Do you remember what you learned in chemistry class? What is the composition of water? You’re right—2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen. Suppose God slipped up when he created water and forgot the 1 part oxygen. Then what would we use to take a bath or to water our gardens?
What about the composition of a human being? There are also 3 parts to us—body, soul, and spirit. The common thinking of our age is that there are only 2 parts to human beings—body and soul. We know, of course, that we have a body; we can see it, touch it, and hear it. And we know there are parts of us that we can’t see, such as thoughts, feelings, and desires. This convinces us that we have a soul. But what about our “inmost selves”, the spiritual part of us?
Remember when the serpent tempted Eve? She told him that God said she would die if she ate the forbidden proof. The serpent answered, “You will not die.” In a certain way, the serpent was right. Eve’s body and soul would not die. She ate the fruit and yet could still talk, think, and feel—her body and soul were still alive. What she didn’t know is that her spirit had died, because it was instantly cut off from God. Even her body and soul were impacted by her sin; she and Adam felt afraid and ashamed, and bodily pain was introduced to the human race for the first time. She, for example, suffered pain in delivering her children.
Just as, when a certain portion of the brain is cut off and dies when a person has a stroke because it loses its blood supply, so the spirit dies when it is cut off from its spiritual “blood supply,” the life of God. Before our baptism, we are cut off in spirit from God. We know from catechism class that we need rebirth by water and the Holy Spirit to come alive in our inmost self. Such is the amazing power of baptism made possible by Jesus’ death and resurrection. What Eve and Adam lost, we have regained in Christ through the sacraments.
Jesus talked to a group of people who believed that man has just 2 parts. He tried to put them straight (John 8:21-30).
“Jesus said to the Pharisees: ‘I am going away, and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.”
Though the Pharisees did not know it, they were still dead from the fall of Eve and Adam. Jesus was providing a way back to the Father and a rebirth of their spirits. If they did not line themselves up with Jesus, their spirits would never come alive again, and so they would “die” in their state of sin.
Jesus was getting ready to leave this earth to return to the Father. He was always spiritually alive because he had no sin in him. When he died, he would return directly to the Father. Only those reborn through baptism would be released from spiritual death and join Jesus in heaven. As religiously perfect as the Pharisees were, they could not go where Jesus was going. Their spirits were still dead to eternal life.
“He said to them, ‘You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die to your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.’”
“Below” and “this world” mean that though 2 parts of the Pharisees were alive, the inner part was still dead. They were still alive in body and soul, just like Eve and Adam were after the fall, but their inner spirits were cut off from God. They belonged only to this world. Jesus’ home was beyond this world; he belonged to a land that is far beyond the limitations of earth. Those who believed in him would one day rise to the “land above;” those who didn’t would be stuck in the “land below.”
How critical then it is that one believes in Jesus and allows him to give them a new birth so that their home, too, will be in the “land above.” The Pharisees were so grounded in their opposition to Jesus that they kept the door to their spirits tightly locked.
“Because he spoke this way many came to believe in him.”
Yay! There is a happy ending to this discourse. “Many” came to believe in him.
Lent is our opportunity to renew our spiritual rebirth in Jesus. Though at baptism we were born into the “land above,” our ties to this earth tend to pull us back into the “land below.” We are blessed with the sacrament of Reconciliation in which we can continue to be cut loose from our ties to this world and be released more fully into the “land above.” Let us not pass up this moment of grace.
