200. Can we be truly spiritual without the Holy Spirit and the Gospel?
No. "Spirituality" can have different meanings. For example, some refer to spirituality as enjoying nature or contemplating life's deeper meanings, which does reflect that life is more than mere material reality. However, such spirituality, based on human contemplation and imagination, is unable truly to know God and His grace. Human reason or contemplation cannot "figure out what God is, what He has in mind and does" (LC II 63). Only the Holy Spirit, working through the Word, shows us the incarnate Son and, through Him, the Father. Because God has revealed the truth about Himself in this way, only Christian faith and life is authentic spirituality. Only the Holy Spirit through the Means of Grace moves us to follow Jesus through this life to eternal life.
John 1:18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's ide, He has made Him known.
John 3:31-32 He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He wh comes from heaven is above all. He bears witnes to what He has seen and heard, yet no one receives His testimony.
Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:9-11 For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; Ephesians 3:14-19; and 1 Thessalonians 2:13.
Eventual commentary
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