the physical man and the spiritual man - 22nd week Tuesday 2014

There are two kinds of persons according to our first reading today from the letter of Paul to the Corinthians.  The person can either remain a physical man or he can become a man imbued by the Spirit of God.  Other bibles translate physical man as the animal man or the natural man.  Tawo lang gid sia, tawohanon lang gid sia, so ang panan-aw niya tawohanon ang gid.  St. Paul describes a physical man as someone who could not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, he does not have the spirit of God with him, so he only sees things with human wisdom.  That is why for him the wisdom of God and those who follow it, is foolishness for the physical man cannot understand it because he remains worldly, he relies only on human wisdom.

But a spiritual man sees things differently because he sees things from the point of view of God, not according to the standards set by the world but according to the heart of God.  This is because the spiritual man has the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit is in the depths of his heart, and he is therefore familiar with the ways of God.

I remember a person who counseled me on a very difficult case and he said something like "Father you can do this, you can do that, you can even get back on him and hit him hard by doing this."  But he ended, “but Father this is not good because you are a priest.”  That person has the Spirit living in the depths of her heart.  He knew that I should not take that road kay pari ako, because I am a priest.  He is familiar with the ways of the Spirit.  Ugaling gin-confine ya lang sa mga pari.  Tani nagsiling sia pero Father, indi nami kay Kristiano kita.

We view things differently because of our faith in Jesus.  We have a different point of view from the natural man because we have received the Spirit of God and He resides in our hearts teaching us, making us familiar with the mind, the heart and the ways of God.  We know the ways of man, but because we have the Spirit in us we also know the ways and wisdom of God and it is different from the world.

We have a different take on money.  It is a means and not an end.  We have a different view of human relations – our workers, our family; for they are an end and not just a means like things which we can use.  We view suffering differently, we know what sacrifice is because Jesus himself embraced suffering including his pain, persecution and even death.  We have a different stance on conflicts and how to resolve them – we have learned forgiveness, we have learned to understand, we have fought evil not with another evil, not with hatred, but with good. 

These are the ways of God and it is difficult to understand this when we remain in the level of what St. Paul calls the animal man or physical man.  But we can understand these when we have the Spirit in us, the Spirit residing in our hearts, the same Spirit promised us by Jesus saying that he, the Spirit, will teach us all things.