal promise to the church concerning the work of the Spirit.
Here are three things which are universal promises to the church regarding the Holy Spirit. First: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and [then] you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The word then is not there in the Greek, but surely the thrust of it is there. The church is not supposed to be a witness in its own power, but the universal promise to the church is that with the coming of the Holy Spirit there will be power.
Second, there is a universal promise of the fruit of the Spirit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering [patience], gentleness [kindness], goodness, faith, meekness [gentleness], temperance [self-control]: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23). If we have accepted Christ as Savior, we live in the Spirit, but let us walk in the Spirit. And these fruits of the Spirit are not some special thing; they are a universal promise, given to the church.
And the third thing that is universally promised concerning the Holy Spirit is that the raised and glorified Christ will be with the church through the agency of the Holy Spirit: “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless [orphans]: I will come to you” (John 14:16-18).
Notice the words “I will not leave you comfortless [or orphans]: I will come to you.” The promise of Christ—crucified, risen, ascended, glorified —is that he will be with his church, between the Ascension and his second coming, through the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit. These are universal promises, made to the church for our entire era.
These are the things that the world should see when they look upon the church—something that they cannot possibly explain away. The church should be committed to the practical reality of these things, not merely assenting to them. There is a distinction between men, even converted men, building Christ’s church, and Christ building his church through converted and consecrated men.
Organizational and financial matters should not be allowed to get in the way of the personal and group leading of the Holy Spirit. There is no use talking of these things abstractly, without bringing them down to the real place where the battles are fought. Organizational and financial arrangements of the church should not rule out the exhibition of the reality of the existence of God. Throughout church history, one is aware that the danger always comes at a time of emergency. An emergency arises which causes us to cut off the exhibition of faith, and discount the possibility of God guiding through financial matters. There always seems to be a legitimate reason for reaching out and steadying the ark. As Uzzah reached out to steady the ark, he thought he had a good reason for disobeying the word of God (2 Samuel 16:6-7). At this point, he no longer trusted God to steady the ark. Might it not fall? Might not something of God’s work and the glory of God be shaken? This danger often comes in organizational and financial emergencies, when it would seem for a moment that the glory of God is jeopardized.
There is to be a moment-by-moment supernatural reality, for the group as well as for the individual. This is the really important thing. In comparison to this, everything else is secondary. We tend to think of Christ building his invisible church, and our building the visible church. We tend to think in this kind of a dichotomy. So our building of the visible church becomes much like any natural business function, using natural means and natural motives. How many times do we find that in doing the business of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a rapid opening prayer, a rapid closing prayer after half the people have left, but in between there is no difference between doing the Lord’s business and the business of some well-organized business enterprise?
Instead of that, we should always look to him, and always wait and pray for his leading, moment by moment. This is a different world. We will not do it very well—we will always be poor in this fallen world, until Jesus comes back. But the church of the Lord Jesus Christ should be functioning moment by moment on a supernatural plane. This is the church living by faith, and not in unfaith. This is the church living practically under Christ’s leadership, rather than thinking of Christ being far off and building the invisible church, while we build that which is at hand with our own wisdom and power. This places the church in the supernatural battle, extending into the heavenlies, and not just in a natural battle. This raises the battle from being merely the battling of other organizations, other men, to a real battle of the church in the total war, including the unseen war in the unseen portion of reality. This makes the church the church, and short of this, the church is less than the church. With the objective standard of the Word of God, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, in these areas we are to be yielded to Christ.
Prayer now becomes something more than merely an abstract religious, devotional act. It is a place where the church is the church, and where Christ is in the midst in a special, definite, and real way. Organization is not wrong; let us say this with force. Organization is clearly commanded in the Word of God, and it is needed in a fallen world. But it becomes wrong if it stands in the way of the conscious relationship of the church to Christ. Simplicity of organization is therefore to be preferred, though at the same time it is all too easy to get one’s eyes fixed on simplicity of organization and forget the reason for simplicity, which is that Christ may truly be the Head of the church.
