As we started to preach through Colossians, I realized that to make sense of what Paul was writing, I needed to see the world in the same framework that he did. As I dug into that more and wrestled with how to communicate that framework, I settled on four words that together brought Paul’s message into focus of me.
If the world in which we live were a house, it would have four rooms, that I would call:
The Physical – This is the room of stones and trees and bodies and things. It is the realm of physical cause and effect.
The Personal – This is the room where our emotions, thoughts and memories are. These are all “real” and affect in our lives in direct ways, but you don’t stub your toe on them. They are real, but not physical, like the just as real things in the previous room.
The Social – In this room are human groups – like a nation or an ethnicity or a military unit or a peer group. Being Jewish or Roman, for example, had observable consequences and helped shape a person’s identity, thoughts and actions in ways that were just as real as a rock or as anxiety, but real in a different way yet.
The Spiritual – The final room in the picture would be just as “real” for Paul as the Physical, the Personal and the Social, but again, real in ways that are different and distinct from the other rooms. Grasping reality in Paul’s writing means that the things in this room that I am calling “The Spiritual” are just as “real,” even though are different and distinct from the marble statue that belongs in “The Physical” room and moves our emotions in “the Personal Room.” And so on.
This is simply my observation for organizing my understanding and reading. It is not some secret knowledge to pass on, or the identifying mark of a new denomination or anything that serious.
But ponder it for a bit, and see if it doesn’t clarify some things for you. Better yet, read through Paul’s letter to the Colossians (It’s only four chapters.) and as a mental exercise, place each phrase in the room where it functions. For example:
Colossians 1:7-8:
“You learned it from Epaphras” – Physical – Epaphras is a
real, physical person
“who told us of your love” – Personal – love is a personal
motivation that expresses itself (that would be Physical) to the benefit of
other people (that would be Social!).
“In The Spirit” – So what is that?!? Is “love in the Spirit” simply a different
type of “Personal” reality that then expresses itself to the benefit of other
people? OR, is it a love that comes from a different room
– namely “The Spiritual” – and then affects the “Personal” and expresses itself
to the benefit of other people.
Simply put: I think Paul intends to communicate that second picture when he writes “in the Spirit.” Paul writes from a four-room framework, not a three-room framework.
That is when I realized how much of my life seems to function in a three-room framework that is different than Paul’s. That is what got me to pondering each time I read through Colossians during this series. In my next post, I’ll dig around in some of my discoveries and implications of the four-room framework of the world.
