What do we need to be fully human?

We all want to be the best version of ourselves. But what do we need to get there? What do we need to be able to be all that we were made to be? What do we need in order to fulfill our calling, in order to live out our purpose in life, to become the best you that you can be?

There are two prevalent answers in our world today. Some would say that our most pressing need is information—education and know-how, that’s what we need more than anything else. What we lack is knowledge. For this reason, science and technology are the key to becoming all we can be because they give us the power to know and the power to make our knowledge work for our best interests and achieve our goals. Christians often modify this assumption a bit by saying that what we need is a proper view of the world, a Christian worldview. This Christian worldview allows us to apply proper knowledge to life circumstances, enabling us to become all that we were made to be.

Others would say that we need freedom to be our best selves—for only when we have the liberty to express the deepest longings and desires of our hearts can we become our truest selves, which enables us to be all that we were made to be. Freedom from limits; freedom from restrictions; freedom from rules, laws, customs, norms, peer pressure. That’s what we need to be what we were made to be.

Knowledge and freedom; that’s what we need to be all that we can be.

But there is a big problem when we compare these two common answers with what the Bible says about the human condition. To start with, the Scriptures tell us that we are not as free as we might think we are; in fact, they tell us that we are slaves; we are enslaved to Sin, a power that works in us and the world to make us disobedient to God; a power that works in the systems and institutions of this world to distort our desires, and make us think that our best life is one that is self-sufficient and independent from God (Romans 6; Eph 2.1-3). The Apostle Paul says that Sin has affected our hearts so that we don’t love, want, or desire the right things; and it has affected our minds such that we suppress the knowledge (literally press it down) when it tells us things we don’t like (e.g. Rom 1.18-23). Paul calls this condition ‘death’; he says that left on our own, we are all dead in our trespasses and sins.

We need knowledge and freedom—but they are not enough; they are not sufficient. They alone cannot liberate us from our condition of slavery. We need something outside of ourselves; we need life. We need intervention, life support if you will, that enables us to want rightly, to know rightly, and to do rightly. We need to be freed from the power of Sin, our slave master. And that life, that liberation, only comes from God.

So, what we need more than anything else is God’s life, His personal presence with us. God’s empowering presence. And that is what our theme for today is all about. The Holy Spirit. I am not sure what comes to your mind when you think about the Holy Spirit. But at the core of it all, the Holy Spirit is God’s empowering presence, who enables us to share in the love and life of God and to love others the way that Christ has loved us. When the Spirit interrupts, intersects, intercedes, intervenes in our lives with His life of love, we become what we were made to be. We become our best self, we become fully human. Paul calls this keeping in step with the Spirit. More on that later. For now, let’s pause, take a deep breath, and thank God that he has not left us as slaves in this world, but instead by His Spirit has given us His own self to enable us to be what we were made to be—beloved children of God.