In the Christian Science Bible Lesson July 25, 2011 Issue

How do we get to know God better?

For the lesson titled "Spirit" from August 1–7, 2011

By Brian Hall

Do we turn to temporal, material ways of understanding God, or do we take a spiritual approach, seeking a higher way? This week’s Bible Lesson, titled “Spirit,” teaches us a better understanding of Spirit, and the blessings this understanding provides us. The Golden Text makes it clear we should turn Spiritward, because “it is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63, English Standard Version). 

In the Responsive Reading, the Apostle Paul echoes the Golden Text in his message to the Corinthians. In Paul’s teaching and counsel to the church in Corinth, he reminded them of the way he instructed them when he visited previously. He had not tried to impress them with big words or great speaking. Had he done so, the temptation would have been to follow and believe in Paul the man, rather than in God. He preached to them showing “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (I Cor. 2:4), for the purpose of drawing their faith to God.

This concept of Spirit as representing God was not something new introduced in Paul’s teaching. Paul was well trained in Jewish tradition and law (see Phil. 3:5); thus, he would have been intimately familiar with the accounts of creation in Genesis. Section I of the Lesson includes this statement from Genesis 1, verse 2: “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (citation 1). So the concept of Spirit in creation is present from the very beginning of the Bible.