What does it mean to be spiritual? Many these days are undertaking to consider spirituality, its meaning, and how to achieve it. This interest appears to come in addition to or perhaps because of the focus on material success. It would seem in the minds of some that now is a good time to take up the spiritual, to seek the meaning of spirituality, and how to achieve it.

Spirituality, traditionally and Biblically, means the forgiveness of sins (i.e. absolution) and faith. Jesus says in John 20:22: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Here Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to His disciples. Here we see what it actually means to become spiritual because here the Holy Spirit is given to men. To be spiritual means to receive and to have God’s Holy Spirit through Jesus.

Jesus then spells out how He gives the Holy Spirit to men: absolution. Jesus says: “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them … ,” reads St. John 20:23 Traditional and Biblical spirituality then is absolution, i.e. the delivery of the forgiveness of sins of Christ’s atoning death on the Cross through His word, whether applied to ourselves or to our neighbor (Galatians 6:1). Because sin in thought, word, and deed, is what makes someone unspiritual (St. Matthew 15:18-20, Galatians 5:16-26, 6:8), the forgiveness of each and every one of those sins continuously through Christ’s absolution makes him spiritual again. Through Christ’s word of absolution people receive the Holy Spirit and thereby become spiritual beings.

The tools of Biblical spirituality are Jesus’ Word and Sacraments (i.e. Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper) because they absolve of all sin. In Holy Baptism, the Word, and the Lord’s Supper, we find God’s forgiveness or absolution of all sins for Christ’s sake (Acts 2:38, St. John 20:23, St. Matthew 26:28) and thereby we find the spirituality of the Bible.

Martin Luther writes: “Thus we confess: ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit and the holy Christian Church.’ With these words we affirm that the Holy Spirit dwells with Christendom and sanctifies it, namely, through the Word and Sacrament, through which he works faith in it and the knowledge of Christ. Those are the tools and the means through which He continuously sanctifies and purifies Christendom. This also makes Christians holy before God, not by virtue of what we ourselves are or do but because the Holy Spirit is given us.”

Biblical spirituality, then, is absolution and faith which receives such absolution of Christ and justifies (Romans 10:17, 3:28).

In the Church, therefore, we should seek and fully expect to find there nothing but the forgiveness of all of our sins distributed freely and daily for Christ’s sake.

The Lutheran Church states: “Everything, therefore, in the Christian Church is ordered to the end that we shall daily obtain there nothing but the forgiveness of sin through the Word and (Sacraments), to comfort and encourage our consciences as long as we live here. Thus, although we have sins, the (grace of the) Holy Ghost does not allow them to injure us, because we are in the Christian Church, where there is nothing but (continuous, uninterrupted) forgiveness of sin, both in that God forgives us, and in that we forgive, and bear with, and help each other.”

Clearly, such forgiveness is the love and wisdom of God (I Corinthians 1:30, St. John 3:16). And being the wisdom of God, absolution grants us the wisdom, counsel, might, knowledge, and understanding of His Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2) in order to love God and to love and help our neighbor. (I Corinthians 2:15-16)

These benefits, moreover, are eternal. For absolution of sin reverses the wages of sin (Romans 6:23), grants eternal life, and the resurrection of the body from the dead (Titus 3:4-7, Romans 8:11).

Biblical spirituality, then, is absolution and faith through which comes the Divine blessings of the forgiveness of sins, life everlasting, and the resurrection of the body.