In a fallen world there is need of organization, and there is also need of Christian leadership. But the leaders, as office-bearers, stand in relationship to the church of Jesus Christ, to the people of God, as brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as leaders. The church as a whole, and the officers, are to function consciously on the basis of each one being equal as created in the image of God, and as equal in the sense of being equally sinners, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. In this way, believing in the priesthood of all true believers, believing in this supernaturally restored relationship among those who are brothers in Christ, believing in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each individual Christian—organization and Christian leadership do not stand in antithesis to true spirituality.
With such a mentality in the church we can also say something about the attitude of loyalty. Loyalty in the church of Christ should be in an increasing scale. To reverse the scale is to destroy the church. The primary loyalty must be to God as God, on a personal level. This is personal loyalty to the person of the living God, and it is essential and first, above all other loyalties. So strongly do I feel this that I would put the second loyalty in a decreasing scale; loyalty to the principles of revealed Christianity. It is not that I would separate these principles of revealed Christianity from the personal God, but rather that it is because they are from him that they have any authority.
Third in importance is loyalty to organizations, not because they have been called church organizations and have had historical continuity for a certain number of years, centuries, or millennia, but only as far as they are biblically faithful. Below this, in fourth place, must be that which is often put first, and that is loyalty to human leadership. It must be kept in its proper order. To reverse the order is to be totally destructive. If loyalty to human leadership becomes central, we tend to show loyalty not even to our own organization (which would be horribly limited in itself) but to our own little party within the organization. But if, on the other hand, we keep our eyes on loyalty to the personal God as our “first love,” we will tend to love, on a practical level, all those who are Christ’s.
Once more let us stress that the end to be attained in working for the purity of the visible church is loving relationship, first to God and then to our brothers. We must not forget that the final end is not what we are against, but what we are for.
Let’s bring all this down to our own level. Loving the whole church is not just loving the whole church facelessly, like the humanist man loving Man but caring little about the individual. As finite we cannot know the whole church that is on the earth now, let alone the whole church across all space and time. So what does it mean to “love the church of Jesus Christ” in practice? It is very clearly laid out in the New Testament that the Christians should meet in local congregations and groups. In these churches and groups the universal church is cut down, as it were, to our own size. We can know each other on a person-to-person level and have person-to-person love and communication.
God commands that we should assemble ourselves together until Jesus comes (Hebrews 10:25). We are commanded not only to meet together, but to help each other (verse 24). Christianity is an individual thing, but it is not only an individual thing. There is to be true community, offering true spiritual and material help to each other. In the New Testament church the love and community extended to their responsibility under the leadership of the Holy Spirit to all the needs of life, including the material ones. In the local church, the Christians of that particular congregation are called upon to be in close contact personally. This is what stands under proper scrutiny—not only of men, but of God and the angels and demons in the unseen world. Many a Christian’s child has been lost because they have seen nothing of real love and communication in that body where it may be scrutinized, in the church “brought down to our size.”
This is important for modern man, who has lost his humanity. Modern man’s problem is not getting to the stars; it is this loss of humanity. So here is something for modern man to look at: the interplay of true human beings in a group small enough for it to be practically possible. Of course there is an element of danger in drawing our own family out of their sterilized little social circle. There is a danger that our own little stratified rightness of thought-forms and social circle will be challenged. But what else is the community of the saints to mean? It is not just a group of strangers sitting under a roof nor a set way of provincial thinking, but whatever has real value being shaken down until eventually the real values become the values of the group and those in it. It is in this way that the upper-middle class aspect of the church in all of our countries, which churchmen everywhere are disturbed about, can be really changed: with the doors thrown open to the intellectuals, the working men, and the new pagans. There is a danger to our set ways, but within the structure of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit there is a possibility of glory, too.
The local church or Christian group should be right, but it should also be beautiful. The local group should be the example of the supernatural, of the substantially healed relationship in this present life between men and men.
The early churches showed this on a local level. For example in Acts 2:42-46 we have something that sets the tone: “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.”
The appointing of the deacons in the early church exhibited this, too. These men were waiting on tables, in a local situation, not just as an idea or a principle, but serving individual people at a point in space and time (Acts 6:1-5). The problem was that Greek-speaking Christian widows were being neglected in the area of material help because of a language problem; it was a real situation. It was not just an idea but real men waiting on real tables. How many orthodox local churches are dead at this point, with so little sign of love and communication: orthodoxy, but dead and ugly! If there is no reality on the local level, we deny what we say we believe, right up to the apex, because what we really deny is that God is a personal God. There must be the mentality, in the local situation, of an interest in people as people, and not just as church members, attenders, or givers. These are people, and this is related to our statement that we believe in a personal universe because it all begins with a personal God.
