The Spiritual Life

I first started thinking about going back to my seminary notes not on a whim or out of despair for all I had forgotten. It started because I’ve been fighting my way out of a dark night of the soul. After a few years of rich intimacy and joyful service, I found myself tired and angry. I knew intellectually that God loves me, but He had come to feel so distant. Often—sometimes each new day—I would have to fight once more to stand and claim the place Christ had purchased for me. As I tackled one illusion after another, tugging at one part of the knot and then the next, things finally began to change, by God’s grace. And what I longed for most was to remember what healthy was supposed to look like.

Thankfully, the first class of my first semester at Dallas Seminary was on the spiritual life.

My professor was Dr. Abraham Kuruvilla, who was as intimidating in his accomplishments as anyone, even though his demeanor was kind. Dr. Kuruvilla was not only an expert at preaching, but a practicing dermatologist. He often served as an interim pastor and has gone on to become an author as well. His accomplishments were clearly aided by his self-discipline. He had devoted himself to celibacy unto God, by choice, in community, for life.

So there I was, a 25-year-old man, still newly married, and not known for my self-discipline. I had prayed for years that God would give me self-discipline, but I didn’t feel I had made any progress.

Things would get worse for me before they got better. More on that later.

When I first began writing this, I only remembered one or two moments, but as I continue to reflect, more comes to mind. The course began with the greatness of God and our distance from Him. It considered God’s beauty and how far short we fall. In Him is life, but we begin our lives as we know them separated from Him.

Dr. Kuruvilla was a good communicator, someone who was adept not only with words and body language, but with video and music. He understood that the best way to make something stick is to engage multiple senses—especially music—and connect new knowledge to the old. It’s how he used a Beatles song to really connect me with Augustine for the first time.

One image that really stuck with me in class is a corpse: we all begin spiritually dead to God. A dead man is characterized by unresponsiveness. You can poke and prod and call, but he will not move. He can’t. And so it goes with our spirituality. We begin dead, unresponsive to our need. Our spiritual life begins not with something we do but with something God does. He moves first because we could not. He makes the spiritually dead come to life. He takes our inability to respond and breathes life into us, calling us to relationship with Him.

This is incredibly important because it introduces the subject of grace. Grace is what happens when an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, good, holy, and glorious God reaches down in love to His creation. Grace is by definition a gift. I did not attract God to me. I was not a calculated investment on God’s part. God gives in love because that is who He is.

And this is one of the crucial things I always have to come back to. Left to my own devices, I will always revert back to thinking I have to be good enough so I don’t disappoint God. But my salvation is not something I have to keep any more than it was something I could have grasped to begin with. We begin in grace and we continue in grace.

But there’s a huge complication, and it’s tied to a second image that really struck me: the slave and the whip. When we were spiritually dead, we couldn’t help but sin. But once Christ has made us alive, we have a choice to sin or not. A Christian choosing to sin is like a freed slave walking back to the whip of his cruel master. It doesn’t make any sense, it’s destructive, it’s painful, but that’s what we do. I found this image so compelling it inspired a song that I wrote with my good friend Joel.

Some think this is too much. Some say that our sins can cause us to lose God’s gift. Some think that if grace is really that strong and powerful, we’ll be tempted to abuse it and sin more.

And this is definitely a danger. It’s one I experienced at this point. I remember reading Chuck Swindoll’s The Grace Awakening for this course and being stunned by the thought that if grace doesn’t tempt us to abuse it, then we don’t really understand it. I wanted to understand it. So in my arrogance, I stopped striving for self-discipline and chose to let grace “tempt” me.

It was a horrible mistake.

While I believe that grace is indeed a gift you cannot lose and that it is indeed powerful enough to handle your worst mistakes, it also heals you and changes you over time. Not without halts and setbacks, not always in ways you want or ways you can see. But God’s Spirit is always at work calling us back and teaching us faithfulness.

And this brings me to the last great image that Dr. Kuruvilla left with me. It was a powerful declaration that I have tried to pass on whenever the opportunity arises. Salvation begins by bringing the spiritually dead to spiritual life, and it continues to free us from the effects of sin as we walk through the days God has appointed for us. But it doesn’t end there.

I’ve never had the responsibility of speaking at a funeral, but I’ve had friends pass away and seen many more grieve for the loss of their loved ones. Death touches us all. And how we respond is incredibly important.

For much of my life I was content with the idea that the dead were in a better place, that their suffering was relieved, that they had reached the goal. But I will never forget the challenge Dr. Kuruvilla laid down for us. When we speak of believers who have died, we must declare “THIS BODY WILL RISE AGAIN.” The spiritual life is not consummated by physical death; it is consummated by the resurrection of the dead. Physical death does not bring true spiritual life; it is spiritual life that brings true physical life.

There is so much to talk about with a subject like this, but I’m so grateful for these foundational principles that I have come back to time and again. We face so many trials in life. But salvation by grace, sanctification by grace, and the hope of the resurrection together outline the true and lasting life that we have in Christ.