Spiritual realities are real.
This may seem obvious enough but often I find that functionally, I (and many other Christians, I suspect) fail to truly internalize this truth and live it out.
Our culture has been impacted by several centuries of naturalism. We’ve inherited, from our Enlightenment forefathers, a certain worldview. This worldview is very rational and very naturalistic. We trust our experiences and our senses. We tend to place emphasis on things that we can see, hear audibly, and touch.
This has impacted the way we approach spiritual things. We may catch ourselves talking about spiritual things in an almost theoretical sense: a “spiritual” interpretation of a Bible passage is associated with “allegory”. This is especially prevalent in dealing with Biblical prophecy. A “spiritual” fulfillment of prophecy is regarded as “less than” a literal and physical fulfillment. And those who interpret some prophecies spiritually are accused of “allegorizing” or “spiritualizing” the Bible.
Furthermore, this functional naturalistic misunderstanding of the “spiritual” affects our daily Christian lives. We find ourselves slipping our faith into its own box: the “spiritual” box. And many important theological truths become little more than intellectual exercises for the bookish.
In this post, I’d like to share some thoughts on the reality of the spiritual, using Biblical evidence to point to the truth of the spiritual world and its impact on our lives. In other words, I wish to express how we ought to understand that the spiritual world, and spiritual things, are real. They are real in the same way that the physical, visible world around us is real. And no less.
Literal or Allegorical?
There are many different genres of literature present in Scripture. And we must interpret them all faithfully. This means we must do so responsibly and full of faith. A common question we encounter in this task of Biblical interpretation is “should we interpret the Bible literally?”
The answer, of course, depends on what passage we are reading and studying. Ought we to assume that the Shulammite bride saw through a pair of doves embedded in her skull? Or should we interpret Solomon’s words in Song of Solomon 4:1 as poetic affirmation? Clearly it is more faithful to do the latter.
When the Bible says “Your eyes are doves” we understand that this is not meant to be taken literally. It is poetic and figurative. This is fairly easy and straightforward to understand. But what about prophecies? Prophecy is a bit harder because some prophecies are fulfilled very literally and others are not.
But here we must make a distinction between “allegorical” and “spiritual”. Reading the Bible “allegorically” is often dangerous. It shrouds the literal realities of the Bible in an attempt to infuse deeper meaning into the text. However, there is a place for viewing literal events and drawing deeper conclusions from them.
Paul does this in Galatians 4. He looks back at the lives of Hagar and Sarah and interprets them “allegorically” (Gal. 4:24). However, at no point in his discussion of this story does he imply that the story of Hagar and Sarah is only allegorical. Paul clearly defends and expresses the historicity of the Patriarchs. He does not take them as simply literary characters invented by human writers (or even the Divine Author) to make a point. They were real people. And yet, the spiritual realities that exist within these stories are just as real.
Spiritual truths are not “overlaid” on top of literal events in the Bible in an arbitrary or artificial way. They are just as real as the physical events. To use another example from Genesis, when fire rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah, that fire was literal. It was also, spiritually speaking, the judgment of God. The spiritual sense of God’s judgment was not tacked onto a physical event to “make sense of it”. It was inherently there all along.
Going back to prophecy: let us take an OT prophecy that is spiritualized in the New Testament and see how this “spiritualization” is real.
In that day I will raise up
Amos 9:11-12, ESV
the booth of David that is fallen
and repair its breaches,
and raise up its ruins
and rebuild it as in the days of old,
that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the nations who are called by my name,”
declares the Lord who does this.
If we take this prophecy “literally” we would expect to see the kingdom of David repaired and its walls rebuilt (literally). We would also expect to see the land of Edom conquered by the new Davidic kingdom.
When we read that this prophecy is fulfilled in the New Testament however this is not what we find. The prophecy of Amos is quoted as fulfilled in Acts 15:15-18. Here, the Apostle James uses this passage to refer not to a literal military restoration of David’s kingdom but a spiritual restoration of the Kingdom with Christ reigning spiritually on David’s throne. Rather than a military conquest of Edom, James speaks of “the remnant of mankind [seeking] the Lord”.
We would be wrong to understand this as “allegorical”. As if the restoration of the Kingdom was “theoretical”. This is not restoration “in theory”. It is not restoration “figuratively speaking”. It is real restoration.
Of course, there are many prophecies that are fulfilled literally. And we should not neglect those. But we must not do the opposite and treat “spiritual” fulfillment as less real as “literal” fulfillment.
Real Redemption
This has a great impact on our daily walk of faith. We must live our lives like the spiritual is real and it is integrated with the physical.
For example, we ought not to approach the Gospel as a good abstraction to believe like we would a math equation. The Gospel is not abstract as much as it is spiritual and unseen.
If we could find a time machine that would transport us to the exact time and place that Jesus was crucified we would find Him nailed to a cross. We could see that with our eyes and we could hear His final words with our literal, physical ears. That event would exist in our historic and sensory experience.
What we could not see with our eyes, but that would be just as real, would be the atonement accomplished. We wouldn’t be able to “see” Jesus bearing our sin and suffering the “invisible” wrath of the Father “spiritually”. But it would be just as real. In the same way, just because we didn’t “see” Jesus enter into the heavenly holy places, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen in a very real way (Heb. 9:11-12). The truth is, our redemption is just as historical as the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. There were spiritual events happening that were “unseen” by human eyes but that were nonetheless real.
Perhaps one of the reasons we may struggle with sin and shame is that we fail to recognize the reality of our spiritual redemption. It is not abstract or allegorical or theoretical to say that “Jesus’ blood cleanses us from our sin”. It really does. Not in a way that we can visibly or physically see it but in a very real way nonetheless.
This is where the rubber meets the road. Our lives are spiritual just as they are physical. We need physical food to survive and we also need spiritual nourishment to live the life of faith. When we recognize and live like the spiritual realities revealed in Scripture are realities, we can understand how the spiritual and the physical are integrated deeply.
Sacrements (or ordinances) are a good example. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not just activities we do as traditions or habits. There is real meaning in them. That meaning is debated by Christians throughout the centuries but we ought not to think of them as “ungrounded” in reality. The New Testament speaks of baptism as more than just a traditional activity devoid of any meaning in itself (1 Pet. 3:21, Rom. 6:3-4). Likewise, the Lord Himself spoke of the elements of the Supper as His body and blood. He did not say they were His “literal” body and blood as if he had chopped off a limb and baked it or cut Himself and collected the blood in cups. But He also does not appear to imply that the Supper is just “something you do” that has no meaning in and of itself but that receives its meaning from tradition. It is spiritual. And it is real.
Embracing the Reality of the Spiritual
When we embrace the deep reality and “trueness” or “realness” of the spiritual world we can better live out our life of faith but integrating our sensory/physical experience with our spiritual experience. Because we have been “baptized into Christ’s death” (Rom. 6:3) for example, we can spiritually “put to death the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13) which will mean physically refraining from sin in our physical bodies.
The spiritual is real. And I believe we would all benefit and grow in our faith by contemplating the reality of the spiritual things of the Bible: unseen by our physical eyes but nonetheless impacting our souls.