In the local church the possibility of the diversity of love and communication, rather than merely a reciprocal situation (as in a husband-wife relationship), expands wonderfully. In the Old Testament the whole of life and culture was based upon the relationship of the people of God first to God and then to each other. It was not just a religious life, but the whole culture. It was a total cultural relationship, and though the New Testament no longer sees the people of God as a state, nevertheless there is still an emphasis upon the fact that the whole culture and way of life is involved in this vital diversity of love and communication. There is to be no platonic dichotomy between the “spiritual” and other things of life. Indeed, we read in Acts 4:31-32: “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.”
The Bible makes plain here that this is not a communism of law or external pressure. In fact, Peter, speaking to Ananias about his property, stressed: “Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” (Acts 5:4). This sharing is not law, but true love and true communication of the whole man to whole man, across the whole spectrum of what humanity is. The same thing happened further abroad. Gentile Christians gave money to Paul to carry to Christian Jews. Why? So that there would be a sharing of material possessions. This is ten thousand times removed from the dead, cold giving of most Christians. This is not a cold, impersonal act as a bare duty, but a sharing of the whole man with the whole man. True Christian giving is in love and communication across the whole framework of the interplay between whole men.
You will remember that we have previously seen that true spirituality has meaning in all the practical relationships of life: husband-wife, parent-child, employer-employee. These things must be taught in the church as an aspect of the conscious side of sanctification, to be understood and then acted upon by choice. The environment of the local church or other Christian group must be conducive for these things to grow. Such growth will never be once for all, but, like all things in our life, a moment-by-moment process. There must be moment-by-moment teaching, there must be moment-by-moment example, of the present meaning of the work of Christ, and a conscious choice of the individual and the group to lay hold of these things. There must be faith, moment by moment, in God’s promises, to lay hold of these things—first in instruction, and then in example.
The church needs to function consciously on the basis of the finished work of Christ and not on the proud basis of any inherent value in itself or any supposed or assumed inherent superiority. It must be consciously working on the basis of the supernaturally restored relationship and the exhibition of that restored relationship, and not upon merely natural gifts and talents. And if these things are forgotten or minimized on the basis of past, present, or legal relationships, the whole group can grieve the Holy Spirit just as surely as can the individual Christian. The Holy Spirit is the one by whom the body of Christ is joined together and if the body does not care about being fitly joined together, it is he who is grieved.
As in marriage, all this is possible because God himself is the ultimate reference point, and so the members of the local church do not need to hang too much on each other. The church should be what it can be, for it does not need to be what it cannot be. The pastor does not need to hang everything on the people, and the people do not need to hang everything on the pastor. Everything is to hang only one place—on him who is infinite and personal, and who can carry everything perfectly. This is not a matter of just hanging everything on doctrines about the infinite and the personal God, but upon him as a person—because he is there, and he knows the local group by name, and the individuals in the group by name.
The alternatives are not between being perfect or being nothing. Just as people smash marriages because they are looking for what is romantically and sexually perfect and in this poor world do not find it, so human beings often smash what could have been possible in a true church or true Christian group. It is not just the “they” involved who are not yet perfect, but the “I” is not yet perfect either. In the absence of present perfection, Christians are to help each other on to increasingly substantial healing on the basis of the finished work of Christ.
This is our calling. This is part of our richness in Christ: the reality of true spirituality, the Christian life, in relation to my separation from my fellowmen—including those fellow men who are my brothers and sisters in Christ—in the church as a whole and in the local congregation or other Christian group. It is not to be practiced in a dull, ugly way; there is to be a thing of beauty, observed by those within, and those outside. This is an important part in preaching the gospel to the humanity still in revolution against God; but more than this, it is the only thing that is right on the basis of the existence of the personal God and on the basis of what Christ did for us in history, on the cross.
And having come this far, true spirituality—the Christian life—flows on into the total culture.