Without the Spirit the Game Can't Be Played

This may be hard for some to believe, but lately I’m worn out on politics. I’ve grown tired of watching reports on the primaries and I’m wondering how I’ll ever make it through the election season. I’ve especially grown tired of the way politics has become so much a part of my being Christian.

I know some people would say “it’s about time.” But they’re probably people who never read my stuff anyway. I wish I could escape this compulsion to always ask how our faith should influence the shape of our society, but unfortunately it can’t be done. When you read the Bible carefully, it’s obvious that political values, what we might call God’s politics, are at the heart of it.

But just for today, in the dead space between primary elections, I’d like to think for a minute about the foundation on which God’s values depends: the presence of the God’s Spirit in each of us, and in our relationships with each other.

One of the things which unites Christians is the belief in the Trinity -- God the Creator, God the redeemer, and God the Holy Spiritual presence in our lives. You can confess your obedience to the creator, and declare your allegiance to the redeemer, but without the Spirit, God is invisible in this world and our faith becomes an pleasant nursery rhyme recital. This may startle some people, but the need for the Spirit’s presence is greater than the need was for Christ to come into the world. As Jesus himself told Nicodemus, unless we are reshaped according to the spirit, God’s kingdom has no chance in this world. You might say that Jesus’ main purpose was to introduce God’s Spirit.

Many claim to have God’s Spirit, but how do we know if it’s truly present? Well, we see it in the kind of people we are. How do we know what kind of people we are? We see it in how we treat each other. As John wrote, anyone who declares love for God but doesn’t display it toward brother and sister is fooling themselves. Unfortunately, the church has let a lot of fooling go on over the years by focusing more on obedience and redemption than on lives reshaped in the Spirit. Welcome the Spirit into your heart and you’ll no longer search for obedience and redemption. They will come to you naturally.

But God didn’t send the Son and the Spirit into the world for the small work of changing each one of us, but for the great work of changing the world. If we as individuals are changed but do not change the relationships and politics of this world, we are no more that what Paul in First Corinthians calls “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” On the contrary, Paul says, the gifts of the Spirit are given “for the common good.” And Paul clearly marks the path to change. A life in the Spirit and a world reshaped in God’s Spirit, will have three main characteristics: faith, hope and love, “and the greatest of these is love.”